VeriSign, Inc. and it’s wholly owned subsidiaries (”VNDS”) is hereby notifying all registrars of a fee change for .com and/or .net domain names effective October 1, 2008. In accordance with our contract, ICANN has already been notified. Details as follows:
1. VNDS’ fee for each annual increment of a new and renewal .com domain name registration and for each transfer of a .com domain name registration from one ICANN-accredited registrar to another will be US $6.86, exclusive of any ICANN Variable Registry-Level Fee (as defined in the .com Registry Agreement) or any other ICANN fee; and
2. VNDS’ fee for each annual increment of a new and renewal .net domain name registration and for each transfer of a .net domain name registration from one ICANN-accredited registrar to another will be US $4.23, exclusive of any ICANN Variable Registry-Level Fee (as defined in the .net Registry Agreement) or any other ICANN fee.
This will most likely be another factor causing more domains to drop and sale prices of some names to fall. It is also very likely that VeriSign will continue to raise registration fees by 7% annually in the coming years. If you want to avoid paying higher prices in the next couple of years you can advance-renew your domain names now. This way you will save quite a lot of money, depending on the size of your portfolio.
I recently wrote an article about buying domain names for DotSauce Magazine. Mark published it earlier today, so I’d like to point you to his great domain news site where you can read it. Its title is “Buy Domain Names Now“, short excerpt follows:
I think we’re having quite an interesting market situation right now that is especially advantageous for buyers.
Yes, I believe that currently it is a very good time to acquire domain names. There is one obvious reason for doing so, which is that the value of domains has steadily been going up for years, and I don’t see any reason why this should stop. That’s one long-term argument for investing in domain names sooner rather than later.
But there are a few other arguments I’d like to point out, too.
SearchMe is a new visual search engine which lets you see the websites in the search results before you visit them. Watch the demonstration video here:
The flipping feature looks pretty cool, but what makes it so useful and what does it mean for website owners? If would say the visual search approach might result in better conversion rates, because people see the sites in the search results and can then directly go to the website they think they’ll like best without having to click through all the other sites. This means traffic could become more targeted. Of course, it depends on how well SearchMe’s search algorithm will be working, but the potential to make finding websites easier is defnitely there. On the other hand, it is possible that poorly designed websites will receive less traffic than other sites just because they don’t look as attractive. Another negative aspect is adult content. From SearchMe’s FAQ:
We make every effort to allow people to filter out adult material from their results. We’ve done our best, and we’d like to think that we’re working at the same level as other major search engines. It’s impossible to be perfect with today’s Internet, but we’ll continue to improve on this as time goes on.
But what I really like about SearchMe is that it automatically categorizes the websites in its index. It then recognizes keywords and suggests related categories, so that you can exclude unrelated websites from the search results.
SearchMe got $31 million in funding from Sequoia , the guys who also backed Google and Yahoo. It isn’t based on any of these search engines as SearchMe built its own engine and has its own index which currently includes about 1 billion websites. The private beta has recently been launched, you can sign up for it here.
As the Online Publishers Association’s latest Internet Activity Index (IAI) points out, content is still king when it comes to time spent online. The IAI devides Internet usage into five activities: Content, Communications, Commerce, Community and Search.
Despite the impression that web 2.0 sites are actually more popular than old-school content sites, it is actually content that people spend most time with. Continue reading ‘Content remains king’
Henry Blodget has analyzed the change in advertising spending and its shift from traditional media to the Internet throughout the last year. The final results are not surprising, but they’re pretty impressive:
Google could add more than $2.6 billion in advertising revenue in 2007, which constitutes a 44% increase over the company’s 2006 revenue. In total, Google made about $8.7 billion.
Henry Blodget has 
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