There are still lots of opportunities in the domain space. I’ve said this more than once before. A few days ago I received an email from the guys at HappyBirthdayDomains.com, asking for my opinion on their new project.

On their website, they list hundreds of branded domain names that users can lease to put happy birthday greetings on. Each of the domains includes a first name, so that you can, for example, create a special greeting page for your friend Brad on HappyBirthdayBrad.com.

This certainly is an interesting idea for making money off domain names. Lots of promotion has to be done to get the word out, but once more people know about this service it might eventually take off. In any case, this is a good example showing that by being creative you can find different ways of monetizing your domain portfolio in times of falling PPC revenues.

I posted this on a private domain board today, but I thought I should make a short post about it on my blog, too. Since ICANN has decided to open up the TLD space, I’ve been asking myself this question:

If a company (e.g. Nike) is offered Shoes.com and .SHOES, which will it choose?

It is the answer to that question that could determine the aftermarket value of generic .com domains in the future.

Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested. - The Trial, Franz Kafka

George Kirikos has always done an excellent job spotting potential dangers for the domain community. Now he has found a new request by Afilias for a registry service relating to the “abusive” use of .info domain names. DotInfo has been a popular top-level domain with spammers, because the .info annual registration fee has usually been lower than the renewal fee of other TLDs.

Although the policy request has been made with good intentions, it might also embody a danger for upright domain registrants, as George points out:

… While most folks (including myself) probably care very little about the .info TLD, my concern is that any bad implementation in .info might be copied or used as a precedent in other more important TLDs, in particular .com run by VeriSign.

In particular:

Pursuant to Section 3.6.5 of the RRA, Afilias reserves the right to deny, cancel or transfer any registration or transaction, or place any domain name(s) on registry lock, hold or similar status, that it deems necessary, in its discretion;…

I would be against giving VeriSign (if the model was copied to .com) that discretionary power over my company’s domains, especially the “right to cancel.” What exactly is “illegal”? In China, I’m sure there are many things that are illegal that are perfectly legal in Canada, the USA or the EU. …

This is, in fact, a very dangerous clause, because it would give the registry the uncontrolled right to take domains away from their owners. If the policy is accepted by ICANN, it will dramatically curtail the rights of domain holders. The domain registries already have too much power and a monopoly that allows them to virtually set prices as they wish, but the policy proposed by Afilias would only make things worse, and it would make investing in the domain industry a very risky undertaking many outside investors would shrink away from.

Click here to find out how to submit public comments on this issue to ICANN.

(via CircleID)

Eric Rice of Domains for Media has launched his new project DNCartoons.com. The site offers a satirical look at the domain name industry. On DNCartoons.com you can also subscribe to Eric’s new domains for sale newsletter, which he is going to send out to more than 2,000 domain buyers.

I’ve subscribed to all domain newsletters I’ve ever come across and I think you should sign up for Eric’s, too. Eric is a nice guy and a successful domainer who was General Manager of domain registrar BulkRegister.com and who manages a large portfolio of quality domains. He also helped to get the much publicized Cowboys.com acquisition off the ground.

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DNCartoons.com Launches to Provide New Channel Matching Domain Sellers with Buyers

Get an Edge on Buying and Selling Coveted Domains and Enjoy a Few Good Inside Laughs at the Domain Name and Internet Industry

June 17, 2008 – Annapolis, MD – DomainsForMedia (DomainsForMedia.com), experts in domain name monetization, leasing and sales, today announced that its founder, Eric Rice, formerly General Manager of Bulkregister.com, will produce a blog and domain sales newsletter at www.DNCartoons.com to promote the sale of domains from his personal portfolio and those from other domain sellers. The blog will feature satirical cartoons about the domain industry, while the newsletter will showcase domains for sale at reasonable prices. Readers can submit cartoon concepts for DNCartoons.com to consider producing. Those cartoon concepts produced and published will feature the reader’s web site and marketing message. Sellers may submit domains to be considered for inclusion in the newsletter.

DomainsForMedia believes that at times domain sellers might be better served by direct selling methods rather than auctions or a listing on a domain mass listing web site. In some live auctions the “bid up” promised never materializes. As a result, many domains only have one bidder and often go for the reserve price. Some domain listing web sites have become unwieldy, with millions of domains listed. Many sellers on such sites are too focused on selling names at unrealistically high prices for today’s market. In the DNCartoons.com domain sales newsletter, a seller will set a fair and reasonable price and benefit from having their domain promoted to over 2,000 (and growing) of the world’s top domain buyers.

In the next few months the newsletter’s readership is expected to grow to 4,000 subscribers through a variety of marketing efforts. Those who sign up at DNCartoons.com will receive the free newsletter and gain the inside track on domains for sale.

“Our goal is to promote domains that are truly priced right, or even a little under for the market, so they will sell. We anticipate generating a higher sell through ratio than other selling platforms,” states Rice. “The concept of featuring cartoons and humor on our blog will make it fun for readers and help us to expand our already robust list of 2,000 domain buyers. Sellers will appreciate the added value we will offer from our growing list of qualified and active buyers.”

In 2007, Rice brokered over $4 million dollars worth of single domains, domain portfolios and web sites. Many of these deals were completed in non-disclosed transactions that were never posted on industry sales tracking website. Rice’s success demonstrates that small domain brokers do play a significant role in the growing domain aftermarket.

In related news, today DomainsForMedia.com also announced that it has secured another $2 million dollars to buy domains and domain portfolios. In 2007, DomainsForMedia.com purchased names such as Snowboards.com, Skateboards.com and Surfboards.com in partnership with Mike Mann (www.MikeMann.com ) and WashingtonVC (www.WashingtonVC.com). These domains are currently under development. Future purchases will be of the same caliber; high potential generic domains, traffic generating domains and miscellaneous domains with resell potential.

Global registry operator VeriSign has published its June 2008 Domain Name Industry Brief (PDF). According to the report, the base of domain registrations has grown 26 percent in the past twelve months and six percent quarter over quarter. This marks yet another significant increase in the number of domain registrations and is further proof that there is no slowdown in sight.

There are now more than 162 million domain names registered; .com is still number one, followed by ccTLDs .de (Germany) and .cn (China). VeriSign reports that Germany’s .de TLD comes in second, but I have already heard reports elsewhere that China’s .cn has overtaken .de. Anyway, both of these country-code domains are highly popular and they will continue to grow as more and more people in Asia get reliable Internet access and IDNs (internationalized domain names) become more popular and more widely used.

But not only .cn has experienced double-digit growth quarter over quarter (it grew 23 percent), Poland’s .pl, Spain’s .es, Russia .ru and France’s .fr have seen large growth as well. There are big opportunities in local domain markets, so if you find yourself in the position to invest in foreign language domains you might want to look into this more thoroughly. Personally, I’ve recently been watching the German IDN market, although I haven’t committed to any investments, yet. China, Poland and Russia look very interesting too, in my opinion.

Another growth market one should keep an eye on is India. VeriSign says that, despite the fact that the .com and .in TLDs are well-known and established in India, most people still don’t understand what domains are and what services to associate with them. Therefore, the vast majority of domain registrants in India has been medium and large businesses. So there is lots of potential untapped when it comes to small businesses and private domain registrations. As soon as these groups will begin to demand more domain names too, both the primary and the secondary market will become even more interesting. At the end of the first quarter of 2008, there was a total of 1.2 million domain registrations in India, which represents a 46 percent increase over the same time last year. About 60 percent of these domains are .com or .net domains and 40 percent .in domains. I expect the number of domain registrations as well as the number of aftermarket domain sales in India to grow at similarly high rates in the future. Investing early could yield higher returns than waiting until demand for and knowledge about domains in India has finally gone up.