The high value of generic domain names  was the topic of conversation in two interesting new interviews with industry leaders - one released in print and the other in video format. 

Yesterday, BostInnovation.com, a site that covers business innovation in the Boston market,  published an interview with Swap.com CEO Jeff Bennett, a man already very familiar to those in the domain industry since he served as the President of NameMedia before moving to his new position earlier this year. 

When Bennett joined his current company it was known as SwapTree, but last week the firm was re-branded as Swap.com. In his interview Bennett talked about the huge advantages that come from owning such an intuitive brand - one he describes as "descriptive" rather than generic (I have to admit, I think that is a better term as well). "We don’t have to spend millions of dollars in advertising to convince a consumer what we are. Swap.com is all about swapping!," Bennett said.

Bennett also told interviewer Kyle Psaty "The 

Jeff Bennett
CEO, Swap.com

re-branding will allow many efficiencies in how we market the company to expand our current offerings. Adopting this “category killer” name also implies that we are more than just a book, music, movie or game swapping site. We have plans to expand and serve a wider set of categories and the whole swapping market."

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Attendees at the Epik Developer's Conference coming up Sept. 15-17 in Seattle, will find a little something extra in their "goodie" bags - $795 worth of EpikBucks. Epik Founder and CEO

Rob Monster said his company's new "currency" - also known as Developer's Credit -  addresses what he called "the single most pressing issue in the industry - liquidity, i.e. how to enable transactions between 2 or 3 parties to occur when there is no significant cash available as a medium of exchange." 

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Moniker.com's DOMAINfest New York  Extended Online Auction ended Wednesday with an additional 19 names sold for a total of $1,207,710. Combined with the domains previously sold from the live auction catalog, a total of 38 domain names were sold for $3,009,610. 

Most of the extended auction total came from a blockbuster 7-figure sale - Quotes.com for 

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A 2010 domain conference that we haven't talked about (before now) - an important one on the international calendar - is coming up next week. It is the 6th edition of the

DomainvermarkterForum that will be held September 2-3 at  the five-star Hotel Sofitel Bayerpost in Munich. This is Germany's biggest show and the only major event dedicated to the German market. The event was started in 2006 by Christoph Grueneberg and Thomas Mueller and it has steadily grown over the years, drawing attendees from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and other European nations as well as from the United States. 

This year's show will have an added attraction - a live domain auction presented by Oversee.net's Moniker and SnapNames divisions.  The auction will get underway Friday, September 3 at 8am. U.S. Eastern time 

which will be 2pm local time in Munich. Previous DomainvermarkterForum events have yielded more than $1.1 million in domain auction sales. 

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The DOMAINfest New York Power Networking Day was held Wednesday (August 18) at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan. Conference organizer Oversee.net was kind enough to send 

us some of Stefanie Papay's photos from the event so we could share them with you along with show highlights that Corinne Forti helped us put together.  

A crowd of approximately 200 people converged on the Big Apple for this second show in Oversee's new series of one-day power networking events (the first was held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida May 13, 2010). Attendees came from as far away as Australia and Brazil , along with lots of new faces, who were eager to learn about the importance of domains for their businesses.

The jam-packed agenda began at 8am when the registration desk opened and attendees were invited to enjoy a 90-minute informal networking period complete with fresh coffee and sweet rolls. Registrants then headed to the conference room where Peter Celeste, Senior VP & General Manager of Oversee's DomainSponsor unit, welcomed the crowd. 

Gregg McNair (PPX.com) & Attorney John 
Berryhill were happy to see each 
other again at DOMAINfest New York. 

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Colin Pape, the founder of ShopCity.com, a company with a portfolio of over 8,000 developed “geo” domain names, will give the keynote address at the 1st Annual Epik.com Domain Developers Conference coming up September 15-17 in Seattle. Pape will deliver his speech on September 16, starting at 1:30 pm (U.S. Pacific Time) at the Bell Harbor Conference Center Bay Auditorium. Pape's speech will be followed by a live auction featuring 100 developed websites. Both events will be open to the public. 

Pape’s company built their portfolio into a network of local Internet marketplaces such as ShopNewYork.com, ShopBoston.com and ShopSeattle.com. Each territory is licensed to local partners, similar to a franchise model. The collection of domains was assembled over a ten-year period by merging the portfolios of three competing companies.

Colin Pape will deliver keynote
speech at the 1st Annual Epik 
Developers Conference Sept. 16

Epik's Chairman and CEO Rob Monster said, “Few people understand the individual intricacies of both domain names and domain development as well as Colin Pape. As he has expertly demonstrated with ShopCity.com, the power of descriptive domain names, combined with the right domain development platform has the potential to generate significant, sustainable revenue. His in-depth, hands-on knowledge makes him the perfect Keynote Speaker for the Epik.com Domain Developer Conference."  Monster added that ShopCity's networked software solution has enabled Pape to command hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees for a domain name that would sell for much less on its own.  

“Domains have tremendous inherent marketing value, but unless you leverage that potential and convert it to revenue, you’re missing out on 90% of the benefit,” Pape said. “Domain development is the process of creating the applications, payment gateways, management and reporting systems that work together to turn a concept into a business that creates value that can be measured and improved."

Pape said, “I’m honored to speak to a group of domain investors who’ve made the commitment to move beyond parking. Domain development improves the user-experience, increases the value of the domain, and enhances the perception of the domain industry."

For more information about the Epik Developer Conference, visit http://Epik.com/Conf.

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Oversee.net staged their second DOMAINfest Power Networking Day Wednesday (August 18) in New York City (this new series of one-day events had debuted in Ft. Lauderdale, 

Florida May 13th). A prior commitment prevented me from attending the New York show but I have made arrangements to have some photos and conference highlights sent to us and will post those for you when they come in. 

The show included a live domain auction staged by Moniker.com. They wound up with $1,801,900 in sales from from the catalog for this show ($1,265,000 of that amount came from a five-name package including 

T-Shirts.com that was actually closed in a separate deal the day before it was scheduled to go on the block during the live event. We have more details on that deal in our latest weekly domain sales report). The next highest sales were Disco.com ($255,000), BigApple.com ($70,000), NewYorkApartments.com ($65,000), Companion.com ($45,000) and, in what may have been the deal of the day, Exterminating.com at $35,000. The domains that did not sell in the live auction are still available in an extended online auction. That event will close at 3:15pm (U.S. Eastern time) on Wednesday, August 25.

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In our last Who Are They? exercise (last updated in an August 6th Lowdown post) we were still looking for the identities of two of the people with veteran domainer Richard Lau (in the white shirt) in the photograph below that was snapped at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Vancouver conference in June. At that point readers had identified Shane Martin (2nd from left) and NameDrive's Director of European Operation, Matthias Kaiser, who is standing behind Richard. That left us needing names for our bookends at the far left and far right. As it happens, soon after our readers identified Matthias, he in turn identified the gentleman at the far left - Adrian Ariolla of SecondIncome.ca. 

When our readers did not come up with the name and profession of our final holdout at the far right (reader Frank Michlick did remember his first name - Ken) we called on Richard Lau to complete the puzzle. "That's Ken Nybeck," Richard wrote. "He is an independent contractor and we work together on a few different projects. His main focus right now is building Resume.com (not yet launched)." Thanks to all for helping complete our latest mission. I've gotten favorable feedback on this feature which allows us to introduce you to industry people that you may not have previously known. I'll have a new set of faces for you in the next week or so and we'll again see who can be the first to answer the Who Are They? question next time around.

Last month I told you about the Domaining III conference coming up at the Hotel Sorolla Palace in Valencia, Spain September 23-25, 2010 where Sedo CEO Tim Schumacher and the Castello Brothers (Michael and David) will be the keynote speakers. If you think you might like to attend the conference but cost is an issue, you will be interested to know that EuroDNS is giving away 20 free passes to the event in a random drawing. To put your name in the hat, just sign up here before the drawing deadline September 1st. 

A couple of other notes today - congratulations to David Clements (former President at RickLatona.com) and Harvey Kaplan on their launch of Cheesecake.com. I'm sure they will turn that generic gem into a solid online business. Also, don't forget that the DOMAINfest New York Power Networking Day will be held tomorrow (Wednesday, August 18) at the Grand Hyatt Hotel  in Manhattan. If you are in the Big Apple it's not too late to pay at the door to attend what will be an event well worth attending.

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Following six months of discussions and development, Rob Grant, CEO of RealEstateDirectory.com (who was profiled in our April 2008 Cover Story) and John Burke, President and CEO of Select Sotheby's International Realty in northern New York State, have announced a unique internet partnership with the launch of a powerful New York real estate portal for www.LakeGeorgeRealEstate.com.

"We are very excited to partner with Select Sotheby's International Realty on this unique project and to be working with John Burke," Grant (who is based in Lake Placid, New York) told us. "If this first site performs the way we think it will, it may represent the future template for a major build out of our powerful New York real estate network in select markets."

The RealEstateDirectory.com was founded in 1996 by Grant who owns the largest network of geo-targeted real estate domains in the world, including LondonRealEstate.com, JapanRealEstate.com, TokyoRealEstate.com, AustraliaRealEstate.com and GermanyRealEstate.com, as well as hundreds of other countries and cities around the globe.

"Our current strategy is to partner with companies like Sothebys here in Upstate New York which offer excellent inventory and a large network of experienced agents," Grant said. "It's critical that we have internet savvy agents who can handle these real estate leads and convert them to actual sales."

Throughout New York State, RealEstateDirectory.com owns domains representing the most important markets throughout New York State, including 

Rob Grant (left) and John Burke in front of 
the Select Sotheby's International Realty 
office in Saratoga Springs, New York.

NewYorkRealEstate.com, BuffaloRealEstate.com, AlbanyRealEstate.com and SyracuseRealEstate.com to name just a few. The majority of these domains are still utilizing a traditional parking based platform generating PPC revenue, but Grant has his sites set on forming more development deals like the arrangement with Sotheby's to unlock the full potential of these domains. 

"As the traditional PPC revenue model slowly dies, large domain portfolio owners are now finally moving into the next development phase," Grant noted. "For real estate domains, the highest and best use has clearly always been as fully developed real estate portals. The commissions which can be generated from the sale of physical real estate dwarf any other revenue model we know of."

"The way we've structured the LakeGeorgeRealEstate.com deal with Sotheby's is that RealEstateDirectory.com owns the actual web site and Select Sotheby's International Realty provides all the unique inventory and listings. Its a very simple and straight forward arrangement. If we can generate the leads, Select Sotheby's International Realty agents can convert these leads into sales," Grant said.

John Burke (left) and Rob Grant have high expectations for LakeGeorgeRealEstate.com.

If the LakeGeorgeRealEstate.com site proves successful, Grant said their next project will be in the Catskills with the build out of CatskillsRealEstate.com. 

"We already operate a very large and successful site in the Adirondacks"  noted Grant, who is a veteran real estate broker. "AdirondackRealEstate.com in Upstate  New York leverages our own brokerage firm and experienced agents. Now, with this new internet partnership involving Select Sotheby's International Realty we hope to expand into new markets throughout Upstate New York."

The RealEstateDirectory.com is part of www.WebMediaProperties.com which owns over 8,000 highly targeted domains in a variety of industry verticals. The company also operates a content network of 1,600 lifestyle and travel based sites throughout the U.S. Grant founded the company in 1996.

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Parking revenues have fallen so far over the past couple of years that some have gone as far as to declare that form of domain monetization dead. I wouldn't go that far, but there is no denying that parking has become a critically ill patient. In this environment, no one would dream of starting up another parking company, right? I would have thought so, but I would have been wrong.

ParksDot.com, based in Great Britain, plans to open their doors for beta testing on August 25th. One of the company founders, Kerr Gracie, claims they have a platform that could re-ignite flagging interest in domain name parking. 

"Domain parking has become very stagnant and boring over the last few years and not very enticing for domain name owners with boring landing pages that don’t give justice to the potential of a domain name that has a lot of traffic," Gracie said. "ParksDot.com offers an opportunity for users to create and manage landing pages, making them fully customizable and pleasing to the eye when landing on a parked domain name, encouraging better click through rates. Users can also enter their own meta tags and descriptions to get indexed in major search engines and drive targeted traffic to their domains."

Kerr Gracie
ParksDot.com

Turkel Alizadeh, the head of operations for ParksDot.com added, “We have a dedicated team of designers and an excellent marketing team so we have a lot of ideas we can bounce around and we are adding different dimensions on a daily basis to improve domain parking for our users. We strive to give our users what they want and like to listen to their ideas, above all we believe in great customer support."

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Congrats to Andrew Allemann on the launch of DNWStats.com - his very useful new service that brings a trusted third party statistics verification service to the domain industry. Many domains are sold for prices that are based on traffic and revenue statistics provided by the

seller. The problem is has always been that, unless the seller was someone you personally knew very well, there was always a danger that you were being fed inflated numbers (often with falsified documentation). Horror stories abound of buyers taking delivery of so-called "traffic" domains, only to find that once they had paid, the traffic, seller and the buyer's money were all gone with the wind. 

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Time for another round of everyone's favorite domain game (OK, so maybe it's the only domain game, but we're not too proud to take the title by default!). In case you missed the debut of Who Are They? last week (and the correct answers provided by reader Laura Schmidt), what we are trying to do, with your help, is identify some of the people in our massive photo database so we can match names with all of those pretty faces.

We started out with two attractive young ladies, so this time we will give the guys the spotlight. The photo below was taken on the rooftop balcony of Gregg McNair's suite at the Renaissance Vancouver Harbourside Hotel during the June 2010 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Vancouver conference in Canada. Gregg (Executive Chairman of PPX International) held an open house evening party and many of the show attendees who turned out gravitated to the balcony to enjoy the panoramic view of beautiful Coal Harbour and the crisp Pacific northwest air. 

Most of you already know domain pioneer Richard Lau (DomainManager.com), who happens to be a Vancouver resident. If you don't Richard is the handsome devil in the white shirt. Now, can you name any or all of the four gents around Richard? If so, drop me a note (editor @ dnjournal.com) with each person's name and, if you know, what they do, or who they work for. In a follow-up post we will share the information with everyone - the whole idea is to introduce more industry people to our readers. When we post the IDs (assuming you come through again) we will also credit the first person (or persons) who sends in the correct answers. 

In the early going we're just trying to get a feel for whether or not you would like this to be a fairly regular feature (the response to the first round last week was very strong - thank you for that). If the interest is there, we might turn this into a real game with prizes (modest ones to be sure!) to make things even more interesting. Who knows, with The Price Is Right starting to show in its age, we might just have a replacement in the wings here. CBS-TV execs, are you listening? :-)

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The vast majority of domains I have been testing are non .com domains (mostly .us) with minimal type-in traffic. The whole point of the exercise has been to see if a mass development system could  make those domains more attractive to search engines and random visitors who, finding something more interesting than a standard parked page, might be persuaded to stick around and click on some of the product offerings that catch their eye.  

Some examples of domains I moved into the SmartName system are IceMachines.us, Fins.us, SwimmingPools.us, PictureFrames.us, Barrels.us, LicensePlates.us, Canes.us, FoosballTables.us, MotorScooters.us and BirdCages.us. I have seen dramatically improved revenue from those domains since turning them into SmartName stores. In their system you have at least two ways to earn income - from PPC rates paid by Shopping.com (you get a share of that revenue) and from AdSense ads that you can plug into your SmartName pages (you keep 100% of the AdSense revenue and in my case those earnings have boosted my total revenue from SmartName pages considerably ( under Google's TOS, the exact Adsense numbers cannot be released and Adsense revenue is not included in the SmartName earnings in the chart below).  

For the names I noted above (which are my top 10 earners thus far at SmartName) here is the amount earned from SmartName (in 4 months or less) vs. the amount earned over an entire year with a parking company (If you want to do the simple math, I think it would be fair to multiply the 4-month SmartName earnings by three to get a more accurate view of how they are likely to compare versus the year they spent on parking pages : 

The difference for the top ten domains has been dramatic - $181.72 total for 4 months or less at SmartName (not even counting the additional revenue from AdSense) vs. 47 cents total parked for an entire year. If SN earnings holds up for 12 months that would make their total $545.16 vs. 47 cents parked.

Certainly there are many names that I moved to SmartName that made nothing - or next to it (just as they had parked) but for the entire group of about 500 domains moved to the SN eCommerce platform I've seen about a 5X increase in total revenue. Depending on the domains you have your results could be considerably better or worse. 

I would imagine the primary reason for my SN sites falling from their initial high rankings  is that no content was added to or changed on the sites (other than Shopping.com changing some products shown). The SmartName system has many search engine optimization features - I just never took the time to use them - preferring to see how a mostly hands off approach would compare to parking (with SmartName you do need to enter some keywords relevant to your domain to generate pages that feature related products - but it is no more time consuming than optimizing a parking page). SmartName execs said they have seen similar disruptions from past algorithm changes that they have largely been able to overcome by tweaking titles and content. I will likely spend some time doing that since it looks like it could be worth the effort. If you have stronger domains than I do that are bigger earners I'm sure their staffers would do some of that work for you. 

I should add that the eCommerce platform is just one of three options SmartNames has for domains. They also have an auto-generated content platform for domains that are suitable for information rich sites, as well as a parking platform. 

As people continue to search for parking alternatives it looks as though companies that specialize in specific sectors may benefit. SmartName has their eCommerce and content platforms, companies like Octane360 help you build directory sites, DomainAdvertising.com has a new graphics rich approach that produces fabulous looking sites, etc. You also have WhyPark, Epik, DevHub and others that allow you to easily customize a large volume of sites to your own taste with various plug ins. These are all encouraging developments that are offering viable alternatives to people looking to reverse the disappearing revenue trend. The only way to see how well they will work with your specific domains is to give some of them a test run for a few months to see how they perform over time. I plan to try more of these platforms myself. 

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Over the weekend we sent out our latest newsletter to opt-in e-mail subscribers. The lead story was an analysis of 2Q-2010 domain sales reported to us by the various sales venues across the industry. The highlights included a 26% jump in sales revenue from the previous quarter (rising from $23.1 million to $29.1 million) and a 38% jump over the same quarter in 2009 (expanding from $21.1 million to $29.1 million). 

Further evidence of a solid market rebound came today when Sedo released their 2Q-2010 Market Study. Sedo said they logged $22 million in sales representing the fourth consecutive quarter of rising sales there (they did not break out the percentage gains from previous quarters). (Editor's note: We do not track sales below four figures in our own records, so Sedo's sales total includes millions of dollars worth of lower end sales that we do not request from them and that are not included in our totals).

Sedo said that a  total of 11,146 domains were sold in their global domain marketplace during the quarter with .com remaining the most popular extension, accounting for more than 46% of their total sales and 74% of their gTLD sales (other gTLDs would include .net and .org). The average price of a .com domain was $2,401. 

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