Tucows has a banner year and discusses rising aftermarket domain sale prices.

Today Tucows reported record quarterly revenue of $26.4 million for the last quarter. That’s the seventh record revenue quarter in a row for the company. The company posted $97 million in revenue for the year; a record.

Here are some other interesting facts from its investor conference call:

YummyNames, which monetizes and sells Tucows’ inventory of domain names, saw its revenue up 24% year over year. It also had a record average selling price.

Tucows CEO Elliott Noss said that over the past 12 months, the average selling price of individual names has more than doubled.

I’m not usually a big fan of averages because a few sales can skew the number. But I think YummyNames’ domains sell in a fairly consistent band, so this is actually an interesting data point.

The company also moved much of its inventory of domain names to a new domain name parking company. As a result, the company had flat parking revenue for the quarter — compared to a falling trend in previous quarters.

I guess it’s true — “flat is the new growth” in domain parking.

(Bill Sweetman, who runs YummyNames, was recently promoted to Vice President.)

Tucows’ retail operation Hover benefited from the company’s opposition of SOPA. It picked up Wikia, run by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, as a client thanks in part to its stance against SOPA.

Noss also said he’ll be surprised if there are fewer than 1,000 applications for new top level domain names.

New TLD backers take note.

Australian parliamentarians can’t access .info domain names, according to a story on ITNews.com.au today.

A block was placed late last year on the advice of the Defence Signals Directorate because the domain “is generally considered to be a source of more than its fair share of attacks and malicious software”, according to the department’s acting secretary.

This doesn’t affect many people, and it may be a stupid way to run internet security.

But .info has frequently been called out in the past for having a lot of “bad” sites. The reason? Most likely cut rate first year pricing. For a while it was the cheapest way for spammers, sploggers, etc. to get get a domain name.

There’s a message for companies behind new top level domains: manage your namespace’s credibility.

China’s .cn faced a similar issue because it registered domains for only 14 cents a year at one point. In a world where scammers need to register hundreds or thousands of disposable domains, they flock to the cheap ones.

If your model is to offer cut rate pricing, and you have an open TLD, you will likely attract some of the less savory domain registrants. That can be bad for your entire namespace.

(Hat tip: @GeorgeKirikos)

16 companies buy the right domain in the domain aftermarket.

Here’s Domain Name Wire’s weekly look at end user domain sales. All of these sales took place on Afternic unless otherwise noted.

The owner of eClassie.com wised up to the radio test and bought eClassy.com for $3,500.

Another domain registrant made a smart move by dropping a hyphen. The owner of Fifth-Axis.com bought FifthAxis.com for $2,149.70.

Williams Chevrolet Honda Geo of Traverse, Michigan paid $1,500 for WilliamsMotors.com.

Arysta LifeScience Corporation bought Arysta.com for EUR 7,000 on Sedo.

Pest management company Beneficial Insectary bought FlyControl.com for $4,588.

A company called Effective Fundraising Strategies bought EffectiveFundraising.com for $1,188.

Here’s an example of a company that owns a category killer domain buying a more niche domain to go along with it. Wild Attire Inc., which owns Ties.com, bought CorporateTies.com for $2,921.

Another upgrade, this time from .me to .com. The owner of Entheos.me bought Entheos.com for $8,000.

Unknown.com, Inc. paid $1,177 for UnknownPublisher.com.

Book publisher Thomas Nelson returned to the domain aftermarket to pick up TimeWithGod.com for $1,188.

New Jersey based heating and cooling repair company Airflow Systems, which does business as The Weather Busters, bought WeatherBusters.com for $2,488.

The company behind AdKeeper, which has garnered lots of press, registered DealKeeper.com for $2,088. I think you can guess what that domain will be used for.

Emerald Performance Materials, LLC paid $1,295 for EmeraldChemicals.com.

New York City car wholesaler and exporter Targa Motor Group bought Carporter.com for $1,000.

Professional staffing company Strategic Professional Staffing Inc. bought AttorneysonDemand.com for $1,500.

CampingWorld.com bought FastRescue.com for EUR 1,000 at Sedo.

Online is a commonly registered keyword — and most commonly sold.

If you’re looking to hand register domain names and list them for sale, here’s some simple advice: take a popular term and add “online” to it.

“Online” is consistently one of (if not the) most common words used in domain names. VeriSign’s updated DomainView tool shows the top 15 most registered keywords, and online is right at the top. Just about every time I view the tool’s tag cloud “online” is the biggest as well.

OK, so this tells you it’s a popular keyword within domain registrations. But does that mean you’ll be able to sell them?

As it turns out, online is also a popular keyword on the aftermarket. GoDaddy Auctions Domain Market Report consistently has online at the top of the list of most sold keywords.

So if you see a hot topic and the domain isn’t available, I’d take a stab at adding “online” to the end, e.g. populartopicOnline.com. Then list it for sale on GoDaddy Premium Listings (or similar services).

Company goes after two alleged cybersquatters.

Verizon has filed two separate cases with World Intellectual Property Organization concerning ten domain names that include the “Verizon” or “Vzw” and “iPhone” marks.

The first case is for the domain name verizoniphone4s.com. Interestingly, this domain name loads the Verizon Wireless page for iPhones. But it’s merely loading it in a frame.

The second case covers nine domain names registered by an Illinois man:

verizoniphone4.com
verizonwirelessiphone4.com
verizonwirelessiphone4g.com
verizonwirelessiphone5.com
verizonwireless4giphone.com
vzwiphone4.com
vzwiphone4g.com
vzwiphone5.com
vzw4giphone.com

Verizon is known for suing cybersquatters, but it also turns to domain arbitration as well. Last year it filed 14 cases under the uniform domain name dispute resolution policy (UDRP). It won all of them.

My guess is Verizon uses the courts when the numbers are big, the accused has a big pocketbook, and the domains are hidden through various proxy services. Otherwise it’s fine using UDRP.