Domain name companies spend hundreds of thousands lobbying politicians.

Domain name companies such as .com/.net registry VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) and registrar GoDaddy are spending hundreds of thousands each year lobbying in Washington.

An AP story published today disclosed that VeriSign spent $570,000 in the first half of 2007 to lobby the U.S. federal government.

I searched the United States Senate’s records to find out which other domain related firms were busy in the capital.

GoDaddy’s last report, covering the last half of 2006, shows that it spent $280,000 during that period. Its total for 2006 was $460,000. GoDaddy has been active in Washington since late last year when it announced it had a “full-time presence” there (See GoDaddy Goes to Washington).

Register.com has a few disclosures from the early 2000s, but appears to have exited the lobbying business around that time (at least under the name of Register.com).

NueStar, the current registry for .us, spent about $80,000 the second half of 2006 in Washington. Its lobbying may be unsuccessful. NeuStar, which starting running .us in 2001, may lose out to the government soon. NueStar appears to have hired a new lobbyist this year. (Prior lobbying may be related to other business lines, not domain names).

The Internet Commerce Association, which was founded in part by iREIT and domain brokerage and parking company Sedo, spent $40,000 last year. Michael Collins, formerly with Afternic, is the association’s Executive Director. The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, founded in part by large companies such as Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) and Eli Lily (NYSE: LLY) filed its lobbying registration statement on May 1 this year with the stated purpose of “Representation on intellectual property and Internet/technology issues related to domain names”.

You can expect lobbying dollars related to the domain name industry to increase rapidly over the coming years. The world is starting to recognize the value of domain names. The increased attention and growing value of the industry means big money is at stake. Organizations that can influence the legislative process will get a leg up in the battle.

Here’s a look at the top 5 domain name news stories of July.

Following are the five most viewed news stories at DomainNameWire.com for the month of July, ranked in order of views.

#1: New Domain Name Renewal Scam Hits Inboxes – yet another domain renewal scam is making its rounds. After publishing this story, the credit card processor that was an unwilling participant in the scam shut down the scammer’s account. Alas, the scammer merely started collecting credit card numbers for himself. I’m still receiving a few of these fraudulant emails each week.

#2: Internet Brands Files for $100M IPO – Internet Brands, formerly known as CarsDirect, filed to raise up to $100M in an initial public offering. The company owns valuable domain names including Autos.com and Loan.com. As Domain Name Wire’s article first pointed out, Internet Brands has a collection of web sites that happen to contain trademarked terms…although the trademark owners don’t seem to mind.

#3: Valuable Names Closes Down, Offers Domain Name Lists – I first reviewed Valuable Names, a high end service for discovering valuable domain names, in May 2006. The service is closing and owner Lee Hodgson is selling off the database behind the service. Frank Schilling wrote, “Surely a treasure trove of info in there”, referring to the database. For a follow up story about the man behind Valuable Names, see The Domain Guru Talks About Valuable Names, IDNs.

#4: Role of Domain Registrars to Change Over Next 5 Years – What will be the role of domain registrars five years from now? There will be less focus on registrations and more focus on domain management.

#5: Majority of Domain Names are Purchased as Investments- research of the top 100 reported domain name sales in 2006 uncovers that 65% of big ticket domain purchases are made by investors, not end users.

Lee Hodgson, who owns Domain Guru, talks about shutting down ValuableNames.com and where he sees value in the domain name market.

Depending on whom you asked, Lee Hodgson was either the greatest guy in the world or the bane of your existence in 2001. That’s when he started publishing a series of articles about the domain drop on SitePoint. He outlined how and when the dropped worked, giving ordinary Joes the chance to participate.

So how did Hodgson get involved with domain names?

“I got into business on New Year’s Eve, 1999″, explains Hodgson. “I was looking for some work I could do in Thailand as opposed to going back to freezing cold UK when I came across an article about business.com selling for $7.5M and I thought “that looks ideal, work from anywhere with an Internet connection, and it could be nicely profitable”.

“So my New Years’ Resolution was to become a domainer,” says Hodgson.

In 2000 and 2001 he started writing articles about domain names, including the infamous “Domain Goldrush” article at SitePoint. Hodgson says a handful of people have never forgiven him for writing that article and exposing the domain drop, although many more have thanked him.

He says he’s always enjoyed the challenge of designing systems and services. He created NamePursuit.com, a service to help people be the first to make a backorder for a domain on Snapnames. (Before auctioning domains, SnapNames sold backorders for $60 to the first person who placed the backorder.) He also created Valuable Names, a service which is now shutting down.

Why is he shutting down the service? Notice how Hodgson says he enjoys the challenge of designing systems, not necessarily marketing them. The everyday work of promoting Valuable Names wasn’t fun to him.

“I decided to shut down the service and offer the underlying data for sale,” he says. “I don’t want to sell it to too many more people, because that will create competition for the good domains. I’m going to continue selling the data until the end of the month, and then I’m done. I’ve sold my lists to about a half dozen people in the past couple weeks.”

The high price for the data is certainly limiting sales to only serious domainers, and that is Hodgson’s intention. He is serious about stopping sales of the data at the end of this month, at which point it will be extremely difficult to obtain this domainers’ treasure trove of information.

(If you are interested in getting your hands on this data, see this article which describes the data and pricing he is offering.)

Hodgson is now investing heavily in international domain names (IDNs, domains which are not in roman characters).

“My big passion is IDN domain names. Since I live in Thailand and can speak and write Thai, I have invested 95% in Thai language domains. Many of the best I got on launch day on April 19th, 2001 but others have been acquired since, both fresh registrations and aftermarket purchases. We have around 900 Thai domains now and have focused almost entirely on acquiring the top Thai search terms.”

Hodgson continues:

“We are still very much “ahead of the curve” with Thai IDN domains. Only about 10% of Thai browsers are IDN-enabled. Thais are stuck with IE6 for the most part, but it will change in the next couple of years. Also, Thai traffic is difficult to monetize at the moment. That will start to change when Google Adsense is launched here, which was supposed to happen sometime in 2007.”

His first “hub site” is http://xn--12c8d1a4fxc.com/, or เกมส์.com, which means “games” in Thai.

Hodgson admits that IDNs are speculative, but backs up his investments with reasonable assertions. “I understand the jury is still out with most domainers on IDNs,” he says. “Domain names after all is said and done are a communication tool. Thais are currently being forced to communicate in a foreign language. Think of all those Bangkok billboards containing domain names full of foreign letters. How many Thais can remember them? Very few. Is that effective communication? No.

“How many ASCII domains could possibly pass the “radio test” for Thais? Way below 1%, if for no other reason than there is no standard way for Thai words to be written in the English language, so Thais simply cannot listen to a domain name, then go and type it in. It just doesn’t work for them. But if the domains were actually in Thai, then suddenly a huge % would pass the radio test.”

Is the Domain Guru right about IDNs? Will he help turn the world onto them like he did expired domains? Only time will tell.

Local business directory publisher buys company, edging out other suitors including News Corp.

Business.com, a web advertising and directory business, has sold for $345M in cash and “deferred purchase consideration” to R.H. Donnelley (NYSE: RHD). R.H. Donnelley is a yellow pages and local search company. The Business.com acquisition is a way for the company to diversify.

As I pointed out earlier, this is not just a transaction for the domain name Business.com. Many bloggers and media will portray it as such. But the acquisition is for a company that will gross about $50M this year and earn about $15M profit. It includes the domain names Business.com and Work.com, which are certainly a foundation for the business, but it includes a lot more. The business has 100 employees and over 6,000 advertisers to which R.H. Donnelley can cross sell its other services.

The business.com domain name helped ignite the domain name business. Businessman Marc Ostrofsky, who is also a co-founder of iREIT, purchased the domain name for $150,000. He later flipped the domain for what turned out to be $2.0M.

R.H. Donnelley Corporation will discuss this transaction and 2nd quarter earnings on a conference call scheduled for today at 10:00 a.m. ET. Individuals within the United States can access the call by dialing 888-387-9606. The pass code for the call is “RHD.”

Hundreds of domain industry participants to attend Name Intelligence event; event focused on networking.

Domain Roundtable, a domain name conference hosted by Name Intelligence, will hold its 2007 conference August 12-15 in Seattle, Washington.

“The focus will be on networking,” says Jay Westerdal, Name Intelligence President & CEO. Westerdal says there is a party planned every night of the event, including Wednesday evening after the auction. Additionally, Domain Roundtable will feature Ntag, a networking technology that makes it easy to swap information with other attendees and follow up after the conference.

About 200 people have registered for the conference so far, and Westerdal hopes that number doubles by the opening of the conference. Previous Domain Roundtable conferences have attracted a wide variety of attendees. Compared to other conferences, Domain Roundtable has attracted more policy makers, government officials, and lawyers. That may be different this year.

“There will be a lot more domainers this year than in the past,” says Westerdal. “We are targeting domainers in general, but have also invited others…including a few staff of ICANN.”

The event will feature a 450 lot live domain name auction on Wednesday, which is open for free to the public. The auction listings have not been publicly released because the Domain Roundtable staff is “triple checking” the validity and ownership of submissions. Even though the auction will feature twice as many lots as the most recent TRAFFIC auction, Westerdal says he expects the auction to last only 3 hours. Domain Capital will provide domain financing at the auction.

Domain Roundtable costs $995, but there are a number of discounts available. Domain Roundtable provided a $100 discount code to Domain Name Wire, which can be used by up to 20 people. Just enter Domainnamewire2 in the promo code box during registration at DomainRoundtable.com.

(Domain Name Wire will provide live coverage of the conference. I will be at the event Sunday through Tuesday, and will speak on a panel Monday morning at 10:30 titled “The Eyes, Ears and Voices of the Domain Universe Speak”.)