Domain registrars seek new profit opportunities.

Yesterday’s news that new domain name registrations are down sharply and the total base of domains registered is stagnant is bad news for domain name registrars.

For years, registrars have been able to count on new registrations to fuel growth. Although the margin on new registrations is small, registrars earn money by cross selling other products to registrants. So the typical margin on a domain may be only $2, but the margin with “extras” may be closer to $5-$10.

How can registrars counteract falling numbers? There are three key ways:

1. Take market share away from competitors. Although new registrations are down, there were still 9 million new domains registered last quarter. Aggressive registrars can capture a larger part of this pool. Also, the drop to 9 million is somewhat overstated since many of the domains registered at this time last year were from domain tasting, which was only done in scale at a handful of registrars. Registrars can also grow their base by courting domain transfers.

2. Do a better job of cross selling. Registrars that get customers — new and old — to load up their shopping carts can boost revenue. The key is to offer something innovative on top of standard web hosting and domain privacy products.

3. Push for new TLDs. Wonder why eNom, Tucows, and Network Solutions are so keen on seeing new top level domain names introduced? Cha-ching. Even though most of these new TLDs will fail, it could significantly boost these registrars’ sales over the next 2-3 years. It’s a lot easier to sell new TLDs than to come up with innovative products for their customers.

Keep in mind that ICANN’s revenue from domain registrations is also under pressure. Its contract with VeriSign will actually result in a $6M boost in financial year 2010, but its growth will certainly take a hit from reduced new registrations. It can’t take market share from competitors and can’t cross sell. So look for it to push through new TLDs as well.

Individuals and entities push ICANN to move forward with new top level domain names.

Many organizations that seek to benefit from the introduction of new top level domain names — including eNom, Network Solutions, Tucows, and Minds + Machines — have sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom asking him to implement the plan for new TLDs “without further delay”.

The letter suggests that “special interests” are trying to slow down or stop the introduction of new top level domain names. It also says that no further reports or studies about the need for new TLDs are necessary:

Instead of commissioning yet more studies to prove the obvious demand for new toplevel domains, ICANN’s Board of Directors should instead believe the evidence of the market, heed their own staff reports, and read the conclusions of the many studies already conducted – and approve the introduction of new top-level domains without further delay.

The authors point out several examples of cases in which consumers and industry leaders didn’t think there was a need for innovation or a different type of product.

The letter is signed dozens of people, including:

Antony Van Couvering – CEO, Minds + Machines (USA)
Paul Stahura – CEO, eNom (USA)
Jonathon Nevett, Senior Vice President, Network Solutions (USA)
Elliot Noss – CEO Tucows (CANADA)
Rob Hall – CEO, Momentous (CANADA)
Marcus Faure, Chair of the Executive Committe, CORE Internet Council of Registrars
Dirk Krischenowski, CEO, dotBERLIN GmbH & Co. KG (Germany)
Bhavin Turakhia, CEO, DirectI (INDIA)
Michele Neylon, CEO, Blacknight (IRELAND)
Ben Crawford, CEO, CentralNIC (UK)
Minor Childers, Founder, Dot Eco LLC (USA)
Emiliano Pasqualetti, CEO DomainsBot (ITALY)
Fred Krueger, CEO, Top Level Domain Holdings (UK)
Bill Mushkin, CEO, Name.com (USA)
Oscar Robles Garay, Director, NIC Mexico (MEXICO)
Dr. Liz Williams, New Top Level Domain Strategist (UK)
Neal Marshad, CEO, Marshad Technology Group (USA)
Richard Lau, Owner, DomainManager.com (CANADA)

Jets.com leads pack at Sedo.

By now you’ve probably heard that Sedo brokered the sale of Jets.com last week for $375,000. But that’s not the only great sale from Sedo this page week; it also sold two other six figure domains.

But first let’s discuss Jets.com. [UPDATE: We now know that the domain was bought by Concord Private Jets.] The domain is still in the transfer process so we don’t know who bought it. After the nameservers were switched to Sedo parking, they then moved to wikimedia.org for a brief period before switching to secureserver.net. I don’t think Wikimedia has anything to do with the purchase; they were just holding nameservers and the domain didn’t resolve there. But later this week we should know if the domain was purchased by a “flying” jet, a “football” Jet, or someone else altogether.

Now onto the other six figure sales. Newbrand.de sold for 120,000 EUR, or about $175,000 USD, and TradeTracker.com sold for 100,000 EUR, or about $145,000 USD.

Other impressive sales include Production.com at $70,000, 222.com at $49,000, designer.de for 50,000 EUR, and a strong .org sale of Attorney.org for $38,500.

Here are other notable sales at Sedo this past week:

.com
digiweb.com 25,000 USD
virtualimmortality.com 25,000 USD
gutenberg.com 20,000 USD
ukmail.com 10,000 GBP
risk-consulting.com 9,500 USD
pinkdiamond.com 7,999 USD
californiainsurancefinder.com 6,000 USD
viajantes.com 5,000 USD Travelers in Portugeuse
loveqa.com 5,000 USD
770poker.com 5,000 USD
it411.com 5,000 USD

ccTLDs
tuc.nl 10,000 EUR
cleaningservices.co.uk 9,100 GBP
hotelscombined.kr 8,000 USD
superstar.eu 8,000 EUR
recensioni.it 7,200 EUR Reviews in Italian
hotelscombined.co.kr 6,000 USD
springbreak.de 6,000 EUR
mitbewohner.de 5,500 EUR
lumen.eu 5,000 EUR
thalasso.ch 5,000 EUR
arctos.eu 5,000 USD
dumm.de 5,000 EUR

Other
karneval.org 12,500 EUR Carnival in German
medicalschool.org 11,500 USD
freelancer.org 10,000 EUR
gmn.org 9,888 USD
counselor.org 8,900 USD
qfi.org 7,140 USD
parfum.org 6,600 EUR Perfume in French

Don’t bother with keywords meta tag, and focus description tag on what makes users click.

Spending time stuffing the keyword meta tags for your web page? Don’t bother.

That’s the official word from Google, which says it doesn’t consider what you put in your keywords meta tag at all. You may as well leave it empty. The company hasn’t used the keywords meta tag for many years because it was often abused.

For a while people have suggested that the keywords meta tag meant very little, if anything. But still a bunch of people have peddled the notion that they’re important. Countless search engine optimization packages analyze your description tags and keyword tags compared to competitors to try to decipher what you need to include in them. I know that I always put a couple keywords in for pages that I develop. So it’s good to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Also, that long page description you’ve been writing for your description meta tag? It doesn’t play a role in search rankings. But it is sometimes used in the search results display. So rather than stuff it full of keywords, just try to make it most relevant for potential visitors.

Even more important, focus on making your web site valuable to visitors.

Go Daddy and Google popular among Y Combinator companies.

Where do Y Combinator’s startups register their domains and host email? Here’s a handy chart generated in August using domain-profiler.

Go Daddy dominates the domain registration business for Y Combinator startups, according to the chart. Go Daddy also has a large share of the SSL market. On the email side, most of the startups are fans of Google.

When it comes to web hosting, a good number rely on Amazon’s backbone, and SoftLayer and Slicehost also have a good share of the business.

Another thing you might notice by looking at the list is that many of Y Combinator’s startups are customers of Bad Web Site Naming, Inc. From webmynd.com to wundrbar.com to bountii.com, perhaps Y Combinator needs to offer some more advice on name selection.