An idea for domainers to help charity.

After paying $127.50 for a sugar cookie in the name of charity, I had an idea. Couldn’t we auction off some other swag for charity?

So I’m going to give it a shot. I’m introducing the “Ultimate Swag Bag Auction Series” on Domain Name Wire.

Here’s how it will work. For each auction, a domain name company will put together a nice swag bag. Now I’m not just talking about a handful of chotskies that I could just pick up from your booth at a tradeshow. It needs to be really cool. Ideally, you throw in something really cool plus offload some t-shirts and trinkets from your swag closet. The total package should be worth at least a couple hundred dollars in total, and perhaps more.

What’s in it for domain companies:
-Get publicity on Domain Name Wire
-Help a charity
-Get some domainer to proudly wear your t-shirt around town

What’s in it for bidders:
-Help a charity
-Get some cool swag
-Get mentioned on Domain Name Wire

At first we’ll just try auctioning a swag bag off on Domain Name Wire using the comments system. If necessary we can upgrade to a real auction site.

So what do you think? If you’re a company interested in putting together a swag bag for auction, hit me up at editor (at) domainnamewire.com.

As if a flimsy trademark wasn’t enough…

It’s bad enough that Romantic Tours, Inc. has convinced three panels to hand over domain names based on its trademark for “Hot Russian Brides”. Now the company has gone too far: it tried to get a domain name based on a directory on the web site.

Romantic Tours, Inc. filed the case against the owner of JimsLists.com. The reason? One of the directories on his site is called /hotrussianbrides. Specifically, the company tried to get the entire domain name JimsLists.com because of this URL:

jimslists.com/agencies/hotrussianbrides

Of course, Romantic Tours lost the case. As the arbitrator pointed out, you can’t filed a UDRP because there’s a trademark somewhere in a web site’s naming structure.

The owner of JimsLists.com decided to remove the folders from his web site, but someone needs to challenge this company on its “Hot Russian Brides” trademark filed with the USPTO.

Next month’s event just got more interesting.

I’ll say this about Oversee.net and its DOMAINfest conferences: it always responds to feedback.

The company just announced that it’s beefing up its one day event to be held on May 13 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Some of the rumblings on blogs and message boards when the company first announced its “Power Networking” days was that it seemed more like an excuse to hold an auction. But the new agenda has more substance including a keynote. Here’s the agenda for the day, which starts at 10:30 AM:

Internet Trends – Jeff Kupietzky, CEO & President, Oversee.net
Keynote – Jay Berkowitz, Author of Ten Golden Rules
Power Networking- Meeet the Experts
-Website Development Tips and Success Stories.
-Keyword Tools and Tactics in Buying Domains and Acquiring Traffic.
-Domain Buying, Selling & Valuation Trends
-Legal Q&A – Intellectual Property & Domain Names.
Moniker Premium Auction

Oversee made a change to its main event last January based on feedback as well. It ditched LAUNCHfest, which was receiving luke-warm reviews, and doubled up its PITCHfest instead.

Creating a marketplace is tough, but the rewards are high.

One of the challenges new companies offering domain name services face is that of creating a market. It’s the age old question of the chicken and the egg. Which comes first, the supply or the demand? To get sellers you need buyers and vice versa.

This isn’t limited to domain marketplaces in terms of buying and selling domain names.

Starting a parking company. Consider the typical domain name parking company. First you need to get a contract with Google or Yahoo for an ad feed. To do this, you need to monetize a substantial inventory of domain names just to get a meeting. And the more domains, the better your payout from Google or Yahoo. But how can you get more people to park their domains with you when you are getting a lower cut from the ad provider, making it hard to compete with larger parking companies?

A typical solution for parking companies is for them to own their own substantial portfolio. A number of domain parking companies have sprung up thanks to the parking company’s own domain portfolios. One option for newer parking companies: offer a higher percentage of your cut to the domainer. Even if Google is paying you less because of your volume, you can come close to matching the revenue paid out by bigger companies. As you get more domains you can decrease your payout percentage without lowering the domainer’s take.

New Monetization. Another example of a company that is facing the market challenge is Root Orange. The company leases category killer domain names on a city-by-city basis. If you’re the owner of one of these domains you could, in theory, make more money in the long run on Root Orange than with traditional PPC or using the domain for only one “site”.

But what happens the first day your domain goes live on Root Orange? It’s not like 50 cities will be leased in the first month.

Root Orange tries to “pre-sell” certain domains before bringing them onto its platform, but this is also challenging. It’s hard to get business owners to lease the domains before they’re even on the system.

Another solution is to allow domain owners to continue to park the domain and earn PPC revenue for any city that isn’t sold yet.

Aftermarkets. Of course, the prototypical marketplace in the domain industry is a place to buy and sell domain names. Asking domainers to spend time uploading inventory is fruitless if you can’t guarantee buyers on the other end.

There are several solutions to this. Consider Bido, which started with one auction a day. By offering only one auction, it was able to ease the supply side of the equation while focusing on building the demand side. Once it attracted buyers, it was able to open up the supply side.

Another tact is to focus on a smaller niche. 4.cn is proving successful by focusing on the Chinese domain market.

Although the challenges of creating any marketplace are plentiful, the results of executing it are powerful and profitable. Once an effective marketplace is operating, the owner can sit in the middle while the economic forces of the market do the work.

More fighting between Sex.com owners.

It’s a business relationship gone sour, and it doesn’t look to be getting any better. Here’s a recap in the case of Sex.com owner Escom, LLC, as well as the latest developments in this soap opera.

To recap:

-First, one of the company’s creditors, DOM Partners, pushed the company’s main asset, Sex.com, into a foreclosure auction.

-The day before the auction was to take place, three entities controlled by Mike Mann filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against Escom, thereby halting the auction. One of the entities is also a creditor with a loan backed by the Sex.com domain name.

-DOM Partners then filed a motion to dismiss the bankruptcy case so that it could go ahead and auction off the domain name to recoup the debt.

-Mann’s entities objected to DOM Partners’ motion to dismiss.

-The bankruptcy judge decided against dismissing case, and suggested a trustee might be necessary to act on behalf of the creditors as a whole.

-DOM Partners agreed with the judge that a trustee would be necessary.

Here’s what’s new:

-Mann and Escom objected to the idea of appointing a trustee. They say the company should sell the domain name on its own terms.

-Mann invoked section 5.03 of the Escom, LLC Operating Agreement, which basically says any issues not able to be decided by the three Managers of Escom (DOM Partners, Washington Technology Associates, and Domain Name Acquisition Group) would go to the non-Managing members of Escom. All Managers would be required to submit a report to the non-managing members, who would then have authority to decide. The two non-managing members are Nothin’ But Net, run by Mike “Zappy” Zapolin, and I-95 Investment Group. The latter is a larger member, and submitted a letter saying that it supports Mann’s and Escom’s position on the matter. DOM Partners says section 5.03 of the agreement is not valid given the current status of this dispute.

-Disagreements between DOM Partners and Mann may put a recent settlement with Sovereign Bank over embezzlement in jeopardy.

-DOM continues to claim that Mike Mann effectively controls Escom, while Escom’s CEO and Mann have said this is not true.

-Escom’s CEO claims the company’s revenue increased 194% between September 2009 and March 2010 and that the company has about $200,000 in cash.

-Communications between the company’s owners suggest that it considered a way to get a more mainstream advertiser on the site — someone “like WebMD” — in an attempt to make the web site more attractive to mainstream acquirers.

-So far Andrew Miller and Mike “Zappy” Zapolin of Internet Real Estate Group, both part owners of Escom, LLC through various holding or investment companies, have remained quiet on the case. However, tweets by Mike Mann today suggest that Mann is not on good terms with Miller and Zapolin.