by Crystal Peterson

[ICANN's 39th Public Meeting is headed to Cartagena, Colombia this December. While much of the world pushes through frigid winter, .Co Internet Senior Marketing Manager Crystal Peterson promises it will be nice and warm in Colombia. -Andrew]

I had the opportunity to travel to Cartagena in advance of the 39th Public ICANN meeting being held there in December. As the Sr. Manager of .CO Internet and therefore a host of the meeting, I am excited to welcome everyone to this warm, beautiful locale and wanted to share a bit of my experience now so that those that have never been know what to expect.

HOT! – Expect it to be hot, more hot and then a little more – yup….HOT. The heat will of course be very welcome for most of us by the time ICANN is scheduled in December. I am told that December will be just as warm, but not quite as humid as it is in August – there will be a breeze throughout the evenings coming from the water. Bring your swimsuits – there is a pool on top of or on the property of every hotel. I highly recommend that you plan an extra few days on either end of your trip (or better yet, on both ends!) to rest, relax and enjoy all the fantastic things Cartagena has to offer.

Eating – is fantastic! If you love fish — you are really in luck! The fish is fresh and simply fantastic! Ceviche is very heavily represented in many menus – and you’ll absolutely love it! However, if you are not a fan of fish, your options are still great. Every restaurant does have a selection of non-fish dishes and vegetarian dishes that reflect the local taste and culture, but I really encourage trying the fish. (Did I mention how delicious the fish was?)

Culture & Nightlife – get ready for fun. Cartagena is an extremely lively, vibrant and colorful city! I had the opportunity to stay both in the walled city as well as a hotel a little further away. I recommend everyone stay in the walled city. There are a few hotels identified on the ICANN local site and (as of the date of this posting), even more of the small venue, but awesome hotels inside the muralla (or wall) will be coming. Each evening within the city (which is walking distance to the Convention Center); there is music, local bars, horse drawn coaches and a lot to see and do. I felt very comfortable walking the streets from hotspot to hotspot. And the burning question on everyone’s mind? Where do we hang out?! Well….you’ll have to come to find out!

All I can say is that we (.CO Internet, ICANN and the beautiful country of Colombia) have a lot in store for everyone attending ICANN Cartagena in December. I can promise you one thing for sure — it’s gonna be Hot, Hot, Hot in every way! Don’t miss it!

Below: street dancing in Cartagena

DNS parking may be required in the future.

A few days ago Sedo informed its customers that its primary advertising provider (read: Google) may change the way it allows domains to be parked. URL forwarding will be out and all domains will need to be parked using DNS. This change has been rumored for a while and likely has to do with tighter control and transparency for parked domains, as well as changes to how parked ads are served technically.

According to the communication from Sedo:

Based on current discussions it is possible that our ad provider will cease its provision of advertising to URL-parked pages and in consequence only support DNS parked domains.

This step is considered by the online advertising provider in response to advertiser feedback and would affect all URL-parking customers at all parking companies worldwide that share this advertising provider. This change could happen in the near future (potentially as early as the fourth quarter of 2010) and we wanted you to have this information in advance to take into account for your internal planning.

If you already have your domains parked with a particular companies nameservers such as ns1.sedoparking.com, this won’t affect you.

Here’s what’s stopping you from selling more domain names.

1. The distribution market is still fragmented – we’re still at a point where we have a fragmented market of domain listing distribution providers. There’s AfternicDLS, Domain Distribution Network, and to some extent Sedo. GoDaddy has a separate service to get in front of end users. As long as these systems aren’t fully cooperative, it’s harder to sell domains.

2. You aren’t listing them with both major exchanges – if you’re just listing with only Afternic or only Sedo, you’re missing out on millions of monthly domain searches. List your domains on both.

3. You haven’t selected the maximum exposure option – AfternicDLS has three levels of exposure for your domains. The basic level just gets them on Afternic. Choose an expanded option to get them on BuyDomains or even to show up when people are searching for the exact domain at a domain registrar.

4. You haven’t priced your domains – small business end users don’t want to play around. They don’t like the game of “make an offer”. So price your domains. It also makes it easier to sell to other end users.

5. You think your domains are worth millions – If you price all of your domains at $1 million, or respond to all offers with a $1 million asking price, you aren’t going to sell many domains.

6. You don’t respond to low ball offers – Sure, many low ballers are just wasting your time. But many brokers who sell lots of domains have told me that some of their biggest sales start with low offers.

7. You aren’t using GoDaddy’s premium listings – if your domains are at GoDaddy, try Premium Listings. The domain will show up for sale when someone searches for the exact name. That’s what we call a targeted buyer.

8. You haven’t tried selling domains on NameJet and SnapNames – I haven’t had much luck with SnapNames’ self-service listing option in a while. But did you know NameJet offers something similar? It’s worth trying.

9. You’re afraid to sign an exclusivity contract – If your domain is worth something and you want a broker or auction house to list it, you’ll need to sign some sort of exclusivity deal, just like you do when you list a house for sale. Otherwise your broker won’t work as hard on your behalf.

10. Your domains suck – I can’t think of something witty to say about this. But if your inventory sucks, the above 9 items aren’t going to help you out much.

DNS company gets marketing kick with DNS.com.

Last month at HostingCon I met with Cloud.com to learn how their great domain name has propelled their business. I also got to spend time with domain industry show regular Sean Stafford, who’s latest venture DNS.com is off to the races. He proudly wore his DNS.com t-shirt throughout the show.

Over tacos at lunch, Sean said that the DNS.com domain name has done wonders for his business. I caught up with him after the show to find out more.

DNW: You were previously named Comwired.com. What were the challenges of using this name?

Stafford: We began with the Comwired name and we still actively use it. It was a domain from the portfolio of one of our founders and was selected as a brandable, pronounceable tech name to represent our company. Initially Comwired.com was used for our geodirectional DNS system and authoritative DNS network. As our platform matured, we developed two distinct products serving two markets with very different needs. We continued development on Comwired.com, our geodirectional DNS system, but we also found that many users and prospects were interested in authoritative DNS services outside of the domainer context.

What resulted was a pair of related but unique software products using the same domain name. This was starting to cause some market confusion between the two offerings. We began looking for fresh input and a newlook. That’s when we came across the opportunity to use DNS.com. Now Comwired is more of a specialty geodirectional service and DNS.com is the mass market brand.

DNW: When did you first start thinking about acquiring a better name, and was DNS.com your first choice?

A few months before we acquired the DNS.com name we knew that a change needed to take place. Our technology was rock solid, our UI was miles ahead of existing solutions, and we had everything we needed to be successful. However, I think our Comwired.com was somewhat obscure and did not effectively relay what we did as a company. While larger companies can afford massive branding and advertising to firebrand
their name into the consumer’s psyche, that wasn’t an option for us launching our new service.

We did, however, have a fantastic alternative for advertising, and that was the DNS.com premium generic domain name. Instead of spending millions and millions trying to brand an inferior name, we saw the
opportunity to invest the same resources into an asset that invokes automatic trust. While there were many other choices available as pertaining to domain names, there was only one name that truly caught our eye. We now own it.

DNW: What benefits are you realizing from using the better name?

Actually, we’ve seen numerous benefits since using DNS.com. In a matter of 6 months we’ve seen our rankings climb like crazy in Google, much owing to our site being the exact match keyword for “DNS”. This
domain also affords us the unique opportunity to offer premium vanity nameservers to our partners and customers.

Aside from the highly qualified leads we receive from type-ins, we also enjoy instant brand appeal. When walking on a tradeshow floor, people immediately know we are a DNS provider. The domain is not only easier
for people to spell and remember, but attaches a premium, trusted, and familiar quality to our brand, which is extremely challenging to build independently. We believe this is in part to thank for the unsolicited
leads we have received from major brands, including Fortune 500 companies, who now recognize DNS.com as a major player in our industry.

Domain registrar continues growth, lands on Inc 5000 again.

GoDaddy continues its growth, landing on the Inc 5000 again in 2010. As the company gets bigger it makes it harder to turn in huge percentage growth numbers, but Inc reports 153% growth over the past three years.

The revenue number for 2009 was reported as $610.3 million. Earlier I had reported $750 million in 2009 revenue, but this was not a GAAP number. I’m talking to GoDaddy in the next couple weeks to get a better handle on their numbers of the past few years.

While there are other domain companies on the Inc 500 list, one traditional company caught my eye: Tortuga Rum Cake. The company turned in $4.8 million in revenue last year. I believe this is where Frank Schilling orders his Rum Cakes from that he delivers to lots of people over the holidays.