How much did customers overpay thanks to Halvarez?

Last week I reported about how the judge in the California lawsuit against Snapnames questioned how much money was at issue. In order to qualify for class action status, at least $5 million must be at stake.

In questioning the total number, the judge noted that the plaintiff in the case had lost a whopping $20. If ‘halvarez’ participated in 50,000 auctions at an average overpayment of $20, that would be only $1 million. It’s simple math, but the plaintiff decided two can use that logic.

Yesterday the plaintiff and his lawyers submitted their own crude analysis. The lawyers say they talked to a number of people, one of which had overpaid by $200 in an auction. So between one overpayment of $20 and another of $200, the median is $110. Multiply that by 50,000 and you get $5.5 million.

Hmm. Seems like a stretch to pick the highest overpayment selected out of talking to many people who were affected.

I’ve talked to lots of people, too. And I’d estimate the amount at play here is well under $5 million. Perhaps it makes sense for SnapNames to file with the court the exact amount at issue.

Domain owners think values are headed up.

Are domain name aftermarket prices heading up? Domain owners are certainly optimistic.

61% of those surveyed in the 5th Annual Domain Name Wire Survey believe domain values will be higher in 2010 than last year. Only 12% think they’ll be lower.

Compare that to last year, when only 32% thought prices would be higher in 2009 compared to 2008.

Indeed, domainer sentiment on values saw a quick one year dip, followed by a recovery to almost 2006 levels:

Are domainers good at predicting value increases, or have we all drunk the same Kool-Aid? It’s a tough question, as there is little data to accurately compare prices from year to year since each domain is unique. It’s safe to say that the lofty expectations of domainers going into 2008 were perhaps to high. Yet low expectations for 2009 may have been too pessimistic.

For more results from the 2010 Domain Name Wire Survey, click here.

Brand yourself with customized URL shortener.

It has always bothered me that URL shorteners are taking over the web. As many people have pointed out, your entire linking history is subject to the lifeline of a third party service. And with many URL shorteners operating on questionable country code domain names, the risks are prevalent.

This weekend I set out to get my own URL shortener. After all, I plunked down five figures for my short domain name DNW.com, so I may as well get as much value out of it as I can. I came across Your Own URL Shortener (YOURLS), and it does the trick.

There are a couple steps to using YOURLS. First, you install it on your web server. This process is painless, assuming you have PHP 4.3 or better, MYSQL 4.1, and mod_rewrite enabled.

Once installed, you can manually create short links. You can also link it to WordPress to automatically create short URLs for your new blog posts using the WordPress plugin.

The WordPress plugin automatically shortens URLs for each of your posts and posts them to Twitter. Like most shorteners, YOURLS also keeps stats to help you understand how much traffic each short URL or tweet delivers. For example, the short URL to this post is dnw.com/6.

You can also open up your shortening service to friends, but that presents plenty of risk.

If you follow Domain Name Wire on Twitter @DomainNameWire, you’ll see YOURLS in action. Here are the benefits:

1. Not reliant on third party service
2. Sends link juice to your domain, not a service provider
3. Customize your short links
4. Build your brand (showing your URL)

A look at selling points for domain name registrars.

Price and security are the most important characteristics customers consider when choosing a domain name registrar, according to a survey of over 500 people in the 5th Annual Domain Name Wire Survey.

171 respondents selected the security of their domain names at the registrar as the most important factor, while 153 said price was the primary concern. However, when the weighted average of all factors shows that price is the top concern.

The third most important factor was customer service, with account management tools coming in at number four. The ease of transferring domain names between accounts, which is important when selling domain names, ranked fifth.

Of relative little importance is what the domain name registrar does with its domain names when they expire. Some registrars auction off expired domain names, others keep the domains themselves, while still others have a hybrid model. The availability of value added services such as web hosting and domain privacy were also of relatively little importance. However, these value added services are where registrars make most of their profits.

Weighted results:
1. Price
2. Security
3. Customer service
4. Account management tools
5. Domain push/transfer
6. Expired domain handling
7. Value added services

When you consider the opinion of only owners of 1,000 or more domain names, security is clearly the most important factor, with 52% of people selecting security as most important. Account management tools also weigh more heavily for registrants with more than 1,000 domain names to manage.

See more survey results at DomainNameWire.com/survey.

News network wants Spanish domain name.

Cable News Network, aka CNN, wants to get its hands on the CNN.es domain name. There’s just one problem: it was registered back in 2005. So the company has filed a domain dispute with World Intellectual Property Organization to try to get the domain name.

At the time of writing CNN.es doesn’t resolve to a web site. But the domain’s owner appears to be based in the United Kingdom if his email address is any any indication. (.Es is the country code for Spain.)

This isn’t the first time CNN has challenged domain names through domain arbitration. It filed 8 cases last decade, winning all 8 of them. However, this appears to be the first challenge the company has made for a second level domain name merely containing “CNN” in a country code domain.

CNN knows the value of a good domain name, even if belatedly. In 2008 the company ponied up $700,000 for the domain name iReport.com. CNN had made the iReport brand valuable thanks to its crowdsourced news program by the same name.