Affiliate marketing grows while domain business stagnates.

Sedo Holding, parent company of domain name marketplace and parking company Sedo, reported growth in Q3 compared to the same quarter in 2011. The growth was driven by the company’s affilinet affiliate marketing business.

Q3 sales were EUR 29.1M compared to EUR 27.3M in the same quarter last year.

For the first nine months of the year sales in the affiliate marketing division increased 20.7% compared to the same period in 2010, coming in at EUR 62.5M.

Sales in the first nine months for the Sedo division dropped 8.1% from EUR 32.0M to EUR 29.4M. The company says domain brokerage remains strong while domain parking continues to face headwinds. The company continues to cull its own domain name portfolio to reduce the number of unprofitable domains.

So far this year Sedo says it has focused on its SedoMLS system and is placing emphasis no “buy now” domain names sales.

You can view Sedo’s complete Q3 report here.

Moniker’s Year End Auction ends today.

At least nine domain names will sell in Moniker’s Year End Auction, which ends at 12:15 PM PST today.

Nine domains have hit their reserve, ranging from MosquitoWipes.com at $300 up to PaternityTest.com at $21,500. The latter has six bidders.

A number of other domains are active and close to hitting reserves. QX.com is at $82,500 and has a reserve of up to $100,000. APW.com is up to $12,999 with a reserve range of $10,000-$25000.

Altogether 17 domain names have bids at the time of writing.

You can see and bid in the auction here.

Domain price index now includes data for ten top level domain names.

Today Sedo and its research partner (now an employee) released an updated version of the IDNX, a price index for domain names.

Included in the latest refresh are sub-indices for 10 different top level domain names.

Top level domain options now include .com, .net, .org, .biz., .info, .mobi, .eu, .de, .co.uk, and .es.

With the TLD analysis, Sedo draws two key conclusions that are relevant to companies considering introducing new top level domain names.

First, historic performance of .net and .org could not close the gap market leader .com. Both price trends and registration numbers show that demand for “second-best” substitutes has been modest, at best.

Second, the relative success of .info vs. .biz and .eu shows that a TLD can be successfully introduced to the market, which Sedo says provides encouraging news for aspiring registries.

This latter point is worth noting, although I think the introduction of new TLDs will be very different from when .info and .biz were introduced. .Info was well marketed. Neustar, which operates .biz, looked at itself as more of a technical provider than a marketer for that TLD. Lesson learned.

AMEX and The Georgia Department of Agriculture buy domain names.

Here’s a look at end user domain purchases from Afternic over the past week.

Switzerland’s Deesse AG, which operates web sites at Deesse.de and Deesse.com, bought Deesse.net for $1,688.

The Broadway Consortium, which produces and invests in a variety of theater projects, bought BroadwayRecords.com for $1,200.

Sevier County Electric System bought SCES.net, its acronym, for $1,316.

Salt River Materials Group also ponied up for its acronym, SRMG.net, but at a cost of $5,000.

Market research company Marketview Research, Inc, paid X for Survey123.com for $4,800.

Prestige Resorts and Hotels of Minnesota paid $1,288 for PrestigeAccommodations.com.

ManageStaff, Inc., which until now used the domain name managestaffinc.com, bought ManageStaff.com for $1,888.

StreetInkCorp, owner of Swingtowns.com, bought Swingtown.com for $12,000. This may have been a bargain given the TV show of the same name.

The Confidentiality Group, LLC, which operates SecureZone 360 and owns SecureZone360.com, bought SecureZone.net for $2,588.

The Georgia Department of Agriculture bought GeorgiaGrown.com for $2,000.

American Express bought DevExchange.com for $3,188.

International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers (how’s that for a mouthful) paid $17,000 for IronWorkers.com to match its IronWorkers.org domain name.

TheRetirementCentre.com followed Facebook’s lead by dropping the ‘the’ for $2,000.

Company puts domain name on the books at a huge sum.

How much is the cloud.com domain name worth?

According to Citrix’s accountants, it’s $18 million.

The company acquired Cloud.com (the business) for $200 million plus earlier this year.

George Kirikos just noticed that the company is amortizing the domain itself with a value of $18 million.

Now this is just an accounting number, so I’m not sure the domain was worth that much when it wasn’t attached to a business. But it’s still an interesting valuation for a great domain in a growing business.