Yahoo’s sale of Contests.com was a win for everyone involved.

When Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) sold the domain name Contests.com on Tuesday, the mood was upbeat. It was a relatively big domain sale from a big company for a lot more money than the seller anticipated.

I was surprised to see some people questioning the sale. Larry Fischer made some fair points. TechCrunch went a little overboard, suggesting this was more than just a simple decision to sell an unused domain. (People who read the TC article took it a step further. Two commentors thought it was some sort of inside deal as a favor to the buyer. Gotta love conspiracy theorists.)

Here’s my take: it was a good domain sale. The seller got more than they required and the buyer probably would have paid more.

Yahoo set a reserve of $150,000 and was willing to take that much. The buyer was determined and probably would have gone higher had an internet bidder not pulled out at $360,000. But is $380,000 that bad for this domain?

It’s true that the domain was inserted into the auction relatively late. That may have to do with internal reviews at Yahoo. But the level of promotion inside the domain industry was better than for just about any domain sold at a live domain auction: a solo email blast to qualified buyers. Buyers knew about it and there were many qualified bidders at the auction who decided not to participate. It was very different from Toys.com, in which only a handful of bidders were aware and kept the secret to themselves.

This sale can only be good for the industry. So I’m just going to treat it as what it was: a good sale in which both the buyer and seller are happy.

Delay affects all Yahoo partners.

For the second time in as many months, a domain parking statistics delay from Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) is making domainers wonder “just how much have I earned this week?”

Apparently Yahoo hasn’t been able to provide final stats to domain parking companies since about March 25. The company provided some stats but then called them back, saying they weren’t accurate.

Although it may be a minor annoyance for some, the problem needs to be resolved within the next few days for clients to receive payments on time. For example, Parked.com usually sends payments on the 7th for earnings from the second half of the prior month.

NameMedia sent an e-mail to customers of its domain parking services, including Goldkey and ActiveAudience, yesterday to update them on the stats delay.

Delay in revenue stats hits major domain name parking companies.

A domain name parking stats delay from Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) has hit a number of domain name parking companies, preventing them from providing final parking stats to customers for the past few days. Yahoo is one of the biggest domain name advertising feed providers.

The outage appears to have started late last week when parking companies started to notify customers of stats delays (or simply not update stats). The stats delays are affecting all major Yahoo partners, including Parked.com, TrafficZ, HotKeys, and NameMedia (SmartName, Active Audience, and Goldkey).

The problem is being resolved, and it appears that stats are starting to be processed through Saturday, February 14. Stats at Parked.com and HotKeys are updated to February 13 as of the time of posting.

Google Adsense customers faced some delays over the weekend, as stats were delayed starting 4 a.m. PST on Sunday. Those issues do not appear to have affected Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) domain name parking channel.

Domain name parkers have become accustomed to stats being finalized within a day, but it was only recently that major parking companies such as Parked.com were able to provide this data quickly. Delays from smaller parking ad feed providers are common, but it is rare for such a prolonged delay from a major provider.

Park domain names? Review parking companies at Parking Judge.

As the curtain comes down, here’s a look back at last week’s conference in Los Angeles.

Oversee.net’s DOMAINfest Global 2009 was an excellent conference. Now that I’ve had time to relax and reflect on last week, I’d say the conference deserves five stars. Of course, there’s always room for improvement.

The Good
-Attendance was very strong at over 600 people. DomainSponsor handed out fewer “rebates” and free passes this year, so I suspect paid attendance was in line with 2008. That’s a heck of a feat given the economy.

-Google and Yahoo domain parking teams at the same show? Very cool. The session with Google’s Hal Bailey was OK, but the best part was meeting with the companies during Thursday afternoon’s networking session. Google brought down about 10 people from the Adsense for Domains and analytics groups. Yahoo’s team made the drive over from Burbank, where the domain parking team is located. The networking session with domain lawyers was excellent, too.

-DFG set the bar for professionalism at a conference. Sessions started on time and the moderators were well prepared. There were no blank stares waiting for the audience to ask questions.

-The entertainment was phenomenal. Although most people will talk about the party at the Playboy Mansion, I had a blast at Universal Studios. Imagine showing up to a theme park and having no lines, an open bar every twenty feet, and the cashier at the restaurants not charging you. I shared a few screams with the Domain Capital guys and Dark Blue Sea CEO Richard Moore on the Mummy ride.

-The exhibit hall was big and had plenty of meeting space. There were a number of exhibitors I’ve never seen before, so it was not just the same-old sponsors. With lots of couches and tables, many people held meetings inside the hall.

Suggestion Box
Nothing was “bad”, but here are some ways Oversee.net can improve the next conference.

-The legal session on the first day was too good to not be held during the regular conference (it was on the bootcamp day). Instead of the usual smattering of legal questions, the moderator walked the lawyers through an unfortunately common scenario that a domainer might face, including buying a stolen domain, receiving a cease & desist letter, UDRP, etc.

-With 600 people there, I didn’t get a chance to run into many people that I would have liked to. I found out on the last day some of the people who were there that I would have liked to connect with. DOMAINfest Connect was a good idea, but most people didn’t use it. I recommend sending an registration list to attendees a week before the show. It would only contain names and companies, and attendees could opt-out. This would allow me to set up meetings in advance without sending out a hundred “are you going to DOMAINfest?” e-mails.

-Dinner was held at the parties, which meant you didn’t get a chance to eat until after 8 pm. That’s late if you flew in from a later time zone.

Overall, this conference deserves the positive press it’s receiving. Now, all eyes are on New Orleans.

Is Microsoft looking to buy into the domain market? It could be a winning strategy.

You may have read a few rumors lately that Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) may be getting into the domain name business.

The last time I talked to a Microsoft representative on the record, he said the company was very interested in the domain channel but had no immediately plans to provide an ad feed to parked domains.

Would Microsoft be so bold as to buy up hundreds of thousands of generic domain names? It’s plausible.

Microsoft has lagged both Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) in search. It has invested lots of money trying to improve search and even launched its own pay-per-click ad network. The search efforts haven’t paid off. So Microsoft decided to buy marketshare but Yahoo rebuffed it.

In other words, the company is having trouble improving to get market share and trouble buying market share.

But there’s one avenue in which the company could buy up search traffic: generic domains. Owen Frager’s suggestion that Microsoft may be looking to buy portfolios from Frank Schilling, Kevin Ham, and Marchex* (NASDAQ: MCHX) actually makes some sense. Microsoft could just forward the pages to Microsoft search results along side its ads if it wants to. It could buy a lot of traffic to its search product in little time. This would make Microsoft search relevant again, and potentially be a lot cheaper than buying Yahoo.

We know Microsoft is interested in the domain channel. Time will tell how it plans to engage with it.

*I own a nominal number of shares of Marchex.