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Google Ads RPM drives CentralNic revenue growth

by — Domain Parking 0 Comments

Surge in ad rates drives organic growth at CentralNic.

Images of ParkingCrew ad landers

Google ads on domains parked at ParkingCrew are paying a lot more this year. Image from ParkingCrew.com.

Domain name and online advertising rollup CentralNic (London AIM: CNIC) reported earnings for the first nine months of 2020 today.

Due to major acquisitions, CentralNic’s revenue grew 118% to $168.5 million year over year. The company reckons that revenue grew 17% organically during the period if it had owned the acquired businesses last year.

Much of the growth is thanks to increasing ad rates at Google.

In order to understand Google’s impact on CentralNic’s revenue, it’s important to understand CentralNic’s three segments:

  1. Indirect – Revenue from the reseller registrar channel, registry services provider (e.g., providing the backend for .XYZ), and running the .sk country code. Revenue in this segment was up 51% to $63.5 million, mostly due to two acquisitions. It was up 8% ($4.9 million) on a pro forma (organic) basis.
  2. Direct – Revenue is generated from sales to end consumers such as small businesses, i.e., retail. Revenue was down 9% year over year to $31.1 million, but some of this was due to rejiggering segments. CentralNic says it was down 2% on a pro forma basis. (It’s worth noting that CentralNic recognizes revenue for domain registrations in both its reseller and retail channels upfront rather than over the life of a registration. This is different than most publicly traded domain name companies.)
  3. Monetization – Monetization revenue is mostly from the Team Internet business that CentralNic acquired at the end of the last year. On a pro forma basis (assuming it owned the business last year), it grew 39% to $72.9 million in the first nine months of 2020.

Monetization is the biggest segment, and it’s basically a new segment at CentralNic this year.

The increased revenue in 2020 isn’t due to more traffic (that’s up only 2%); it’s because of a higher RPM. RPM stands for Revenue Per Thousand and measures how much revenue is received per 1,000 views. It’s up a staggering 36% this year.

This means that increased ad rates have driven about $19 million of CentralNic’s $25 million organic growth this year.

Take out the increased RPM and the monetization segment is up only $1.2 million so far this year.

Almost all of CentralNic’s monetization revenue comes from Google, which provides ads for its parking pages. In the first nine months of 2020, 92% of CentralNic’s monetization revenue ($66.9 million of $72.9 million) was from Google.

This is both good news and bad news.

It’s great that Google is paying more. There’s reason for optimism that rates can go higher: RPMs continued to grow in Q3 and certain ad market segments are still depressed right now due to Covid. A return to normalcy sometime in 2021 could drive segments such as travel higher, increasing RPMs even further.

But ask any domain name owner and they’ll tell you that depending on Google for so much revenue can be a double-edged sword.

 

Investing in new TLDs with Oswin – DNW Podcast #314

by — Podcasts 2 Comments

This domainer has success selling new TLDs.

Making profitable investments with new top level domain names has proven challenging for many investors. Registries held back their best inventory or priced it at a premium. Today’s guest, Madhu Oswin, made a great return on his new TLD investments. The sample size is small, but it shows that domainers who selectively choose their investments and negotiate well can make a profit on new TLDs.

Also: GoDaddy tricked, reverse domain name hijacking, and a new calculator site.

Sponsor: Donuts

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Subscribe via Apple Podcasts to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

7 ways to find contact email addresses for Chinese companies

by — Services 4 Comments

Kassey Lee explains how you can find email addresses of Chinese companies for outbound domain sales purposes.

I research end users in China every day, and part of the exercise involves finding email addresses of companies I’m interested in contacting. Here are some of the methods I regularly use, which could help you for outbound sales of your domain names. Many of these apply to non-Chinese companies, too.

1. Use the Hunter browser extension. Once installed, it appears as an icon on my Chrome browser. When I’m visiting a website, I simply click the Hunter icon to display a list of email addresses found on the site. Hunter works on Chinese websites as well.

Screenshot of Hunter

2. Check the bottom of the home page of a website. I have noticed that many Chinese companies like to put their contact email addresses at the bottom of their home page. This tip is handy especially when Hunter cannot find any email addresses. For example, I recently visited www.yunyangdata.com and found one email address at the bottom of its home page even though Hunter reported none.

3. Find the Chinese text 联系 (contact) on a web page. In Chrome, for example, you can use Ctrl+F to open the “find” box. Copy the Chinese text from here and then paste it into the box. If the result is a link, click it to show the contact page and look for email addresses.

Image showing finding the contact link on a Chinese website

4. Check the English language section. If the Chinese website you are visiting also provides English contents, visit that section as well. Sometimes the English section shows email addresses not available in the Chinese section.

5. Check Whois. Even though it is harder to find ownership details of a domain now, sometimes Whois still gives you a contact email address. My favorite tool is Whois.com. For example, a search on “amazon.cn” displays the contact email address of the domain registrant.

6. Check Crunchbase. Crunchbase also covers Chinese companies. For example, a search for “Codemao” (a startup that teaches Chinese children how to program) gives you the contact email address shown in the image below.

Crunchbase image for a Chinese company

7. Check Baidu’s database of Chinese companies. This function is very powerful, but you must know Chinese or have someone who does. Visit Aiqicha.baidu.com and enter the name of a Chinese company. For example, a search for “点猫” (Codemao) gives you the contact email address shown in the image below.

Aiqicha image

If you need to contact a Chinese company, try the methods mentioned here to find its contact email addresses. Note that these email addresses may not reach the decision makers for domain acquisition. For this reason, I also use LinkedIn, which enables me to zero in on the CEO or other top executives of a Chinese company. I make use of the connection request feature to send a short message to the executive.

Black Friday domain name deals including .com

by — Domain Registrars 3 Comments

New domain registrations are cheap today.

Black Friday deals at domain registrars and hosting companies can sometimes be eye-opening yet are often impractical. Do people really decide to wait until Black Friday to set up their hosting plan to save a bit of money?

But if you have a list of hand registrations you’ve been waiting to pull the trigger on, today might be the day. Registrars are offering steep first-year discounts.

As usual, these deals are mostly on non-.com domains. You’ll find lots of heavily discounted new top level domain name deals right now, like .cloud for 99 cents at Name.com. It might be worth taking a flier on this, registering 100 decent domains to see if any sell within the first year.

Name.com even has .inc on sale for $500, about a quarter of its usual cost. That could be a good arbitrage opportunity if you’ve been thinking about buying any of the services that come free with .Inc.

What about legacy domains such as .com? Those deals are few and far between.

Namecheap has great prices on .com and .org — but limits apply. Through November 30, up to 5 .com registrations are $4.98 each and up to 5 .org registrations are $5.98 each. You must use coupon code BFTLDREG at checkout. The company also has discounts on transfers right now. You can transfer up to 50 .com domains for $6.98 each using code BFTLDMOVE.

Beyond that, NameSilo is promoting unlimited $6.99 .com’s. That’s lower than the registrar’s usual price, but Sav.com’s current everyday price is $6.95, so it’s not that great of a deal unless you prefer to use NameSilo.

Feel free to post any other .com specials in the comments (be sure to mention limits).

GoDaddy not increasing discount club price for existing subscribers

by — Domain Registrars 5 Comments

Existing subscribers will continue to pay $120 per year.

Picture of an arrow pointing up and to the right. The arrow is black on an orange background

There was an uproar last week when GoDaddy customers who subscribe to the Discount Domain Club received renewal notices with a hefty price hike. Customers were shocked to get notices that the annual membership cost was doubling from $120 to $240.

Discount Domain Club (DDC) is a paid discount program that gives customers heavily-discounted rates on domains. Customers with DDC pay $8.29 for .com domain registrations and renewals, which is substantially less than GoDaddy’s list price. The program also discounts other top level domains.

GoDaddy released this statement to Domain Name Wire after our inquiry about the price change:

When we launched Discount Domain Club 12 years ago, we wanted to create a program that assisted our customers with larger portfolio a way to maintain their portfolios at a reasonable price. While the prices of domain names have increased over the years, Discount Domain Club has not kept up. So for new customers, we have increased the price to bring the program back in line with original intentions. While new customers will have the updated price, existing customers will receive the same price they always have.

It turns out that, despite erroneous renewal notices, existing subscribers have been locked in at the $120 price.

Paying a fee to get discounted prices is controversial. Before it was acquired by GoDaddy, Uniregistry faced a backlash after raising its prices unless customers joined a discount club. Some registrars offer prices that are close to the discounted prices offered with these programs without the need to join a program, and others will extend discounted prices to large customers who ask.

Several registrars currently charge less than $9 per year for .com registrations and renewals. PorkBun, for example, charges $8.56.

.Com prices will increase during 2021 when Verisign increases the wholesale price of .com domain names. Keep a close eye on how much registrars increase their fees in response to Verisign’s increase.

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