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Web.com acquires Tucows’ half of NameJet

by — Expired Domains 0 Comments

Deal is a sign of the times in the expired domain business.

Web.com is now the sole owner of domain name auction site NameJet after acquiring Tucows’ (NASDAQ: TCX) interest in the business.

NameJet was created as a partnership between Enom and Network Solutions (now part of Web.com) in 2007 at a time when SnapNames was dominating the direct-transfer expired domain business. The deal meant that Network Solutions’ expired domain inventory would move to the new NameJet platform, delivering a blow to SnapNames. Oversee.net had just acquired SnapNames but knew about Network Solutions leaving the platform before completing the acquisition.

In 2014, Web.com acquired Snapnames from KeyDrive for $7.4 million. That meant that Web.com owned all of Snapnames and half of its competitor NameJet.

SnapNames and NameJet later combined forces on grabbing pending delete domains, which are domains that make it through the deletion cycle and are deleted by the registry.

Tucows acquired Enom last year and Enom’s half ownership in NameJet was a sort of “gift with purchase”. After the acquisition closed, Tucows shifted its expired domain name inventory from GoDaddy to NameJet, only to switch back to GoDaddy later in the year.

This was a big indication that GoDaddy was far better at monetizing Tucows’ expiring domain names than NameJet.

Today’s news makes sense. In fact, it probably makes sense to merge the SnapNames and NameJet platforms.

The big question is if Enom domains will remain on NameJet and for how long. This was obviously part of the negotiation and ultimate purchase price. If Enom leaves the platform for GoDaddy at some point in the future, it will further degrade NameJet’s role in the marketplace.

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How NameJet can right the ship

by — Expired Domains 12 Comments

NameJet needs to make some changes to improve its results.

It’s been a rough year or so at domain marketplace NameJet.

First, there was the shill bidding scandal last summer.

Then, the company re-lost its Tucows expired inventory to rival GoDaddy. This is despite Tucows owning half of NameJet, so that wasn’t exactly a vote of confidence.

It also lost Name.com inventory. And Namecheap.

Those were big blows. NameJet is mostly left with Web.com’s registrars and Enom, plus pending-delete domain names and private seller inventory. A drop in the Chinese market is also hurting.

Last month, NameJet had $259,000 of sales over the $2,000 mark. It had $744,000 in the same month last year. That might have been an outlier because of a lot of three letter inventory, but I checked year-over-year sales for the past five months and they are all down except for August, which was essentially flat.

This could be somewhat of a death spiral. NameJet needs to reinvest in the business, but it also needs to make the case to its owners that it’s worth making the investment in light of lower revenue. I hope they choose to invest in the business because the industry needs at least two solid competitors for direct-transfer expired domains.

Here are some inexpensive ways that NameJet can improve its business. Click here to continue reading…

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GoDaddy is closing an expired domain “loophole”

by — Expired Domains 18 Comments

Last second backorders will no longer circumvent closeout process.

Auctions for expired domain names at GoDaddy can get competitive. With no backorders required, domain names can go from $0 to hundreds of dollars even when no bids are placed until the last few minutes.

This is complicated by the closeout process. If you bid on a domain in the live auction it will likely be bid up to over $100. If you can snag it when it goes into closeouts then it’s only $12 plus the renewal fee.

Unfortunately, there are lots of people with API access and computing power who treat the closeout like a drop. They start sending calls to buy the domain as soon as the regular auction closes.

But there has been a loophole that has helped people like me. If you place a backorder the second an auction closes, you can win the domain for the cost of a backorder before it gets placed in closeouts.

For the past year or so, I will closely watch auctions and be ready to bid if someone jumps in at the last minute. If the auction ends with no bids, I’ll place a backorder at the second the auction ends.

Historically, this has helped me scoop up a lot of domain names. About 95% of the domains that make it through the auction with no bids. But it’s gotten tougher this year.

Starting in January I noticed a lot of people placing backorders with a few minutes left in the auction. I’m not sure why they were doing this because it triggers a $10 bid and then everyone can pile in.

Then a few weeks ago I noticed that many of the domains I was backordering at the last second were getting scooped up by other people. My success rate went from 95% to about 25%. My guess is that they automated the process for backordering to get the timing just right.

While the backorder loophole was nice while it lasted, GoDaddy is about to eliminate it.

Joe Styler explained this change in a post on NamePros this week.

So now the options are either bid regularly and fight with everyone else, or program a system to snipe domains the minute they hit closeouts.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. At least now I won’t log into GoDaddy to place a backorder, only to be frustrated when someone places a last minute bid.

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WIPO panel explains a common expired domain occurrence

by — Policy & Law 0 Comments

A company wanted a domain but failed it capture it when it expired. Then it filed a UDRP against the new domain owner.

A World Intellectual Property Organization panel has provided an unusually descriptive explanation and interpretation of a very common occurrence.

Rolyn Companies Inc. filed a UDRP against the domain name Rolyn.com just weeks after the domain name was sold in an expired domain name auction. The domain was previously used by another company named Rolyn. That another company previously used the domain for its business suggests that the complainant is unlikely to have exclusive rights in that term.

Take a look at how the panel summarized this while inferring that if the complainant wanted the domain, it should have figured out how to buy it upon expiration: Click here to continue reading…

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GoDaddy gets patent for text-based domain name renewal

by — Domain Registrars 3 Comments

System would make it easy for people to renew domains using a third-party texting service.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued patent number 9,929,995 (pdf) to GoDaddy for “Third party messaging system for monitoring and managing domain names and websites.”

The patent is a continuation of an earlier one the company filed for allowing people to make changes to a website via text message.

This latest patent covers technology that would allow GoDaddy to communicate with customers via SMS, app or a third-party social network to help them renew their domain name or expand their webhosting package.

For example, if a customer’s domain is about to renew, GoDaddy could send a text message to the customer and ask if they want to renew it. They could respond ‘yes’ to renew the domain automatically, or ‘no’ if they want to let it expire.

On the hosting side, GoDaddy can send a message to the customer if they are about to exceed one of their quotas and give them the option to upgrade their hosting package.

This is somewhat like a chatbot. When an ad campaign on Facebook expires the company starts a Facebook Messenger chat with the advertiser that lets them get stats and extend their ad campaign by typing plain English words.

GoDaddy Chief Architect Arnold Blinn and former Sr. Director of Product Management Nitin Gupta are listed on the patent as inventors.

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