How Many Domainers Does It Take to Screw In A Lightbulb?

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By , September 29, 2010

I put this down whilst killing time on an errand as I was thumbing through the comment thread  on TheDomains in response to the Adage article that had the posited Facebook as “a domain killer”. Just a harmless riff on an old theme with no disrespect intended.

How Many Domainers Does It Take to Screw In A Lightbulb? Read more »

Demand Media files amended S1

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By , September 17, 2010

In Brief: Demand Media has filed an amended S1 to their IPO. I don’t have a lot of time to look at the differences, but I thought I’d mention it for those who are interested. Could make for some interesting weekend reading.

A US Dollar Crash will give US-based Registrars Huge Advantage

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By , September 15, 2010

I have been monitoring this situation for literally as long as I’ve been in the domain name business, which is nearly 15 years. easyDNS, based in Canada,  does nearly half of all it’s revenues in US dollars. In the early days of the company, the USD was worth upwards of 1.35 to 1.45 Canadian. We made piles of money on the exchange, and because we weren’t a margin player, the relatively small amount we were paying back to the registries in USD didn’t really bother us.

Of course that began to seriously change to the point where we really started noticing it after 2003, 2004 area. The Canadian loonie has even hit past parity a couple times, and believe me when that happens, we feel it!

We’re basically in the same position as “exporters” to the US, we pull in revenues in USD, but we incur expenses up here in CDN. So when the USD is weak, it reflects in our revenues.

I look at things in an extremely long-term perspective, so much so, that I often look crazy. When I placed a bet with my former accountant circa 2004 that the Canadian dollar would hit parity within 5 years, I think those were his exact words “You’re crazy”. I wish I could find a usenet discussion board I said the same on back in the early 00’s, where I was also assured  by the resident pundits that the Canadian loonie would never, ever rise higher than .75.

So here we are today, where a loonie in the .95 to parity range is the new normal and we’ve been actively executing our strategy for protecting against a weak USD for several years.

That strategy included:

  1. Read more »

Comparing Godaddy’s and NetSol’s price tags

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By , September 11, 2010

I was going to comment directly on Domain Stryker’s article about Godaddy’s vs NetSol’s respective price tags, until I read that he was putting me on the spot to say something half clueful about it over here 🙂

My initial comment was to the key differences between the prospect of Godaddy being bought for 1 Billion today and Verisign’s purchase of Network Solutions for 28B back in the dotcom heyday was this: Network Solutions included the registries for .COM, .NET and .ORG.

ICANN later forced Verisign to divest out of the registrar side if they wanted to renew their contract for the registry (and they were also forced to let go of .ORG as well)

So for 28B, Verisign got the .COM and .NET registries, for what looks like in perpetuity. No matter how big Godaddy ever gets, at $8.88 a domain or so, they will always be paying the lions share of it to Verisign (well, for .COM and .NET’s)

That’s not to say Verisign got a bargain on NetSol. They locked up the registry, but given the times, everybody was paying nosebleed valuations for everything, but consider this:

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Tucows to repurchase another 5% of shares in Dutch Auction

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By , September 9, 2010

Tucows has just announced another Dutch Auction to repurchase 2,900,000 shares of it’s stock in a Dutch Auction ranging from .61 to .70 / share, commencing next week.

This comes on the heels of a long line of regular share repurchases and another Dutch Auction last year. Tucows has been steadily reducing its outstanding shares for a few years now.

Disclosure: Long Tucows.

Parksdot.com: Comment spamming my blog like there’s no tomorrow.

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By , September 9, 2010

I make it a personal mantra to never do business with spammers. There’s a guy who keeps comment spamming this blog and then leaving hostile comments “why aren’t you publishing my comments?” – Because they’re spam, you imbecile.

Well right now the cake has been taken, with about 2 dozen spam comments received so far, coming in at the rate of one-per-minute: parksdot.com, who are ostensibly “parking the net”, but whom I’ve never heard of before today are spamming the hell out of me.

This is no way to enter a business and gain any cred guys. Cut it out. My recommendation to anybody looking to test unknown, obscure, second tier domain parking platforms: give these guys a pass.

Sell Domains. Raise cash. Prepare to feast.

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By , September 5, 2010

I was away on St. Lucia for a couple weeks and on a really crummy internet connection which made blogging very cumbersome. I did read with interest three articles from Epik’s Rob Monster: The Quest for Recurring Income, Explaining Domains as an Asset Class to Finance types and Called it: Sell stocks and bonds. Buy domains and websites!.

While I’m largely in agreement with his assessment of the current economic climate and find his business-like approach to domaining refreshing, I wanted to weigh in a few points. Read more »

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