100 people in the world own 2 million domains

[Andrew Shaw]

nice find

 

[Rick Latona]

The top Eight in that story would be:

-Marchex (acquisition) formerly Yun Ye - Ultimate Search
-Highland Capital (acquisition) formerly Mike Mann - Buydomains.com
-Fabulous (public Australian exchange) Australia
-Vertical Axis/Proto/DomainDeluxe/Hitfarm group (private) Hong Kong
-Name Administration Inc. (private) Cayman Islands
-Compana LLC/RentalQue (private) Jeff Baron Texas
-Domain Systems (private) Florida, Steve Obrien
-FMA.com (private) Thunyann/Elequa guy (sweet set mixed with conceptual stuff)

Lower quality big guys who grew quickly in the last year or two with expireds and linkpop crap:
-Directnic (private) New Orleans [mainly old linkpop stuff expiring from their registrar]
-QSRCH (new.net group) [aweful typo linkpop crap]
-Netster (some older stuff and then a bunch of tmish stuff)

Biggest mid-size operators who people always think are much bigger, but who have some nice portfolios include:

-Oversee.net yes they own names too
-WorldWideMedia (private) Tampa Florida
-Digimedia-Reflex Publishing (private) Texas-Oklahoma / Florida
-Dotzup (private) Spokane WA
-Modern Limited formerly Real Time Internet(private) Indiana/Carribean
-CNET.com (yes they hold some domain names to drive traffic to their properties)
-National A-1 advertising (free.com)
-Viper Holdings (SFO) Slavik V.
-Rick Schwartz (the one and only)
-Webquest (private) Modesto California
-Modern Empire Internet Ltd. (private) Hong Kong
-Ecorp.
-Strategist Research / Innovation HQ (private) Carribean
-Dot Com Agency - france


You can actually see how smart it was for Marchex to buy Ult Search. You would have to do deals with 4-5 guys from the bottom two levels to equal the quality of 1 deal at the top 8 in terms of traffic volume and quality of name.

Everyone should pay attention to Chaiki because he clearly knows this business. My only negative comment is that he is discounting end users. I could give many examples but here are a couple that I’ll give in an effort to join this community:

Python is an adult internet company that made it big when processing tricks where all that mattered to get affiliate traffic. Their free sites that paid 40 dollars a sale from 1995 to 2004 got them millions of new members and they'd launch 5 sites a week in order to always have new things for mailers to promote. Now I'm not endorsing their model. I'm trying to get across that they have 10,000+ domains due to their marketing model and as an end user with no intention of ever being a domain broker. Don’t break out a calculater because they have a lot more domains for other reasons.

My second example would be myself. I've been buying domains for years because I'm a domainer like most of you guys and I love the art of the deal and get jealous and motivated by threads like this. I also own Consumption Junction and the rest of the sites in the Sick Site Network. That company alone has 1000s of domains just off typos and future development ideas. iWebmasters, my offshore staff leasing company has hundreds of names. Hell, we just spent 27,000 dollars on offshoring.com and 25,000 dollars on contactcenter.com. Both of those transactions were last month. Me being who I am, as a partner I make sure all advertising dollars are spent on properties that pay dividends, i.e. domains. I am also a founder and partner in DigiPawn which has an undisclosed (*cough) amount of domains. Point is that altogether I have over 10,000 domains.

Does this mean I'm in the top 10? No. I'm trying to say the above top 10 list was written by an insider that knows what is going on in the domain industry but doesn't know what Internet cowboys may have in play.


Marc Benioff, of salesforce.com and Marc Cuban of broadcast.com both made over a billion dollars off their Internet prowess. I’ve been in contact with both of them about domains they own through other entities. I bet they both control over 10,000 domains.

To regress, it’s humbling to think that the people Chaiki mentioned probably control even more domains through other companies.

 

[Fearless]

Everyone should pay attention to Chaiki because he clearly knows this business. My only negative comment is that he is discounting end users. I could give many examples but here are a couple that I’ll give in an effort to join this community:

Python is an adult internet company that made it big when processing tricks where all that mattered to get affiliate traffic. Their free sites that paid 40 dollars a sale from 1995 to 2004 got them millions of new members and they'd launch 5 sites a week in order to always have new things for mailers to promote. Now I'm not endorsing their model. I'm trying to get across that they have 10,000+ domains due to their marketing model and as an end user with no intention of ever being a domain broker. Don’t break out a calculater because they have a lot more domains for other reasons.

My second example would be myself. I've been buying domains for years because I'm a domainer like most of you guys and I love the art of the deal and get jealous and motivated by threads like this. I also own Consumption Junction and the rest of the sites in the Sick Site Network. That company alone has 1000s of domains just off typos and future development ideas. iWebmasters, my offshore staff leasing company has hundreds of names. Hell, we just spent 27,000 dollars on offshoring.com and 25,000 dollars on contactcenter.com. Both of those transactions were last month. Me being who I am, as a partner I make sure all advertising dollars are spent on properties that pay dividends, i.e. domains. I am also a founder and partner in DigiPawn which has an undisclosed (*cough) amount of domains. Point is that altogether I have over 10,000 domains.

Does this mean I'm in the top 10? No. I'm trying to say the above top 10 list was written by an insider that knows what is going on in the domain industry but doesn't know what Internet cowboys may have in play.


Marc Benioff, of salesforce.com and Marc Cuban of broadcast.com both made over a billion dollars off their Internet prowess. I’ve been in contact with both of them about domains they own through other entities. I bet they both control over 10,000 domains.

To regress, it’s humbling to think that the people Chaiki mentioned probably control even more domains through other companies.

Cool Newbie

 

[sasquatch]

What about these:

Anything.com
WebMagic
LaPorte Holdings, Inc.
Unasi Inc.
Jasper Developments
Alberta Hot Rods
3v Networks

Do they belong in the above list or...?

Also who is controlling Zuccarini's domains?

P.S.
Mark Cuban has majority stakes in NetIdentity - those notoriuous "last name" cybersquatters with thousands of domains.

 

[Anthony Ng]

Yes, I'm actually surprised. Even without any hard evidence at hand, I KNOW that there are way more than 100 entities which own 1,000+ domains.

 

[Rick Latona]

What about these:

Anything.com
WebMagic
LaPorte Holdings, Inc.
Jasper Developments
Alberta Hot Rods
3v Networks

Do they belong in the above list or...?

Also who is controlling Zuccarini's domains?

P.S.
Mark Cuban has majority stakes in NetIdentity - those notoriuous "last name" cybersquatters with thousands of domains.

Funny thing is that he bought into NetIdentity after selling broadcast.com for billions to Yahoo. Think he believes in the power of a good domain? He bought into it before he had "realized gains". In otherwords, before his lockup period expired and he could sell his Yahoo stock. Since then he hasn't worked to the best of my knowledge.

 

[sasquatch]

Yes, I'm actually surprised. Even without any hard evidence at hand, I KNOW that there are way more than 100 entities which own 1,000+ domains.

Yes you are probably right although so far we identified only about 25-30 individuals/entities (above) - so even if we ad few other active posters from this board alone (Daddies, Edwins, Dukes... and few Asian-based players and pseudo-players...) it seems we would still be short of 100(?) Anyway, it doesn't really matter because that statement by Fabulous official wasn't meant to be an exact science, beside I think the point they were trying to make was that 100 people own 2+M .com domains; though I've also heard somewhere that about 2000 people/entities outthere own majority of all world's domains.

Funny thing is that he bought into NetIdentity after selling broadcast.com for billions to Yahoo. Think he believes in the power of a good domain? He bought into it before he had "realized gains". In otherwords, before his lockup period expired and he could sell his Yahoo stock. Since then he hasn't worked to the best of my knowledge.

Well he was very speculative, though in 1999 it was already becoming obvious that internet names were the new real estate so I guess he decided to invest some in an orderly fashion, except I don't see a particular success (at least not any more) in the "novelty" approach that NetIdentity took, though I could be very wrong.

 

[Chaiki]

Funny thing is that he bought into NetIdentity after selling broadcast.com for billions to Yahoo. Think he believes in the power of a good domain? He bought into it before he had "realized gains". In otherwords, before his lockup period expired and he could sell his Yahoo stock. Since then he hasn't worked to the best of my knowledge.

NetIdentity was formerly Mailbank.com founded by Jerry Sumpton in Vancouver BC .. he sold out and did quite poorly. They only have many thousand of names but at it's height Sumpton controlled 60,000 gems that he got by not paying for names through Netsol payment system - Jerry would buy names and not pay, names would drop then Jerry would buy back. He was always much bigger than Brian Liew's Communicate.com which only ever had a handfull of epic names but everybody thought was much bigger. Also CES Marketing which had a nice set. Today they are called Domainworks.com

All those guys (re-listed here) would still be in bottom level in terms of size and reach:

- Communicate
- Anything
- Zuccarini's good names - controlled by Ari Goldberger
- Alberta Hotrods
- CES MArketing / Domain works
- Mailbank / Net Identity

The bigger middle level guys I accidentally left out include the drop services themselves:

-Pool.com (tens of thousands of names, Rob Hall CEO) Ottawa
-Enom.com (club drop unpaids and privately held keeps [many thousands], Paul Stahura CEO) Seattle
-Snapnames (unpaids and significant portfolio, Ray King CEO) Portland Oregon
-Dotster (sleeper portfolio, very large, kept from drops at Namewinner, Baker Capital is owner [baker did the deal for them partly 'because' of the portfolio]) Vancouver WA.
-And lastly but certainly not least, who could forget the mother of all "inventive" domain collectors, the loveable and cuddly Yomtobians: Daniel and his dad Saied (Karim) (rumored inventors of the now defunct but incredibly useful Xupiter.com toolbar)

 

[Rick Latona]

Well he was very speculative, though in 1999 it was already becoming obvious that internet names were the new real estate so I guess he decided to invest some in an orderly fashion, except I don't see a particular success (at least not any more) in the "novelty" approach that NetIdentity took, though I could be very wrong.

I'm sure they regret their email aproach. How do you modify that model without screwing your customers?

 

[Chaiki]

Everyone should pay attention to Chaiki because he clearly knows this business.

Very nice of you to say, but this is all available/learned info from the web and forums here, also at domainstate.com

 

[sasquatch]

All those guys (re-listed here) would still be in bottom level in terms of size and reach:

I somewhat disagree. Biggest typosquatters have much more size and especially reach than the holders of quality generic portfolios. For instance, for every generic name that sits undeveloped and gets 100 uniques daily, there are 20 typo domains of successful sites getting 100-1000s+ per day each. There are variances and exceptions of course, but largely ^that^ is the case.

 

[Rick Latona]

Very nice of you to say, but this is all available/learned info from the web and forums here, also at domainstate.com

Well, I'm new to domain message boards. I learned what I know in the trenches. Kudos none-the-less.

 

[sasquatch]

Very nice of you to say, but this is all available/learned info from the web and forums here, also at domainstate.com

So Chaiki which one of those listed somewhere above is actually you? d

 

[Rick Latona]

I somewhat disagree. Biggest typosquatters have much more size and especially reach than the holders of quality generic portfolios. For instance, for every generic name that sits undeveloped and gets 100 uniques daily, there are 20 typo domains of successful sites getting 100-1000s+ per day each. There are variances and exceptions of course, but largely ^that^ is the case.

Bigger than the average domainer maybe but can't touch the revenue of the biggest. I agree they get a lot of traffic. Crack.com gets cracks.am traffic. aeiou.com gets aeiou.pt traffic. I didn't intend to squat on either of those, someone else just developed a similar name. I've spent over 600,000 dollars buying back the many ways to misspell consumptionjunction.com. Do an overture extension search on common misspelling like consumtionjunction.com or consumptionjuntion.com and you'll be amazed.

All who follow that model will eventually lose and never have an exit strategy. In a business were we deal with annual returns and appreciation it just doesn't make sense and the big guys know that.

 

[sasquatch]

Bigger than the average domainer maybe but can't touch the revenue of the biggest.

Well he talked about the "size" and "reach" (gee why do I feel dirty wriiting these words?:clown, so I thought by that he meant the size of domain portfolio and the traffic it gets, not necessarily the revenues it produces.

 

[Chaiki]

So Chaiki which one of those listed somewhere above is actually you? d

Chaiki = all hat, no cattle.

 

[Rick Latona]

not necessarily the revenues it produces.

What's the point of that?

 

[sasquatch]

What's the point of that?

Well the point is that you could still be powerful, as long as you have the "reach"; meaning the audience, the traffic, the eyeballs; even when that traffic doesn't convert well.

In the ever competitive Internet world the audience is a precious commodity. You've got audience, you've got power. Simple as that. Eventually you can sell your audience to the highest bidder if you want (WhatIsMyIp), or you could use it (Million$Homepage) and abuse it (Zuccarini) in many different ways.

 

[Chaiki]

Well the point is that you could still be powerful, as long as you have the "reach"; meaning the audience, the traffic, the eyeballs; even when that traffic doesn't convert well.

In the ever competitive Internet world the audience is a precious commodity. You've got audience, you've got power. Simple as that. Eventually you can sell your audience to the highest bidder if you want.

That is a very deep statement, very accurate and fascinating. How many unique visits does Yahoo get a day? What is their market cap? Is it harder to get traffic or to build the content Yahoo has? What would happen if Yahoo or MSN or even Google pointed all those traffic portfolios listed into their businesses? How would that change their market cap and the dynamic of their business? How much more stuff could Amazon sell? How many more Auctions could Ebay get bidded, if they could point relevant traffic names to relevant undervisited content within their vast sites?

It is very interesting from a media perspective when the name 'is' the content. Your visitor flow is 100% disposable. You deliver nothing and the people keep coming. Really amazing conversations.

 

[uglypeoople.com]

Chaiki, do you have the email addresses for these top 20 companies?

Maybe, they can buy my domain names for a million bucks to add to their huge domain portfolios.