Posted: 19 Apr 2012 09:58 AM PDT

Internet Traffic Website

The following is a guest post by Mike Cohen of WannaDevelop.com.

When Frank Schilling quietly soft-launched InternetTraffic.com last year and made the service available to a few select fellow domainers and professional type-in traffic operators, not too many could predict that the move would forever change the domain parking industry. So to get a better idea of what’s going on and more importantly what is still to come in the near future we reached out for a quick update from the founder of the popular domain monetization platform as we near the one year anniversary.

Below are some interesting insights and data which we were provided with:

By internal estimation InternetTraffic.com is now running 50%+ of all professional name operators on the platform
Close to 1,552,000 names are monetized on the platform
Names setup on the platform are much better and more potent than the names you would normally find on other big parking and sales platforms
In terms of audience delivered each day, InternetTraffic.com is likely the largest parking platform right now in the world

Frank Schilling went on to explain in detail about what happens behind the scenes of his operation…

“The most important thing to take-away is that all the changes… Everything we do internally, is designed to maximize the revenue on our owned and operated portfolio of domain names… We are trying to swing for the fences and maximize revenues in that department (on name-sales and on traffic sales) so we can make more money of our own names… If those things we do work, then we roll out the changes to our customers on the InternetTraffic / DomainNameSales platforms.

We work a Costco model: Very low margins… Big volume! Again, our core focus and time is really spent on our own stuff and then we marginally mark up services on our clients who get a free ride on our learning’s. We don’t play favorites or game payouts or shave tops or repackage revenues… It’s surprisingly untouched and ungamed. The brokerage services and sales-site we’ve developed is free but delivers significant revenue opportunity.”

Frank Schilling tells us that they’ve barely scratched the surface so far and that much more is still to come. Although almost a year old, the domain monetization service still remains very exclusive and not easy to get into for the average domainer.

“We hate to be clubby and would love to include all domainers that want to participate but not all domain names are created equal and its impossible to create a healthy market with all operators. There are administrative reasons, there are practical and competitive reasons.. But it’s not possible for us to work with everyone at this point.

The changes we’re roiling out will allow our clients to work less hard, to field more quality sales inquiries, to reply faster and to close sales and facilitate transfers quicker and more easily… With less charges than they are presently paying. It’s really remarkable stuff that the team is building. Again this is all for me, but the partners will get it shortly after we’re sure it makes more money and lives up to its high ideals.

DomainNameSales.com will be providing much much more revenue in the years ahead than CPC parking. Domain sales are maturing and we have designed a platform that can sell more names at higher dollars than other platforms can. Anyone can sell $2k names… Very few can sell $10k+ domains in volume. We want to chase that market and are one of the only platforms that do volume there. It is our intention to offer this machine to our partners, for free. We have some very big (revolutionary iPad / iPhone like) changes coming to this platform which will result in the ability to close more sales, faster.”

Frank Schilling wrapped things up with the following bold statement… “There will be a lot of shock and awe this year. But in the end if you own quality names with traffic, it’s all good. Brandables and punchy generics with very-low or little traffic are all good too ;)”.

DENIC and Netnod Team Up for Further Name Service Enhancement of .de

Posted: 19 Apr 2012 02:20 AM PDT

The operator for the German .DE ccTLD announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Swedish based Netnod, adding Netnods 35+ worldwide DNS locations to their own network.

"We have chosen Netnod for their outstanding technical expertise and fully trust their competence to meet the high level demands associated with the operation of our supplementary name service for .de, which is by far the biggest ccTLD worldwide. Also, both Netnod and DENIC are not-for-profit, neutral, and independent basic infrastructure-providing organisations and share similar strategic positions and views. Therefore, this partnership ideally matches with DENIC's commitment to provide services of utmost reliability, on a self-regulatory basis," said Dr. Jörg Schweiger, Member of the Board and CTO of DENIC.

See the full press release after the jump.

Effective 19 April 2012, German TLD .de operator DENIC and the Swedish-based Internet infrastructure organisation Netnod have entered into a strategic partnership to further strengthen the .de Name Service. By making use of Netnod's extensive infrastructure to complement DENIC's own worldwide DNS network, DENIC's operation of the domain name system for .de, in its role as a crucial resource of the Internet, will be additionally secured.

The new second foothold will further minimise potential risks for the .de zone by integrating Netnod's additional 35+ locations worldwide, this way allowing for rapid response in the case of a malicious intent. As a surplus benefit, Netnod's services will provide a significant capacity upgrade.

"We have chosen Netnod for their outstanding technical expertise and fully trust their competence to meet the high level demands associated with the operation of our supplementary name service for .de, which is by far the biggest ccTLD worldwide. Also, both Netnod and DENIC are not-for-profit, neutral, and independent basic infrastructure-providing organisations and share similar strategic positions and views. Therefore, this partnership ideally matches with DENIC's commitment to provide services of utmost reliability, on a self-regulatory basis," said Dr. Jörg Schweiger, Member of the Board and CTO of DENIC.

"Netnod is happy to assist DENIC in enlarging their footprint by offering them the shared use of our widespread multi-site anycast infrastructure for full backup support of .de, and thus for the common good of all Internet users. Of course, we are very proud that after having supported a large variety of European ccTLDs for quite some time now, .de as the No. 1 ccTLD has chosen us to be their strategic DNS partner," said Kurt Erik Lindqvist, CEO of Netnod.

About DENIC
DENIC is responsible for managing .de, Germany's top-level Internet domain and the world's second largest Internet registry with 15,000,000+ domain names. Next to running a 17-site worldwide name server network, DENIC provides all domain database and registration system resources for .de and also operates the German ENUM domain (.9.4.e164.arpa), along with all .de and ENUM related whois lookup services. Since its inception in 1996, as a private, not-for-profit cooperative, DENIC's mission is to fulfil a public purpose by supporting a fast, secure and reliable access to German Internet pages and e-mail addresses, through the excellence of its extensive name server infrastructure and services, on a 24/7 basis. Today, 280+ registrars from the IT and telecommunications industry in Germany and abroad offer .de registration services and support the independent, self-regulatory approach of the cooperative as active members. DENIC is also committed to be a leading force in shaping the continued development of the open, decentralized and secure Internet, in a close collaborative effort with international Internet bodies including ICANN, RIPE, IETF, and CENTR. Based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, DENIC employs 120 staff and has an annual turnover of EUR15m.

Website: http://www.denic.de

About Netnod
Netnod is a not-for-profit, neutral and independent Internet infrastructure organisation, based in Sweden and owned by the TU foundation. Netnod provides DNS anycast and unicast slave services to TLDs worldwide through its highly respected and robust DNSNODE product. Netnod is also the proud operator of i.root-servers.net, one of the thirteen logical DNS root name servers in the world – a critical part of the Internet underlying infrastructure. This service is provided as a public service to the Internet community at-large, as part of Netnod's goal to work for the "Good of the Internet". Finally, Netnod operates six exchanges in five different cities in Sweden where Internet operators exchange traffic. The Netnod IX has among the highest amount of traffic per peer in Europe and is fully IPv6 enabled.

EnCirca Provides List of .Travel and .PRO Domains that are Expiring/New or in Auction

Posted: 18 Apr 2012 01:25 PM PDT

A few days ago the registrar EnCirca released new feeds (available via RSS and HTML) on their site that list new, expiring and auctioned domains in the .Travel and .PRO TLDs. According to EnCirca, News.pro recently sold for $3,600.00; credit.pro sold for $2,400.00 and irki.com sold for $1,200.00.

[via EnCirca]