What is this month’s top domain sale? How much should your company budget for a domain name? What’s going on with ICANN and its policy changes? How is the domain industry currently adapting to the GDPR? Below is some interesting October news in the domain industry.
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Eko.com sold for $1.5 Million
At this time, the sale of Eko.com for $1.5M will be the 3rd largest publicly reported domain sale of 2019. First is Voice.com at $30M, and second is California.com at $3M. The domain was purchased by interactive video company, Eko.
How important are domain names and how much of a startup’s funding should be spent on a domain name?
Startups need to budget for expenses such as overhead, marketing, and hiring, among others. A certain portion of funding will include a suitable domain name, but how much should be allocated? There’s no right answer, and every company will have a different budget based on a number of factors. Morgan Linton poses key questions when deciding on a budget – Is your company a B2C or B2B business? What market are you selling to? How will you conduct your advertising and marketing? All of these will affect whether $500 or $500,000 is a more suitable range.
Further, while some individuals think domain names are becoming less relevant as people turn to search engines to find businesses, recent data compiled and analyzed by Domain Name Wire suggests otherwise – at least for the Chinese market. According to data from Chinese tech giant Baidu, it appears that direct visit accounts for the largest share of web traffic in China, at 45% as of 2018. This data demonstrates that Chinese consumers remember and enter domains to visit websites, rather than going through search engines and referrals, which drives demand in domains.
ICANN and GDPR policy and procedure changes?
ICANN was recently under fire regarding proposed changes to its public comment guidelines. The timing and purpose for these proposed changes came into question, leaving many to wonder exactly how commenting periods will change and its effects on those in the domain industry.
It looks like there’ll be plenty to discuss at ICANN’s next public meeting coming up next month in Montreal. There has been more discussion surrounding how domain registration information will be accessed, in light of the GDPR. A “hamburger” model for allowing access to private Whois data has been proposed, which involves registries/registrars as one “bun”, data requestors as another, and an unknown middleman acting as the “patty” to go between the two.
It’s award season!
Public Internet Registry (PIR), the organization that operates the .org extension, hosted its first annual Impact Awards in Washington, DC. Awards were given to 12 winners who represented the achievements of the .org community. Winners included World Refugees School and Community Focus Group.
Looks like there are more awards to be celebrated as the ICA names 9 nominees for its 4th annual Lonnie Borck Memorial Award. Recipients are recognized for their work in protecting the rights of domain owners/registrants. Winners will be announced at NamesCon 2020 where we’ll be attending again this year!
We’re looking forward to positive changes and updates with the end of 2019 soon approaching.
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