Domain Name Wire » Search Results » domainsponsor

6 questions about DOMAINfest answered

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:11:07 +0000

A look back at last week’s DOMAINfest conference.

Before heading to DOMAINfest I posed six questions that would be answered by the end of the week. Here are the answers.

1. How will Oversee.net’s new leadership present itself?

Just before the conference began, Oversee.net announced that co-presidents Debra Domeyer and Scott Morrow had been promoted to co-CEOs.

I haven’t seen many “co-CEO” type situations end favorably, but they seem to be handling it well so far.

Most people I talked to at the conference were positive about the new leadership. Domeyer will be more visible to domainers since she handles the domain monetization side of the business. Morrow covers the vertical markets properties.

The new leadership gives Oversee a “fresh start” after a rough few years.

2. Will Oversee.net address Moniker?

Yep. KeyDrive, which owns NameDrive and Key-Systems, announced that it acquired both Moniker and SnapNames. That leaves a lot of of questions up in the air, but I think this is a good thing. Oversee had been trying to get rid of these properties for at least a year. It’s good to have them in the hands of a company that wants to invest in them. More on that in a future article.

3. Will the new parties make up for the (lack of) Playboy Mansion?

I think both parties were good. But I’ll let others chime in here.

4. How many people will be there?

About 600 people were expected to attend. More on that in a future article.

5. Can DOMAINfest successfully include topics outside the typical domainer realm?

Confession time – I didn’t really go to any of the sessions. But they were well attended, with 200-400 people in many of the sessions. I’d say it was another step toward bridging the domainer and internet marketing communities. These are two communities that historically haven’t understood much about each other.

6. What big company announcements will be made?

Sedo announced a big deal with GoDaddy, but KeyDrive probably grabbed the most attention with its acquisition.

…

Now, a bigger question: where do Oversee.net and DOMAINfest go from here? They have emerged a smaller, leaner company after the sale of Moniker and SnapNames. Now they have a vertical markets division and DomainSponsor. They’re a smaller part of the domainer lifecycle and have only about 100 employees, down from 200 just a few years ago.

Is DomainSponsor alone enough to justify holding a large conference each year? Will it team up with KeyDrive for future domain auctions at its conferences?

Will the conference eventually morph to a point where it no longer makes sense to put “domain” in the title?

Coming soon: Domain/Affiliate/LeadGen/SEOfest, presented by Oversee.net.

Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.

HostExploit says Oversee.net is improving, making a case study

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:18:15 +0000

HostExploit applauds Oversee.net for fixing problems that landed it at top spot at recent “Bad Hosts” list.

HostExploit, a group that compiles a list of what it calls “Bad Hosts”, no longer lists Oversee.net as the #1 bad host.

In its fourth quarter report, the group says Oversee.net is now ranked as the #12 bad host.

Why? It’s kind of hard to tell. Last quarter I reached out to both Oversee.net and HostExploit about the ranking. I heard back from neither so I guess I’m on my own to interpret the results.

But HostExploit applauds Oversee.net in its latest report, stating:

For a responsible host, the shock of finding they are ranked unusually high, or even worse in the #1 position, can be enough to prompt immediate remedial action.

Take, for example, the Q3 2011 #1 overall Bad Host (#1 for both Badware and Infected sites) AS33626 Oversee.net. This customer oriented reseller swiftly investigated the causes behind its undesired status. The introduction of a clean-up program and new procedures promptly reversed the trend. (More on this in a future case study.)

The clean-up for Oversee.net progresses with an added confidence that their high ranking will drop further and take them off the #1 spot for badware.

Indeed, Oversee.net is still ranked #1 for badware. But the report notes that it continues to work on negating false positives for badware on parked domains. (Oversee.net is parent company of domain parking company DomainSponsor.)

Sedo is also on the overall “bad” list at #39. Google is ranked #43.

Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.

Monte Cahn and Oversee.net go to trial next week

Andrew Allemann — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:43:45 +0000

Court to decide two aspects of dispute between Moniker founder Monte Cahn and his former employer.

Monte Cahn and Oversee.net will square off in court on January 24, but it will be a limited non-jury trial over just a couple aspects of Cahn’s breach of contract claim.

The trial will seek to address two issues:

1. Oversee’s treatment of the Oversee EBITDA performance goal under Cahn’s bonus plan
2. Who counts as “TrafficClub customers” for determining if Cahn met his goal for domain monetization

Trial briefs submitted by the respective parties shed more light on the history of Moniker as well as Oversee.net’s performance in recent years.

Seevast sells Moniker to Oversee.net

Monte Cahn sold Moniker to Seevast (called Kanoodle at the time) in 2005. Seevast thought it would go public or be sold within a couple years. Cahn had a provision in the sale that would allow him to ask for Moniker to be sold again in two years if that didn’t happen.

After Seevast bought Moniker, Cahn stayed on with the company. It generated $3.6M in EBITDA in 2006 and $4.1M in 2007, according to Cahn.

After two years the Seevast exit did not materialize, so Cahn asked Seevast to put Moniker up for sale.

A number of companies made firm offers for Moniker, Cahn says, including Tucows, Sedo, Millennium, Baker Capital and two other private equity companies in addition to Oversee. Oversee’s initial offer was $50M. It ultimately paid $24.1M, according to Cahn.

Cahn says $10M of the price reduction was to help fund a Management Incentive Program (MIP).

Oversee characterizes the MIP as basically an earn out for Moniker employees. Cahn was to identify its participants each year by January 15, but Oversee.net says he didn’t.

The MIP covered four areas: Oversee.net’s overall performance, TrafficClub (domain monetization), domain sales, and registrar.

Overall Oversee.net performance

Is Cahn owed money under the MIP for Oversee.net’s overall performance?

Although the financial goals in the MIP for Moniker’s segments were determined when the plan was signed, the overall Oversee goal was left as “TBD”. The board would determine the goal each year.

Oversee’s board never set goals for the MIP. Because of this, Cahn says he should be held to the same EBITDA goals as the rest of senior management. Oversee claims that during negotiations of the MIP it demanded that it retain discretion to set different EBITDA goals under the MIP than for other senior management. The company says that, although it never set those goals for Cahn, doing so would have been an “idle act”. The goals would have been for improving financial conditions, but Oversee.net’s condition weakened shortly after the acquisition. It also points out that Cahn never consulted with the board or asked it to set the goal.

According to Cahn’s filing, in 2009 and 2010 Oversee.net’s EBITDA goal for senior management was around $24M each year, and Cahn says it topped this goal slightly each year.

Oversee.net also created an alternative plan for Cahn, under which he received bonuses in 2008 and 2009. It contends that Cahn could receive a bonus under either the MIP or the new plan each year, but not both.

Cahn says he deserves a bonus of $3.2M for Oversee hitting the EBITDA goals.

DomainSponsor and TrafficClub

DomainSponsor and TrafficClub have an interesting history.

TrafficClub was Moniker’s split-test parking system, which rotated traffic amongst many parking companies to figure out which domains earned the most on each system.

Before Oversee.net acquired Moniker there was a spat between the two companies with regards to TrafficClub. DomainSponsor pulled out of the TrafficClub program and reached out to TrafficClub customers to convince them to bring their business to DomainSponsor.

The Oversee.net acquisition surprised some in the industry because of this previous disagreement.

Shortly after buying Moniker, Oversee.net shut down TrafficClub.

At issue is how much (if any) Cahn is owed for his work bringing in new DomainSponsor customers and/or bringing on more revenue from existing ones.

Cahn says he worked hard to bring new clients to DomainSponsor or get existing ones to expand their business. He convinced Mike Berkens to transfer his entire portfolio. He also struck a deal with Jan Barta to advance $3M to him that would be paid off by monetizing domains. He also says he brought on traffic from clients such as Rick Schwartz, Tucows, and Marchex.

Cahn says that Oversee.net didn’t track the revenue he brought in to the new combined TrafficClub/DomainSponsor correctly. (It’s worth noting that Cahn originally was to run the Moniker division at Oversee, but later was given responsibility for DomainSponsor.)

There’s also a disagreement about which customers should be counted toward Cahn’s goal, and the court will decide that in this case. Cahn says the incentive plan includes customers that were on DomainSponsor (but not TrafficClub) when he joined Oversee but whose business Cahn grew after arriving. Oversee.net disagrees, saying the plan does not include these customers.

According to Cahn, DomainSponsor/TrafficClub’s gross profit was $51.7M in 2009 and $37.3M in 2010. That’s an interesting number to benchmark the fall in domain parking during that time.

Cahn says Oversee owes him $1.6M related to TrafficClub.

I think this gives a fair overview of what both sides are arguing. But the details are nuanced, and this summary by no means covers every point of fact the two parties will argue in court. It’s now up to a judge to decide.

Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.

Domain attorney Ari Goldberger featured in NBC Miami story about expired MiamiPolice.com domain

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:07:23 +0000

Goldberger featured in TV news story about MiamiPolice.com.

Domain name attorney Ari Goldberger of ESQwire.com was featured in an NBC Miami story last week about MiamiPolice.com.

The Miami Police let the domain name expire a couple years ago and it was picked up by someone who now parks the domain with DomainSponsor. While I’m not sure why NBC Miami just did this story now (slow news week for the holidays?), it’s good to see Goldberger was interviewed for the story.

It turns out the Miami Police only owned the domain for a short time and never really used it, favoring their official web site Miami-Police.org. So they decided it wasn’t worth the $35 to renew the domain name.

The story reads:

Police spokesman Delrish Moss underscored that not having miamipolice.com does not affect police services at all, and that a small purchase here and a small purchase there adds up in times of severe budget crunches.

That’s the government at work.

The video is embedded below.

(As a side note, does anyone think the reporter in this story resembles ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom?)

Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.

Oversee.net Discusses Layoffs and Its Future

Andrew Allemann — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:53:10 +0000

Company co-president explains Oversee.net’s business shift.

News of Oversee.net’s layoffs didn’t come as a huge surprise last week. This sort of shuffling the deck is common when there’s turnover at the top.

I caught up with Scott Morrow, co-President of Oversee.net, to find out what’s going on at the company.

Morrow told me that Oversee.net now has three strategic focus areas.

First, it will leverage its core assets of DomainSponsor and DOMAINfest Global. It will expand these further outside the limited domainer crowd.

“The domain industry is evolving and many of our clients are moving from parked pages to building out sites, taking advantage of affiliate opportunities and lead generation,” explained Morrow.

The company will still be involved with monetization but it won’t just be parked pages.

Second, it will build out its marketing services platform “to better value or add value to the traffic that we support.”

This involves projects like categorizing and profiling traffic to better understand it. The company is also investing heavily in email and mobile.

Third, Oversee.net will continue to build out its own properties, particularly in the travel, consumer finance, and retail sectors.

Despite the layoffs, Oversee.net is still hiring. The company is looking for engineers, developers, and sales people.

Morrow says the company is still going strong into Europe as well.

As one of the largest companies in the domain name space, Oversee.net is seen as somewhat of a bellwether. It will be interesting to see if there are similar shifts are other companies in the space.

Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.

Oversee.net Lays Off 13% of Staff

Andrew Allemann — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:24:44 +0000

Company lays off staff after executive transitions

Los Angeles, CA domain name company Oversee.net has fired 13% of its workforce. The company just announced the layoffs with the following statement:

As part of its plan to address new growth opportunities, Oversee.net has realigned its work force resulting in a staff reduction of 13 percent. These moves, along with pending new hires, will allow the company to leverage core assets to innovate more effectively, improve competitive positioning and achieve growth.

This move comes just weeks after CEO Jeff Kupietzky left the company. Three other executives left in June.

Oversee.net fired 18% of its staff in early 2009, but has been hiring since.

Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.

A Warning if You Use TrafficClub NameServers

Andrew Allemann — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 17:49:18 +0000

Legacy nameservers no longer generating revenue for parking customers.

Oversee.net shut down Moniker’s traffic monetization solution TrafficClub shortly after buying the company. TrafficClub accounts were transitioned to DomainSponsor and the trafficclub.com nameservers continued to work.

But that changed back in March, apparently without notice as far as I can tell. Although the trafficclub.com nameservers continue to function and resolve to DomainSponsor parked pages, you no longer are receiving credit for any of that traffic.

Perhaps I’m the only one who didn’t bother to change my nameservers after the changeover. And clearly I don’t make much money from the domains I had there since I didn’t notice earlier. But if you were a TrafficClub user who never switched DNS, I recommend doing it immediately.

Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.