All about domains, cloud, and web hosting

DomainX is India’s first and largest conference in this field. It’s been held every year since 2014, when Gaurav Kohli and Manpreet Pal-Singh from the Domain Name Owners Association of India launched this event.

The agenda of DomainX has always included social events and business sessions. But this year, there’s been a new twist added to the mix. For the first time ever, the conference held an exciting live auction for premium domains.

The 6^th annual DomainX conference was held at the Eros Hotel, Nehru Place, New Delhi, early in August, 2019. An after-party was also organized on 4^th August at Excuse Me Boss, MGF Metropolitan Mall in New Delhi.

The 2-day event was sponsored by Dynadot, Netspace India, and Namecatch.org, with Kings.Digital as the Digital Partner of DomainX 2019.

Dynadot, a domain marketplace where you can easily buy and sell premium domain names, is even more popular than GoDaddy. Netspace India provides premium web hosting and digital web solutions, while you can register domains at affordable prices at Namecatch.org.

The First Day: Speeches and Business Sessions

On August 3, experts from both national and international spheres were brought together at the DomainX event. An impressive line-up of speakers took the stage to share their knowledge on web hosting and domain name investing.

The Chief Guest at the event was Samiran Gupta, Head of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) India.

A veteran in business strategy, Samiran used to be a Senior Director at APCO Worldwide, a global public affairs consultancy. He has worked extensively in telecom, e-commerce, entertainment, payment systems, and various other sectors.

Samiran Gupta, Head of ICANN India, speaking at DomainX 2019. Source: official Facebook page of DomainX

Jon Yau, shopkeeper at StockPhoto.com, delivered the Keynote Address at DomainX. He’s a successful entrepreneur from Australia, and now runs the website full-time.

In a country where cricket is a religion, Jon hit all the right notes with a comparison between a successful IPL cricket team and a solid domain name portfolio.

According to Jon, just like team owners pick the right players to ensure that their team wins the IPL matches, you need to pick only those domains that will help your business to not only attract more customers, but also to convert and retain them. If your domain doesn’t do that, it’s worthless, even if you’ve paid a lot of money for it.

IPL players can be acquired either by trading with other teams, or by choosing them at annual auctions. In the same way, you can acquire domains either by trading with other domainers, or by attending auctions for fresh and expired domain names.

“With domains, you don’t have to win every match,” said Jon, “You just have to make more money than it costs you.”

A key lesson shared from Jon’s own experience was to be very careful while allocating one’s capital, by paying attention to structuring your domain name portfolio well!

Themed ‘Internet Governance in India’, speeches at DomainX were delivered by Samiran Gupta, Ajay Data, and Amrita Choudhury. Dr. Ajay Data, the ‘Father of Internet’ for Rajasthan, is an Indian entrepreneur who founded Data Infosys Limited. He has recently received the Graham Bell Award for having created the world’s first linguistic email address mobile app.

Amrita Choudhury is both the President of Internet Society Delhi Chapter as well as the Director of CCAOI. A founding member of India School of Internet Governance (inSIG), she also advises the Youth Internet Governance Forum (Youth IGF) in India.

Both Ankur Raheja and Rodney D. Ryder spoke on ‘Domain Names & Trademarks_ What You Should Know about the Law’. Cyber/Domain Lawyer Ankur Raheja handles domain name disputes and trademark registration matters for clients. His experience of 15 years has led technology companies to consult him on matters regarding Cyber Defamation, Cyber Safety, and Cyber Law Compliance of websites.

Rodney D. Ryder is Advisor to the Indian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology on the enforcement of the 2000 Information Technology Act. The IP Lawyer’s also a Partner with Scriboard, a commercial law firm specializing in technology, intellectual property, and new media laws.

A case study on US$ 15,000 Domain Name Sale was then presented by award-winning blogger and CashOverflow.in founder Pardeep Goyal. He’s a domain name investor who taught 1.5 million people about saving and investing money through CashOverflow back in 2018.

“Domain selling is real business,” said Pardeep, who used to think earlier that domain selling is the marked territory of only experts. His love for branded domains led him to create not only CashOverflow, but also ContentStack, StartupKarma, and BitcoinBanker, among others.

While presenting the case study at DomainX about how he sold ContentStack for $15,000, Pardeep admitted that he had rejected initial lowball offers.

“There is no rule for exact valuation of domains. It depends on the need of the buyer and the pocket of the buyer. You can set your own standard rules for selling. Like I won’t sell any domain in less than $1000,” said the domain name investor.

Pardeep enlightened the audience at DomainX with some tips that he used to sell ContentStack:-

• List your domain on platforms like Flippa and sedo.
• Domain brokers can help you sell domains, so connecting with them would be wise.
• Connect with people belonging to the domain flipping industry.

Once the deal was closed and ContentStack was sold to the client, Pardeep re-invested the money in buying more domains.

But purchasing domains isn’t that easy. According to Pardeep, you should buy a domain that’s:-

• Brandable
• Got high keyword traffic
• Related to cool domains and technologies
• .com, .net, .org, as these are highly valued in international markets
• Sunrise or expired

As Pardeep said, “Invest in domains like long-term investing in the share market.”

Ever wondered why domain names are that important? Well, 5 industry experts were called upon to speak on the subject. Among them were Barry Coughlan, Nitin Sethi, and Manpreet Singh.

Dynadot’s Business Development Manager Barry Coughlan has been handling affiliate marketing programmes at Dynadot for nearly 8 years.

A leading domain name resources blog, GoDomaining.com, was founded and authored by Manpreet Singh. He’s also the Founder-CEO of a cloud solutions and web services providing company named Magical Cloud Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

As Vice President Digital at Indigo Airlines, Nitin Sethi helps the group undergo digital transformation. His experience in product design spanning over 19 years has led him to create Naukri.com, Yatra.com, Rediff.com, and Quikr.com. He won the 2017 Design-led Entrepreneurship Awards, making it to Adobe Content 100 list in 2017 and Adobe Digi100 list in 2018.

The other speakers on this topic were Sea Ansley (Mother.Domains) and Shashi Kant Pandidhar (Netspace India). A futuristic domain name investor, Sea Ansley quickly grew Mother.Domains, the “Mother of domains”, to hundreds of customers, and began running innumerable world servers. Shashi Kant Pandidhar has been in the web technology industry ever since 2007, based out of Mumbai.

Next, a second case study was presented by Harmandeep Singh on ‘Outbound Marketing and Domain Name Sales’. The founder of Delhi School of Digital Marketing, the Internet entrepreneur and coach is also a part-time domain name investor.

“My first exposure to the domain industry was at DomainX 2017, where I met Mr. Manmeet Pal Singh and other domainers,” said Harmandeep Singh at DomainX 2019.

Since he’s from a digital marketing background, he was already familiar with the basics of domain names and web hosting. But Singh claimed to have learnt a lot more from DomainX.

“At DomainX, when I attended the event, I got to know that these domains can be bought and sold as intangible assets. I did my research and entered this vast field,” Singh said.

He even gave tips for beginners in the domain industry, asking them to:-

• Learn from blogs and YouTube videos
• Learn from the DomainX forum
• Attend events and keep networking
• Get expert guidance

Harmandeep Singh’s top domain sales to date include Accessible.org, which he sold for $9000, and Tradly.com, traded for $6500.

The Second Day: Live Domain Name Auction

The live domain name auction at DomainX was held the next day, on August 4.

A total of 26 premium domain names were listed with or without reserve prices for the auction. These domain names included Tablets.com, Salary.in, SmartMobiles.net, ChildrenBooks.net, Chocolatechip.in, DownloadGames.in, and other super premium ones.

Manmeet Pal Singh, the Chief Producer of DomainX, kicked off the auction with some tips for sellers. “Always keep in mind that you have to quote something double the price you would be happy to accept, but also keep in mind that the buyer should be able to pay up that price and it is within his budget,” he said.

Tablets.com was sold at the live auction for a whopping US$100,000, while the bid for DPF.com went up to US$19,000.

Everyone agreed that the 2019 DomainX conference has been a tremendous success. Being the official Digital Partner of DomainX 2019, we at Kings.Digital are really proud of what this event has been able to achieve. But most importantly, we want to thank all the expert speakers and the attendees at this conference for their massive support for the event.

With the live auction now a part of this conference, it’ll keep building communities among Internet experts. We all hope that DomainX will continue providing aspiring Internet professionals with income opportunities for days to come.

Do you want to be a part of the next DomainX conference? See you in 2020, then!