The person you nominate can work for a domain registrar, domain monetization company, aftermarket sales company, domain financing company, or other domain industry focused company. The person can not be the owner of the company, but he or she has to be someone with whom you work on a regular basis and who represents the company at events and/or handles accounts of domain investors.

There are a number of great account people that work with domain investors, and I want to honor the best of the best. One nomination per person.

BankAds co-founder Sean Sullivan stated, “the re-launched CreditCards.net property is going to be the cornerstone for our credit card advertising business within BankAds.” Terms of the CreditCards.net acquisition were not disclosed by either party.

BankAds will be operating in a very competitive space, and it will give potential clients an idea about how they can expect to perform with their own sites. Many of the major credit card issuers have high ranking websites, and even Google has a credit card portal. In addition, the well-funded CreditCards.com is a major competitor (organically and paid). It was reported that CreditCards.com was acquired by Bankrate for $145 million in 2010.

CreditCards.net has been owned by Acme Media, LLC, a New York City-based company operated by Keith Levenson. Acme Media owns and operates a number of domain names and websites including Rio.com, HomeImprovement.com, Vibrator.com, Devices.com, among many others. I have very high regard for Keith and his business.

Congratulations to Sean and Keith on the announcement.

BankAds press release is below:

BankAds, a leading provider of advertising solutions for the banking and credit card industries, announced today that it has signed an exclusive agreement to acquire CreditCards.net from Acme Media LLC, a leading online publishing company based out of New York. Sean Sullivan, Co-Founder of BankAds, said the following regarding the acquisition.

“CreditCards.net is an incredible domain name, and in my opinion could be easily considered the most valuable .net domain name ever. I am extremely pleased that we were able to work with Keith Levenson, CEO and Founder of Acme Media and complete this deal. He is someone with an incredible record of success and insight and this acquisition is critical for BankAds. Moving forward, the re-launched CreditCards.net property is going to be the cornerstone for our credit card advertising business within BankAds.

We have re-launched the site and given it a completely unique design and approach, not just with regard to the service itself, but also the corporate image and the brand we hope to firmly establish within the US market. BankAds has a very clear goal and frankly that is to create an experience where consumers can not only be presented with factual information and top credit card offers from all major companies, but we hope to bring a little bit of humor to things at the same time.”
While mixing humor and financial services might sound like an odd pairing at first glance, it is actually an approach that you see quite often from credit card issuers or other companies within what are widely considered boring or humorless industries. Capital One has their credit card barbarians, Geico it’s popular Gecko, Aflac it’s bumbling duck and now CreditCards.net has launched with an adorable seal that is certainly unique as well.

Sergei “The Seal of Approval” is nothing short of a laugh riot; dispensing advice on how to balance a budget and avoid massive credit card bills while simultaneously informing the reader that he’s no fan of the walrus, otter and pelican. Creativity and factual information regarding credit cards are not in short supply on this website. Sergei’s back story regarding his dislike of walruses even goes as far as showing an “infamous” illustration of his great, great, great, great grand poppa being “one upped” by a smug walrus. Pelican’s are routinely referred to as “bird brains” and the otter is labeled a “sissy.”

Sergei’s “story” began in Russia, where he refused to follow the career path of his family as a fisherman. Instead he chose to attend university and upon graduation, moved into the fast paced lifestyle as an investment professional managing other people’s money. Quickly tiring of the fast cars, money and partying he then chose to become what else, a blogger….

Sullivan, who had previously worked for more than seven years in the advertising industry producing commercials explained further,
“Everyone that has a business model similar to ours, whether it is CreditCards.com, CardRatings.com or any of the other sites someone is going to see listed within Google when they search for “credit cards”, we are all essentially distributing the same basic information. There are some differences in terms of how we present the information and connect the consumer to the credit card issuer, but fundamentally the information is the same.

So I think if someone is going to have to sit down and research a bunch of credit card offers, they might appreciate having a laugh or two while they’re doing it. We’re a very serious and professional company and everything we do is within all best standards and practices. To work with banks and credit card companies you have to be. That being said, our team likes to laugh and enjoy life so I think we are pretty lucky to have been able to get Sergei to agree to join our team.”

Aside from having up to the minute information on the best credit card offers available from most major card issuers and banks, CreditCards.net also features a lot of articles written by a knowledgeable editorial news staff, some of which are based out of the South Florida headquarters. BankAds is in early negotiations with some well known financial news writers about joining the team in their base office. According to Sullivan, they even got a couple to agree to start writing under “pen names” temporarily.

Further adding, “BankAds being a new company, it is not always easy to get really great writers to jump ship. So we’re fine with some taking a wait-and-see approach before coming over full time. We have a very long time horizon for this company and we really are trying to up the game and increase the quality of the overall experience for the visitor to any of our financial websites.”

One thing that certainly sets BankAds apart from many of its competitors is the sheer number of sites that it owns and / or controls. While the company is relatively unknown within the industry, for some time now it has been increasing the size of its internet footprint. Even acquiring other sites outside of the core business. BankAds has other properties that it feels can be of use to consumers, but mostly small business owners. Many of those sites and services are currently being offered free of charge to anyone who wishes to use it.

Sullivan explained, “A lot of our other properties are focused on small business. We recognize that small businesses are the backbone of the US economy, so whenever we possibly can we’ll offer some kind of service or product for free.

This approach seems a bit odd coming from a company that operates in advertising and finance, both industries not known for being “charitable”.
According to Sullivan, BankAds is fortunate to be in a position where they have the opportunity to give back in those areas where it is needed the most – small business and helping consumers.

“If you look at our core business model, what it really comes down to is helping people save money. Regardless if it is on a bank checking account, credit card interest rates or business incorporation fees, our goal is to save people money, period.”

BankAds almost sounds like an aggressive capitalist mixed with a consumer advocate. Who knew the two could be one in the same?

BankAds is based out of Delray Beach, Florida.

About Acme Media

Acme Media acquires, sells, leases and develops its growing portfolio of domain names and destinations like www.rio.com, www.vibrator.com and www.homeimprovement.com. We have a stern belief that the internet continues to change everyday life on all social and economic levels. We share the belief that such trends are evolving, changing and improving every day. Acme Media thrives to stay on the cutting edge of today’s developing trends and strives develop their portfolio of domains with these trends and technologies.

I received an email from Bari today confirming the news, and it looks like she’s happy about the move. ”I’m very excited about joining the Demand Media ‘family.’ Demand Media has a solid foundation of providing quality services and together we have an excellent opportunity to grow the business.”

Having a trusted account manager at a domain registrar is reassuring to me, and I am excited that Bari moved to a company where I have an account and do business.  As a result of this hire, I plan to transfer a group of names over to Enom.

Congratulations to Bari and Enom on this smart hire.

News release from Enom is below:

Bari Meyerson who left her Sr. Account Manager position in December 2011 at Moniker, has accepted a new business development position with Seattle based registrar Enom.

In her new role, Bari will be responsible for growing/managing Enom’s existing domainer client base as well as targeting domain investors. In addition, Bari will be focused on identifying strategic opportunities around domain parking, premium names, and value-added services.

During Bari’s 5 years at Moniker, she managed a portfolio of their top 500 registrar clients and assisted in the domain sales of Scores.com, Poker.ca and Dating.com.

With Google continuing to crack down on link building schemes targeted at manipulating rankings, building high quality white hat links is more important than ever. On April 24th, 2012 Google rolled out the Penguin update and if you want to believe Google the update was a rousing success, but the reality is probably closer to this.

Site owners, SEO professionals, domain developers, and web content professionals are worried about what types of links are now acceptable. Penguin has clearly cracked down on sites with over optimized links; trying to brute force your way to the top with anchor text is a game that just became a lot harder.

Penguin is Google’s code for the penalty box, and, if your site gets tagged (Penguined?), you will rank lower than before. Google can’t de-index hundreds of thousands of sites over night (even though they might like that) without a massive uproar, but Penguin allows them to control the subset of sites they want and handle them separately from the regular algorithm.

There is the primary Google algorithm, and now we have the Panda and Penguin parts of the algo (wouldn’t surprise me if these two got combined at some point). This is all quite confusing for SEO professionals: you can drop by any of the popular forums and blogs and find them endlessly debating what to do and how to fix your site. And if you want a really entertaining read, check out the new business of negative SEO.

How are ecommerce stores, business professionals, and your local brick and mortar shops supposed to market their site? Ranking well is still important and links are part of the game, so burying your head in the sand isn’t the correct choice.

What we do for our sites is guest blog posting. With guest posting, rather than the spam posted on low quality blog networks, humans actually write content that someone might actually want to read—crazy, right? Beyond the obvious link benefit, sites receive the benefit of brand recognition, access to a new audience, and referral traffic. If the content is good enough, the post may even be socialized and the benefits compounded.

The premise of guest posting is pretty straightforward: find high-traffic blogs related to your niche and coordinate with blog owners to provide them high-quality content in exchange for promoting your site. While guest blogging can be done by anyone, most companies out-source this activity to third-party service providers who specialize in guest posting.

Guest blog service providers are able to draw upon existing relationships with blog owners and operators to best match clients with blogs, providing a maximized return on investment. WordsforLess.com is one of those guest blog service providers and recently opened their doors for orders. WordsforLess.com will find the blogs, negotiate with the blog owner or operator, draft the unique content, and ensure that the article is posted appropriately. In addition, we can help manage content for your site and provide in depth pieces from writers with experience in your vertical.

Thanks to Christie Chute, Manager of Monetization and Aftermarket Sales at Web.com, I was able to find out the first domain name I ever registered.

The domain name I purchased on October 31, 2002 was Legal-Aids.com. It appears this name was dropped at some point, re-registered in 2005, and it seems to have expired within the last couple of days. It is not the type of domain name I would purchase today, but it was my starting point in the domain industry.

The next domain names I registered a few days later were SeekNewYorkCity.com, SeekBoston.com, SeekDC.com, and SeekPhilly.com.

I got a fairly late start compared to many of the people I admire who have successful businesses, but I spent a lot of time soaking in as much information as I could in order to learn what domain names sell for how much, and why. I think someone could start today and be very successful, but I don’t think this is a business in which someone can expect to become rich overnight.

I’ve registered some truly crappy domain names in my time, but I continued to learn from my mistakes and make better purchases.

What was the first domain name you purchased?