Marchex: What To Do With 200,000 Domain Names?

[Charley]

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Marchex (MCHX) is a company with great assets that keeps coming up short on performance. Shares recently fell to a 3 year low after reporting results which missed expectations and issuing a disappointing outlook for the next quarter.

Marchex owns a portfolio of over 200,000 domain names. This includes a large number of zip code domain names like 90210.com and domains with semantic or type in value like debts.com or newyorkdoctors.com. They were one of the earliest public companies to invest in domain names for the purpose of monetizing direct navigation traffic. In late 2004, they purchased a portfolio of over 100,000 domain names from Name Development Ltd. for $164.2 million.

Initially, most of their domain names were populated with generic pay per click advertising landing pages. They have recently moved towards turning their locally targeted domain names into basic websites with local content. Is this the right move?

 

[DnPresident]

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In late 2004, they purchased a portfolio of over 100,000 domain names from Name Development Ltd. for $164.2 million.

They have recently moved towards turning their locally targeted domain names into basic websites with local content. Is this the right move?

I've got a parking account with Marchex, Do you?

I've had it for maybe a year but haven't really tried it out yet.

Appreciate if you can PM me or post a little about there parking program.

I'm not in their shoes but always thought the $160mil may have been too much for those names. But I don't know. What do you think?

I know there were some really good names in the purchase but a lot of, What I felt were not so good names as well.

As far as what you do with all the names. You have (HAVE) to hire the best in the industry at domain monitization/revenue with a proven track record and let them pick a group of industry professionals (only the best) not there buddies that need a job, to get maximum return from this large investment,
that seems to have some 2nd guessing.

 

[gazzip]

[Initially, most of their domain names were populated with generic pay per click advertising landing pages. They have recently moved towards turning their locally targeted domain names into basic websites with local content. Is this the right move?

Probably not as it would cost a fair bit to develop and maintain them all (unlike a parking page) - How are they getting money from the developed ones ? Advertising ?

I also wonder if they had loads of TradeMark issue names in their initial purchase ? - If so, then they "may" have had to dump them all, that would make a fair dent in the income.


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