The Internet Commerce Association announced today that Michael Collins has joined the organization as Executive Director.
The ICA is the largest business association in the direct navigation and domain name investment business. Direct navigation occurs when a consumer bypasses search engines, typing a search term of interest as an IRL in the browser address bar, leading to a site specifically designed for that topic. It is estimated that the direct navigation industry is responsible for between 6-9% of the search advertising industry. The marketplace is currently estimated at between $700 million to $1 billion annually. The ICA’s members represent over 2 million domain names generating over 100M monthly unique visitors.
Domain investors are also selling their domain names. It is becoming commonplace now to hear of seven-figure sales of generic domain names. Over $10,000,000 in domain names were sold in a recent live auction in one day. Other ICA members are focusing on developing their generic domain names. As prices increase for the best generic domain names, it is expected that even more domain buyers will be developing commercial websites on their domains in the future.
Michael Collins brings over five years of direct navigation and domain name sales experience to the Internet Commerce Association. Collins joins the ICA from Afternic, where he was a co-founder and [VP of Marketing.] He was introduced to the domain industry when his brother and partner, Roger Collins told him about the .us land rush. Together they started NameBuySell.com as a part-time venture. The business became a serious endeavor after getting an opportunity to acquire a famous Afternic brand.
The Collins brothers aggressively grew Afternic from startup to over $1.6 million in revenues in less than three years. Afternic developed into a market leader in the domain sales business with over 25,000 domain transactions. Afternic was sold to NameMedia in November 2006.
Michael is responsible for leading the organization’s developments, and plans to focus on recruiting new members to the ICA. He says “We need a larger base from which to draw our support and our ideas. This association will only succeed by listening to its constituency. Then we can be a voice for the industry.”
About the ICA
The Internet Commerce Association is a business organization made up of individuals and companies that own, buy, sell, resell, host and manage Internet traffic which comes from search engines, domain names and Internet links.
Our mission is to promote the value and benefits of Internet traffic, including the value of buying direct navigation traffic, on behalf of our membership — to the media, the advertising market, government and regulatory authorities around the world.
We stand for prosperity and entrepreneurship within the Internet and fairness among regulators, the dispute resolution process, the tax code as well as other United States and international laws.
Our association exists because together our voices will be heard as a result of our membership strength, our common interests and our collection of experience in the Internet traffic marketplace.