On average, about  16,000 children die from hunger-related causes each day, or one child every five seconds.  About 5.8 million children die from hunger-related issues each year, about double the total population of the state of Utah.  (Source: Black, Robert, Morris, Saul, & Jennifer Bryce. “Where and Why Are 10 Million Children Dying Every Year?” The Lancet 361:2226-2234. 2003.)

If all of the hungry people in the world were combined, the total number would be large enough to be the world’s third-largest country, and more than three times the population of the entire United States.

2007 World Population Rankings

(Source: The Orphan Foundation and State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2008 FAO.”Food Security Statistics”)

Hunger is essentially the most extreme form of poverty, a state in which individuals or families cannot afford to meet their most basic need for food (Source: Are We On Track To End Hunger? Hunger Report 2004. Bread for the World Institute. 2004.)  Hunger manifests itself in many ways other than starvation and famine. Most poor people who battle hunger deal with chronic undernourishment and vitamin or mineral deficiencies, which result in stunted growth, weakness and heightened susceptibility to illness. (Source: Are We On Track To End Hunger? Hunger Report 2004. Bread for the World Institute. 2004.)  Undernourishment negatively affects people’s health, productivity, sense of hope and overall well-being. A lack of food can stunt growth, slow thinking, sap energy, hinder fetal development and contribute to mental retardation.  (Source: State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2008 FAO.”Food Security Statistics”. ) Poor nutrition and calorie deficiencies cause nearly one in three people to die prematurely or have disabilities (Source: “Malnutrition”. World Health Organization.)

Here a a few good websites that are working to fight world hunger:

Action Against Hunger - an international network committed to saving the lives of malnourished children and their families while ensuring access to safe water and sustainable solutions to hunger.

Bread for the World – a non-profit organization focusing on fundraising and lobbying for hunger-related issues.

TheHungerSite.com – by using certain websites, money will be donated to charities that combat hunger issues.

WorldVision – allows you to sponsor a child.

Yesterday Crystal and I purchased the domain name Hunger.net. We would love your thoughts about how we can use digital media and Hunger.net to help solve world hunger.  For example, microlending websites such as Kiva, empower us to help entrepreneurs better provide for their famlies.  Microlending is one of the most effective, sustainable solutions to poverty.  Child sponsorship websites such as WorldVision, help connect great people with and sponsor specific children.  What other ideas do you have about how Hunger.net can make a large-scale difference to help solve world hunger?

I have used several domain parking services over the years to help monetize unused domain names. Recently, I read an article about Sedo winning the Domain Name Wire survey as the best parking service, for the second year in a row. In the survey, about 48% percent of the responding domainers voted that Sedo is the best domain name parking program. That percentage is up from 32% last year.

According to the survey, the top parking services are:

1. Sedo 48%
2. Name Drive 19%
3. Parked.com 13%
4. DomainSponsor 5%
5. Fabulous 5%
6. Active Audience 2%
7. Skenzo 2%
8. TrafficZ 2%

Other parking companies received 1% or less of the vote.

I was impressed with this survey because (1) I felt the domainers who read Domain Name Wire and voted in the survey would be very qualified to identify the best domain name parking service, and (2) Sedo won the survey by such an impressive margin.

Although I have used Sedo to buy and sell domains in the past, I had never considered using their domain name parking service. Based on this resounding vote of confidence from the survey, I decided to give Sedo’s domain name parking service a try. So, more than a week ago I moved more than 100 domain names to Sedo to test their domain parking service to see if it would better monetize these unused domain names.

With Sedo’s parking service, most of the optimization controls are given to the domain name owner, such as selecting the keyword for the ads shown on the site, selecting a related image for each domain, and selecting related keywords. Most other domain name parking services automate this customization process, selecting the keywords through a computerized system. Sedo’s customization requires much more time to set up each domain. However, as I have gone through this customization process over the past week, the revenue generated from Sedo’s parking service has dramatically increased as my pages have become more targeted to the keyword of that domain name.

Sedo’s parking solution still has some issues to work through. Their system has an annoying pattern of changing the capitalization of words that are not correct.  The domain name owner should have the ability to set the capitalization of the domain name and keywords.  Also, there is no ability to block specific ads for unwanted sources to appear on the domains. The Sedo system is pretty good about not showing unsavory ads where they are not wanted. However, somehow two of my domains were selected as “adult” and started to override my keyword ad selection instead of showing adult-themed ads. I asked Sedo if there was any way to mark domains or my entire portfolio as “do not show adult ads”. They do not have that option yet, so I had to remove those two domains from the Sedo parking program.

For me, the increased revenue definitely outweighs the additional customization time, and the additional issues. The customization makes the domains feel like a targeted web destination for that topic, and are much more effective in generating advertising revenue. I trust Sedo, and believe they will work through the other issues in time. I only wish I would have known about Sedo’s parking service years ago.

What domain name parking services have you used, and what has been your experience with those services?

During the early days of Adoption.com when money was very tight we were very creative in our methods of generating income to fund the core business we were building. We “boot strapped” our financing at one point by registering domain names for which we had no ability to pay, and then we worked to sell them before Network Solutions dropped them for non-payment.

Even though domainers have been actively buying or selling domain names for more than a decade, this is still a relatively new industry and business practice in terms of IRS standards. As such, very few specific rules have been established by the IRS regarding domain name taxation issues such as appropriate recovery periods for depreciation, and donations of domain names to charity.

Through the years I have been unable to find an accountant with a strong knowledge of domain name issues, and as such we have traditionally treated domain names like trademarks, for tax purposes. However, domain names are not trademarks, and their business purpose is much more like a business asset than a trademark.

This week I was referred by Andrew Allemann of Domain Name Wire to Susan Brooks, an accountant who specializes in domain name taxation issues. Susan used to work at Ernst & Young, one of the Big 4 international CPA firms. Since then, Ms. Brooks has worked as the Chief Financial Officer and a Board Member of several corporations in the Internet and service industries. She has run her own tax practice for nine years and has been in the domaining business since 1998. Susan has a website at DomainTaxGuide.com where she sells an 85-page book she wrote about domain name tax issues.

This week I purchased and read her guide and was very happy to find an accountant who has thoroughly researched and thought through the unique issues faced by domainers. I was even happier to find answers to questions which we have been asking for almost a decade.