In the summer of 2007 I spent $40 to buy the domain HitPig.com on a domain forum. It had a fun alliteration quality about it and loosely reminded me of the game Whac-A-Mole. The domain remained parked for years, barely earning its renewal fees every year but I was too fond of the name to […]

A good 60 days into using the Afternic marketplace as a "forced" transition from the now defunct Dan.com, I'm about to present my personal experience and the results aren't great. The first 30 days looked promising, to be honest. After clocking two months I have one positive thing to say: The sheer amount of inquiries, […]...

As a domain investor, I've never used Afternic intentionally before to sell domains. It was always due to GoDaddy acquiring Uniregistry and Dan that I got to experience a range of annoying woes of being on the Afternic platform as a domain seller. As a domain buyer, I was far less concerned about the lack […]

Twenty-two years ago I opened an eNom account as a subseller, allowing me to register domains at a lower price. It also gave me other benefits, such as registering and managing domains for clients. eNom was fresh and a smart choice, away from the mediocrity of GoDaddy and Network Solutions at the time. Even Stargate, […]

Migration is not a great word to use when forcing the end of life of a service that was useful to many. In the literal sense, migration reeks of physical violence and war turmoil, of broken families and refugees. A migration is typically done not by choice. GoDaddy migrated our Uniregistry account to their own […]

Afternic is a ghost platform, operated by GoDaddy. It was a dedicated web site where both sellers and buyers could interact, buying and selling domains respectively. A few months ago, GoDaddy disabled the ability of buyers to search the Afternic domain inventory directly. That search was replaced by the same search form that one can […]

Today, GoDaddy announced the availability of native LTO landing pages on Afternic, replacing the "Dan style" landers that it offered there. The timing is odd, considering that I've been testing the waters at Afternic as far as LTO deals go. These transactions at Dan.com eat up banking fees as Dan sends payouts via international wire; […]...

After 25 years of using GoDaddy as a domain registrar on an as-needed basis, I'm not surprised by the lack of effective process logic. Perhaps the best thing that ever happened to the biggest domain registrar in the world was the acquisition of Uniregistry; a massive domain portfolio paired with expert talent able to broker […]

Fresh from Sedo and InterNetX arrives the Global Domain Report for 2024. It's not just a pretty bundle of information and charts; it's the quintessential representation of the domain industry's evolutionary path. The report does not just present data but it's backed by raw data that both InterNetX and Sedotwo large companies in the domain […]...

The art of negotiation is a learning process and domain investors benefit from such knowledge, both for financial reasons and for the purpose of overall engagement. In a recent transaction that took place via Sedo, I was able to acquire a domain name that BuyDomains had listed across several marketplaces. I chose Sedo as it's […]

Dan.com provides several options to domain investors, including selling with a BIN price, making an offer, and lease to own options. In the past few months I've completed 3 LTO deals successfully, which means that three entrepreneurs are now using these domains under full ownership. Dan has been instrumental in creating a niche market for […]...

Last week I completed my first domain sale in October, for a domain I acquired for a few hundred dollars almost 15 years ago. It's not the first time this long hold of a domain leads to a substantial ROI. The art of determining which assets are worthy of holding long term is part of […]

I've been using Dan.com with great success in the past two years and its acquisition by GoDaddy was disappointing. The Dutch start-up was about to roll out its own domain registrar, as a white label of Metaregistrar BV. A domain registrar/marketplace combo had tremendous potential; it also posed extreme danger to GoDaddy: Dan.com was already [̷...

Today I woke up to an email from Uniregistry, informing me that my portfolio of domain names was successfully migrated to GoDaddy. To complete the transition and take control of it, I had to take control of a new account number and set up a password. In the process, I had to verify my email […]

Domain investors with their portfolios still at Uniregistry were informed today that the transition of accounts to GoDaddy will take place in 30 days. The end of April is thus the end of Uniregistry, following the end of the Uni Market on April 18th. For almost a decade, Uniregistry held the scepter of the most […]

InterNetX and Sedo are sister companies under the United Internet AG umbrella and often collaborate on domain industry reports. This year, the Global Domain Report "2023 edition" presents data, metrics, and expert analysis produced by the two companies. I'm truly impressed by the report's presentation, wealth of information, and visually pleasing p...

Sav.com has been my go-to domain registrar for several months now. Transitioning away from GoDaddy-operated properties such as Uniregistry, is my personal and professional decision, based on extensive use and understanding of the domain industry. Disclaimer: Sav sponsors my publication DomainGang but as a full time user of their services, capable o...

Merry Christmas! Lease-to-own domain sales, often abbreviated as "LTO," are becoming popular among domain investors, that offer a flexible payment plan to their prospective buyers. The option to pay for the acquisition of domain names in installments is not new but it's the automation that wins customers. If the process is bulletproof then more dom...

After a decade at Uniregistry as my domain registrar of choice, I've been migrating my portfolio elsewhere. The acquisition of Uniregistry by GoDaddy presents complex issues such as the forced addition of Uni domains to Afternic, with no direct management of these listings via the Uni Market. Currently, I'm transferring domain names (and registerin...

Participating in domain name auctions at DropCatch is a business activity that I partake in weekly, enhancing and expanding my domain portfolio. DropCatch auctions are popular among other domain investors and I do attend the auction at its closing moments. This approach offers two benefits: deciding whether I want to win "must-have" domains and to ...

Setting a "buy it now" (BIN) price for your domains is one established approach. Instead of providing a contact form where visitors can make an offer, you can skip endless negotiations by simply defining the asking price. It's not a secret that many such domain sales take place on popular marketplaces, when the buyer finds […]...

Dan.com is a domain marketplace that in recent years propelled itself onto the top list of favorite platforms for domain investors. Domain sellers and buyers engage through its well-planned interface and exchange process of funds/domain, making the process a cinch. After testing the Dan.com for a while, my first domain sale on Dan.com was almost [&...

Ted Olson is a veteran sales expert, having worked with NameMedia, Afternic prior to its sale to GoDaddy, and Endurance International. I had the pleasure of meeting Ted in the late 2000s during one of the Targeted TRAFFIC conferences; if memory doesn't fail me, it was in 2008. Ted's positive demeanor, engagement as a listener […]

Recently, I closed my first sale on the Dan.com platform. In recent months I've been transferring in bulk my domain names away from the Uni Market, simply because the platform's association with GoDaddy creates a slew of problems. Don't get me wrong; the platform created by Frank Schilling's excellent team in 2012 still performs great […]...

Part of the domain investing game is waiting for inbound inquiries. Also known as "the waiting game," this is the part that often challenges a domainer's patience. Having sold domains I held for almost two decades, waiting on offers can become exhaustive. At some point, a re-assessment of one's domain portfolio and a repricing might […]...

In recent months I've been using DAN.com, formerly known as Undeveloped, as a domain marketplace alongside the Uni Market. As a long haul beta tester and user of the Uniregistry platform, I am always looking for ways to "fail" the DAN platform, mostly by accident and sometimes intentionally. DAN has a great range of settings […]...

This is the 3rd post in a row about "meta" domains and that's a good indication about the increased interest in the keyword, and Metaverse domains in general. A couple of weeks after my last story about "meta" domains that I registered or acquired years ago, I completed one more domain sale. The deal closed […]

Facebook rebranded its umbrella company as Meta, moving away from strictly social media and marketing and onto a more complex company. Brands in the US but also globally tend to be short vs. long words, and Meta is a simplified form of Metaverse – the online universe that arrives next. As I explained recently, the […]

Domains that begin with "meta" are extremely popular currently; the Greek prefix is very easy to pronounce and write, for a change. Using letters that are common between the Greek and Latin alphabets helps, no doubt, along with the consonant/vowel/consonant/vowel (CVCV) structure. Today I'll share the meanings of "meta" and its uses in the Greek [&...

Two decades ago I was busy hand-registering domains from droplists provided by DomainsBot, an excellent daily email service. The rush for daily drops was competitive among those targeting dictionary words but the market was wide open for seemingly "random" combinations of letter/letter/number and letter/number/number domains. I focused on these two...

Would you walk into a car dealership with a cocky attitude? Probably not. In most cases, when someone wants to buy a car they take a look at the sticker price and state their intentions to the dealer. Negotiations are good to have, especially if you want to get low APR financing, or to take […]

It's been a fun May as far as domain sales go; today I'll be comparing three popular domain aftermarket platforms, based on my recent experience. The Uni Market needs no introduction, I've used it since 2012 when it was called Domain Name Sales. Now a part of the GoDaddy brand, it's still where the majority […]

The American Rescue Plan is a huge financial stimulus package aimed at transitioning the US through and after the pandemic. Valued at just under $2 trillion dollars, the plan's name was first announced by government officials on social media on the evening of January 14, 2021. Moments after that tweet, I registered the matching .com. […]...

Greece celebrated its bicentennial today, commemorating 200 years since the war of independence began in 1821. As a Greek, I'm proud of my heritage and despite the physical distance I'm well aware of what March 25, 1821 signifies for all Greeks around the world. A nation that was placed under four centuries of Ottoman oppression […]...

Having just completed my first domain sale using Tipalti, the new payout processor for Uniregistry, I'm about to share my experience. When negotiations take a while to complete, the last thing one needs is some additional delay with the delivery of the final "check." Fortunately, that wasn't the case; less than 36 hours after the […]...

There is a tremendous amount of spam circulating 24/7 and domain investors often receive hundreds of emails daily. In recent years I've identified the two primary reasons unsolicited email has increased in volume: Cheap, throwaway domain names, and Spam servers hiding behind free proxy DNS services With that in mind, the type of spam that […]...

Got an active inbound interest for one of your domains? That's great. Then again, unless your minimum asking price is met, that might not be a good sign. Assuming you're using a third party platform to sell your domains, such as the Uni Market, offers arrive with some information about the prospective buyer. In recent […]

When GoDaddy acquired Uniregistry and its Uni Market, I had high hopes. The promise for an improved, combined market with "millions of eyeballs" was shared exactly one year ago, in February 2020. Fast forward a year later, and from a personal standpoint the combined Uni Market / Afternic has not produced much. I still use […]

One of the many great features I liked at Uniregistry was its support system. The acquisition of Uniregistry by GoDaddy has broken that part, and it's a big loss in my opinion. For starters, the GoDaddy ticketing system is by email only. It creates an email chain that includes unnecessary elements like signature graphics, HTML […]

Today's most established domain investors span about 25 years of trading domain names for profit, if we account for a 1995 launch of the commercial Internet. Hello, Rick Schwartz! Some of us began their journey a bit later on, and are close to clocking two full decades of active domain investing. Activity status isn't gauged […]

It took a lot of effort for GoDaddy to provide a token report of sales, earlier today. Personally, I lost track of time; was it really in 2015 such numbers were last shared? Although the format isn't perfect – very small sample of sales, four month delayed release of the monthly report – you can […]

It's been 20 years since my first domain sale took place in the summer of 2000, and boy, do I feel like it was yesterday. Despite not using any type of escrow and receiving a check from overseas in exchange for the domain, that first experience was a smooth event. The reason: I was dealing […]

It's been exactly 10 years since SedoPRO World Tour took place in Boston, Massachusetts. Attending the two day event was a tremendous experience, which I shared at the time, emphasizing the remarkable side of Sedo: its people. Reflecting on the past decade since 2010 and the challenges it has brought forth, both to the domain […]

Every domain inquiry begins with the best intentions, as buyer and seller negotiate. It's not just the price that affects the outcome of a negotiation on a domain name, but it's the most important element of the exchange. If there is no agreement on the price, there will be no sale. When negotiations hit a […]

Domain names have been stolen since the early days of the commercial Internet. The most known case involves the hijacking of Sex.com, a domain that was "milked" for its traffic, before it was returned via a court order to its registrant. There are thousands of domain names that have been stolen in the 25 years […]

As shared by Uniregistry, all affiliate earnings balances are to be paid by the end of this month, as the Affiliate Plus program was terminated. Today, I received my final payment from the program, and plan to use my "check" to buy more domains – that's what domain investors do! It was a good revenue […]

Querying Mike Mann's domain droplist was a herculean task, but Konstantinos of Online Domain delivered! Fifty thousand domains, or about 16% of Mike Mann's portfolio dropped recently, and Konstantinos shared those that became available, along with a separate list of upcoming deletes at the time. Perusing thousands of domains "by hand" reminded me o...

An increasing number of businesses produce "sob stories" in order to usurp domain names on the aftermarket. The usual excuses involve using a company's status as a start-up or as a non-profit to indicate an inability to budget up for a domain name. By default, these excuses are not true; start-ups and non-profits can have […]...

As a beta tester at Uniregistry, I opened one of the first accounts for its Affiliate Program, six years ago. The program paid handsomely, with 20% being standard on domain registrations, renewals and transfers done with one's ID. Retention of products (domain names) was dependent on how faithful registrants were to the Registrar. Sadly, the [̷...

Engaging with a potential buyer doesn't always result in a sale, but domain names that get renewed continue to work their magic in that person's mind. In other words, inquiries that end due to a difference in pricing, often get a second chance at a later time, sometimes at a price considerably higher than the […]