I don't do much outbound marketing to sell domain names these days. In the past, I spent a fair amount of time reaching out to prospective buyers, and the timing of emails is important. I don't have the data to share what day or time of day is best to send emails, but I do […]

Over the weekend while reviewing a Dropping.pro list of domain names coming up for auction that day, I saw a domain name that stood out to me. It's the unique name of a popular beer in the .com extension. The domain name had been registered for many years before expiring and dropping. I am pretty […]

On Wednesday, GeekWire reported on the $100 million funding round of a real estate startup called Place. The company is now valued at $1 Billion, and it wisely uses Place.com for its website. Most interestingly to domain investors, the article shared that Place.com was acquired for $3 million. Jeff Eckhaus spotted the sale price and […]

In October, Afternic made a significant upgrade to the user control panel in a beta platform that became available to all sellers. The objective was to integrate some of GoDaddy's look and feel as well as provide functionality upgrades for Afternic customers. I've been toggling back and forth between the beta and classic version, and […]...

In 2018, the Crypto.com domain name was reportedly acquired for $12 million. Perhaps because the sale price was never confirmed, it was not added to the DNJournal sales archive for 2018, where it would have ranked at the top of the chart. Since that time, Crypto.com has become a platform to buy and sell cryptocurrency […]

I was chatting with a Chiropractor friend yesterday about domain names. He has been into cryptocurrency trading for several years, and we regularly chat about that despite the fact that my knowledge is generally limited to what I read on my Twitter feed. Yesterday, my friend asked me about .ETH domain names, and admittedly, I […]

According to NameBio, Panet.com was acquired for $5,752 via auction at DropCatch.com in September of 2020. A company that operates on a Panet ccTLD filed a UDRP against the domain name at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the single member panel ruled in favor of the complainant. You should have a look at […]

In a press release distributed this morning, Namecheap unveiled its domain name marketplace platform for users to buy and sell domain names. In addition, Namecheap will also auction its expiry stream of domain names instead of sending expired domain name to GoDaddy Auctions. The marketplace quietly launched a few weeks ago, and there are now [̷...

TechCrunch just published an article about a $75 million fundraising round for a collectible card startup called Alt. The startup had previously raised $31 million in funding: Collectible card trading platform Alt raises $75M as it eyes other asset categories and preps its mobile launch https://t.co/DvPJDhy4Dd by @grg TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) Nove...

In the domain name management control panel at GoDaddy, there's a Buy & Sell drop down menu. Within that menu, there is a Domain Broker Service link that takes customers to a status page with all of the Domain Broker Service inquiries received on their domain names. These inquiries are from GoDaddy's Domain Broker Service, […]

For the last few years, I have found domain investing to be a bit less fun than before. Business has been quite good for the last several years, so it's not the money issue that has made it less exciting. I haven't really been able to pinpoint the issue until I was chatting with a […]

This afternoon, security researcher and blogger Brian Krebs shared a link to a Robinhood corporate blog post disclosing a "security incident:" Investment platform Robinhood says a security incident led to the theft of email addresses for ~5 million customers. It's safe to expect an uptick in phishing schemes targeting Robinhood users. https://t.co/...

In July of this year, Domain Gang published an article about Tilt.com. The domain name had been owned by Airbnb and was reportedly stolen from the company when the Whois registrant email domain name was acquired by a third party. Tilt.com was then registered to Greenberg & Lieberman, an Intellectual Property law firm and domain […]

An inglorious record has been set at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2021, and we still have nearly two months remaining in the year. From what I can see on the WIPO case filing page, it appears that more UDRP cases have been filed this year than in any prior year. WIPO UDRP […]

According to a tweet from the Twitter account of Domaining.com, the Domaining.com website may have been compromised. I have not independently confirmed the veracity of the tweet: Urgent: https://t.co/yvF1mB9mIF has been apparently compromised, login has been closed. We were not story any CC data but change your password in other services if you wer...

The largest sale in last month's Great Domains auction at Sedo was Portugal.com for $350,000. As with all auctions, a domain name is not really considered sold until the transaction is processed by the platform. It looks like the sale of Portugal.com has gone through, according to a tweet from Sedo: Our themed auctions are […]

If you are an investor that owns .US domain names, you might consider adding the .US Town Hall forum to your calendar on November 4, 2021. The event annual event livestream is open to the public and gives participants an opportunity to learn more about the .US registry and its operations. Live .US Town Hall […]

A little over a week ago, I read that Facebook was planning to rebrand in a fashion similar to the Google / Alphabet rebrand. The idea behind the rebrand was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's promise to plan to turn the company into a metaverse-focused business. The news, as I understand, was first reported by The […]

Every once in a while, someone asks domain investors if there is a tool that would be helpful if it existed. I think it would be helpful if there was a domain name price monitoring tool. The tool would allow investors to keep a list of domain names listed for sale on Sedo, Afternic, Dan…etc. […]

Albert Schimmel, Owner and Founder of BuyMyName.com (and formerly of Sedo), shared a comic on LinkedIn that resonated with me. "A domain name is like a joke… if you have to explain it, it's not that good" You can see the comic on Albert's LinkedIn page: I think it's very true with limited exceptions. If […]

Navigator.com has been acquired by Google. The Whois record for Navigator.com became public for the first time since 2018, and the registrant is now Google LLC. The acquisition was first reported by Jamie Zoch on Sunday morning: Google LLC acquires ultra premium generic domain name Navigatorcom from its past domain owners according to whois records...

In response to my article yesterday, a couple of people suggested asking for equity from wanna-be startup entrepreneurs who can't afford to pay for a domain name. I like the idea of having equity serve as upside in a deal, but in practice, it is more challenging than simply asking for and getting the equity. […]

People don't seem to understand that domain investing is a business, and domain investors run their businesses to make money. In the last handful of days, I was asked if I would be willing to ‘let [a domain name] go' for offers that were not even close to what I paid to buy them. In […]

I have a small percentage of my domain names resolving to pay per click landing pages at Uniregistry. When I checked in on my PPC earnings this afternoon, it showed zero revenue was earned since October 1. The traffic figures seemed to be consistent, so there is an issue with revenue reporting. I reached out […]

According to data from Betalist, as shared by Marc Khlbrugge on Twitter, .com usage amongst early stage startups has been on the decline. The data that was shared shows .com usage was 78% ten years ago and it has declined to 56% most recently: .com usage amongst early stage startups has declined from 78% […]

Ned OMeara shared a post on LinkedIn, and he gave me permission to share it here because the message is important. Domain registrants, and particularly domain investors, need to create a plan to protect their business assets for when they die. Ned shared a story about a client of his who purchased one of his […]

When someone emails to ask, "would you sell X for $xx,xxx?" I look at as a fishing expedition. Some may also call it tire kicking, but people who ask about buying a domain name at a certain price are usually more interested in fishing for the right number rather than simply kicking the tires on […]

In September, I noticed that Gorillas.com had a Media Options landing page with a $500,000 asking price. What was interesting to me is that Gorillas.com has been owned by NameFind, the domain name portfolio company owned and operated by GoDaddy. I shared what I noticed on Twitter: Looks like @MediaOptions is brokering the generic and […]

In a blog post published yesterday afternoon, Coinbase announced that it would soon launch Coinbase NFT. According to the article Coinbase NFT will become "a peer-to-peer marketplace that will make minting, purchasing, showcasing, and discovering NFTs easier than ever." My guess is that Coinbase NFT will be found within the original Coinbase.com we...

Dan.com announced a partnership with Media Options that will allow Dan sellers to work with Media Options to negotiate a deal on their behalf. The news was sent to Dan.com customers this morning, and a press release with details about the partnership was published this morning. Sellers on Dan.com can now hand off their domain […]

Yesterday afternoon, Paul Nicks (GoDaddy VP and GM of the Aftermarket) announced that the Afternic beta website is now open to all Afternic customers: Hey all, @afternic beta is now open to all accounts, just login and click the "Try Afternic 2.0 Beta" banner. Previously we limited to only smaller portfolios, so now y'all that […]...

It has been a year and a half since GoDaddy acquired Uniregistry. GoDaddy recently began the process of notifying some Uniregistry (Uni) customers that their accounts will migrate to GoDaddy. I have been told this first batch of migrations is for Uni accounts that have 50 or fewer domain names in them that do not […]

Early this morning, I saw a tweet from Kukuh Laksana announcing the sale of Meta.so for $149,000: Metaso sells for $149,000 @hypernames Congrats Nikul! #dotso https://t.co/GYADjkfAso Kukuh Laksana (@kwkuh) October 5, 2021 The seller of Meta.so, Nikul Sanghvi, confirmed the sale in a subsequent tweet. Nikul also provided additional information abou...

You've probably heard the news that Facebook has been down for most of the day. Instagram, too. For those people who operate businesses exclusively on those social media websites, today was a very bad day. While Facebook appears to be slowly returning online, one LinkedIn post caught my eye. I think Avishai Abrahami, CEO & […]

"Domain King" Rick Schwartz and Krista Gable will be hosting a Clubhouse room tomorrow, and Rick announced he will be giving domain name appraisals to participants. "Dont miss your one and only chance to have the Domain King himself publicly valuate your domain live on Clubhouse," the Clubhouse page says about the session. I think […]...

According to a morning press release from Tucows, the company has acquired the UNR registry platform and has hired 10 employees from UNR. As you may recalled, UNR is the registry spin-off that Frank Schilling founded and retained when he sold most of his businesses to GoDaddy in 2020. In the press release, it seems […]

GoDaddy posted a job listing for a Public Relations Manager, and a good understanding of the domain name space would be helpful for this particular role. A Public Relations professional working within the domain name industry might be a good fit for this job, as would a PR professional who has experience buying domain names. […]

Kevin O'Leary is an investor who is best known for being a "Shark" on ABC's Shark Tank television show. One of his investments is in a company called Immutable Holdings, Inc., a holding company with various blockchain-based investments. One of the company's investments is NFT.com, a domain name that is currently under development. In a […]...

The other day, I was negotiating the sale of a domain name with a prospective buyer. After sharing the price of the domain name with the buyer, I was sent what was considered to be a comparable domain name at a much lower price. In reality, the domain name that was sent and priced less […]

This morning on NamePros, a user named astrade shared an email he received from Escrow.com suggesting that a password reset may be necessary due to the "security breach at domain registrar Epik." The email suggests that the recipient change the password for the account at Escrow.com. Another email shared on NamePros by an Escrow.com customer [̷...