NamePros Blog

James Iles · Feb 14, 2020

If you have followed domaining news this week, you might have seen Verisign's proposal to increase .COM registration and renewal prices. This news has not been received well by domain investors and leading domaining companies alike.

The day this is published, February 14th is the final day...

Bob Hawkes · Feb 12, 2020

Short domain names have impact, and there can be no shorter domain name than one with a single character to the left of the dot. Unfortunately, most of the single-character domain names in the major legacy extensions are not available at any price.

There are, however, single-character domain...

James Iles · Feb 9, 2020

Hostgator founder Brent Oxley has amassed an impressive portfolio over the past couple of years, with names like Broker.com, Drone.com, and VT.com under his possession. One of the leading domains in his portfolio is Create.com. This versatile name has sat idle for some time, but it looks like...

Bob Hawkes · Feb 5, 2020

Do you hold pairs of domain names that you try to sell as a package? These might include both the plural and the singular forms of a word, the UK and American spelling, a hyphenated and non-hyphenated version, or the same name with two different extensions.

While there are good arguments, in...

James Iles · Feb 2, 2020

In this week’s Top Topics, we feature four discussions from the world of domaining. Firstly, an investor asks for advice and feedback regarding their direct mailing outbound sales strategy, and we look at the results of the NamesCon live auction, with investors giving their thoughts on the...

Brian Harbin · Jan 27, 2020

A dad was in his home office on an important phone call when his 5-year-old son came in and asked him if he could play. The dad said, "Not right now son, I’m busy." The young boy left and came back a few minutes later with a hopeful expression, "Now are you ready?" The dad tried to stay calm...

James Iles · Jan 25, 2020

Recently, the original owner of the 1T.com domain name took to NamePros' marketplace to sell the domain name. It was good news for the seller since they were able to find a buyer willing to offer an acceptable amount. The sales price isn’t known, but the name previously held a $99,999 asking...

Bob Hawkes · Jan 22, 2020

Over the past five years the average price for domain name sales listed in the NameBio database is about $1473, compared to $1306 for year 2019 alone. In the first part of this series I looked at domain name sales volume, while this time I look at average price trends.

I start by...

James Iles · Jan 19, 2020

In this week's Top Topics, there is intense debate about GoDaddy's new logo, and we discover what domain investors learned in 2019. Elsewhere, we see whether reading will maximize returns as a domain investor, and there is speculation that we have established a bottom for the three-letter .COM...

Bob Hawkes · Jan 15, 2020

In recent years the total domain name sales volume reported in the NameBio database has ranged from just under $110 million in 2018, to almost $142 million in 2019. This includes results from all domain extensions, but only includes sales of $100 and greater.

The complete sales volume is...

James Iles · Jan 12, 2020

If you are looking to bid on any domain names that are being auctioned off in the NamesCon 2020 auction event, DomainSherpa has compiled a helpful list of all the domain names being auctioned, as well as data such as their reserve range and their current auction price. You can find the list on...

Bob Hawkes · Jan 8, 2020

A year-end domain portfolio sales analysis can help inform possible changes to implement. In this article, I consider numerical measures that could be used in an analysis. In determining your profitability, it is important to consider changes in domain portfolio worth resulting from sales and...

James Iles · Jan 5, 2020

In the first Top Topics of the new decade, we feature a discussion in which domain investors are asked to share the offers they have received so far in 2020. This includes a $16,000 opening offer for a "chain" domain name. Elsewhere, a domainer shares their 2019 review and we take a look at how...

Bob Hawkes · Jan 2, 2020

I contacted a number of prominent domain industry people to ask what they saw for the year ahead. I suggested ten questions, ranging from Overall, are you positive about domain investing in 2020? to Is there an important topic that is being overlooked? I asked each person to...

James Iles · Dec 29, 2019

Last week, we brought you news of the likely Everest.com sale. At the time, we had no official verification of the sale, but thanks to a helpful senior staff member from National Gun Trader who confirmed the company’s acquisition of the domain name. No details of the domain’s sales price...

Bob Hawkes · Dec 26, 2019

So much happens every year on NamePros that it is possible to overlook noteworthy content. In this post, I draw attention to eleven topics from 2019 that I found particularly valuable. They cover domain name acquisition, pricing, selling, negotiation, security, and more. Readers are urged to...

James Iles · Dec 22, 2019

A tweet from Shane Cultra (@Domain Shane) prompted me to look into a possibly monumental domain sale. Earlier this year, Lumis was brokering the sale of the Everest.com domain name, with an asking price of $1 million.

This week, Shane tweeted about the current use of Everest.com...

Bob Hawkes · Dec 18, 2019

In early December new extension domains reached the 30 million registration point according to nTLD statistics. The previous high of about 29.5 million was established in April 2017, although over most of last two years the total was not far from 26 million registrations. The number of...

James Iles · Dec 15, 2019

In this week’s Top Topics, an investor shares their story of negotiating their way from a $3,000 offer to a $26,000 sales price. Elsewhere, domainers are hosting their own end of year awards ceremony and this week’s featured poll asks investors to vote on their most productive platform for...

Bob Hawkes · Dec 11, 2019

It is not surprising that single words and short acronyms attract most of the attention at the high end of the domain name sales news. For example, voice.com sold for $30 million, and California.com, EKO.com, TM.com and RX.com all above one million dollars in...

James Iles · Dec 8, 2019

In this week's Top Topics, the sale of River.com is announced. Yesterday on Twitter, I posted some information about another domain sale from earlier this year. It seems that Kudos & Co, a company founded in 2014 that has raised $5,7 million to date, has rebranded to Spot.lite (using the...

Bob Hawkes · Dec 3, 2019

Memorable domain names have great value. Among the domain names that are most easily remembered are situations where the name and extension match, such as com.com or win.win. These are called domain name twins. In this blog post I take a look at domain name twins in use...

James Iles · Nov 29, 2019

It looks like GoDaddy's NameFind portfolio has sold the two-letter domain name VT.com. According to DomainIQ, the deal took place in the past few weeks. The buyer of the name is Hostgator founder Brent Oxley, who has now added his second two-letter .COM name to his portfolio after reportedly...

Bob Hawkes · Nov 27, 2019

This is the time of year that often has the best deals on domain name registrations and services. In addition to the time-limited promotions, there are implications for domain auction timing and domain drops. In this post, I look at both seasonal savings and how to save on domain purchases...

James Iles · Nov 23, 2019

According to a notice on the domain Fashion.com, it has been sold as of November 21st 2019. The domain name has made some headlines as the owners decided to put the domain up for auction, but it has been indicated that the auction will no longer take place now that a buyer has been found...

Bob Hawkes · Nov 21, 2019

The domain name sell-through rate is the percentage of domain names that sell in one calendar year. For example, if your sell-through rate was 2% and you had 400 domains in your portfolio, on average you would expect to sell about 8 domain names per year. In this post I look first at the...

James Iles · Nov 16, 2019

In this week's Top Topics, we look at a new .TV sale that makes the top twenty list for 2019, and investors discuss the .ORG extension after the recent news that could mean that .ORG prices are drastically increased. Elsewhere, we get an end-user's perspective on a domain name purchase and...

Bob Hawkes · Nov 14, 2019

Over the years domain investors and website developers change DNS settings countless times, and the whole system just works. The field of domain name investment exists because standards were developed to robustly link domain names and internet addresses. This means that names that resonate...

James Iles · Nov 10, 2019

In September, Jamie Zoch tweeted the news that collaboration platform Postman acquired the domain Postman.com from its previous owner. This week, I received information that the company acquired the domain name for $85,000. Postman upgraded from GetPostman.com to Postman.com, five years...

Bob Hawkes · Nov 7, 2019

About 90% of respondents in a recent poll indicated that offering a payment plan increases domain name sales. This is not surprising, as most major purchases involve payments over an extended period. In this post, I look at some of the ways to offer domain names with payment plans, the...

James Iles · Nov 3, 2019

In this week’s Top Topics, we explore an interesting negotiation strategy in which an investor suggests raising their “buy now” price, a domainer lists every single sale of $10,000 or more from the last year and two years after a five-figure sale, the seller realizes that the domain is still...

Bob Hawkes · Oct 31, 2019

Today is Halloween, and I thought it might be fun to have a look at Halloween domain names. As well as summarizing historical sales in Halloween-themed domain names, I survey what is currently for sale. I even find a few possibly interesting domain names still available at standard...

James Iles · Oct 27, 2019

In this week's Top Topics, we touch on the subject of motivation. With domaining being largely an individualistic venture, how do you keep yourself motivated? Elsewhere, investors are discussing the subject of terminology for landing pages, after Rick Schwartz mentioned that "Price Upon Request"...

Bob Hawkes · Oct 24, 2019

Many domain investors have avoided domain names with hyphens. It is not rare to see in the NamePros Requests section the wording “no hyphens”. @Rob Monster of Epik recently started a thread arguing that hyphenated .com domain names are back in fashion. He also indicated a...

James Iles · Oct 19, 2019

Domain investor and broker James Booth (@BoothDomains) announced his latest acquisition yesterday, the three-letter .COM name DND.com. Today, he has tweeted the news that the domain has been sold! Congratulations to James on another quick flip.

Here are this week's Top Topics...

Bob Hawkes · Oct 17, 2019

Impressive recent new-extension domain sales have been widely discussed on NamePros. Not only are the five-figure sales noteworthy on their own, they may also represent new ways to use domain names. While it is natural to be excited about high-value sales, it is important to keep in mind that...

James Iles · Oct 13, 2019

I noticed the likely sale of a high-value one-word .COM name recently, that doesn't seem to have been reported elsewhere. Olive.com was owned by Tim Olive Studios Inc, with the name hosting a basic homepage for the small company until earlier this year.

From data available at DomainIQ...

Bob Hawkes · Oct 11, 2019

It is important to know how much actual internet traffic there is on a domain extension, or top level domain (TLD), since this is one indicator of the health of the extension. There are various measures of internet website use, with the main ones being Alexa, Cisco Umbrella...

James Iles · Oct 6, 2019

This week, we have an extended version of Top Topics! Due to a vacation and no connectivity, I am publishing Top Topics covering both this week and last week’s pick of nine discussions, polls and questions from the community. There are some fascinating discussions covering a multitude of...

Bob Hawkes · Oct 4, 2019

In many things in life, taking a break can be healthy, and domain investing is no different. If you are getting frustrated from lack of sales, or losing your passion for domain investing, one option might be to give yourself a break. Even if you don’t briefly take a complete break from domain...

Paul · Sep 25, 2019

We discussed how to understand hackers in part 1 and phishing emails in part 2. Now we discuss managing your personal information.

Managing your personal information is an important but often overlooked aspect of security. Unfortunately, many organizations use personal information...

James Iles · Sep 21, 2019

A top-tier animal .COM domain name looks to have been sold recently. The domain name is Panda.com, which has moved from Network Solutions to a privacy protected Fabulous.com account this week. The domain name was advertised on NamePros in July by Grit Brokerage, with user @Keith...

Bob Hawkes · Sep 18, 2019

The premium domain name July.com recently changed hands. While no price has yet been disclosed, I speculate that this is probably a six-figure sale. The domain name is already in use by the Australian travel products firm July, redirecting to their GetJuly.com site. The...

Bob Hawkes · Sep 17, 2019

A domain hack uses content from both sides of the dot to form a word or phrase – for example: s.top. While domain investors have created many imaginative domain name hacks, the number in actual use is much smaller. In this post, I look at a selection of short single-word domain hacks...

James Iles · Sep 13, 2019

DomainMarket.com CEO Mike Mann revealed yesterday via Twitter that he is just 526 domains away from owning a portfolio of 350,000. This is a phenomenal milestone that just a handful of people will ever achieve, but it does come at a steep cost, literally. Aside from acquisition fees...

Rob Monster · Sep 10, 2019

Long before General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance was a topic, GoDaddy and other registrars adopted a practice of obscuring WHOIS records and/or requiring persons interested in knowing the identity of the registrant to visit their website to retrieve the properly...

James Iles · Sep 8, 2019

In this week's Top Topics, we take a look at the case of an investor who may need to use a wire transfer in order to keep a domain deal alive, and we discuss the subject of domain appraisals. Are they really necessary?

Elsewhere, domain marketplace DomainAgents shares a list of American vs...

James Iles · Aug 30, 2019

Animal domain names have been desirable assets for investors thanks to their unique properties and versatility. Domain sales database NameBio is littered with animal .COM sales in the five and six-figure range including Walrus.com for a reported $55,000, which now looks to have been resold based...

Bob Hawkes · Aug 29, 2019

Dan Bingham (@DefinitelyDomains) asked an intriguing question: At what point do you stop buying domains? The question could mean, “When do you stop adding to your portfolio?” or “When do you get out of domain investing?” Good advice related to both...

James Iles · Aug 26, 2019

This weekend, I was in Zurich Switzerland for a short break and as a domainer, it’s difficult not to notice domains that are being used by local companies. It seems that although the ccTLD for Switzerland is .CH, many companies have opted to use .COM instead. Tourist destinations such as the...

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