NamePros Blog

James Iles · Jun 20, 2019

The majority of domain investors will have come across a domain owned by Digimedia at some point while navigating the web. Lead by founder Scott Day and president Jay Chapman, Digimedia started registering and acquiring an expansive portfolio of highly valuable domain names in the late 1990s...

James Iles · Jun 16, 2019

In case you missed it, we published an analysis of several well-funded companies that might consider rebranding since their ultimate .COM domain name is unavailable. It is, I believe, a reality check. There are a large amount of companies that still do not understand the value that a...

James Iles · Jun 14, 2019

In the domain industry, we regularly read reports about startups or established companies that have made the monumental decision to upgrade their domain names from something obscure to a powerful, short, one-word .COM. Recently, for example, MassDrop rebranded to Drop and acquired the...

James Iles · Jun 9, 2019

According to my DomainIQ monitors, Nat Cohen’s Telepathy Inc, which holds an incredible portfolio of premium names, sold the domain Properly.com this week. The buyer is a holiday home management company called Properly, who upgraded from ManageProperly.com.

According to Crunchbase, there are...

James Iles · Jun 7, 2019

Recently, we published an article looking at how various animal domain names are used. We highlighted animal .COM domains since they are a versatile type of domain name that is coveted by investors and end users alike. Another niche that is highly desirable is color domains. Exact match color...

James Iles · Jun 3, 2019

Analytics company MicroStrategy owns a stellar portfolio of domain names, which we have profiled on the blog in the past. Alongside names such as Emma.com, Hope.com and Alert.com is the highly valuable Voice.com domain. It seems that MicroStrategy has just sold this name.

The domain moved...

James Iles · Jun 2, 2019

In this week's Top Topics, we find out more about the best way to acquire a complete domain name portfolio, and an investor asks about the lack of demand for new gTLD's. Elsewhere, this week's featured poll asks domainers to vote on the number one factor to take into consideration when choosing...

James Iles · May 30, 2019

In 2012, ICANN started the monumental process of releasing the new class of domain extensions. This represented the largest introduction of new extensions in over two decades. As such, over 1,900 applications were submitted to ICANN, with 751 of those applications being contested. Large...

James Iles · May 25, 2019

This week's Top Topics comes to you from Dublin, Ireland! From a domaining point of view, Ireland is heavily invested in their .IE extension. The large majority, probably close to 85%, of billboards and local advertisements I've seen, have contained a .IE domain name. In comparison to my...

James Iles · May 22, 2019

Brothers Michael and David Castello are founders of CCIN (Castello Cities Internet Network), a portfolio of domain names and city-based websites that has been amassed since 1994. Previous sales from the brothers’ portfolio include Whisky.com for $3 million, Rate.com for $725,000 and Driven.com...

James Iles · May 18, 2019

We recently wrote an updated "Top 10" domains article profiling the recent acquisitions of James Booth (@BoothDomains). One more name that could be added to that list is Booth.com's recent purchase of Coconut.com, which was announced by James on social media this week. This monster name is...

James Iles · May 14, 2019

In March 2019, the domain name DoubleDutch.com expired after being used since the 1990s by a Minnesota-based multicultural leadership development company. The owner likely received some offers in that time, but for whatever reason, the domain expired earlier this year.

The name was caught by...

James Iles · May 12, 2019

In case you missed it, we reported on Ubiquiti's acquisition of the UI.com domain name this week. The sale looks to have taken place at the backend of 2018 and Ubiquiti transitioned to UI.com in early 2019. After reading several comments on various websites from Ubiquiti clients, it looks as...

James Iles · May 8, 2019

Another two-letter .COM domain looks to be off the market forever after California-based Ubiquiti Networks stealthily acquired the UI.com domain name, upgrading from the four-letter domain UBNT.com.

Ubiquiti, founded in 2005, is a publicly-listed technology company that achieved revenues of...

James Iles · May 8, 2019

Since entering the industry in 2015, James Booth has been responsible for hundreds of high-value domain sales, which has seen him ranked consistently in Escrow.com's annual Masters of Domains list. In October 2018, we published a Top 10 list of names owned by James along with his brother...

James Iles · May 5, 2019

In this week's Top Topics, an investor asks for advice on how to respond to a difficult question, Eric Lyon evaluates “STER” domain names and another domainer has an issue with a potential GoDaddy sale. Elsewhere, a .TV investor sells Privacy.tv for $5,000.

How Would You Reply to...

James Iles · Apr 30, 2019

Political domain names have made some major headlines in the past few years. In 2015, US Senator Rand Paul paid $100,980 for RandPaul.com and "Donald J. Trump for President, Inc." purchased ClintonKaine.com for $15,000.

Recently, another significant political domain purchase took...

James Iles · Apr 28, 2019

In case you missed it, this week we published some details of a 2018 four-letter .COM sale. The Keep.com domain moved into the possession of a Chinese fitness company in what we would consider one of the biggest transactions of last year. If we look at DNJournal’s 2018 chart, it’s likely...

James Iles · Apr 25, 2019

It's not often that a domain is sold twice to end users within a matter of years, but that seems to have been the case with Keep.com.

In early 2012, according to DomainIQ's WHOIS history, Keep Holdings purchased the Keep.com domain name from its previous owner in an undisclosed deal...

James Iles · Apr 24, 2019

Animal domain names are some of the most sought after investments in the domain space? According to NameBio, domains such as Walrus.com and Snake.com have sold to investors for five and six-figures a piece, but why? What makes an animal domain name so desirable? To find out, we have...

James Iles · Apr 19, 2019

The ultra-premium White.com has been sold, with BQDN's James Booth (@BoothDomains) reporting via social media that he brokered the sale. According to DomainIQ, the domain showed "Booth.com", as the owner briefly before it went under privacy protection. DomainIQ's WHOIS history shows that...

James Iles · Apr 17, 2019

Recently, a prospective client told me that a domain name is "not that important in comparison to our social handles". This CEO owned a company offering a valuable, physical product. To someone involved with domain names, this came as a shock but upon closer inspection, it shouldn't be a...

James Iles · Apr 13, 2019

During some research this week, I came across a one-word .COM domain sale that I don't think has been reported before. The domain Abstract.com looks to have sold to workflow platform Abstract as a direct upgrade from GoAbstract.com. Abstract recently raised a total of $30 million in Series C...

James Iles · Apr 10, 2019

The prestigious DNJournal has been collecting data since 2003 and compiling it in a weekly sales report. Operated by Ron Jackson, DNJournal is one of the most credible sources for the domain name industry and has been referenced in outlets such as Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Bloomberg.

Now...

James Iles · Apr 7, 2019

Over the last couple of days, I've taken part in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on NamePros. It's been an interesting experience that has produced a couple of challenging questions as well as a few fun ones! One of the main talking points seems to have been my prediction that rental names (with...

James Iles · Apr 4, 2019

In a new industry, it's often difficult to know where to start. Coming in with an abundance of enthusiasm and a desire to make money quickly, it may be hard to resist the urge to start acquiring new domain names immediately with the hope of selling them within days or weeks.

It's been well...

James Iles · Mar 31, 2019

This week, we released the final installment of our four-part series teaching you how to perform outbound sales. Mike Robertson, Director of Business Development at Fabulous.com, contributed a phenomenal amount of information to this series, and I truly believe that it's a valuable...

James Iles · Mar 28, 2019

In this fourth and final edition of our outbound sales series, we have possibly some of the best negotiation advice possible. Over the past three installments of "How to Perform Outbound Sales", we have teamed up with domain name broker and Director of Business Development at Fabulous.com...

James Iles · Mar 25, 2019

On this blog, one-word domain names are highly covered thanks to a large number of premium, single-word names that trade on a regular basis. These highly desirable assets are snapped up by investors and end users alike, often in deals facilitated by brokers.

Today, domain broker @Joe...

James Iles · Mar 24, 2019

In this week's Top Topics, an investor shares some information about a one-word .TV sale, and domainers debate after brand switches from a two-word .COM domain name to a one-word .APP name. Elsewhere, we discuss why networking is beneficial to domainers and our featured poll asks whether you...

James Iles · Mar 20, 2019

The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney, had humble beginnings in 1923, with Walt Disney moving to Hollywood after the bankruptcy of his previous firm. Along with his brother Roy, the pair built the now world-famous company.

With over 200,000 employees and an annual revenue of over...

James Iles · Mar 15, 2019

I had planned a full article about this subject, but I think my point can be summed up here. With ZenSourcer’s recent rebrand to Gem.com, the crypto marketplace Gem (operating on Gem.co) have lost much of the Gem brand control and power that they may previously have had.

The company operating...

James Iles · Mar 12, 2019

Inside Interview is a series in which we talk to buyers of high-value domain names to discover why they purchased these names, and what they’re doing with them. In this edition, we’re speaking with Jacob Smith, CMO of Packet, a cloud computing company based in New York.

In 2018, Packet made the...

James Iles · Mar 10, 2019

We have been following the progress of the gem.com domain name after reporting on a transaction involving the domain recently. This week, the name has started to resolve to ZenSourcer, a talent CRM co-founded by Nick Bushak, a former Facebook employee. Will ZenSourcer be rebranding as Gem?

Here...

James Iles · Mar 6, 2019

When contacting a prospective buyer via an outbound email, what exactly do you say? That is one of the many questions we're going to attempt to answer in the third installment of our outbound sales series. This series is being compiled with the generous help of @Mike Robertson, the...

James Iles · Mar 3, 2019

In case you missed it, we broke the news that the highly valuable Gem.com domain name moved into Escrow this week in a reported seven-figure deal. Domain brokerage company Lumis followed our story by posting a tweet, confirming that they were involved with the sale. As of publishing, the...

James Iles · Feb 28, 2019

The domain name Gem.com has moved into Escrow.com's holding account today, signaling that a deal involving this three-letter .COM domain has been agreed. Registered in 1992, Gem.com has been owned by the Roglenn Inc since at least the late 1990s, based on archival copies of the...

James Iles · Feb 27, 2019

Every week, we get to hear about some of the domain industry's largest recent sales thanks to DNJournal's highly respected weekly sales chart. However, most sales do not get reported for one reason or another. Experts such as Jamie Zoch (@Yofie) regularly post domain name movements, but...

James Iles · Feb 23, 2019

Yesterday, Elliot Silver (@EJS) reported on Jamie Zoch's (@Yofie) discovery that the domain name Medicine.com had been sold recently. Not much is known about the purchase, but the new WHOIS showed Hampstead Trust of Auckland, New Zealand as the buyer.

This trust has a...

James Iles · Feb 20, 2019

Founded in 2002 by Thunayan Al-Ghanim, Future Media Architects (FMA) has amassed a portfolio spanning thousands of premium domain names. Historically, FMA has been known to rarely sell their domains. However, since transferring over 100,000 domain names to Uniregistry in 2014, the company...

James Iles · Feb 17, 2019

In this week’s Top Topics, a four-figure domain sale is revealed, a domainer shares their journey of how they became an investor and we read the interesting story of someone that teamed up with another investor to produce a sale.

Elsewhere, an innovative outbound idea sees the community...

James Iles · Feb 13, 2019

In the first of our four-part series on outbound domain sales, we learned about some of the basic steps that you should consider taking before sending any outbound emails. With the help of @Mike Robertson, Director of Business Development at Fabulous.com, our sales expert for this...

James Iles · Feb 12, 2019

Three-letter .COM domain names are highly sought after by investors and end users alike. In the past twelve months alone, ICE.com, DXL.com, and EEN.com have all sold for six and seven-figure fees to end users. The KOS.com domain name now joins the ranks, as it has been acquired by KOS Naturals...

James Iles · Feb 10, 2019

One of the largest sales of the recent NamesCon 2019 auction was that of DomainNames.com for $370,000. The name was purchased by @Frank.Schilling's Uniregistry, which left a lot of investors speculating on what Frank might do with the domain. According to WHOIS, DomainNames.com has now...

James Iles · Feb 6, 2019

Single-word .COM domain names are some of the most sought after digital assets for both investors and end users. Thanks to their desirability, many of these one-word domains can fetch six or seven-figure sales prices to the right buyer. Often, the right buyer is a venture-capital backed company...

James Iles · Feb 3, 2019

This week was the final NamesCon in Las Vegas before it heads to Austin next year. Whilst it was the last Las Vegas NamesCon, 2019 also my first. I would like to publicly thank the NamePros staff and members for making me feel very welcome. If you are in two minds about going to the NamesCon...

James Iles · Jan 29, 2019

The Live NamesCon auction in Las Vegas has just finished with some impressive domain name sales posted. Here are the auction results, as recorded live at the event. I believe these listings are correct, but there may be discrepancies. If there are, please add a comment, and the list will be...

James Iles · Jan 27, 2019

This is the first Top Topics written at 38,000 feet over the Atlantic! I’m heading to Las Vegas because NamesCon starts this weekend, and if you're going, I hope to see you there! There is a planned meetup at 5pm on Sunday 27th January at the 9 Fine Irishmen across the street from the Tropicana...

James Iles · Jan 22, 2019

Outbound domain sales can be an effective means of producing cash flow for your domain portfolio. Rather than simply relying on buyers to come to you, outbound marketing relies on contacting specific potential buyers to try and secure a deal.

When it’s performed properly, outbound sales can...

James Iles · Jan 20, 2019

Earlier this week, I came across Trig, a design an innovation firm. Usually, this would not be newsworthy at all, but what I found interesting was at the top of their homepage, there is a banner notifying users that "Trig Acquires Trig.com". In the subsequent press release posted in May...

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