I’ve been asked to look at numerous domain name sales landing pages lately. I will generally be happy to take a look if I have the time, but I thought I would share what I think are the most important elements to a BIN landing page for domain name sales.
1) Domain name quality
2) BIN price
3) Ability to easily transact securely
and/or 4) Ability to contact seller
As you know, GoDaddy is shutting down Dan.com in October. Yesterday, Afternic and Dan launched a “Migration center” to help domain name sellers move domain names to Afternic and archive account data before October 15. Buyers were also emailed about the migration process.
I have heard from many domain investors who sell on Dan, but I had not heard from any buyers until yesterday.
I have two active LTO deals remaining on Dan.com. One of the buyers reached out to me to let me know he submitted the remaining 5 monthly payments (approximately $3k) ahead of schedule. He did this because he wanted to avoid dealing with the transition to GoDaddy.
Tim Hargis alerted me about a recent corporate rebrand. A company called Stride Funding, which had previously been funded to the tune of $20 million, announced it was rebranding itself as Clasp. In addition, the company announced a $10 million oversubscribed venture funding round. Wisely, the company acquired the brand match Clasp.com domain name prior to the rebrand announcement.
Tess Michaels, Founder of Clasp, shared why the company rebranded in a post on LinkedIn. Tess also specifically mentioned the Clasp.com domain name, presumably because acquiring it is a signal of strength:
In June, with the help of DomainTools, I noticed that the Engine.com domain name was pending transfer and the nameservers had recently changed to Cloudflare. This valuable domain name transferred to Cloudflare, where it is currently registered under Whois privacy.
According to my @DomainTools Domain Monitor alert email, https://t.co/skWspkn2bF is pending transfer and the nameservers recently changed to Cloudflare (domain name doesn’t resolve yet).
It has been registered at GoDaddy under Whois privacy, and it had Afternic nameservers.
— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) June 17, 2024
We now know who acquired Engine.com.
If you’ve been involved in the domain name investment space for more than a minute, you know – or at least know of – Divyank Turakhia. Div, as well as his brother Bhavin Turakhia, is a billionaire who got his start in the domain space. I am pretty sure he is still involved with the industry. Ron Jackson wrote an article about Div’s background in DNJournal, as did Wired.
With competitive UEFA Champions League matches starting this week, I thought it was neat to learn that Div reportedly became an investor in Atalanta, an historic Italian football club:
The image above is a GoDaddy landing page that is shown when the domain name has Afternic nameservers but is not listed for sale via Afternic. The visitor is encouraged to “Get this domain,” and clicking the link opens a new browser window with a GoDaddy search page searching for that domain name. If a person wants to buy that domain name, the prompt is to pay for GoDaddy’s Domain Broker Service (DBS).
For some reason, it would appear that this isn’t limited to the situation I described above. In fact, I mentioned it on X when I noticed a domain name of mine with this landing page even though it was actively listed for sale in my Afternic account:
Just saw a domain name I won in auction in June that I added to @Afternic shortly after is showing a page that says “This domain is registered, but may still be available.”
It is definitely in my account listed for sale. Is there a way to make sure no others are like this? pic.twitter.com/eNfupnzKnN
— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) August 30, 2024
