It’s always exciting when the domain name aftermarket and domain investing gets a mention in a non-tech news publication. GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani made an appearance on Fox Business yesterday to discuss the company’s first quarter results. What caught my attention was that Mr. Bhutani spoke about the growth of the domain name secondary market at GoDaddy. Not only that, but he specifically mentioned domain investors.
Have a look at the interview:
The .Club Registry was in the news recently when it was announced that GoDaddy had a deal to acquire the .Club extension. Introduced in 2014, .Club has been one of the most successful new gTLD extensions, and it currently boasts more than 1.1 million domain registrations, according to nTLDstats.com.
To celebrate its 7th birthday, the .Club Registry shared the video below with highlights from the last seven years:
Last night, I received quite a few emails from NameJet. This is not uncommon when domain names I have backordered are about to hit the auction block. What was unique about these emails are that they advertised domain names that were available to purchase on NameJet without going through the auction process. Instead, NameJet is now offering domain names for purchase with a buy it now price.
Here’s an excerpt from one of the many emails I received with some details redacted:
In its earnings call this afternoon, GoDaddy discussed its acquisition of around 30 new gTLD extensions. The company cited the “efficiencies of scale” for why the acquisition made sense, and I mentioned that I am curious about whether GoDaddy acquired any of the extensions that were offered for sale by UNR in its auction at the end of April. As you may recall, UNR announced it would be auctioning 23 of its TLDs in separate no reserve auctions.
I reached out to Shayan Rostam, Chief Growth Officer at UNR, and I asked him if he can share a status update on the auction and perhaps share some of the results. Shayan replied with a press release (published below) that will hit the wires shortly.
After the market closed today, GoDaddy reported its Q1 2021 earnings. The quarterly earnings report can be accessed via the Investor Relations portal on GoDaddy’s website. Depending on what time you read this, GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani is either preparing to share some remarks on the investor call today at 5pm Eastern, or he already gave them.
Whether you listen live or not, you can have a look at the prepared remarks to see what was said. Most interestingly, domain investors were specifically mentioned:
For more than ten years, I operated a group of pet related directory websites. DogWalker.com was the most popular of the group, and I also operated DogPark.com, DogGroomers.com, and CatSitter.com. I closed down DogPark.com more than a year ago, and the other websites were shut down a month ago. I thought I would share why I decided to retire these websites.
DogWalker.com was the first of these pet directory websites I launched. I don’t know if I would call it an immediate success, but at its peak, there were several hundred paying advertisers. I later acquired DogGroomers.com and CatSitter.com, and launched websites using the same WordPress theme and customized design. Those two websites were not as commercially successful from an advertising perspective.
