I receive many inquiries from people who specify that they want to buy a domain name for personal usage. I am not sure why they feel the need to tell me this, but I assume they think they might get a better price if they are using it in a non-commercial manner rather than if they are going to use it for commercial purposes. Suffice to say, it doesn’t matter how the buyer is going to use the domain name, the price will not change.
We are a couple of weeks in to 2019, and it looks like we have our first notable UDRP filing. A UDRP was filed against TheSun.com at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This UDRP is WIPO Case D2019-0084.
TheSun.com has a creation date of April of 2001, making it nearly 18 years old. The domain name is parked at Uniregistry, with a wide variety of seemingly generic links. There is a message that says “Lease this domain” at the top of the page. Clicking the link brings me to a page within the Venture.com website where the domain name is offered for lease for $10,000/month:
Some domain investors and investment companies prefer to keep their domain name purchases and sales private. Others like to share their deals publicly. Some people don’t care either way. I thought I would discuss what I see as the advantages of publicly reporting domain name sales as well as the advantages of keeping domain sales private:
Publicity Advantages:
A few weeks ago, I read an article about a company called Firefly, which had just raised $21.5 million in seed funding. I knew the matching Firefly.com domain was forwarding to MediaOptions.com and likely being brokered by Media Options, and I visited Firefly.com to see if this company acquired the matching domain name before the funding news hit the press.
With NamesCon being the largest domain industry conference and a conference sponsored by quite a few new gTLD operators, it is no surprise that NamesCon is utilizing several different domain names for different purposes. Here are some of the domain names that I can see NamesCon is using for different objectives:
I am occasionally offered the opportunity to purchase a domain name portfolio. Most of the time, the portfolios I am sent are relatively small, but the portfolios can be comprised of a wide variety of domain names in them. Last week, Mark Levine tweeted about buying portfolios, and he likened it to the A&E television show, Storage Wars.
Buying a domain portfolio is a lot like those tv shows where they buy storage locker contents – beneath the nickle & dime stuff are some golden nuggets!#domains #domaining #domainnames #StorageWars
— Mark Levine (@domaintheory) January 10, 2019
