Beware of the “l”

In 2018, I received an outbound sales email purportedly from the owner of a great one word .com domain name beginning with the letter I. The email was signed by this person, and throughout the email, the first letter was written as I and i. Even the return address appeared to be from this domain name. The price looked too good to be true.

I went back through my email records and saw that I had tried to buy the domain name using an alternative email address. I made a low but decent opening offer and never received a reply to my email. I followed up a couple of times and never heard back. After receiving the outbound email, I followed up to confirm that it was the owner who sent the email.

A bit of diligence after showed me that someone was trying to pull a fast one. The domain name in the email address started with a lower case “L” instead of an I. The l looked like a capital I, and it was particularly easy to overlook when the content of the email had the correct spelling. A Whois search of the domain name used in the email showed the name had just been registered.

This morning, someone asked the following question on NamePros:

“Maybe someone here can explain this to me. LNVESTOR.xyz yesterday sold for 194 USD at SAV. Looks like investor.xyz but with a capital i when written out (ok I see the pro/value in that) but still I cannot see the 194 price tag value nor usecase for such a name.”

I assume this may have been an error on the part of the buyer. A quick glance at a domain name in auction can make it look like the lower case L is an upper case i. If an auction has bids and/or is closing soon, there might not be enough time to fully vet the domain name in auction.

When bidding on domain names or answering outbound emails, beware of the “l” or you might take the L.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

4 COMMENTS

  1. #1) Copy domain
    #2) Paste in Notepad using Courier Font
    #3)…there is no step #3

    Work every time.
    I almost got spanked about 2 weeks ago myself
    Per BullS— – yes – there are always wankers

  2. FYI –
    NameJet.com is offering a backorder for lnvestor.com for an auction to start in a week or so April 4 or 5 2022.
    Using the courier font in notepad the domain is actually LNVESTOR.com.
    Bri

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Recent Posts

Sponsor our 2025 PMC Domain Industry Jersey

0
John Berryhill, my wife Karen, and I are raising funds for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute via the 2025 Pan-Mass Challenge ride in August. Together, we...

Atom.com Transfer Center Status Meanings

0
I frequently see people posting screenshots of their domain name sales on Atom. There are different messages overlaid on the images of the logo...

Escrow.com: 2025 Master of Domains

1
Escrow.com announced the winners of its 2025 Master of Domains awards. The awards are typically given out during NamesCon, but the conference isn't being...

Odyssey.com is Braden Pollock’s Largest Domain Name Sale

0
Andrew Miller from Hilco Digital Assets announced that his company oversaw the sale of Odyssey.com on behalf of Braden Pollock. According to the LinkedIn...

$50k .AI Sale is Now Just Noteworthy

3
Tim Hargis alerted me to a LinkedIn post by Kushal Byatnal announcing that his company, Extend, had acquired the Extend.ai domain name for $50,000....