Domain investing is.a 24/7/365 activity for many people. This business gives investors the ability to work whenever and wherever, and sometimes inspiration strikes at odd hours. For me, I might be watching a movie with my wife when I think of a great domain name to buy, and I hit pause to send a purchase inquiry. Sending a domain name related email at 9pm on a Sunday may not be effective, so I like to use the Gmail schedule send functionality.
About a year and a half ago, I sold a domain name that was quite replicable. I don’t want to give away details about the domain name I sold, but it was the type of domain name where I could change keywords and similar types of names would also hold value. I wanted to buy similar domain names, but they’re all owned already.
One issue I faced is that these domain names were valuable to end user buyers in the mid 4 to possibly low 5 figure range, but they don’t exactly hold a ton of liquid value. It wouldn’t make much sense for me to reach out to the registrants to try and buy them because I would need to spend in the low to mid 3 figures for them on the buy side, and not too many domain registrants are willing to sell in that range when emailed out of the blue.
Yesterday was a bad day for Gmail users. There was an outage that impacted many Gmail users. Some people experienced downtime with Gmail, and they were unable to access their email for a period of time. Other users faced potentially bigger issues, with emails sent to them being returned to the sender as undeliverable. The Verge has more information about the outage, but here’s how domain investors were impacted.
Jon Ossoff is a Democratic Party politician running for United States Senate in one of two run-off elections in the state of Georgia. Mr. Ossoff uses the short ElectJon.com domain name for his campaign website. This is a solid call to action domain name for his campaign, but I do not believe it is the ideal domain name for him. I believe the matching JonOssoff.com domain name would be better. Unfortunately, someone beat Mr. Ossoff to the punch, and even more unfortunate for his campaign, it is being used against him by a rival political organization:
👀 NEW: https://t.co/2MHik9rXup
How many times does @ossoff need to lose before learning to buy his domain name? #GASen #gapol
— The Senate Majority (@NRSC) December 2, 2020
I inquire about a lot of domain names, and I bid on many domain name auctions. This may seem pretty obvious, but how the domain name looks and sounds is what catches my attention the most. Various stats and keyword information are important to note, but I try to buy domain names I can see people wanting to turn into brands, and it starts with the name itself.
Beyond this simple thought, there are a number of elements that make me want to buy some domain names more than others. In fact, I would pay a premium for a domain name – perhaps even overpaying for a domain name – when everything lines up perfectly for me. I want to share some of the appealing elements that make me more interested in certain domain names:
I do quite a bit of outbound emailing, with the majority of my emails focused on domain name acquisitions. I have tried to buy thousands of domain names, and there were emails sent to thousands of email addresses. I have also tried to sell many domain names, and I have emailed thousands of people over the years. One thing we need to be careful of is the outbound rebound with malware.
