For many years, domain name traffic was an important aspect of a domain name’s value. Domain names that had traffic could make serious amounts of revenue via parking, and that revenue gave additional value to a domain name beyond its intrinsic value. These days, traffic may be less critical to a domain name’s value, but I think it is a good idea to monitor it.

For almost a year, I have been forwarding 90% +/- of my domain portfolio to DAN.com landing pages. These domain names aren’t monetized with pay per click links as the goal is to sell the domain names. In essence, I am foregoing what I believe is a nominal amount of incremental revenue to make it clear that domain names are available for sale.

Over the years, I have been asked by quite a few people to be their domain industry mentor. It’s an honor when someone thinks highly enough of me to ask me, although most probably did a quick Google search for “domain investing” and found my website… LOL. Unfortunately, I do not do any mentoring formally or informally.

There are several reasons for why I don’t offer mentoring:

If you own valuable domain names and you have spent a serious amount of money buying domain names, it is important for your significant other or family to know what to do in case something happens to you. Because domain investing is my job, my wife hears about my business every day, and she has a pretty good idea about who I trust, where I do business, and how the business works.

One thing I have done to help my wife and family in the event something unexpected happens to me is I created an emergency contacts list that I update once or twice a year with important contact information. These are the people who can help my wife and family secure control of my business assets and strategize on go-forward operations should something happen to me.

I want to share what types of contacts I have on my list because other investors should consider doing the same thing.

Two years ago, I was presented with a mid six figure cash offer to buy one of my domain names. The catch was that just 10% of this would be paid immediately, and the remainder would be paid in installments over a couple of years. This was a solid offer, especially since the initial payment would not be refundable.

After considering the offer, opted to decline it because the planned usage of the domain name made me uncomfortable. Pierluigi Buccioli, an investor in gambling domain names, shared his thoughts on why he doesn’t like to offer payment plans for his gambling domain names, and his rationale is along the lines of mine: