Advice

I rarely do domain name consulting. When a friend or friend of friend needs some domain registration or acquisition advice, I am happy to chat with them if I am able to offer advice or insight. Beyond that, I am a hard no when people ask about domain consulting.

In the past, I would chat or exchange emails with these acquaintances a few times, and maybe I would follow up down the road if I recalled our discussion to see if they were able to get their coveted domain name. Since I did not have any sort of vested interest in their acquisition, their needs would generally fall off my radar shortly after chatting.

There was an article (paywall protected) on Business Insider that covered a lawsuit involving the Wormhole.com domain name. Attorney Evan Brown also wrote an article about the case. This morning, Decrypt published an article that revealed a settlement had reportedly been reached.

Here’s how Decrypt described the negotiation for the sale of Wormhole.com.

“In June of 2021, someone at Jump used a third-party domain broker to approach Merryman and offer $2,500 for the name. The latter rebuffed the request, saying—perhaps in jest—that the price was a “firm US$50000.”

I don’t like to share my domain name sales. Strategically, I think it’s unwise to report what I am selling and for how much. I’d rather use this confidential information to buy domain names at prices that make sense. Beyond the strategic reasons, I don’t think it’s right to share sales without permission from the buyer.

I regularly see sales reported on NamePros, Twitter, and other venues. People have different motivations for sharing sales. It can help raise awareness of domain name values. It can help drive up the profile of domain investors looking for positive feedback from peers. It can act as a motivational tool. There are many reasons for why people share their sales.

Earlier this week, I noticed a non profit organization’s domain name had expired and was set to be auctioned if it was not renewed promptly. Over the years, I have tried to help a number of organizations save domain names that had expired without their awareness. I have found that it can be a bit difficult to approach an organization about their domain name as a good samaritan, and I thought I would share how I generally approach an organization when a domain name of theirs expired.

The first thing I try to do is identify a contact at the organization that would understand domain names and would have an idea about what happened to their domain name. Depending on the size of the organization, I would look for a CTO, CMO, President, or another executive. I prefer not to reach out to the most senior executives of larger non profits because they’re likely very busy and are more apt to ignore my email. If the expired domain name is a critical domain name to the organization or the domain name associated with their email, I will call someone at the organization.

One of the selling points for a one word .com domain name is email deliverability. What I mean is that many people assume a company called X will be found at X.com, and their associated email addresses will be email@X.com. A company called X that uses X.io or GetX.com will almost certainly lose at least some emails that were accidentally sent to @X.com instead.

Carl Hancock is the CEO of Gravity Forms. His company recently acquired Gravity.com and immediately put it to use. According to a tweet this morning, Carl enabled a “catch-all” email for Gravity.com meaning all email sent to any @Gravity.com email address will end up in an inbox. Here’s what Carl shared about that: