Don’t Rely on Outlier Sale Data

Elliot Silver
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13

Every day, NameBio reports the largest public sales that transacted at domain name aftermarket platforms and auction platforms from the prior day. Nearly every day, I see at least one domain name sale that leaves me scratching my head a bit. “Why on Earth would someone pay $x for this domain name,” I think to myself.

A critical error a domain investor – especially a new domain investor – can make is buying or registering other domain names that look similar based on the sale price of an outlier domain name sale.

People and companies buy domain names that make sense to them but may not make sense to others. Perhaps the buyer is working on a marketing campaign or wants to secure a domain name for a project or rebrand. A domain name is a unique piece of Internet real estate, and sometimes a company or person needs a very specific domain name when an alternative will not work. If the domain registrant is unwilling to lower the price and the buyer has the funds, it can lead to a sale that stands out to others. This is obviously great for the registrant, but it likely doesn’t mean that similar domain names are worth any more than they were worth before the sale.

Here’s a fictitious example:

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Add LinkedIn Profile Link to Inquiry Page

Elliot Silver
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6

I want to share a suggestion I have not had the time to implement on my own but plan to put into place at some point in the near future. It might be a good idea to add a link to my LinkedIn profile on my domain name for sale inquiry and offer landing pages.

There are two reasons for why I think this is a good idea and why I want to test this out.

Tracking who is landing on your landing pages. There are many inquiries made covertly, and if you are able to see that a specific person at a specific company landed on the inquiry page and you receive an anonymous inquiry a short time later, it can help identify who wants to buy the domain name. Even if an inquiry is not made, you may be able to get a better idea about who is looking at one of your domain names.

People may trust you more when they inquire. The domain name business is notoriously opaque. People don’t necessarily know who they are dealing with when buying a domain name. Someone unfamiliar with the domain space may not trust doing a deal with someone anonymous. Putting a link to your LinkedIn profile can humanize you and help establish a level of trust and rapport when someone wants to know who owns the domain name.

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SEC Filings Can Have Good Contact Information

Elliot Silver
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4

Whether you are looking to privately acquire a domain name or sell a domain name you already own, it is essential to have the contact information for prospective buyers. With GDPR in place, finding good contact information for a company can be challenging.

I have found that many consumer facing websites do not make it easy to find executive contact information. I presume many executives do not want to receive consumer complaint emails – or perhaps even more accurately – companies have expensive customer management and customer support teams in place that are better equipped to deal with consumer issues. These teams are not necessarily well equipped to discuss company owned domain names or potential domain name acquisitions. Contact emails about domain names may go through, but many may never be seen by decision makers or even returned.

One place to find good contact information is within filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or similar oversight organizations in other countries. Oftentimes, these filings contain the names, email addresses, and phone numbers for corporate decision makers. These people

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How I Evaluate GeoKeyword Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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6

I own a fair amount of geographic keyword domain names. I don’t know how many I have right now, but I would guess the number is around 30+/-. I have only sold a few of them in the last few years, but I want to share some thoughts I consider before purchasing them (typically in auction or hand registrations).

Most of the geographic keyword domain names I own have the following attributes:

  • .com
  • Medium to large US city
  • Keyword is relevant to city
  • The keyword industry is large enough that there are many prospective buyers
  • Solid keyword sales history

One of the more important aspects is the relevance to the city. Buying snow related domain names might be good for northeastern US cities, but they would not be good for Florida cities. This is probably common sense, but it is something that needs to be considered at the outset.

When evaluating domain names,

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Domain Registrars Should Reset All EPP Codes

Elliot Silver
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1

Andrew Allemann reported about changes that are coming to domain name transfers, and it is a bit concerning to me. You can read about the new, hopefully temporary transfer authorization process on Domain Name Wire, but this is the part that concerns me:

“In many cases, domain name registrars will not be able to get the registrant email address from Whois that is necessary to send a Form of Authorization when someone transfers a domain name to them. As a result, gaining registrars will be allowed to skip the Form of Authorization requirement.” (emphasis added by me).

From what I understand, domain registrars are responsible for generating EPP authorization codes. Each registrar may have its own process for creating them and for updating them regularly or periodically. With the new transfer process coming into play, I think it is very important for domain registrars to reset all EPP authorization codes. If that would be a major inconvenience for customers who are in the middle of a domain transfer, perhaps the EPP codes could be reset for those that were requested more than 30 days ago.

It would appear that someone could

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Domain Investing Ethics

Elliot Silver
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4

About a year ago, I wrote an article about ethics in domain investing. That article primarily covered buying and/or registering names that could either be considered trademarks or infringing on a brand or personal brand. I want to expand on that today because I don’t think it did a good enough job discussing ethics as it relates to my domain investing business.

As I mentioned before, I do my best to steer clear of obvious trademarks. I stick to buying generic / descriptive domain names that could be used by many different types of brands. I am sure there are some that one company or another would feel that they should have rights to own, but I can safely say that every domain name owned by my company is very defensible and defendable. In retrospect, domain investing ethics involve more than avoiding trademark or infringing domain names. In light of Sahar Sarid’s arrest, I want to expand on the discussion of ethics in domain investing.

When I buy a domain name, I want to do my best to ensure its monetization will not go against my own moral principles. I would not do something I believe is sketchy to make money. Further, if I find the topic of a domain name is offensive or ethically wrong, I can’t imagine wanting to own it.

Ethics is a different topic than the law. It might be legal to have a certain type of advertisement showing or monetization method, but it could be unethical and I wouldn’t do it. Everyone (should) have their own set of ethics, and I would hope they are guided by them.

A small handful of examples, of which there are many more, that I would personally be opposed to doing with my domain names include:

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