A Hyphen May Help You Find a Buyer

Elliot Silver
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Darryl Lopes, formerly a broker at Uniregistry and now an independent domain broker, shared a great tip on Twitter this week that could be helpful to domain investors who are looking to sell a domain name:

For the sake of discussion, let’s say I want to sell DomainInvesting.com. The traditional way that I would search for a buyer if I was doing outbound would be the following:

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Proving Ownership After GDPR

Elliot Silver
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23

GDPR has been in force for over a month, and it is creating some complications for domain investors. This afternoon, a friend emailed me to get some advice. His company is close to selling one of its domain names, but the buyer wants to confirm that the company owns the domain name. Because of GDPR, the Whois record shows “Data Protected” as the registrant. It’s challenging to prove ownership when the Whois information does not reflect this.

I made two suggestions to my friend, assuming that the buyer had contacted his company via the contact link on the landing page and the fact that he replied was not sufficient to the prospect. Here’s what I would do if I needed to prove ownership of a domain name:

1) Take a screenshot of the domain name in my registrar control panel. Take a second screenshot of the actual page where I can modify settings for the domain name.

2) Forward the domain name to a destination of the prospect’s choice temporarily (ie for a few minutes or hours).

I would also explain

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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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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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