I regularly use my email to discuss domain names with a variety of third parties. For over fifteen years, I must have exchanged emails with tens of thousands of different people at various entities. This morning, I received a personally addressed “invoice scam” email, and it is something people need to be mindful about.

Most spam emails I get seem to be hastily created. There may be spelling errors or the email may not really be addressed to me. This particular email was addressed to me and appeared to be from an authentic email account. The tip off for me was that the “from” address was different than the “reply to” address on the email. It was clear that the sender wanted me to think he was someone I communicated with via email at some point in time.

I did a quick search for the “from” email, and I see that I had once communicated with this entity several years ago regarding a domain name. My assumption is that this entity’s email address was hacked, and the hacker harvested

One of the best developments in the last 10 or so years in the domain industry is the openness in which people share information. People have been more willing than ever to share their advice and experiences on domain forums, domain blogs, and on social media. This is a relatively new thing for the domain space, which was once much more hush hush.

Domain name investing is great because there are so many ways to find success. I may earn money doing one thing and someone else may earn money doing the opposite thing. Some people buy keyword .com domain names and spurn “brandables.” Others buy and sell brandables exclusively. Some buy domain names for parking revenue and others buy domain names that don’t earn any PPC revenue. Some people strictly buy .com domain names and others focus on ccTLDs or new gTLDs.

Put simply, domain investing is not a zero-sum game. Everyone can make money doing different things.

In addition to this, people have different

I want to flesh out some thoughts about ethical domain name acquisitions after an article I wrote generated some comments and a couple of emails asking about it. In the article I wrote last week, I wrote the following about ethics:

“I would never intentionally buy or register a brand name with the idea of selling the domain name to a specific company. That is legally and possibly ethically wrong, and it is also financially risky.”

When I buy domain names, I never want to be embarrassed about owning them when someone inquires to buy. I try to buy domain names with large appeal rather than specific domain names only one company or one person would ever want to buy. I feel like it is likely unethical to buy a domain name that only one other person or business would ever want to own (with that being the sole reason for buying it). This might change if I was going to use a particular domain name for a website – like a gripe site I suppose, but I don’t see that happening.

I will share some  examples to make what I am saying a bit  more clear.