Favorite Reply to a Domain Appraisal

Elliot Silver
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24

On occasion when dealing with buying a domain name from someone who doesn’t have much domain name experience, I will receive a counter offer that mentions a domain name appraisal. Typically, the person wants to justify a higher asking price with a domain name appraisal they received at some point. More often than not, the appraisal was purchased, so it comes from one of the leading brokerages.

In the past, I would explain that I think domain appraisals are BS for many reasons, including the fact that they are offered by companies who want to sell the domain name on behalf of the owner, so a higher appraisal makes it more likely that they will sign an exclusive listing. I have a “boilerplate” response somewhere in my email archive, but lately I’ve preferred to respond more humorously:

“If domain appraisals were even remotely accurate and reflective of the real world market, I would have already sold my domain portfolio, retired, and have not inquired about your domain name.”

As you can see, I strongly dislike domain appraisals. Whether I have an email or web page that says me domain name is worth $1 million or $100, it is only worth what someone will pay me.

Dealing With An Expired Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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28

 

I saw this tweet from ICANN Ombudsman Chris LaHatte yesterday, and I want to discuss the topic of the best way to approach a domain investor who has purchased or acquired an expired domain name. Although I generally give advice to domain investors, the focus of this article is advising domain registrants on how I believe they should best deal with an expired domain name that was purchased by a domain investor.

There are many reasons why domain names expire. To name a few potential reasons for why a domain name may have expired:

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Don’t Regret The Deals You Make (or Don’t Make)

Elliot Silver
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5

A week ago, Rick Schwartz posted an interesting article regarding Google’s announcement about the launch of Helpouts and its acquisition of the Helpout.com and Helpouts.com domain names. Rick linked to an old DNForum post from 5 years ago where the former owner of Helpouts.com had it listed for $250 and then reduced to $100.

There were no subsequent posts in the Helpouts.com sales thread, so I don’t know if the domain owner ended up selling it. Judging by the domain name’s creation date of March 20, 2010, it appears that the domain name was dropped and re-registered by someone else who had privacy guard in place. Although it changed registrars a couple of times, the domain name registration remained under privacy until July of this year.

Whatever happened in the case of this domain name, I don’t think a domain owner should

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Yahoo Begins Redistributing Email Addresses & Usernames

Elliot Silver
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5

In June, I wrote an article about how domain registrars can deal with Yahoo’s decision to recycle email addresses. This decision could prove to be problematic for domain owners whose email addresses that are connected to their domain names are redistributed to other people.

This afternoon, I received an email from Yahoo informing me that I was given an email address I request. The email from Yahoo said, “Your wish list pick [redacted] is all yours and ready to claim. You have until 9/7/13 11:59:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time to claim it.” I chose an email address that will work well for me, and I am unwilling to share it in order to cut down on spam emails.

Domain registrants and domain registrars should be

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3 Tips to Keep Your Domain Names Private

Elliot Silver
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14

Several years ago, the day after acquiring a high value domain name in private, I received an email from someone within the industry congratulating me on my acquisition. I couldn’t figure out how he learned about the purchase, but later found out that he was monitoring the domain name, and when it transferred to my company, he was able to tell that I bought it.

By virtue of my blog, my business has become somewhat public. I’ve embraced this to a degree (although I despise it some days), and I don’t generally have issues sharing some recent acquisitions and purchases. By sharing, I think it might help readers to see what I believe is valuable, and it can also help to generate interest in some of my domain names.

Many people and companies prefer to keep their business dealings private for competitive or other reasons. I want to share a few tips on how you can keep your business private. Some of these suggestions might be obvious, but as I’ve learned, what is obvious to some is novel to others.

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Not All Comps Are Real

Elliot Silver
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8

Although they aren’t entirely accurate, I rely on comparable sales (comps) to help establish the market value for domain names I own and want to buy. I use sources like NameBio, DNJournal, personal sales, and private sales I’ve heard about for my comps.

When you are reviewing comps, you should take them with a grain of salt. Not only are domain names unique assets, but some comps aren’t real.

I received an email from a friend about a domain sale he saw that was reported publicly. I checked out the Whois history tool, and I saw that the domain name is currently registered to the same person who owned it before. Without doing research, I

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