Buying Domain Names

At NamesCon last week, I had a chance to briefly speak with Andy Booth. I have known and done a modest amount of business with Andy and his brother James Booth, and I was sorry I did not have much time to speak with them. One topic Andy and I chatted about was if the value of a domain name changes (at least on a psychological level) when the domain name is acquired by a domain investor from a larger company. Andy thought it would be neat to spark a discussion about the topic, and we are both eager to see what readers think.

In December of 2019, I wrote about Mercury acquiring its brand match Mercury.com domain name. The company had been operating on the Mercury.CO domain name, but it had anticipated moving to the Mercury.com domain name at some point in the future. That migration has happened, and the company can now be found by visiting Mercury.com.

Notably, Mercury founder Immad Akhund shared how the company was able to acquire its brand match domain name. In a series of tweets, which I have posted chronologically below, Immad shared details of how it acquired Mercury.com from HP. Although he did not share the price of the domain name, I am sure it was very expensive. I think the eighth and final tweet explains why acquiring Mercury.com was so crucial for the banking brand:

Sean Markey tweeted a link to the My First Million podcast interview featuring Rev.com founder Jason Chicola. In the podcast, there was a discussion about the brand naming process and how the company ended up buying Rev.com for a reported $400,000:

@DInvesting @DomainNameWire

Hey guys, didn’t see this covered anywhere else—just listened to the My First Million podcast by @ShaanVP where https://t.co/KtfmU5qjMM’s founder revealed (for the first time, he says) they acquired the domain name for $400khttps://t.co/heTobVTgWM

— Sean Markey (@seanmarkey) January 31, 2020