Performing due diligence is a critical task before buying a domain name in the aftermarket – both private acquisitions and even on auction purchases. With GDPR in force, doing the necessary due diligence is more difficult, and as time goes by, it will become even more challenging. One area of due diligence that should not be overlooked is related to the registrant’s email address.
One of the best domain investor acquisitions in the recent past that I can recall was just announced by Andrew Rosener via Twitter. His company, Media Options, acquired Clear.com. The deal was first spotted and reported on Twitter by Jamie Zoch:
Excited to announce that @MediaOptions has acquired its exact brand match .com #domain https://t.co/xYR12Bs4ZP for our new CLEAR Domain Acquisition Service. Lots more to come! #IsYourBrandClear https://t.co/dJU2TdrXFr
— Andrew Rosener (@andrewrosener) December 7, 2019
Over the last couple of years, I have been taking more flyers on domain names. I have been buying more names at GoDaddy Auctions in the < $100 range, and my portfolio has grown to around 1,000 domain names. I have found pretty good success in this channel as one sale can pay for almost everything. As the year is coming to an end, I have been cutting bait – letting domain names expire instead of renewing them.
When I receive the expiry notices at GoDaddy and Enom, I look at a few things before deciding whether or not to turn off auto renew or simply not renew:
Adam Strong from Evergreen sent me a link to a video interview Jason Calacanis did with ROOM CEO Brian Chen, as part of his This Week In Startups series. In the interview, Jason asked Brian about the company’s brand match domain name (skip to 2:42 if that is the only aspect of the interview that interests you). The two discuss the value of the domain name and Brian discussed why his company felt the need to acquire this brand match .com domain name.
Here’s the interview:
Media Options, the domain name brokerage founded by Andrew Rosener, has added a new SEO-focused domain name newsletter. This newsletter is separate from the company’s high end domain name brokerage newsletter. In addition, unlike the free domain brokerage newsletter, the SEO Authority newsletter will have a cost of $24/month for people who sign up before October 29 and $49/month for people who sign up after the deadline.
Here’s some more information about the newsletter, which was shared in the inaugural edition:
I have pretty much every meaningful one word .com domain name listed in my Domain Monitor tool from DomainTools. When one of these domain names transfers to a different registrar, changes hands, or has some sort of other update, I am frequently able to see this within a day or two. I regularly notice great brand match .com domain names that were acquired by the most obvious end user buyer.
I recently noticed that Extend.com was acquired by a company called Extend. Obviously, a company called Extend is better off owning Extend.com, and having this brand match domain name should pay dividends for this company for years to come.
