Oscar Health Should Buy Oscar.com

Elliot Silver
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11

According to a news report on CNBC, a health insurance company called Oscar Health raised a $165 million round of funding from the likes of Alphabet, Founders Fund, and other firms. The company is now reportedly valued at $3.2 billion with over $725 million in total funding (per Crunchbase).

Unfortunately for Oscar, the company uses the less than ideal HiOscar.com domain name for its website. This isn’t great for a major health insurance company like this because of the potential for confusion. Yes, I think it is better than an alternative extension, but HiOscar.com could certainly be confusing to customers and prospects. Imagine being a customer and getting an email with a link to HiOscar.com. I think it could raise more red flags than the exact brand match Oscar.com domain name would raise.

So who owns the Oscar.com domain name? The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences owns the domain name. The organization uses it for it’s Oscar Awards, more commonly known as the Oscars. Oscar.com forwards to the Oscars landing page, Oscar.go.com. As you can see, this is a subdomain of the ABC / Disney Go.com website. The Academy also owns the better version for its Awards, Oscars.com, which forwards to the same website. Fortunately, there likely wouldn’t be confusion for Oscar Health customers who accidentally type-in Oscar.com, but I think the exact match .com domain name appears more trustworthy.

If I were advising Oscar, I would urge them to enter a negotiation with The Academy to try

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10 Recent Expiry Auction Buys

Elliot Silver
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46

Yesterday, I shared some of the things I look at when evaluating expiring domain name auctions. I thought I would share 10 recent domain names I bought at expiry auction since the beginning of 2018. These are just a selection of the names I bought at auction, although the total is less than 50 year to date.

10 recent expiry auction purchases:

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Attributes I Look for in Expiry Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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7

I am a regular participant in expiry auctions. Expiring domain name auctions can be a good place to acquire domain names, although some would probably say that auction prices have gone up considerably during the last few years, squeezing out quite a bit of the domain investors might need. Buying expiring domain names can be more cost effective than trying to purchase them from domain owners though, and expiry auctions remain one of the better ways to acquire good inventory.

I want to share some of the things I look at when evaluating expiry auctions. I think every auction participant has their own set of attributes they consider, and here are some of the things I consider when backordering domain names and bidding on auctions. These are not necessarily in order of importance. Your additional thoughts are invited in the comment section.

Generic nature – It is very important to me to only buy domain names that are generic in nature. I have no interest in buying a domain name where there

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Escrow KYC Verification is Not Due Diligence

Elliot Silver
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3

In reading some forum threads and email chains over the last couple of years, I think there is some confusion about the Know Your Customer (KYC) verification at Escrow.com, Payoneer Escrow, and other escrow services. As far as I understand, the KYC verification process is not a form of due diligence for a buyer or seller.

From what I understand, KYC verifies that the buyer and seller in a transaction are who they say they are when the transaction is set up. If a scammer or thief is one party to a deal, the KYC process would likely not be able to “out” that party as a scammer or a thief. The process would simply verify that their banking details match their account details.

Let’s say that Joe is buying Example.com from Bob using a domain name escrow service. I believe the escrow service will verify that Bob and Joe are who they say they are. They do not verify that Joe has the funds to buy Example.com nor do they verify that Bob actually owns the domain name or has the right to sell the domain name. Essentially, if Bob stole the domain name or otherwise has no rights to sell the domain name, that is something that the escrow service would not check.

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It’s Silly to Buy Something That is Much Harder to Sell

Elliot Silver
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33

Making a living as a domain name investor is not as easy as it may seem to be from the outside. Serious domain investors spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) on their domain name investments. Those who are most successful know what to buy and how much they can afford to spend, but even with that knowledge, it can take a considerable amount of time to profitably sell these domain names.

Buying domain names that have value has become more challenging with more competition vying for similar types of domain names. In addition, it has become far more expensive. The cost to buy good to great domain names has gone up considerably. This is a challenge faced by everyone still building their domain name portfolios, including veteran domain name investors.

This has also made it even more difficult for people who are new to the business of domain name investing or for those who have a small bankroll. As a result of the increased competition and pricing for good .com domain names, many people seem

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Using NameBio to Analyze a Purchase Opportunity

Elliot Silver
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15

I came across a pretty solid one word .com domain name for sale. While contemplating the acquisition, I used NameBio to do some research, and I thought I would share how I found it helpful to me.

The domain name I was researching is a one word .com domain name. It is a well known term in its particular field, but it is relatively uncommon in normal speech. This made it a bit complicated to analyze because it wasn’t a standard term I could value based on my gut alone.

The Google Adwords keyword tool can be helpful to see how many people are searching for the keyword. For my needs, it was not as helpful because I don’t really care about that. Even without doing any keyword research, I am quite positive there

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