Mike Berkens is “Ready for More”

Elliot Silver
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26

On occasion, I have read comments that called early domain investors like Mike Berkens “lucky” for getting into the domain investment business at an early stage. Some people have even said that those early birds couldn’t replicate their business if they started today. Well, those people are wrong.

Mike Berkens famously sold the majority of his company’s domain portfolio to GoDaddy for tens of millions of dollars in 2015. Mike could retire and/or live a life of luxury, traveling the world with Judi and never buy or sell a single domain name again. Mike is still buying and selling domain names, and he is continuing to prove that he is one of the smartest people in the business who could start over today and still do better than 99.9% of everyone else in the business.

Case in point:

Mike acquired the domain name ReadyForMore.com a little over a year ago at a public auction on DropCatch.com. Anyone could have bid against Mike and beat his bids, but he prevailed in the

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One Way I Come Up With Domain Name Ideas

Elliot Silver
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16

I took my first long 2017 Pan-Mass Challenge training ride yesterday. It was a beautiful day, and I rode for about 3 hours.  These long rides give me time to think about business without having a computer or iPhone in front of me, and it is a time that I brainstorm about domain name acquisitions.

During the ride, I thought  about a couple of ways that I come up with domain names to inquire about. I presume many people do this already, but for those who don’t, it might offer a nugget of insight that could be useful. I want to share some thoughts about that with you.

Most of my rides are through the back roads of the MetroWest region of Boston (I own MetroWest.com). I pass the beautiful Charles River (I recently sold CharlesRiver.com) at several points throughout my ride. One domain name I own and am surprised hasn’t sold is NeedhamRealEstate.com. There have been a ton of teardowns and redevelopment in Needham during the past couple of years, and I am surprised a real estate agent from Needham hasn’t made an enticing enough offer yet.

Maybe you see where I am going with this?

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Offer Rejections Yield Intel

Elliot Silver
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5

There are many ways to get domain name intelligence to help your business. The main way is to read sales reports from various marketplaces, auction houses brokers, and private sellers archived on NameBio and DNJournal. This information is readily available and doesn’t cost anything to obtain.

Talking to people and exchanging emails is another way to get information. People regularly share private details in private that they don’t want to have published and searchable. This type of information sharing is readily available, but it is only available to those who are acquaintances with each other and to those who are willing to share their intel.

Another great way to get private information that isn’t readily available is to make offers in private. This can lead to good information that wouldn’t be found elsewhere. I regularly make offers for domain names in private via email. While offers are regularly rejected, the rejection emails sometimes have data that is helpful to me without the sender knowing (or caring). For instance, in response to an inquiry about a one word .com domain name yesterday, the owner told me he rejected a $400,000 offer for the domain name last year. He didn’t know it, but his information is helpful because I own a couple of names I would consider comparables.

When a domain owner shares information with me,

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Emoji + ASCII Domains Can Now Be Registered

Elliot Silver
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29

Emoji domainsLast November, I asked readers if they would consider registering an Emoji domain name. At that time, a little more than half of the people who voted said they would not consider registering an Emoji domain name. This morning, I was sent an email from Jon Roig, who let me know people can now register domain names with both Emoji and ASCII characters in them.

Here’s what Jon told me about creating Emoji and ASCII domain names along with some examples of them to show their utility:

i❤️.ws  is a new Emoji Domain Registration web app created by the Domain Research Group. For the first time, it lets you create domains which contain a mix of emoji and text.
Some examples:

I think these kinds of domain names are creative for a mobile marketing campaign or a fun way for people who know each other to share a fun link. The downside is that

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Registrars Promoting .Net Sale

Elliot Silver
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6

It looks like there is a big sale going on for new .Net domain names. For the past few days, I have noticed quite a few tweets, emails, banner advertisements, and other promotions from registrars offering deep discounts on .Net domain names. I would imagine Verisign is behind this marketing push of .net domain names, although I don’t know for certain. I don’t think any of the special promos are offering discounts on .net domain name renewals.

I am strictly a .com domain name buyer, so I have not bought any .net domain names at the lower price and do not have plans to do so. If you have an interest in .net domain names, it seems like now would be the time to register them since it looks like the special promotions end soon.

Here are just a handful of the domain registrars that have tweeted about .net promotions in the last few days, and I suspect there are discount codes at other domain registrars and even hosting companies:

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It’s Million Dollar Wednesday!

Elliot Silver
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1

I find it a bit amusing observing the domain names people share in response to domain names wanted requests. This goes for forum posts, blog posts, and Twitter posts. It’s particularly amusing to see domain names I wouldn’t hand register being priced beyond retail prices when the prospective buyer is a domain name investor.

As you may have seen, Rick Schwartz has been seeking out domain names to buy via Twitter. From what I have seen, he has purchased one domain name so far.

Rick has declared that today is “Million Dollar Wednesday,” and he is looking to buy  category killer domain names for up to $1 million each:

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