Giuseppe Graziano published his market report this week, and it wasn’t great news for Chinese Premium “Chip” domain names. Ray Hackney wrote about this yesterday.
I own a couple domain names that would be considered “Chips,” but I also think they are good for Western buyers as well. I don’t closely follow this market, so I wouldn’t speculate about its health or potential for future revitalization. I would be interested in knowing whether readers think the Chip market is primed for a comeback or if it will continue to fall. You are welcome to share additional thoughts in the comment section if you would like:
I regularly see people discuss whether certain aspects of the domain investment business are ethical. People question the ethical nature of what happens with expiring domain names, auction bidding, trademark registration, pay per click parking, affiliate marketing, and a variety of other issues and topics related to investing in domain names.
Some people outside of the domain investment business don’t think investing in domain names is ethical at all. It’s certainly legal, but some people question the ethical nature of domain name investing. I thought it would be interesting to poll domain investors to ask if their business – the domain investing business – is ethical.
Vote in today’s poll and feel free to expand with a comment:
I spend a good percentage of my day emailing offers and inquiries to try and buy domain names. A great deal of this time is spent trying to find the right contact at a company – or trying to find the correct Whois information for the domain registrant. It has gotten a bit more challenging with GDPR.
Because of the low response rate (or acceptance rate) – even with offers I deem fair, I don’t recall ever running into an issue where I have more accepted offers than funds to buy domain name. From my perspective, that would be a good problem to have. If that ever would ever happen, I am sure I could finance a purchase at Domain Capital, sell some liquid assets, or even offer up one of the accepted offers to a friend.
I thought it would be interesting to see how often readers are making purchase inquiries and offers.
Some of the largest domain industry companies are publicly traded on major stock markets. GoDaddy, Verisign, Neustar, Web.com, Tucows, and others are actively traded.
Because of my business, I have enough domain industry exposure, and I don’t invest in domain name stocks. It’s possible there are some investments in various funds that involve domain industry companies, but I don’t really track that closely.
I’ve heard people discuss getting exposure to the new gTLD domain names via stock investments rather than through owning individual domain names, but that’s not really my thing.
August seems to be a slow time of the year. Kids are out of school for the Summer, families go on vacation, and business generally slows down. Although my family spends a week on Nantucket every August and we travel elsewhere throughout the Summer, I am always connected to my work. It’s a blessing and a curse because I can get away to anywhere in the world at any time, but I can never really get away from my business. This means I can really feel if things are slow as opposed to getting away, shutting things down, and not paying attention to business.
I have noticed that offers and deals tend to slow during August. Last August may have been an anomaly because I spent weeks negotiating a large deal that eventually closed early this year, but beyond that negotiation, things were relatively slow. With my relatively small portfolio, it is difficult to make conclusions about the general state of the domain business based solely on what I see. I could have a few nice sales that change my perception of August.
In asking around, it seems that most people find that August is a slow month for domain sales. I asking you if you have that same feeling about the month of August. Does August suck for domain name sales?
Dispute.com is in an expiry auction at GoDaddy Auctions. The auction ends later on today. At the time of publication, the high bid is $65,000 and there have been 118 bids placed on the auction. The $65,000 high bid is much higher than the GoDaddy Appraisal of $19,636.
Because of the bidding, this auction has been closely followed, including a contest on TheDomains.com asking people to guess the final price (they are donating to my PMC fundraiser in the winner’s name – thanks!).
With a high bid of $65,000 and hours to go, today’s poll asks if you think the auction will hit the six figure $100,000+ mark. The most recent GoDaddy Auctions sale that hit the six figure mark was the $125,001 sale of Gradient.com less than a year ago. I later learned that Gradient.com was bought by Google.
