The year is more than half way over, and I want to know what percentage of readers have either attended a domain conference this year or have plans to attend one.

The largest industry conference, NamesCon, was held in January. I was there as were hundreds of others who operate businesses or work within the domain investment space. NamesCon Europe, NamesCon India, GDS in China, and DomainX in India were also held earlier this year.

In addition to these industry conferences that already took place, there are several coming up (my apologies for omitting any in error but please let me know):

• Merge
• NameSummit
• Domaining Americas
• ICANN Barcelona

With domain industry conferences taking place throughout the world, I would like to know if you attended or are planning to attend a domain industry conference this year:

Yesterday, I wrote about Bob’s Discount Furniture’s acquisition of Bobs.com. As is the case with most sales I uncover, I was unable to get the acquisition price of the domain name. Without an incentive for sharing the price, most buyers and sellers have no interest in telling a third party (me) what they paid for a domain name or the sale price of their domain name.

While there were no comments in yesterday’s article about not having a sale price in the article, I have heard people mention publicly and privately that sharing details about a sale without the sale price makes an article a bit pointless. Domain names change hands all the time, and there is less (or no) value to an article if the price isn’t shared or can’t be shared. I assume this thinking doesn’t extend to sales of the most notable domain names (ie if Alphabet.com or 123.com changes hands privately), but I know there are people who don’t like it when a sale is reported but important details are not available or included.

I understand this line of thinking, but I find these upgrades and acquisitions interesting even without sale prices. Personally, I think it’s neat to see a company like Bob’s spending a considerable sum of money to buy a domain name.

I would like to gauge your thoughts on these types of articles to see if you enjoy reading about them. I find sales/acquisitions regularly while doing my own acquisition and sale research and also while monitoring a whole lot of domain names via DomainTools. Please vote in the poll below and feel free to add your thoughts beyond a yes or no.

I can’t even tell you how many times I have been asked if I would be willing to take on an investment. It’s not a regular occurrence, but it has happened a bunch of times over the years. My answer has always been no for two reasons – I don’t need the capital and I don’t need the stress of making money for someone else. I like having a relatively small business where I only have to worry about my own investments. It could make me more risk averse to invest someone else’s money, and risk aversion is not great when buying high value domain names.

There is utility in taking on outside capital though. If I raised $10 million in investment capital, I could definitely put those funds to good use and buy a small portfolio of exceptional domain names. Although there is more capital at risk with higher value domain names, I believe there is also the opportunity for much greater returns (total rather than %).

One big issue, aside from the two mentioned above, is that investors would likely want to see a return on their investment in the shorter term. With domain names, a $250,000 investment could sell for $500k+ in a week or sit for years without earning much income in the meantime. An investor who has $2.5 million to invest would likely prefer to buy a piece of physical real estate that has renters or commercial tenants to derive regular income.

I know of a few people who have taken on investors’ money to buy domain names or build websites on domain names. I am not sure how they have done, but that is a different type of business

Have you taken on outside investment capital?

Note: A revamped version of DomainInvesting.com was relaunched this morning. I will share more details in an article later on this afternoon. If you see anything strange, please note it and share in the subsequent article so they can be addressed.

Tim Davids suggested that I ask a poll question and I am also interested in seeing the results. Do you think UDRP decisions have swung more in favor of domain registrants lately? For the sake of the polling, let’s assume Tim isn’t asking about domain names involving fairly obvious trademarks (ie “Realtor”) but rather valuable generic (dictionary and phrases) and acronym domain names.

I was able to find some data for UDRP decisions in the last several years, and I will share that along with some thoughts later on today. For now, I would like to know if you feel UDRP decisions have swung in favor of domain registrants lately.

If you own a large portfolio of domain names, having a domain portfolio website can be a good way to sell domain names. If a prospective buyer can’t afford to buy a specific domain name, or if someone stumbles upon the website while seeking out a domain name, it can provide a good opportunity to offer other domain names for sale to a prospective buyer. In addition, it can look more professional to operate a portfolio website.

For someone with a smaller domain portfolio, having a portfolio website may not be as useful. A prospect looking for a cooking domain name, for example, may not be able to find a similar domain name in a person’s small portfolio, and thus, it would be less useful to operate a portfolio website.

There are at least a couple of companies that offer portfolio websites (like Efty, a DomainInvesting.com advertiser). For those more technically inclined, it may not be too difficult to build a portfolio website using WordPress or other content management system. I have done this to some extent with Embrace.com, although it is not a traditional portfolio management website.

Today’s daily poll asks if you have a domain portfolio website. You are welcome to share what you use and/or what you like or dislike about it.

I have owned quite a few geographic domain names. I have sold many of them over the years, and I still have several.

I buy good .com geodomain names when I see them for sale at fair prices, and they are generally acquired as investments rather than for a development opportunity. I am not opposed to developing geographic domain names, but I have sold the names I previously developed (with the exception of LakeWinnipesaukee.com), and I don’t really have the desire to build out any new websites right now or in the foreseeable future.

For the sake of this poll, when I refer to “pure .com geodomains” I mean exact match city, state, province, region, lake, country…etc. .com domain names (not citystate.com domain names though). I don’t mean geo+keyword domain names nor do I mean something like citystate.com. I would imagine the vast majority of investors own domain names like geo+keyword or citystate.com. There’s nothing wrong with these kinds of domain names, but I am interested in seeing how many people own exact match geographic .com domain names. Examples could be Boston.com, GrandCanyon.com, Quebec.com, ColoradoRiver.com…etc.

Participate in the poll below and feel free to share your favorite pure .com geodomain name if you would like.