There are several domain name brokerage newsletters that offer great domain names for sale. Oftentimes, the pricing is geared towards end user buyers rather than domain investors. Even so, I enjoy receiving these newsletters so I can see what is coming on the market at what prices.

As time goes by, I look through old newsletters. Sometimes this is because I recognize the domain name used by a startup had been offered for sale months or years prior and I want to see the price it was listed at. Sometimes I see a name sell or a name come on the market that I recall seeing in an older newsletter and a Gmail search brings up the old listing for me.

Today’s daily poll is about ethics. Do you think it is ethical for a buyer to contact the owner of a domain name that had been listed in a newsletter you received? Should you go through the broker instead? Obviously, I would not contact a domain owner about a domain name that was in a newsletter today, last week, last month, or even a couple of months ago. The domain owner would likely be contractually bound to forward my inquiry to the broker, and that would be embarrassing if the broker thought I was trying to work a deal around him or her. I am talking about after a reasonable time has passed.

Ethics aside for a moment, it might be

Yesterday morning, Rob Jackson started the week off on a great note by reporting on Kate Buckley’s $1 million + brokered deal for Sleeping.com and Snoring.com. These two domain names were sold as a package valued at $1,004,450, so each domain name sale is reported at $502,225. These domain names will each rank in the top 10 public domain name sales of 2018 to date. Kudos to Kate Buckley for putting this great deal together.

For today’s daily poll, I want to know which domain name you think is more valuable – Sleeping.com or Snoring.com:

When it comes to privately buying or selling domain names, I would say that I am a stickler for contracts. Even when I do private deals with people I know and trust, I almost always use a purchase agreement. In the event something unexpected happens in the short term or over a longer period of time, I want to make sure everything is outlined and agreed to in writing.

I understand why a purchase agreement can be burdensome. It might be silly to agree to buy a name for $50 on NamePros and ask the seller to sign a 4 page contract. Purchase agreements can also be expensive to have drafted for a business, and a boilerplate agreement may not suffice.

That said, I would be interested in knowing other people’s habits when it comes to purchase agreements. Feel free to share thoughts in addition to voting below.

I like usable 4 letter .com (LLLL.com) domain names. By usable, I mean the 4 letters need to make sense for a company to use. If the domain name isn’t a real word, there should be multiple organizations and companies that would want to buy / own the domain name to make it valuable and defensible. That’s pretty much my parameters for buying LLLL.com domain names.

Right now, I own just a handful of 4 letter .com domain names: Aesa, MDMD, WRDA, RTVS, and maybe a couple more I can’t think of off the top of my head. I read Raymond’s article about some sort of scandal in China involving 4 letter .com domain names, and it is a bit concerning. I guess every scandal involving a wide swath of domain names is concerning to some degree. There is also a thread on NamePros discussing this topic. Hopefully there will be some clarity on what is happening in the coming days.

For today’s poll, I am interested in knowing how many 4 letter .com domain names you currently own.

Yesterday, I published an article covering the news that Payoneer is shutting down its domain name escrow offering after just about two years in the domain escrow business. Domain name escrow is a low margin business, but I am not sure why the company opted to close this business unit. I used Payoneer Escrow for deals and had no trouble using them. I found Brandon Abbey to be very responsive to questions, and I was comfortable using their service.

For today’s poll, I would like to know if you used Payoneer Escrow:

In 2010, Sex.com sold for $13 million, which set a Guinness World Record for “most expensive internet address domain name.” More recently, Crypto.com was sold – reportedly for $12 million, although that figure has not been confirmed as far as I am aware.

Based on today’s domain name valuations, I am curious which domain name readers think is worth more. Vote in the poll below and feel free to share your thoughts about why you chose which domain name. I am not asking which domain name you would rather have – but I would like to know which domain name you think is worth more in 2018.

Thanks to Adam for the great poll suggestion.