Daily Poll

I am not great with foreign languages. I speak a bit of Spanish dating to a few classes in high school, but it is severely limited.

When buying domain names, I have tried to stick to English language domain names. I have always figured if I tried to invest in foreign language domain names, I would probably buy a domain name that doesn’t make sense or is spelled incorrectly. As great as translating dictionaries are, it can be difficult to understand if it’s the correct word or term. I also figure it could be difficult to negotiate with a prospective buyer using a foreign language!

I currently own just two foreign language domain names. Hoy.com (hoy means “today” in Spanish) and Arbeitsrecht.com (I think that is “labor law” in German). It’s not really my thing, although I would vote “yes” in today’s poll since I own a couple and would buy more if the right opportunity came up.

Do you own foreign language domain names?

A few years ago, I saw a domain name in auction and won it with the intention of donating it to a non-profit organization. The non-profit was happy to take the domain name and still uses it as a forwarder. The auction cost was in the ballpark of what I would have been happy to donate to the organization, so it all worked out.

I have heard of non-profit organizations reaching out to domain owners to ask for the donation of a domain name for a project of theirs. Sometimes this makes sense but oftentimes it does not. Sorry, but I probably can’t justify donating a five figure domain name and I doubt others would either. I suppose it depends on the domain name and the non-profit that is interested in it.

Would you donate a domain name to a non-profit organization?

Uniregistry brokers domain names on behalf of some of the most valuable domain portfolio companies, including its founder Frank Schilling. As such, Uniregistry seems to get very good prices for domain names it sells on behalf of its clients.

Yesterday, Ron Jackson posted a list of the top public sales closed via Uniregistry in the first quarter of 2018. There were quite a few very deals that I think are exceptional for the domain owners that sold the domain names. There were a few that look like good deals for the buyer. What do you think was the best buy in the publicly reported Q1 sales? If I didn’t include it in the poll, feel free to share which one you thought was the best deal in a comment. Of course, a deal can be good for both the buyer and the seller.

One thing to note is that this is not the full list of sales the company completed. I tracked other sales that were brokered by Uniregistry and not included on Ron’s list. I would imagine the buyer or seller requested confidentiality on the other deals:

There are a few common terms for people who invest in domain names. The ones I hear most regularly are domainer, domain investor, and domain trader. Personally, I am not a big fan of the “domainer” term and never have really liked it. It just doesn’t sound professional to me. It also doesn’t seem all that descriptive either, so someone who would hear that I am a domainer wouldn’t know what that means. My preference for a descriptive term is domain investor.

What do you call yourself when people ask? Vote in the daily poll below and feel free to add to it in the comment section.

Yesterday, I reported that GoDaddy sold the F.org domain name. In January of 2017, Jamie Zoch reported that GoDaddy sold the G.org domain name. Both of these sales were for undisclosed prices.

In yesterday‘s article, I speculated that F.org sold for six figures. That was a guess since I didn’t see what the company was asking. Six figures is a big range obviously, and it might be more or less. As a couple of commenters pointed out, GoDaddy’s GoValue appraisal tool values F.org at $13,792.

I am curious what you think a single letter .org domain name is worth. Obviously, the value would be contingent upon the letter and owner of the domain name, so should be a general approximation.

I got my start by flipping domain names. It started by registering names and quickly reselling them for a small profit. This helped me grow my business and I moved into higher value domain names. I continued to flip domain names for quite some time, but that model was modified a bit a few years ago.

These days, I am less into flipping domain names and more into buying domain names and awaiting for an end user buyer. This is a combination of strategy and necessity.

I still spend time emailing prospective buyers on recent acquisitions, but the majority of the shorter term re-sales are auction wins rather than higher profile (aka one word .com) domain names. I try to keep my one word names because they are much harder to buy for a good price these days, so selling for a smaller percentage ROI doesn’t make much sense to me.

I think it is more challenging to flip domain names now than it was when I started, but I still do it from time to time. I would no longer consider myself a domain flipper.

In today’s poll, I want to know if you consider yourself a domain name flipper: