I was reading the New York Post this afternoon, when I came across a photo of a person I recognize, Mike Zapolin, known to most as “Zappy.” The article briefly mentions his domain name investment past, but the focus of the Page Six article is his current status as “‘psychedelic concierge’ to the stars.”
From the article:
Earlier this month, Efty co-Founder Doron Vermaat announced that Efty customers would soon have the option to integrate DAN.com buy it now purchase buttons on their landing pages. This would allow sellers to automatically facilitate new transactions via their DAN.com account. This morning, the company announced the integration has been completed.
To see how this integration looks in a real world example, MovingUp.com has DAN.com buy it now and make offer buttons on its landing page. When a prospective buyer clicks on either of those links, they will be taken to the corresponding page within the DAN.com website:
In 2017, DropCatch.com began allowing domain investors to sell their domain names via the platform. You can now see two types of auction on DropCatch – “Dropped,” which are domain names that expired and were deleted, and “Private Seller,” which are privately owned domain names that were put into auction by the domain registrant.
In approximately one week, a change is coming to DropCatch that will impact private sellers. The change was shared with me by Abdu Tarabichi, who noticed the following message when he attempted to list domain names for auction:
In 2011, Braden Pollock made an investment in Epik, a domain registrar and platform founded by Rob Monster. With this financial investment came a seat on the Epik Board of Directors, which Braden has held since that time.
During the past couple of years, Epik has come under fire for some decisions and comments made by Rob Monster. In one highly critical HuffPost article, Braden and his wife were mentioned because of Braden’s investment in Epik. During this tumultuous time, Braden retained his position on the Epik board. It looks like something has changed though.
In a tweet this evening, Braden announced that he resigned from the Epik board because he and Rob Monster “don’t share the same ideology:“
CentralNic plc, a publicly traded company, posted a job listing on LinkedIn three days ago, and it might be of interest to someone with experience and expertise in the domain industry. CentralNic is looking to hire a Head of Sales in its Resell Division. The full time job will either be based out of the company’s London, England office or its St. Ingbert, Germany office, and working from home is an option.
Here’s the description of the Head of Sales role:
The past two weeks have been busier than I expected in terms of domain name sales. I sold a handful of inventory-quality domain names through a variety of channels. I closed deals via DAN, GoDaddy, and direct negotiations via Embrace.com. There were no home run sales, but I was happy closing 5 figures in deals considering current economic conditions impacting businesses throughout the world. Again, these were middle of the road, replaceable domain names that I was happy to move, with the majority being BIN-priced inventory.
Frankly, when I returned from Costa Rica at the end of February, I thought sales would be pretty dead through the Spring and perhaps into the early Summer. Even GoDaddy warned about softer sales at the higher end of the aftermarket in its Investor Day presentation (page 75). For me, that has rung true, but the lower end sales continue to help fuel my business.
This past Friday, Andrew Rosener from Media Options commented about his company’s sales, and he said it was the strongest week of the year for him:
