DropCatch.com will be undergoing some maintenance later on today. As a result, auctions that were expected to conclude today during this time period will end on Tuesday instead. The note on the top of the website provides the update:
“DropCatch will be undergoing routine maintenance on Monday, January 8th between 2:00PM and 6:00PM Mountain Time. The site will be unavailable during this time. Auctions scheduled to end on Monday will be extended until Tuesday, January 9th.”
Escrow.com may be the largest platform for third party domain name domain name sales transactions. This morning, the company unveiled a short report (pdf file) featuring domain name sales trends from the past year. The data shared is based on the 8,500+ domain transactions worth “[M]ore than US$300M” transacted via the escrow service provider for the year. There are still 10 days remaining in 2023, so it is incomplete.
Interestingly, it looks like this is going to be a down year for domain name sales on Escrow.com. According to a report shared by Domain Name Wire in September of 2022, there were $256 million worth of domain name sales transactions in the first half of 2022. The figure shared in today’s report is ‘more than $300 million USD,’ for this entire year, so it could theoretically be any number above $300m. I would imagine that $300m figure is relatively close to the actual figure though. I asked for a bit of clarity to understand how 2023 compares to 2022.
This morning, Escrow.com released its quarterly Domain Investment Index for the Third Quarter of 2023. This report offers a broad overview of the domain name aftermarket with data from transactions closed via Escrow.com. The entire (free) report can be accessed via this Google Drive link shared with me by Escrow.com.
A few of the datapoints highlighted in the report that I found interesting were:
This morning, domain name parking service provider ParkingCrew announced a new user interface was launched in beta. The company made it clear that the UI is still under development, and it is not the final version that will ultimately be released. Instead, the company is seeking user input to optimize the utility of its UI for customers.
Here’s how ParkingCrew believes users will benefit from using the new user interface:
Trademarkia is a website I use occasionally to perform trademark-related searches. This morning, I noticed a job listing the company posted on LinkedIn that could be of interest to someone with domain registrar expertise. Trademarkia posted a job listing for a Lead Developer for ICANN Domain Registrar Integration.
From what I gather, Trademarkia is looking to build an in-house domain name registrar, and the new hire will be the lead person for its development. Here’s an excerpt from the post that details the job description for this role:
This morning, I received an email from Bodis announcing an “earnings adjustment” for the month of August. The company reported that customers will receive a revenue adjustment (balance decrease) due to “advertiser defaults” experienced by its upstream provider. From what I can tell, this isn’t an action targeting individual accounts, but it impacts all customers.
I use Bodis for parking on a handful of traffic-receiving domain names. The adjustment to my earnings was very small and will have no impact on my business. I would imagine others who have a greater focus on PPC income will be more impacted by this news. Unfortunately, I don’t know of anything customers can do to prevent this from impacting their account.
Here is the email I received from Bodis with details about the earnings adjustment and directions on how to see the impact on individual accounts:
