Efty Hits 1 Million Milestone

Elliot Silver
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17

Efty announced a milestone on Twitter this morning: the one millionth domain name was recently added to its platform. The person whose domain name was the millionth name won a free year of Efty. The software company was founded by Doron Vermaat and Lionel Petitaux in 2013, and Domain Sherpa’s Michael Cyger invested in the company in 2015.

Efty offers domain investors a variety of landing pages they can use to sell domain names. There are several different creative options, and users have the ability to choose a “make offer” landing page or a landing page with a “buy it now” option. The company also offers

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DNDisputes.com a UDRP Monitoring Tool

Elliot Silver
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7

I think it is important for domain investors to follow UDRP proceedings. Not only can it keep investors abreast of current UDRP filings, but reading decisions can give insight into how panelists make their decisions. I am a regular user and fan of UDRPSearch.com, and I just learned about another UDRP tracking and monitoring tool: DNDisputes.com. I don’t think there can be too many tools tracking UDRP filings and decisions.

The team from DNDisputes.com emailed me last week to introduce themselves. I believe I visited their website during the brief time UDRPSearch.com was down a month ago, but I did not use it enough to become familiar with it. In response to their introductory email, I asked them a few questions about their website, and I want to share what they had to say in response to my questions.

As an industry writer, I especially think the tracking and statistics section are helpful. I also think it can be helpful for people whose domain names are subject of a UDRP, especially if they plan to handle the response on their own (I don’t particularly think it is the best idea to not use a lawyer when a valuable domain name is subject of a UDRP though).

Do you track all UDRP providers?

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Mike Mann Seeking Investment Capital

Elliot Silver
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18

Mike Mann posted a tweet on Twitter yesterday that seems to imply he is seeking investment capital for his domain name business:

People who follow Mike on Twitter know that he regularly reports high dollar domain name sales. Yesterday, for example, he shared that he sold GeorgiaBride.com for $24,888, a domain name he acquired for $20 at the end of 1999. While sales with huge returns like these are great, the cost to run a business with hundreds of thousands of domain names must be quite high.

I believe Mike’s company owns hundreds of thousands of domain names (DomainMarket.com says it has 288,839 domain names listed for sale). I have to think that the renewal fees are into the seven figures each year. I would also imagine Mike is actively buying new domain names to bolster his company’s inventory, and that is also expensive.

Even though Mike reports

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GoDaddy Launches Domain Investing Section on Website

Elliot Silver
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16

GoDaddy has launched a new domain investing section on its website. If you click on the “Domains” drop down menu on GoDaddy’s website, you can see the “Domain Investing” category on the bottom right section (with the word “New” next to it). Clicking on this link takes you to a section of the website that will provide educational materials about domain name investing.

The section was created to help educate people about the business of domain investing. There are a variety of resources and tools referenced within this section of the website. Interestingly, there is also a forum for people to ask questions about domain investing. I do not see this replacing other industry forums, as this seems more geared to helping people who have GoDaddy related questions, although there are plenty of broader, industry-related discussion threads.

GoDaddy’s Joe Styler shared this with me:

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What Will Donuts Do With Name.com?

Elliot Silver
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12

The big domain name industry news this morning is that Donuts is acquiring Rightside. According to StreetInsider.com, the deal is for $10.60 per share of NAME stock, which is approximately $213 million. This is an all-cash deal.

A press release with information about the deal can be found on Yahoo Finance.

I am sure there will be quite a bit of analysis from domain industry sources as well as stock/finance sources, but one of the more intriguing things is that Donuts will own Name.com once the deal closes. Since the company was founded,

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Payoneer Escrow Shares Update

Elliot Silver
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5

payoneer-escrowPayoneer Escrow is coming up on its one year anniversary as a domain industry licensed escrow service provider (the  company has existed  longer than that though). I reached out to the company to see if they could share an update about how their business is growing as well as a brief overview about the domain industry. Scott Reynolds, Payoneer Escrow GM, and Brandon Abbey, Director of Strategic Accounts at Payoneer Escrow, provided an update that I could share with readers.

The large escrow providers likely have the best view of the health of the domain space at large. Although licensed escrow providers like Payoneer Escrow and Escrow.com can not generally disclose specifics about deals transacted via their services, I think it is helpful when they offer insights about the current state of the domain business.

Here is what Scott and Brandon shared with me:

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