Agreed Launches “Escrow Now” Button

Elliot Silver
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This afternoon, Agreed announced the availability of a “Escrow Now” button which allows domain investors to place buy now buttons on their domain name landing pages, giving a prospective buyer the ability to agree to purchase a domain name and open an escrow transaction immediately. Instead of encouraging a buyer to negotiate, a seller can put a buy now button with a call to action to facilitate an immediate deal.

The advantage of using a tool like this is that a domain owner doesn’t need to pay a broker commission on a deal that was initiated by the buyer visiting the seller’s domain name. The disadvantage is that a buyer will need to set the button up across many domain names instead of listing them on one marketplace. Since many of my inquiries are from buyers who visit the domain name to see if anything is there, I think this is a great tool and will be worth the time to set up.

Check out the video I embedded below to learn more about Agreed’s Escrow Now button to see if it’s something you can use to help you sell domain names more easily.

Escrow.com Responds to Mashable Article

Elliot Silver
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Mashable published an article about how the founder of Ramshackle Glam was able to recover her allegedly stolen domain name and website. The article was written by Jordan Reid, the website’s founder, and I think it is a must read for domain investors.

One thing I found interesting was how the author reported that she was able to get control of the domain name without having to release the funds to the “seller” after using Escrow.com to facilitate the transaction.

According to the article:

“I immediately transferred the domain into a different account and placed it (and all of my other domain names) on what amounted to lockdown. And then I called the wire transfer company and placed a stop on the payment.”  

I was bothered by the mention that a stop payment could potentially

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Andrew Rosener: Slang.org is “Kicking Ass”

Elliot Silver
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Slang.orgI want to share an update about the success of Slang.org, a website that was launched in December by Media Options. When I published my article about Slang.org several months ago, I promised that I would follow up, and Andrew Rosener was kind enough to give an update on how this search engine play is performing.

According to Andrew, “the site is kicking ass.” Slang.org is now seeing 7,000 unique visitors per day, and it makes $25 a day in revenue. The primary reason for why it is doing so well is that the website currently ranks on page one in Google for almost 4,000 words or phrases. That’s pretty solid considering there are 10,000+ pages indexed in Google on the website.

In addition to seeding the website with

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Domainers Choice Awards Nominees Announced

Elliot Silver
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The nominees for the 2014 Domainers Choice Awards have been announced, and I have posted them below by category. Thank you to those who nominated me for awards. It’s always nice to be recognized by my peers, and I appreciate it, although I don’t believe I am deserving of either award. From the looks of it, there were some excellent nominations made.

Voting for the Domainers Choice Award winners will be made using a third party voting system. beginning on May 8th and run through midnight on May 30th. Award winners will be announced on June 28th at a ceremony in Dana Point, California. More information about the Domainers Choice Awards, voting, sponsorships, and the award ceremony can be found on the DCA website.

2014 Domainers Choice Awards Nominees

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What Does SnapNames Acquisition Mean for Domain Investors?

Elliot Silver
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On Friday evening, I reported that two Web.com employees tweeted that Web.com had acquired SnapNames, a once thriving domain auction platform. SnapNames may still be thriving, but truthfully, I have not participated or followed very many auctions on the platform in a few years. This morning, Web.com officially announced the acquisition in a press release, although terms of the deal were not disclosed.

From my perspective, in the last few years, SnapNames became more well known for its private domain auctions rather than its expiring domain auctions. I remember when SnapNames reported “bonkers” sales numbers for expiring domain names. The numbers may say otherwise, but that’s what it seems like to me anyway. When thinking about expiring domain auction houses though, I still consider NameJet, SnapNames, and GoDaddy to be the “big three,” again keeping in mind that I almost exclusively use NameJet these days.

For a while now, SnapNames has maintained one of the

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BBB Warns About Domain Name “Scam”

Elliot Silver
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BBB LogoThe Better Business Bureau published a “Scam Alert” warning related to domain names. Specifically, the BBB warns businesses that there are companies looking to get business owners to unnecessarily register expensive ccTLD domain names with their brand name or keyword. The emails are typically sent from domain registrars or others under the guise of a trademark or brand warning.

Emails like this have been making the rounds for quite some time, and they probably have a decent success rate because they can appear to be legitimate warnings. I don’t know if it really qualifies as a “scam” per se, but it’s definitely annoying to receive these emails, and businesses should know to be on the lookout for them and avoid the hefty cost of registering a bunch of unnecessary and sometimes expensive ccTLD domain names.

According to the BBB, here’s how the scam works:

“You receive an email addressed to the owner of your company. It appears to be from an Asian domain registration service. The email says that a third party company has requested to register your business’s brand name as a website domain in China or elsewhere in Asia.  

According to the email, the “domain registrar” realized your company owns that brand name. And they decided to do you a favor and offer to register the domain for you instead of this other company.  

The catch? There is no competing business, and the price to purchase the domain is much higher than you would pay elsewhere. Often, the email sender isn’t even an actual domain registration business. He/she simply purchases the domain elsewhere for a few dollars and immediately sells it back to the victim for an inflated price. “

If you own domain names, you’ve

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