Investopedia is a very popular financial website that is described as “a premiere resource for investing education, personal finance, market analysis and free trading simulators.” Based on some analytics I found, it likely gets over a million monthly visits. People visit Investopedia to learn about trading and investing strategies, market news, and for information about various types of investments.

I saw that Investopedia added a new article about domain names last week, and I think it’s pretty neat to see. The article, written by Justin Kuepper, is titled, “How To Make Money With Domain Names,” and it covers a few popular topics such as investing in various types of domain names, buying and selling names, and the risk of domain investments.

The article summary is quite succinct:

“Like any investment, domain names come with their own set of risks. However, for diligent investors who consider the risks and returns thoroughly, domain names can become an investment that yields high returns, and a unique way to diversify his/her portfolio of investments.”

If you could add to the Investopedia article, what information do you think is essential that is missing? Personally, I think it’s a pretty solid write-up that covers investments, and I think it would be beneficial to add information about investing in alternative extensions and ccTLDs. Hopefully, they will turn this article into a series of articles on the topic of domain name investments. Perhaps they might benefit readers by adding links to popular resources, like domain forums, news outlets, and blogs.

There was a pretty huge surge of traffic to my blog yesterday after the NameCheap article, and my blog’s server went down for a bit of time. One thing I really like about Liquid Web is that the tech support team worked hard on my behalf to quickly upgrade the server size, and it was back up and running within about 30 minutes with no ill affects. Thanks to them for their help – it’s their 24 hour service that I really like. Here are some updates.

• According to a CNet article written by Paul Sloan,  Mike Mann’s 11,000 registration  day turned into a grand total of 14,962 hand registered names.  You can read quite a bit about Mike Mann’s background in today’s article, including some information about how he got his start in the domain business. I think you can glean that Mann is one of the foremost experts when it comes to buying and selling domain names, so his strategic purchase of nearly 15,000 hand registered domain name will almost certainly pay off for him, especially considering his Domain Market platform and sales team that works on his behalf.

• One of the most interesting things in the article is that Mann reports that Domain Market “brings in about $400,000 a month.” If you follow Mann on Twitter or Facebook, you know that most of his sales aren’t splashy names that sell for huge individual numbers. He is regularly making end user sales on domain names he probably hand registered or bought on the drop within the last few years.

• There are two interesting articles about Go Daddy Auctions on HybridDomainer.com and DomainShane.com. Should be interesting to see if GoDaddy adapts and how they do that. The big winner will likely be DomainTools since their Whois history tool can help see the registrant prior to privacy if that’s what they do.

• As posted on my website, I sold CallCenters.com this week. The buyer is a company in the business, and I don’t know whether additional information about the sale will be released. I think the company got a great domain name, and I was satisfied with the sales price. Although I found the buyer on my own, I want to thank Sedo and Afternic for putting together solid presentations on how they could sell the domain name on my behalf.

• One tip based on two recent sales. Try to encourage the buyer to keep the domain name at the current registrar. It can take up to 7 days for a registrar transfer, where an account change/push takes seconds. You’ll finish the transaction and be paid by Escrow.com much more quickly. Make sure the buyer knows he can transfer it to a registrar of his choice once he has possession of the domain name.

• Has anyone tested on the new LeadRefs platform yet? I have no tried it out but it looks promising. If you’ve tried it out, let me know your thoughts and let me know whether I should sign up.

Justin Godfrey  is well known in the domain investment space as an investor, broker, and web developer. He and his wife Katie were expecting twins in about a month, but the twins had another idea.

Noah Benjamin Godfrey was born on March 20th (4 lb 14 oz, 18.25″) and Madyson Lynn-Lavonne Godfrey was born two minutes later (4 lb 12 oz, 18″). The Godfrey babies were born at 33 weeks, which is about a month early for twins (single pregnancies go 40 weeks). The twins are doing well in NICU (neonatal intensive care unit), and Katie is also doing well after giving birth.

You can see first photos of the twins on Justin’s public Facebook page: facebook.com/snowmobilers. I asked Justin if he and Katie have a baby registry, and they said in lieu of baby gifts,  donations can be made to the non-profit www.projectnightnight.org.

I want to wish the Godfrey family good wishes and good health.

I received an email from a friend at Domain Holdings who asked if I could pass this message along to you. If you have sales experience and are familiar with domain investments, this could be a good opportunity to work with a growing company.

Domain Holdings is based in Delray Beach, Florida, and there are a number of experienced domain investors and industry professionals already working for the company. If you are looking for a full time job in the domain business, or if you know someone that may be interested, you should pass this job opportunity along to him or her.

——–

Domain Holdings is looking to grow its Premium Brokerage Division by adding a “few good men and women” to our sales team.

We are located in sunny Delray Beach Florida and also have remote work opportunities available for the right candidate.

• Are you a sales superstar with a successful track record?
• Do you listen to your clients and put them first?
• Do you consistently exceed monthly sales quotas?
• Are you an expert communicator and possess saavy computer skills?
• Are you comfortable making 50-60 outbound calls to end-user companies each day?
• Knowledge of the domain industry and experience using Salesforce a plus.
• Do you have 2-4 years sales experience?

If the answer is yes, then we’d like to hear from you!

Domain Holdings is located in Delray Beach on historic Atlantic Boulevard, minutes from the Ocean. We offer a competitive base salary and commission structure. Benefits (Health, Dental, 401K) and Options are available following a 90-day probationary period.  Please email your resumes to sales@domainholdings.com.

DomainIndex.com is supposedly “the domain industry’s leading internet domain name benchmarking, rating and appraisal service.”  I don’t recall ever hearing of (or using) DomainIndex.com before, but I saw an interesting press release the company put out today and want to share it with you.

According to the press release, DomainIndex.com “has changed its rating for the .com and the .net TLD from AAA to AA. The step has been taken after the release of an official statement by U.S. authorities of its intent to continue seizing .com, .net, .cc, .tv and .name domains and forcibly redirecting .org (and probably .us) domains.”

I don’t really know what this means, but I personally have no worries about my domain names or websites being seized by governmental authorities. My personal opinion is that if you aren’t  counterfeiting  anything, selling counterfeit goods, or helping people do illegal activities that are against US laws, you should be okay. I don’t like the seize first ask questions later way they go about this, but I personally don’t believe this impacts domain values or increases risk for the average domain owner.

Anyway, I thought this press release sounded interesting.  Have you used DomainIndex.com before, and what do you make of this?

Full press release is below.