I know nothing about Pierluigi Buccioli beyond the gambling related domain names he shares on Twitter. A tweet he shared yesterday offers two good lessons to highlight for domain investors:
3 years, 250 sales and seven figures later, it's safe to say that at least some of the domains on Gambling Invest are worth reg fee.https://t.co/3s9AzbscNR pic.twitter.com/ibuvfdgOeO
— Pierluigi Buccioli (@pier0) November 26, 2020
This morning, Jamie Zoch announced that it appeared AT&T sold Prodigy.com, a domain name the company has owned since its involvement with the defunct Prodigy company. Prodigy.com was first created back in 1992, and AT&T offered an email service on the Prodigy.net domain name for quite some time:
I don’t think anybody reported this… but it appears that AT&T has sold the premium generic domain name https://t.co/IY76mzMwiZ . The domain resolves to a coming soon page for “Prodigy Education” currently. The domain transferred to GoDaddy under privacy on July 14, 2020.
— Jamie Zoch (@DotWeekly) November 18, 2020
Some domain name buyers are more savvy than others. They actually do some research on the domain name they want to buy beforehand. They may use a source like NameBio or GoDaddy’s appraisal tool to find more information about the domain name and it’s value, and they might come across the sale price of the domain name they are looking to purchase.
I recently sent a handful of emails to prospective buyers to try and sell a domain name I had recently acquired. After a brief exchange, the prospect mentioned my acquisition price. I want to share a paraphrase of how I replied without specifics that might reveal the specific domain name:
I am interested in buying a domain name registered under Whois privacy proxy at Namecheap. I visited the Whois lookup page on Namecheap to see if I could send a message to the registrant via the Namecheap system (like the GoDaddy Whois contact form), but it doesn’t look like there’s a contact form. Instead, there is a “Make Offer” button above the Whois information:
Earlier this morning on Twitter, James Booth reported that his company sold Picture.com for $225,000. The buyer is reportedly Brent Oxley, although the Whois registration information is private at Namecheap, and the nameservers are not yet updated:
https://t.co/lqWXuQJ0m9 sold for $225,000! Great price for the buyer @Chain
— James Booth (@DomainBooth) November 7, 2020
In the past few years, a number of brand marketplaces have opened to help business operators find brand names. While these platforms are ostensibly selling brand names, in reality, they are also helping domain investors sell their domain names. Three of the most well known (to me) brand marketplaces to sell domain names include SquadHelp, Brand Bucket, and Brandpa.
When someone is looking to start a brand or rebrand their business, there is a good chance they will do various Google searches related to brand name creation. I would imagine there are more people looking at brand-related keywords than domain name search keywords. I would imagine that more business owners are looking to find a perfect brand name and then hope to find the most suitable domain name that matches. SquadHelp founder Darpan Munjal touched on this in a tweet on Sunday:
