Email is the Domain Name X Factor

Elliot Silver
-
18

When it comes to domain names, I think email is the x factor that is not always considered. For companies that don’t have their exact match .com domain names, I think email can be a big problem. For those who are fortunate, the email issue will be understood, although it can go undetected.

On one of my domain deals, the buyer may have been a bit too honest with me. His company was using a non-.com domain name, and he told me they were having email deliverability issues. Apparently, some of the emails that his employees were sending to partners, contractors, and others were not being received. This was a big reason he reignited a conversation that died on the vine. We were able to work out a deal, but if it weren’t for the email troubles, I think their team was content using their non .com domain name until a later date.

Last week, Alan Dunn shared this tweet:

People regularly assume a company uses the exact match .com domain name. When it comes to searching for the company, Google and Bing make it

Read More

Aron Meystedt Acquires OC.com

Elliot Silver
-
18

Heritage AuctionsHeritage Auctions (HA) had been brokering the OC.com domain name on behalf of a Dallas company called Open Connect. HA received some good publicity for OC.com, but the domain name was not sold until this week. The Whois record was updated, and the new owner of the domain name is Aron Meystedt’s XF.com Company. As you likely know, Aron also works for Heritage Auctions.

I asked Aron if he could share some insight about how the deal came about since people might be curious about how the person responsible for brokering the domain name ended up acquiring it. Here’s what Aron told me about this:

“We had a 3 month timeline for Heritage to sell the name. They (seller) understood that getting top dollar takes time, but they were really interested in moving the name by the end of July. As our three month deadline approached, and after extensive outreach, we had yet to see a buyer produce a fair offer. It was decided that Heritage and I would give the seller liquidity and purchase the name ourselves.

I’d love to build something for Orange County, CA – a major destination for tourism and a place with a booming real estate market.”

Aron didn’t

Read More

BitcoinCash.org Sold for Nearly $50k, Already Developed

Elliot Silver
-
19

In last week’s DNJournal weekly sales report, BitcoinCash.org was reported as sold at a $48,888 sale price via Rupii/GoDaddy. This sale ranks on DNJournal as the 56th largest public domain name sale of the year, and it is the seventh largest public non-.com domain name sale of the year so far.

Interestingly, it looks like the BitcoinCash.org domain name was hand registered in March of this year. Based on a DomainTools Whois Historical Whois search, it looks like the domain name had previously been registered to someone else, but it expired and was re-registered in March. Obviously, this is a fantastic return for the seller (identified by Ron Jackson as Rupii’s Christina Thorpe).

This morning, Mike Berkens retweeted a tweet from Bitcoin News, which discussed “Bitcoin Cash:”

When I saw the tweet, I immediately thought about Ron’s sales report and

Read More

‘There is Only Value if They Are Used’

Elliot Silver
-
12

While looking through my Twitter feed this morning, I saw that  Alan Dunn posted a link to an article that I bookmarked and will share with people who inquire about my “unused” domain names:

For those with limited time, the article is about singer Julio Iglesias listing 4 connected waterfront lots on the Miami Beach island of Indian Creek Village for sale for $150 million. There are no houses or buildings on these undeveloped lots, but the large property would be a fantastic spot to build a huge home with a couple of smaller villas for family and friends.  I think this is a perfect illustration of the value of a great undeveloped domain name.

In between the time I saw the article and my wife and I got the kids ready for the day, I received a serendipitous domain name inquiry that

Read More

Elon Musk Acquires X.com from Paypal (Updated)

Elliot Silver
-
51

X.com is one of the few single letter .com domain names, and I would argue that it is one of the most valuable domain names. The X.com domain name was originally a financial services company co-founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk. X.com was the predecessor of PayPal, and it does not look like the domain name has been used independently from PayPal (or Ebay) since then.

I recently detected a Whois change involving the X.com domain name (Jamie Zoch also mentioned it on Twitter  and in an article on DotWeekly). For many years, X.com was registered to PayPal Inc. On July 5, I noticed that the Whois information on X.com went private, and the domain name was transferred out of MarkMonitor to GoDaddy. This led me to believe that PayPal sold the domain name, and I reached out to several media and investor relations contacts at PayPal to see if the company could share more information about the status of X.com.

Late this afternoon, Amanda Miller, Director of Corporate Communications at PayPal, confirmed that the company sold the domain name.

Read More

Did Print.com Sell via Sedo?

Elliot Silver
-
12

According to the DomainTools domain registrant email I receive every morning, it looks like the Print.com domain name was briefly registered to Sedo’s Transfer Service. This would indicate to me that the domain name was sold and is in escrow with Sedo.

When I checked the Whois information this morning, the domain name is now registered to an entity in the Netherlands. Prior to this, Print.com was registered to a California-based entity, according to DomainTools Whois history tool. Sedo’s sold domain name RSS feed does not list Print.com. As of this morning, Print.com does not resolve to an active website, so I am unsure about how it will be used.

I reached out to several contacts at Sedo to see if they could confirm the sale, and if so, share any details about the sale. Dave Evanson, Sr. Domain Broker at Sedo, replied to me and said he was unable to comment about the domain name. I searched my email records, and I do not see any emails from Sedo mentioning the domain name, so if the company was involved in the deal, it may have been as a buyer’s broker or they may have been instructed to market the domain name stealthily. Again, this is just a guess.

Incidentally, Dave Evanson tweeted about an approximate $2 million deal he and two Sedo colleagues brokered recently:

Read More
1...120121122...254Page 121 of 254