Can a New gTLD Registration Identify a .Com Buyer?

I was chatting with a colleague last week, and he mentioned that some of his keywordGTLD.com domain names have been receiving more offers now that the matching new gTLDs have become available to purchase. The new gTLDs will likely lead to people and companies trying to buy the matching .com domain name to prevent confusion and leakage. This will likely mean that it should be easier to determine who is inquiring about the domain name.

If the owner of a  keywordGTLD.com receives an inquiry on his domain name, the first thing he or she should do is perform a Whois search for the keyword.GTLD. Most Whois providers (maybe all) can check the Whois data for the new gTLDs. Instead of having to spend a lot of time trying to investigate who wants to acquire a particular domain name, that information can be found simply by looking at who owns the keyword.GTLD domain name.

For at least the near term,

Why I Like Valuate.com and Estibot

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Domain investors tend to be critical of Estibot and Valuate.com (which uses the domain appraisal algorithm from Estibot). These two websites offer free automated domain name appraisals, and in my experience, the appraisals aren’t all that accurate. In most cases, the domain appraisals tend to be beyond retail value, but that’s just in my opinion.

That being said, I think a domain appraisal service like Valuate and Estibot can actually be good for domain investors when it comes to selling a domain name.

When you do a Google search for “free domain appraisal,” Valuate and Estibot

Why I Don’t Like to Share Stats

When I purchase domain names, I almost never ask the owner about stats. I’ve come to find that analytics are different for parking companies and for different stat trackers. Aside from this, I don’t find stats particularly interesting to me because I am buying domain names based on quality rather than traffic and revenue.

I am often asked for a domain name’s stats when selling domain names to other domain investors. On occasion, I will share them with the potential buyer, but I usually just tell them to assume there is no traffic. Sometimes I have stats available on my parked domain names, and other times, I don’t have them available on certain domain names where I haven’t enabled Google Analytics or Stat Counter.

On the infrequent occasions that I have shared stats, I have never received a reply “oh wow, that is a lot of traffic” or anything close to that. More often than not, the potential buyer uses the stats I provided as a means of negotiating a lower price. Perhaps the buyer did think there was more traffic than there really is, but I think it can hurt a sale more than help it, unless the traffic and revenue numbers are legitimately very high.

When selling to end user buyers, I am not often asked about traffic numbers. Most of the time, the buyer is looking at the domain name to either start a new website, use it in addition to the current website, own it for defensive purposes, or buy it for a future project. I am asked on occasion, but typically, this information hasn’t been used by end user prospects as a negotiation tactic (in my experience).

I like to buy and sell domain names based on the inherent keyword value of the domain name. Although having some traffic is good, I don’t look at the amount of traffic as something that would be a dealbreaker.

Know the Former Owner’s Asking Price

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I received an inquiry on a domain name a couple of weeks ago through a  DomainNameSales.com  broker, and I priced the domain name at $75,000. In the course of the negotiation, the prospect mentioned to the broker that he had seen the domain name listed for sale on Sedo for $30,000 about 6 months ago, and he made a $30,000 offer to the broker. He also wanted to know why the price increased by such a large margin in a short period of time.

Prior to this experience, I hadn’t really thought about tracking down a domain name’s price history before buying it, but perhaps it is a good idea.

When you are buying a good or service at a store, the price rarely changes by much over the course of a year or two. If the price does change, it’s not generally drastic unless there is a reason that most people would know about (shortage, storm, illness…etc). With real estate, there are price fluctuations, but they tend to be more gradual unless the seller wants to move a property quickly, and the changes tend to be more publicly known and go with the market conditions.

The domain name resale market is a dynamic market

Details About BitcoinWallet.com $250,000 Reported Sale

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According to a report on CoinDesk this morning, the BitcoinWallet.com domain name was sold for $250,000, and the buyer is reportedly an entrepreneur named Alex Charfen. CoinDesk shared more information about Charfen in its article, although the purchase doesn’t appear to have been officially confirmed by him yet.

The seller of BitcoinWallet.com is Niko Younts, who reported this sale on his Twitter account yesterday. According to Younts, the sale was transacted at Escrow.com, and Younts sent me a copy of the closing statement as confirmation.  Due to Escrow.com’s policies, the company does not release any transaction information unless approved be all parties.

The BitcoinWallet.com domain name is currently registered under privacy at GoDaddy, but for a brief period this week, the information was public, and it revealed

Broncos.com Domain Name For Sale

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With the Super Bowl right around the corner, Domain Holdings just announced that it is now the domain broker of record for Broncos.com. If the Broncos.com domain name sounds familiar to you, it is probably because Broncos.com was up for auction at the TRAFFIC conference, and it did not meet the reserve price what was, “less than half of what Cowboys.com sold for a few years back.”

The email from Domain Holdings did not mention the asking price of this domain name, but I assume it’s listed in the low 6 figure range. It appears that the Broncos.com is privately registered, and it currently forwards to the Denver Broncos website via what appears to be some sort of affiliate link. At some point in time, according to Screenshots.com, the domain name was used for a horse website.

Several years ago, I did some research