Several years ago, Mode made an important domain name acquisition. The company had been using ModeAnalytics.com, and it acquired the brand matching Mode.com domain name. I had been a bidder in the asset auction that was the precursor to the sale. When I saw it was later being represented by Joe Uddeme, I kept in touch with him about the name as it was being marketed.

Not surprisingly, Joe successfully brokered the sale of Mode.com. I believe I already knew that. What I did not know is how much the company paid to acquire Mode.com.

It feels pretty good when a startup founder wants to buy your domain name. I know the domain name can probably incrementally help the business, and it will likely open some doors or impress some people as they raise capital. Oftentimes, it can be challenging to get that startup to make an acquisition commitment. ‘We’ll be in touch after we close our next round,’ a founder will tell me.

Every once in a while, I will touch base and see if anything has changed. Perhaps the business has gained traction, grown revenue, or the company has realized it is hampered by its current domain name. Sometimes founders will stay in touch, and other times they disappear.

A publicly traded company in the insurance space formerly called Baldwin Risk Partners has rebranded itself as The Baldwin Group. The company trades under the BWIN stock ticker on NASDAQ. In advance of the rebrand, the company acquired the brand matching Baldwin.com domain name. The company currently has a market capitalization of nearly $4 Billion USD, and it employees 4,000 people. The rebrand was covered in an insurance industry trade publication last month.

From what I can tell using the Whois History tool at DomainTools, it appears that Baldwin.com changed hands in or around December of 2023. Baldwin.com had been registered under Whois privacy at Network Solutions, and it transferred to Amazon’s domain registrar, also under Whois privacy.

I don’t do a great deal of outbound marketing on my domain names. When I do outbound, I typically find no more than the top 5-15 prospective buyers, and I generally stick to marketing domain names priced below $10,000.

Ideally, because I try to stick to highly targeted prospective buyers, at least one or two people will reply to my email and either buy the domain name or try to negotiate a better deal. More often than not, I won’t receive a reply at all. I hardly ever reply to unsolicited marketing messages myself, so it’s not a surprise to have low response rates to outbound sales emails.

My domain investment portfolio has grown from around 500 domain names to around 2,000 domain names in the last several years. Even at that size, getting consistent domain name sales is a challenge. Using a 3% annual sell through rate as a benchmark, that would equate to around 60 domain name sales a year – or about one sale a week on average.

The two most exciting things for me in the domain space is acquiring a great domain name at a reasonable price and selling a domain name for any price. Yeah, a six figure deal feels better than a $1,000 sale, but an unexpected $1,000 deal gives a nice jolt of dopamine on an otherwise uneventful day.