Domain Sales

I don’t use Google Shopping for much beyond the native price tracking tool. If there’s a product I want to buy but think it’s too expensive, I can have Google track the price and be notified if the price changes. Similarly, some websites – like Amazon – have a tool that identifies when a price is lower than it has been previously offered. I think this is helpful when I am shopping for something specific but am not in a hurry to buy it.

Atom.com CEO Darpan Munjal announced that something in that vein is coming soon to Atom, and I think it’s a fantastic idea.

I frequently see people posting screenshots of their domain name sales on Atom. There are different messages overlaid on the images of the logo and sale price. I thought I would share what each means so people understand the status of a sale that is shared publicly. This can help people understand if a domain name was purchased outright or with a payment plan.

There could be additional messages I haven’t seen before or don’t recall seeing, but here’s a list of Atom.com Transfer Center Messages and what I believe they mean:

Escrow.com announced the winners of its 2025 Master of Domains awards. The awards are typically given out during NamesCon, but the conference isn’t being held until November. The Master of Domains award is given to the 10 highest grossing domain brokers measured by the size of the deals they closed via Escrow.com during the prior year.

Andrew Rosener won this year’s award for the seventh consecutive year. He and his brokerage, Media Options, have been on the list for nine consecutive years. This is an impressive achievement.

Notably, if you look at the top domain name sales of the year in DNJournal and NameBio, many of these brokers are under represented. This illustrates just how many undisclosed large domain name deals are closed each year.

Congratulations to these award winners.

Andrew Miller from Hilco Digital Assets announced that his company oversaw the sale of Odyssey.com on behalf of Braden Pollock. According to the LinkedIn post, it is Braden’s largest domain name sale.

Commenting on the sale, Braden praised Andrew for helping to make the deal happen. “Andrew had to be creative to get this deal done. In the end it was a win-win,” he told me.

Rob Schutz, who made an Ask Me Anything appearance with the ICA yesterday, announced the Kickstart.com domain name was acquired by a company called Kickstart. Prior to the acquisition, Kickstart had been using KickstartFund.com, and that domain name now forwards to the brand matching Kickstart.com.

Congrats to the team at @KickstartFund for acquiring Kickstart*com. Epic upgrade!

And always a pleasure working with you @andrewrosener. 🤝

— Rob Schutz (@rob) May 6, 2025

In Rob’s post, he mentioned that he worked with Andrew Rosener on the sale. Rob’s Snagged.com represented the buyer, but he was unable to share the sale price with me when I asked.

Although the acquisition price was not revealed, it looks like it held a $499,000 price tag on GoDaddy. The listing was still active this morning, so the former owner should have that listing removed. In looking at Archive.org, the Kickstart.com domain name has been priced around that level since at least 2020.

Acquiring Kickstart.com was a wise move for Kickstart. In fact, there is hardly ever a time that acquiring a brand matching .com domain name isn’t a great decision for a business that has the funds to do so.

I added Kickstart to the list of companies that upgraded its domain name. Perhaps the acquisition price will be shared at some point.

A little over a month ago, I noticed the Fizz.com domain name appeared to have changed hands. Fizz.com, which had been owned by Digimedia, transferred from Tucows to Amazon’s domain registrar with Whois privacy enabled. I noticed this with the help of the Nameserver Monitor tool at DomainTools:

https://t.co/DPiqZD3Lzm, which has been owned by @digimedia, appears to have changed hands.

The domain name transferred from Tucows to Amazon Registrar, where it is now registered under Whois privacy.

Whois changed spotted via @DomainTools Nameserver Monitor.

— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) April 4, 2025