It’s not every day that we see an exceptional domain name change hands from one major corporation to another. That just happened with the valuable two letter DC.com domain name. Whois records show that DC.com is now owned by DC Comics:

DC.com does not yet resolve to a website, but I suspect the company will forward it to its website on DCComics.com. DC Comics could also choose to relaunch its website on the shorter DC.com domain name.

Finding common ground regarding the valuation of a domain name is often a struggle for a prospective buyer and domain registrant. The buyer usually has one idea about the worth of a domain name and the registrant has another idea. Sometimes both parties can agree on a valuation for a domain name but making a deal is still impossible.

Many domain registrants fall in love with their domain names. There may be a long backstory to how a domain name was acquired, or the domain name may have been in someone’s portfolio for many years. Whatever the reason, it can be difficult for some domain registrants to agree to sell their domain name even if a “fair” offer is made. A prospective buyer will need to offer substantially more than its value to get a deal done.

The Connect.com domain name has changed hands, and the buyer is HubSpot, a marketing and CRM service provider. HubSpot is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange with a $22+ billion market capitalization. Connect.com transferred to MarkMonitor, and it currently has a MarkMonitor default landing page.

Prior to the sale, Connect.com had been registered under Whois privacy for many years. The domain name previously resolved to a BrandForce landing page powered by Efty. The domain name is still listed for sale via Afternic, and I can see the asking price had been $11.8 million.

In March of 2018, Andrew Allemann reported the $200,000 sale of JumpRope.com. The domain name was acquired by a startup called Jumprope. It was billed as “a platform where users can create, discover, and share how-to videos and tutorial.”

In August of 2021, the Founder of Jumprope announced that the startup was going to be shut down at the end of the month. “To focus on the massive opportunity at LinkedIn, we’re going to sunset the Jumprope platform,” he posted on LinkedIn. “We will be taking down the website and apps later this month, starting August 20.”

When it comes to valuable domain names like JumpRope.com, a closed venture doesn’t mean the end of life for the domain name. In fact, the domain name may be one of the few things that has substantial value post-shutdown.

During the last handful of years, I have done less outbound marketing to sell my domain names. I still enjoy doing it on occasion because it is exciting to close a deal that I completely manufactured on my own. When I have been doing outbound, the call to action is now to direct the prospects to the landing page, which is almost always on Dan.com.

In my email, I usually write something along these lines: