The Parler social platform has been in the news quite a bit lately because many of President Donald Trump’s biggest supporters have either moved their social media presence to Parler or have added accounts there. Under pressure from various service providers, the Parler.com domain name recently transferred to Epik. It is unclear what other services, beyond domain registration, Epik is providing to Parler, if any.
I received a bunch of emails over the weekend asking me about my last post forwarding to a non-working domain name – ClownPenis.Fart. If you aren’t familiar, ClownPenis.Fart was the humorous domain name in an old Saturday Night Live skit. No – my blog was not hacked. I posted an update on Twitter but should have posted one here, too, since many people aren’t active on Twitter:
I received several emails about my article forwarding to ClownPenis.Fart. Yes, this is intentional. It became apparent that Chad was trolling domain investors with his “fund,” so I decided to have a bit of fun in return. Here’s more about ClownPenis.Fart: https://t.co/hViKIBU7DT
— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) January 18, 2021
Kevin McKim shared the sad news that domain investor John Yeomans reportedly passed away:
So, so, sad to hear of the passing of our old time domainer friend John Yeomans, Johnny ‘Net’ (3rd) on rt. He sold a lot of .nets. We’ve often wondered where he was as he went dark a few years ago. 😥 RIP Johnny! #domainer #domains pic.twitter.com/KasotMvOos
— Kevin McKim (@KevinMcKim) January 16, 2021
The Alliance of American Football (AAF) was a professional football league that played part of a football season in 2019. According to Sports Illustrated, AAF filed for bankruptcy in 2019. The league used the valuable AAF.com domain name for its website while it was operational and for sometime after its bankruptcy. Whois records now show that AAF.com expired, and the domain name is now in pending delete status.
Here’s a screenshot of the current Whois record, courtesy of DomainTools:
I would say at least once a month in a negotiation with a prospective buyer or seller, a domain name appraisal is used by the other party to justify an offer or counter my purchase price. The appraisals are almost always from free automated appraisal services like GoDaddy and Estibot. While I think there is some value to those tools, I do think it is quite easy for someone to present them as authoritative when that is not the case.
Nat Cohen, who has sold some of the top domain names and has likely netted more income from domain names than almost everyone else, likely deals with this issue much more than I do given his portfolio size. He recently shared a rebuttal that others might find useful when a prospective buyer mentions the appraised value in a negotiation:
It’s the last day of the year. Things tend to be pretty quiet from a business perspective, so I am going to spend a few hours doing some business housekeeping before the end of 2020. I thought I would share some of the things I am doing in case it sets off a reminder for you, and I invite you to share anything you might be doing that I didn’t discuss below:
