The domain name business is relatively niche and there aren't a whole lot of people who would be considered experts about domain names and the field of domain names. There are a few large companies that operate in the domain industry, and some have job opportunities that would be a good fit for someone who is knowledgeable about domain names.

There seem to be many job opportunities where domain names play a small role. Domain industry knowledge would be helpful for many intellectual property and legal job opportunities, but those obviously require a strong legal background or law degree. There are also plenty of engineering and IT jobs that intersect with the domain name industry, but obviously those are for engineers or IT professionals rather than people who are domain name experts.

I would imagine that the vast majority of people who invest in domain names do it part-time. I am pretty sure many companies would allow its employees to own their own domain names (and even their own private companies if that doesn't interfere → Read More

Donuts reported that it sold the Vacation.Rentals domain name for $500,300 in an all-cash deal. This sale was reportedly the largest new gTLD domain name sale to date. It was the second reported $500,000+ sale of a new gTLD domain name reported by Donuts this year.

Earlier today, I was alerted via Twitter and email that the buyer of Vacation.Rentals, Mike Kugler, did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on the AMAFeed.com platform. In the AMA, there were quite a few questions posed about the domain name and the acquisition of the domain name.

Here are some of the more relevant domain name related questions that were posed: (more…) → Read More

In my daily DomainTools email, I noticed some interesting Coinbase-related domain name registrations. These domain names were registered via the DNStination privacy proxy service operated by MarkMonitor. Coinbase, Inc. uses Mark Monitor for its Coinbase.com domain name registration, so it seems highly likely that the company registered these domain names as opposed to a third party.

Some of the more interesting domain name registrations I noticed: (more…) → Read More

I read an Inc. article about a company called Swag, which uses the exact match Swag.com for its domain name. What grabbed my attention beyond the killer domain name was how they reportedly got the domain name:

"They also observed that no one owned the domain name swag.com, so they quickly grabbed it."

This stood out to me, and a couple of quick searches proved this to be incorrect (I imagine it is misunderstanding). The Swag.com domain name is registered privately, but Whois records show that it was created in 1995 and owned by someone else for quite some time. A search of my Gmail shows that this domain name had been brokered before - Swag.com was listed for sale for $275,000 in September of 2015 in the Media Options newsletter. In fact, in an interview 4.cn did with Andrew Rosener, he confirmed that his company brokered the sale of Swag.com.

That really is neither here nor there, but seeing Swag.com marketed for sale at $275,000 really emphasizes how relatively inexpensive domain names are.

Just about every business has → Read More

Yesterday morning, I asked if readers are concerned with the Whois changes that are likely coming because of Europe's GDPR regulations. Nearly 40% of those who responded are not concerned about changes, which is a bit surprising to me given the nature of what could change.

I was chatting about the Whois changes with a friend, and one big change that might come as a result of not having public Whois records is the domain name sale escrow process. When domain owners sell domain names without the involvement of a marketplace like Sedo or Afternic, most use a third party escrow service (or they should) like Payoneer Escrow or Escrow.com. The verification process currently in place is going to have to change if public Whois records are not available.

The way the process works now is that (more…) → Read More

Saving money is important for municipalities. Taxpayers tend to ask their elected officials to spend less money, and elected officials probably want to save money however they can. I urge municipalities to not let previously used domain names expire!

This afternoon, I noticed a domain name formerly owned by a local municipality coming up for auction. This .org domain name is a pending delete domain name, so I do not believe the former registrant can renew it at this point in time. The domain name appears to have been used as a website, but the website is now resolving on a different domain name affiliated with the municipality. The Twitter account for this town agency still has the old domain name listed in its profile (the domain name that is coming up for auction), and I presume there are probably quite a few backlinks that reference the domain name.

Once the domain name goes to auction, it is almost certain that a third party will own the domain name unless someone from the town (or a benefactor) decides to re-purchase it. → Read More