General Domain Information

Throughout my years as a full-time domain investor, my business model has not changed much. I’ve been buying and selling domain names for around 20 years, and I went full-time into domain investing in 2008 when I left a corporate Direct Marketing job.

My philosophy about domain investing and my business strategy haven’t really deviated much since the beginning. My philosophy is pretty simple. I want to own domain names I think startups and businesses will be willing to pay a premium to acquire from my company.

This translates into my domain investing business model:

Several years ago, nearly every day, I posted a poll on my blog which often led to good discussions. The polls were typically about something related to domain investing or something specific related to domain names.

When I was at the ICA event, someone I hadn’t seen in a while mentioned that they missed this feature and that I should bring it back. On one hand, it’s a somewhat easy way to generate content and start a discussion, but on the other hand, it can be a bit tedious to think of something interesting enough that is worthy of discussion.

So, I’ll post a poll on Twitter to ask you if I should bring it back. I would probably post the polls on Twitter and embed, although a WordPress polling tool might be a better option. I will investigate further if there’s interest.

Several years ago, nearly every day, I posted a poll on my blog which often led to good discussions. Should I bring this back to my blog?

Discussion: https://t.co/W2PYpjQruc

— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) January 26, 2024

It’s important to have a basic understanding of trademarks when it comes to domain investing. I have absolutely no legal background or expertise, but I have done my own research by following UDRP filings and various litigation involving domain names. Basically what I am saying here is that this should not be construed as legal advice because I have no legal expertise.

Over the weekend, I saw Theo’s article about a nice domain name that was sold at Sedo. A reader there commented about the number of trademarks for the term and how that makes it risky. I want to share one good aspect of a keyword .com domain name having many trademarks and one bad aspect of that – from my perspective as a domain name investor who buys one word .com domain names.

Rob Schutz, who goes by the enviable @Rob handle on Twitter, is a Co-Founder of Ro, an online health services company. Rob has also built a domain brokerage business called Snagged.com. I have never worked on a domain name deal with Rob, but I have seen his name mentioned before and have had conversations with him on Twitter.

On Sunday, Rob received a shoutout from Alexis Ohanian, the serial entrepreneur and Co-Founder of Reddit. Alexis was showing appreciation for Rob related to an undisclosed domain name acquisition:

Earlier today, Andrew Miller and Larry Fischer were joined on a video discussion with Jim Campbell, Founder of Honeymoons.com. I wrote about the success the company has been having following the acquisition of the Honeymoons.com domain name, and Andrew and Larry spent some time chatting with Jim.

If you were unable to watch their stream live, you can view it here:

I was chatting with an acquaintance on Tuesday, and out of the blue he told me a brief story. In short, he said he thought about me the other day when he mistyped a web address and landed on some sort of spammy/scammy landing page. I explained that isn’t the type of business I operate, but for all intents and purposes, it didn’t matter. He landed on what was likely a PPC monetized typo domain name and his first thought was of my business.