There Are Some Days I Wish I Had a Partner

Elliot Silver
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30

I love just about everything associated with working for myself as a domain investor. There are some days that I wish I had a business partner though.  Every once in a while, an offer is made on a domain name that I wish I could get another opinion about before making a decision. Yesterday’s article about reasonable offers will give you an understanding about the types of offers that a second set of eyes might help.

Without a business partner, I am solely responsible for business decisions. This is good because I never have to convince someone that a decision is right or wrong, and I have full authority to execute decisions and strategy. This allows me to make offers and close deals quickly and generally without holdups on my end. The downside is that there are times that I could use a second opinion on whether I am making the right call on a domain purchase or sale.

I discuss some business with my wife, but I can’t

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82 Heartbleed Domain Names Registered

Elliot Silver
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6

Screen Shot 2014-04-14 at 9.55.13 AM

The Heartbleed bug has been all over the news during the last week. In addition to information on tech media outlets, a number of mainstream news outlets also covered this big story. Websites of all sizes sent emails to customers and members to encourage them to change their passwords because of the heartbleed bug. When news like this breaks and is shared, I would expect a huge number of domain registrations to follow.

Surprisingly, there were just 82 .com and .net domain name registrations with the name Heartbleed in them since the news of this problem went out. According to the Verisign DomainView Grapher Tool, the greatest spike in domain registrations appears to have taken place on April 9, when 25 domain names were hand registered.

If I were to have guessed without knowing the answer, I would have guessed that there were over 500 domain names registered. Although there isn’t much that could be done with Heartbleed domain names, I assume some Internet security companies could have used these domain names to pitch their wares. I also wouldn’t have been surprised to see legal or lawsuit domain names registered by law firms looking to sue someone for the problems that may or may not exist as a result of websites who may have issues.

With all of the news about the Heartbleed vulnerability, I was surprised that there were so few domain names registered with the this keyword. Not really sure what to make of this, but it was a surprise to me.

How Many “Heartbleed” Domain Names Were Registered?

Elliot Silver
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1

I was curious to see how many Heartbleed domain names were registered after the heartbleed bug was announced a week ago. I did some research and I was able to find this out, and I want to know how many you think were registered.

Mind you, the Heartbleed.com domain name was just registered at GoDaddy on April 5, 2014. Prior to this date, I highly doubt there were any (or many) other domain names in existence that had the heartbleed keyword. Interestingly, Heartbleed.com was originally registered to someone in what appears to be Slovenia back in 2007. Later on in 2012, the Heartbleed.com domain name was owned by Oversee in 2012, but it appears to have expired in June of that year, where it sat unregistered until April of 2014.

If you know how to get this information, please don’t share it in the comment section. I think it would be more fun to guess the number without knowing the actual number of registered domain names. I’ll post an update later on with the actual number of registered domain names.

Vote:


Houses.com Announces Joint Venture

Elliot Silver
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9

Houses.comIf you are a domain investor and you have ever had the opportunity to exchange emails with Richard Swerdlow, you’ve probably been impressed with the company logos in the footer of his email: Condo.com, Houses.com, Property.com, and Location.com. With the exception of Location.com, which is under development, the other three exact match domain names are fully operating businesses.

I read some news about Houses.com that was reported yesterday, and I want to share it with you. In light of the recent Apartments.com deal and Auction.com deal, it seems that there is quite a bit of money flowing in the real estate space, especially for these exact match keyword .com domain names with successful businesses.

In a press release yesterday, Houses.com announced a joint venture with Bayview Asset Management, LLC, a huge real estate investment and mortgage firm based in Florida. According to the press release, “the transaction provides Houses.com capital and resources to elevate its brand, add product features, and scale consumer traffic and revenues.” Terms of the deal were not shared in the news release.

It would be very cool to see another great exact match domain name like this become a well known brand in this space. According to Swerdlow, that is the plan for Houses.com. “We are dedicated to becoming the definitive marketplace for single-family houses and a leading consumer brand in the massive, growing online real estate market,” he said.

The full press release announcing the new joint venture is below:

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Bought for $250k, BitcoinWallet.com is Launched

Elliot Silver
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15

In February, Niko Younts reported that he sold the BitcoinWallet.com domain name for $250,000. The story about the domain flip was pretty remarkable, and I think it’s worth a read if you haven’t done so already. I received a follow up email from Niko this evening, and it looks like BitcoinWallet.com was just launched as a new business.

You can visit the About Us page on BitcoinWallet.com to learn more about the company and its founders:

“BitcoinWallet.com was founded by

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Escrow.com Responds to Mashable Article

Elliot Silver
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3

Mashable published an article about how the founder of Ramshackle Glam was able to recover her allegedly stolen domain name and website. The article was written by Jordan Reid, the website’s founder, and I think it is a must read for domain investors.

One thing I found interesting was how the author reported that she was able to get control of the domain name without having to release the funds to the “seller” after using Escrow.com to facilitate the transaction.

According to the article:

“I immediately transferred the domain into a different account and placed it (and all of my other domain names) on what amounted to lockdown. And then I called the wire transfer company and placed a stop on the payment.”  

I was bothered by the mention that a stop payment could potentially

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