General Domain Information

For the life of me, I couldn’t recall the first domain name I ever registered. A few people have asked me over the years, and I had a vague idea, but I couldn’t recall it and didn’t have a record of it. I knew it was registered at Network Solutions sometime around the beginning of 2003, but I didn’t know much else.

Thanks to Christie Chute,  Manager of Monetization and Aftermarket Sales at Web.com, I was able to find out the first domain name I ever registered.

The domain name I purchased on October 31, 2002 was Legal-Aids.com. It appears this name was dropped at some point, re-registered in 2005, and it seems to have expired within the last couple of days. It is not the type of domain name I would purchase today, but it was my starting point in the domain industry.

The next domain names I registered a few days later were SeekNewYorkCity.com, SeekBoston.com, SeekDC.com, and SeekPhilly.com.

I got a fairly late start compared to many of the people I admire who have successful businesses, but I spent a lot of time soaking in as much information as I could in order to learn what domain names sell for how much, and why. I think someone could start today and be very successful, but I don’t think this is a business in which someone can expect to become rich overnight.

I’ve registered some truly crappy domain names in my time, but I continued to learn from my mistakes and make better purchases.

What was the first domain name you purchased?

I want to take a moment to thank EuroDNS for advertising on my blog for almost a year. The company continued to renew its banner advertisement monthly for quite some time, and I appreciate their supporting my blog.

I also want to thank two new advertisers on my website.

Stevan Lieberman is an attorney at Greenberg & Lieberman, a Washington, DC based law firm that primarily specializes in intellectual property. Lieberman is widely respected in the domain space.

For those of you who purchase descriptive domain names, you’ve likely seen Nokta Domains in many Whois lookups. Nokta owns a huge portfolio of fantastic domain names spanning many verticals. The company actively buys and sells domain names.

I welcome Nokta Domains and Stevan Lieberman, and I want to thank them for advertising. Without the support of companies within the domain name ecosystem, I wouldn’t be writing my blog, so I hope you support them, too!

I read a couple of SEC filings from publicly traded NetQin Mobile, Inc. that discusses the domain name  NQ.com, although some of the language is a bit confusing to me and I don’t know the exact value of the deal or what type of transaction occurred.

The company that reported the transaction, NetQin Mobile, trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the matching NQ symbol, and the corporate website can be found on NQ.com. Just recently, the company announced a name change to NQ Mobile.

According to a Form 20-F filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), NetQin Mobile reported, “Net cash used in investing activities amounted to $47.1 million in 2011, primarily attributable to net placement of term deposits of $47.1 million and purchase of domain name use right (www.nq.com) of $1.6 million, partially offset by proceeds from the repayment of the advance to a mobile payment service provider of $2.2 million.”

According to a second filing found on the SEC website, “In July 2011, the Company purchased a domain name NQ.com from a third party (the “Licensor”) with a consideration of US$1,550. The Company has been granted an exclusive license for the use of the domain name for ten years from July 2011 to July 2021. Unless renewed, upon the expiration or earlier termination of this agreement, the Licensor shall have the right to license the domain name to any other party as the Licensor desires. However, if the Licensor intends to transfer the domain name to another party, the Licensor must first offer the domain name to the Company for purchase. If the Company decides not to purchase the domain name, Licensor may then transfer the domain name to a third party.”

It would be interesting to know more details about what was transacted and what the value of NQ.com is/was at the time of the filings.  DNJournal reported  that NQ.com sold for $27,000 on Afternic in 2004.

Thanks to  George Kirikos  for the tip.