In a blog post yesterday, WordPress announced its new “100-Year Plan.” The plan includes domain name registration, hosting, and support for 100 years. The cost is a staggering $38,000 for each plan.
WordPress created a video advertisement for this new service, and it’s clearly not targeting domain investors or domain name portfolio registrants:
I have several templates I have crafted to respond to purchase inquiries. These templates vary based on the type of domain name. For instance, inventory-quality domain names have a pretty standard response but higher value domain names are more custom tailored based on the domain name and my history with it.
I change up my templates from time to time to modify them as needed. When responding to purchase inquiries and having subsequent discussions about my domain names, there are many factors that play a role in how I respond to a purchase inquiry.
On September 1, 2023 – two weeks from now – the wholesale price of .com domain names is going to increase to $9.59/year. Verisign operates the .com registry, and the annual price is going to increase by 7%, according to a report about Verisign by Zacks Investment Research appearing on Yahoo Finance:
“The company plans to increase the annual registry-level wholesale fee for each new and renewal .com domain name registration from $8.97 to $9.59, with effect from Sep 1, 2023.”
If this sounds familiar, it is because Verisign increased the wholesale price of .com domain names a year ago.
I’ve tried to buy thousands of domain names from registrants who told me some variation of ‘the domain name is not for sale.’ That may be true at that point in time, but the status can change. It doesn’t hurt to follow-up every once in a while.
I recently spent some time looking through hundreds of old emails I sent trying to buy domain names. I followed up on some older leads to re-engage the owners. Perhaps circumstances had changed since our last discussion. I like to follow-up between 6 months and a year after an email exchange, when I see a domain name isn’t being used.
When someone inquires about buying a domain name listed for sale via Embrace.com, they will read my response and the accompanying email signature. You’ll notice a few things I think are important for an informative signature to include.
In addition to including a link to the website’s homepage, I include a link to my LinkedIn profile. This serves two purposes. For one thing, the prospective buyer can see that I am a real person with experience related to domain names. This might make them more comfortable doing business with my company. In addition, if they click through to my profile, I may be able to see more information about them, making me more comfortable.
Much has been said about Meta’s launch of its Threads app on the Threads.net domain name. For many years, much has also been said about the impact of not using a brand match .com domain name when launching a product or a service. SimilarWeb, a web analytics company, illustrates the .com effect using Threads as an example.
James Iles highlighted this report today:
