General Domain Information

A couple of years ago, I moved many of my inventory-quality domain names off parked pages in favor of for sale landing pages. I would guess less than 10% of my domain names utilize pages with PPC links on them. I was looking at my revenue report and noticed several previously-sold domain names continue to earn revenue after being sold.

Almost one year ago to the day, I sold a domain name for $2,999 via Afternic. The buyer did not change the nameservers, and it is still parked with PPC links. In the last year, the domain name earned $33.96 in revenue.

I maintain a fairly small portfolio of domain names – fewer than 2,000 in total. Part of the reason for this is to keep my overhead costs low. Even with a relatively small domain name portfolio, it doesn’t make sense to carry domain names that I don’t think have a good chance of ever selling. Deciding what to let go is difficult.

For the most part, I don’t let many domain names expire. If something about a domain name caught my eye and I bought it, that luster usually continues to exist. I usually let a couple of handfuls of domain names expire each year because there’s almost no chance of them selling. For instance, earlier this year I let a domain name with the word “Famer” in it expire because I bought it thinking the word was Farmer – whoops.

I’ve always wondered what tools domain investors may have created to help them with their domain investing businesses. I think people who operate and manage large domain portfolios must use a variety of tools to effectively and efficiently manage their holdings. I wonder if any are already using artificial intelligence (AI) tools. I also wonder what role AI will play in domain investing in the future.

OpenAI is an artificial intelligence company that recently opened its ChatGPT chatbot to the public. Michael Cyger shared that he was checking out the tool to ask domain name related questions:

Playing around with OpenAI and asking domain name questions. pic.twitter.com/inKAXVuTRr

— Michael Cyger (@MichaelCyger) December 3, 2022

For the past few years, Swetha Yenugula has regularly and frequently shared her .XYZ domain name sales. The value of her sales coupled with the velocity of her sales has led to some skepticism about the veracity of her sales. A bit of skepticism about domain name sales is healthy. It can drive people to investigate reported sales to weed out bad actors who may be inclined to report fake sales. The feedback Swetha has received has gone well beyond a healthy skepticism, and it is unfortunate.

To date, I have not seen any evidence to refute any of Swetha’s reported domain name sales. In fact, over the last few days, Swetha’s sales have been confirmed by multiple third parties.

On Sunday, NameBio’s Michael Sumner published an article about Swetha’s sales on Afternic. Swetha provided Michael with her Afternic login and password to allow Michael to verify her sales on the platform. This must have felt invasive. Every one of Swetha’s sales were verified by Michael. In fact, after reviewing her records, Michael wrote, “Thus I now feel 100% confident in all her reports, not just the Afternic ones.”

In addition to selling 7 figures worth of domain names on Afternic year to date, Swetha has also done a substantial volume of business on Dan.com. On Twitter, Swetha requested that Dan.com Founder Reza Sardeha vouch for her sales. After all, Swetha was likely one of the top sellers on the platform. Reza did just that:

It’s Thanksgiving week in the US this week. On Thursday, Americans will celebrate the holiday, but the travel and related celebrations usually begin before. If you’re in the middle of a negotiation or sending emails to buyers or sellers, you’ll probably receive out of office email replies. Thanksgiving week is not usually a great week for getting business done.

In addition to Thanksgiving, the World Cup started yesterday. The USMNT is playing its first game today, and my television will be tuned in to the match. The second USMNT match is on Friday, which is also Black Friday. People around the world will be tuning in to World Cup matches this week, and work will be on the back burner.