General Domain Information

I was on the Clubhouse domain investor chat organized by Jen Sale last Friday evening, and the topic of domain investing mistakes was brought up. I did not speak out in the Clubhouse room, but I want to share a domain investing mistake I have made many times and will continue to make in the future.

After selling a domain name to a buyer, I occasionally go out to look for similar domain names that I think could also be appealing to the buyer. By way of a hypothetical example, if I sold DomainInvesting.com, I might try to buy DomainInvestor.com or DomainInvestment.com in a private acquisition or future auction. Because of my past success selling the similar domain name, I tend to be more aggressive than normal in buying the subsequent domain name(s). After all, I have my own comparable sale to know the potential resale value.

At the end of January, Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation acquired the iconic Home.com domain name from Anything.com for an undisclosed amount of money. Shortly thereafter, the company launched an independent website on Home.com. It looks like Fairway was not satisfied with buying just one exceptional domain name.

Fairway also recently acquired its brand match Fairway.com domain name. If you visit Fairway.com, you are forwarded to the much longer FairwayIndependentMC.com, home of the Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation website. Whois records show that the domain name is now registered at GoDaddy under Whois privacy.

Verisign (NASDAQ ticker symbol: VRSN ) reported its Q4 2020 earnings after the closing bell this afternoon. In the press release announcing its earnings, the company also announced a price hike is coming for .com domain names. The current wholesale rate Verisign charges domain registrars is $7.85/year for .com domain names, and this price will increase to $8.39/year on September 1, 2021.

Here’s the relevant excerpt from the press release:

If you’ve been investing in domain names for any amount of time and did Whois lookups on some of the top domain names, I am sure you’ve come across Anything.com. The company owns top tier domain names like Kitchen.com, Marketing.com, Hip.com, and many other valuable domain names. I would have listed other domain names, like Home.com, but that domain name was recently sold.

Yesterday, I reported on the sale of Home.com to Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation. The domain name sale price was not shared by any of the parties, but I would be very surprised if it was not an 8 figure deal. In my opinion, Home.com is one of the top domain names possible, and Fairway has the potential to turn it into an iconic brand name.

Andrew Rosener tweeted about the sale and mentioned that he think it is one of the top three domain names. Someone replied to Andrew to ask what other domain names he thinks are in the top 3 (he said X.com and did not name the other name).

I thought I would give it a go and share what I think are 10 of the top possible domain names there are based solely on intrinsic value. Some of these domain names are actively used and developed, but I think they are top domain names without any of the additional goodwill and/or traffic. These are not listed in any particular order – just as I am thinking of them off the top of my head: