It is going to get a little bit more expensive to register .com domain names later on this year. In a press release sharing Verisign’s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 results, the company that operates the .com domain registry announced a 7% price increase in September. As you may recall, the wholesale price of .com registrations was increased in September of last year.

Here’s what Verisign shared about the upcoming wholesale price increase:

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Stephen Colbert hosted Martha Stewart on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. During the segment, Stephen asked Martha how she was able to secure Martha.com. Skip to the 5:30 minute mark to hear Martha Stewart talk about her domain names:

On Monday afternoon, I won the auction for Buena.com. I sent my $24k+ wire transfer yesterday, and it was processed by NameJet. A few hours later, I received the standard Provisioning Complete email from NameJet. The domain registrar listed in the email caught my attention: Gunga Galunga Corporation.

If you have seen Caddyshack, “gunga galunga” may sound familiar to you. Here’s a clip from the movie to remind you:

This morning, I received an email from Dan.com announcing a required update to my payment settings: “Action required! Update your payout settings | Dan.com” The email was sent to customers to notify them that Payoneer will be handling the company’s bank payouts. A second email that followed clarified that an update is not required for customers who do not wish to work with Payoneer.

I reached out to Dan CEO Reza Sardeha, and he told me there are two reasons for why Dan implemented Payoneer as an additional payment option:

1: To decrease the time funds require to land in your bank account as Dan sends international wires while Payoneer sends local wires

2: Eliminate intermediary bank fees

I am not very familiar with Payoneer, but you may recall Payoneer once (briefly) offered an escrow service for domain name sales. Customers who receive payouts to their banks can choose to connect an existing Payoneer account or create a new Payoneer account via their onboarding program if they want to take advantage of the new partnership.

The subsequent email clarified that customers who want to continue to be paid via bank wire the way they have been paid may opt to not update anything. Since I have not worked with Payoneer before, with the exception of their escrow service several years ago, I intend to keep the status quo for my bank wire payout information. If I learn of an advantage to using Payoneer, I may change my mind.

Here’s the initial email announcement from Dan.com:

When I think about companies that might advocate for domain name investing, Verizon is not one of the first few dozen that would pop into my head. In fact, Verizon has been fairly aggressive towards cybersquatters over the years. Obviously domain investing and cybersquatting are not one and the same, but I do think there is a fair amount of overlap, particularly with newer domain investors who don’t really know the laws about cybersquatting.

This morning, I was doing a bit of research on Google related to domain investing and the companies who are advertising, and I came across an article on Verizon’s website about domain investing: It’s Not Too Late To Start Domain Investing. To say that I was surprised there is an article about domain investing on Verizon’s website would be an understatement.

In May of last year, I wrote about the possibility of fractional domain name ownership coming to Rally, a venture backed platform that allows users to purchase shares in various types of collectible assets. Yesterday on Domain Name Wire, Andrew Allemann reported that Rally has added domain names as an asset class to its platform. Fractional ownership shares of Directions.com will be for sale within the next couple of hours and other domain names appear destined to follow.

From what I understand, Andrew Rosener of Media Options has played a pivotal role in getting domain names added to Rally. This morning in a series of tweets, Rosener commented about why he became involved in the project and the value he expects it to bring to the domain name aftermarket: