General Domain Information

I’ve been a big fan of lease to own deals for quite some time. Before Dan.com existed, I had several LTO deals, but they required quite a bit of legal review and discussion with the counterparties. Dan.com made the LTO process quicker and easier, although I believe the seller takes on more risk without a customized purchase agreement. Afternic has continued Dan’s efforts, allowing for quick and easy LTO transactions.

I have LTO enabled for most of my inventory quality domain names listed for sale on Afternic. The LTO length varies based on a few important factors that I want to share below.

Andrew Miller has been sharing a regular post on LinkedIn each week called Random Sunday Thoughts. In each Sunday morning edition, Andrew has shared a mix of insights and news. There is a heavy focus on the domain industry and his Hilco Digital Assets business in particular.

Typically, I would see Andrew share a link on X to his LinkedIn post, but I likely missed a few when I wasn’t online Sunday mornings. Recently, Andrew converted Random Sunday Thoughts into a (free) LinkedIn newsletter subscription, making it easier to access the series. It also appears that he shares even more insights within the subscription posts. Andrew shared his third subscription post this morning.

I don’t have many LinkedIn subscriptions, but I just subscribed to Andrew’s RSL series because I appreciate reading his domain industry insights. Now, it’s easier to read them when I can.

Spaceship CEO Richard Kirkendall recently announced the company’s domain name sales platform would soon open to beta testers. With his post, Richard also offered a sneak peak at the back-end control panel for the platform, and a look at the domain names that had leads allowed people to get a look at the landing pages.

This morning, Richard announced the Spaceship Seller Hub would open for beta testers next Tuesday (April 15):

Artificial intelligence is already having a modest impact on how I run my business. Unlike quite a few colleagues who have been ringing the register because of AI-related domain names, I don’t have many AI or .AI domain names in my portfolio.

I have been using AI to help with a variety of tasks related to my business. For the most part, I am using Chat.com and Grok. Occasionally, if I want more suggestions or am running into issues, I will use Claude from Perplexity. I am open to trying others though.

Here are some of the ways I use AI for my business:

National Retail Federation owns the https://t.co/DKU1Llpkla domain name. It was registered October 31, 2024. pic.twitter.com/KtC1ILazt1

— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) April 2, 2025

The National Retail Federation (NRF) registered TrumpTariffTax.com at CSC in October of 2024. Shortly thereafter, the trade organization issued a press release highlighting the potential costs of tariffs that, at the time, had been discussed by US President Donald Trump.

The first quarter of the year came to an end yesterday. All in all, the domain aftermarket seems pretty strong from my perspective. I had a solid Q1, recording multiple sales at Afternic, Sedo, Atom.com, and privately. Included in this is four new Lease to Own deals – three via Afternic and one via Atom.

Compared to Q1 of 2024, I had a substantially higher volume of sales. In fact, I sold nearly 3x the total number of domain names in Q1 2024 vs Q1 2025. Notably, just one of these sales was outbound, so it’s not like I was priming the pump to induce a greater number of sales. I am not going to share the largest sale price, but the smallest was $997 (I had a few of those).