What Are You Doing About Leases and Payment Plans?

As things continue to develop, the unemployment rate will likely increase, making it difficult for people to pay critical bills like mortgage payments. While domain name lease payments and domain name payment plans are probably not considered “critical bills,” I think people will find deal partners asking to restructure payment plans or asking to put them on hold. People may also opt to forego lease payments or payment plan payments. I am interested in knowing how domain investors will respond.

The way I see it, domain investors who have ongoing leases or payment plans will have three options if the counter party can not pay on time or asks for some sort of lease forgiveness:

Rob Monster: “a worldwide bull run on domains has started”

In a Twitter thread started this morning, Epik CEO Rob Monster said, “I am increasingly certain that a worldwide bull run on domains has started. What is driving this?” I certainly hope Rob is onto something here because that would come as good news to domain investors, but that is not really what I have been seeing right now.

For the past few weeks, I would say that inquiries have been fairly steady, but most are lowball offers for high value domain names. This is not much of a difference from how things normally are, but there has been a bit of an absence of offers on the average inventory that makes up the bulk of my portfolio. My business regularly goes through ups and downs, so I am accustomed to going for a bit of time without substantial deals, but I am not really identifying this as the start of a bull market. Of course, my portfolio is relatively small, so I may not have as good of a view of the market as others.

Here’s the tweet thread from Rob. I would also welcome your observations and thoughts about the current state of the domain name aftermarket:

COVID19.com Forwarding to World Health Organization Website

Domain investors often get a bad rap during various emergencies and tragedies. Sometimes the criticism is warranted when speculation on tragedy-related domain names is distasteful to many. There are always going to be journalists who look at speculative domain registrations as a way to show examples of people attempting to profit from domain names. Even when domain speculation is not done by domain investors, these types of articles portray the business of domain investing in a poor light.

When it comes to the COVID 19 coronavirus outbreak, this is no different. There have been quite a few articles written about related domain names, with a particular focus on scams and schemes involving domain names that are associated with the ongoing, worldwide pandemic.

Escrow.com Report: “Fake Websites Selling Coronavirus Masks Are Scamming Organizations out of Millions”

Escrow.com sent me a research report (.pdf) the company compiled discussing a growing problem involving businesses purportedly selling masks and other supplies to people concerned about the coronavirus outbreak. Various law enforcement agencies and legal teams have also been working to reduce or eliminate these types of scams. For instance, the New York Attorney General sent a letter to GoDaddy to determine how the largest domain registrar in the world is working to protect people from being scammed.

Here’s what the Escrow.com report focuses on:

Disney Hiring Technical Project Specialist, Domain Names

In August of 2019, I wrote about a job opportunity involving domain names at Disney. Yesterday, Disney posted another job opening on LinkedIn that has a focus on domain name management at the company. Disney is looking to hire a Technical Project Specialist, Domain Names. This Mid-Senior level position is based out of Disney’s Burbank, California headquarters, although I don’t know if the company would hire a remote employee given today’s social distancing circumstances.

Here’s the description of what this job opportunity entails:

After Packet.com Acquisition, Packet Acquired for $335 Million

One of the comparable sales I use when someone inquiries about select one word .com domain names in my portfolio (like Docket.com) is the $350,000 sale of Packet.com. Braden Pollock sold the domain name in 2018 in an all-cash deal. Packet acquired the domain name right around the time the company secured a $25 million Series B round of funding. The company had previously raised a $9.4 million Series A round of funding.

Yesterday afternoon, Crunchbase news reported that Packet was acquired by a company called Equinix: