My First and Last Buys of 2018

Elliot Silver
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Last year, I bought around 200 domain names in the aftermarket. This includes auction purchases as well as private acquisitions. This is about 10% more domain names than I bought in 2017, although the spend was down because there were a couple of outliers in 2017. I think I hand registered more domain names than usual last year, although I don’t know how many I registered.

The first domain name I bought in 2018 was InternetLiberty.com. I bought that domain name at NameJet and the total paid was $169.13 including the fees. I still own the domain name and don’t think I received any serious inquiries during the year. I think it could be used by an ISP or possibly even a campaign related to net neutrality or something along those lines.

The final domain name purchase of the year was AlternativeSpin.com. I bought that domain name at GoDaddy Auctions for $12 plus the renewal fee for one year – so a little more than $20. I do not have the domain name in my GoDaddy account yet. I think this would be a neat political news brand name.

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Brent Oxley Announces Plans for New Hosting Company

Elliot Silver
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8

Over the weekend, I wrote about Brent Oxley listing a portfolio of one word .com domain names in the NamesCon auction on NameJet. Perhaps, even bigger news can be found in a comment that Brent posted in response to another reader’s comment about the Create.com domain name:

“The reason I have create.com listed at $3mm is that I plan on turning this into my new hosting company I hope to launch within a year. At the time of selling hostgator we hosted more domains than godaddy and had I not sold I’m confident hostgator would be larger than them today and I’d have billions of dollars to fund my charity give.com I’d like to start.

A day doesn’t seem to go by without an old customer reaching out to share all the issues they’re having at HG. When I was shopping hostgator all interested parties always asked what the secret sauce was and when I told them customer service and uptime they’d hate my answer. The reason is because they all thought they could make millions more by outsourcing to India and that the customers woudln’t notice.

I’ll be coming back with a vengance and this time I won’t be a selllout!”

As you likely know, Brent was the founder of HostGator, one of the largest web hosting companies in the world. Brent sold HostGator to Endurance International Group (EIG) for a reported $225 million in 2012. It would be quite interesting if Brent got back into the hosting business. I am sure much has changed in that space since 2012.

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Tracking a Domain Name Owner Can be Exhausting

Elliot Silver
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Brokering domain names involves more than simply emailing prospective buyers or sellers and acting as a go-between for a domain owner and a prospect. Sometimes, it can take a considerable effort for a domain broker to even reach a counterparty to begin discussing a domain name.

Alan Dunn, founder of NameCorp and someone who has been involved in the domain investment business for many years, recently detailed an exhaustive effort it took just to make a domain name inquiry on behalf of his client:

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Updated List of Domain Industry Newsletters

Elliot Silver
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A long time ago, I put together an article to share some of the domain industry newsletters I receive. That list is totally outdated and not really all that useful.

In a comment posted in response to yesterday’s daily poll asking how many readers sign up for newsletters, Daniel asked if there is a list of newsletters he and others could review. Since I don’t know of any up to date list, I decided to put one together based on my own inbox. This is a bit of a work in progres, as I intend to add more as I think of them. Readers are also invited to share the newsletters they receive if I missed any (which I am sure I did). My apologies to anyone I missed.

Almost all of these newsletters are free, and nearly all are available to the public. Some are delivered daily, and most seem to be delivered at least weekly or monthly.

Domain industry newsletters:

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Bob Casey For President? Democratic Senator’s Domain Name Registered to GOP

Elliot Silver
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Bob Casey is a United States Senator from Pennsylvania, and he is a member of the Democratic Party. There has been some speculation that Senator Casey could potentially become a candidate for US President in the 2020 election. Here’s an excerpt from an article on Philly.com discussing the possibility: “In case you missed it — which you easily could have, with the Thanksgiving holiday and attendant travel, eating, drinking and such — Bob Casey says he might run for president.”

With speculation growing about Senator Casey’s potential Presidential run, it looks like the BobCaseyForPresident.com domain name was just registered on November 27. Interestingly, it doesn’t appear to have been registered by Mr. Casey, a supporter of his candidacy, or even a domain name speculator.

According to Whois records at GoDaddy, it appears that someone associated with the Pennsylvania Republican Party registered BobCaseyForPresident.com. The registrant email address for the domain name

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Here’s My .com Belt

Elliot Silver
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At the end of the Summer, I decided to buy a needlepoint belt. I didn’t want something standard – like tennis racquets, wine glasses, fraternity letters, or something along those lines. I thought it would be neat to have a .com needlepoint belt since domain names are my life beyond my family, and .com domain names are where I’ve made my living.

After doing a bit of research to find a custom needlepoint belt maker via Google and Etsy, I found NeedlePainters. I worked with NeedlePainters to design a custom needlepoint belt using the blue and green color scheme from DomainInvesting.com. I requested a chevron pattern with .com overlaid. The team at NeedlePainters helped me design the belt to my specifications.

The belt arrived in the mail on Saturday, and it was exactly what I envisioned. I am not a big “endorsement” person, but I thought the communication from NeedlePainters was great, and they worked closely with me to design the exact belt I wanted. The finished product turned out great:

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