This morning, I noticed that Prime.com had transferred domain registrars. The domain name moved from Fabulous to the corporate brand protection company, MarkMonitor. Prime.com remained under Whois privacy and the domain name did not resolve to any website at the time I published my article about the transfer.

A short time ago, I took a look at Prime.com, and I was forwarded to an Amazon Prime page within Amazon’s website. A Whois search at DomainTools confirmed that Amazon is the new registrant of Prime.com:

The acquisition of Prime.com was a very smart move for Amazon. For the past several years, Amazon has been promoting its Prime brand quite heavily. As a Prime member, our Amazon boxes come delivered with Amazon Prime promoted on the tape and packaging. Amazon has built

In what might be a sign of a sale, the valuable Prime.com domain name has transferred to MarkMonitor, Inc., according to Whois records at DomainTools. Prime.com is now registered to DNStination Inc., the privacy proxy service operated by the corporate domain registrar. At the time of publication, Prime.com does not resolve to any website.

For many years, Prime.com had been registered under privacy at Fabulous. According to Screenshots.com, Prime.com had been used in a variety of ways over the years. The most recent entry (from 2016) shows that Prime.com was used for pay per click advertising. I am not sure how it had been used in the last year since the most recent screenshot was captured.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t write about a domain transfer like this, but because

I love waking up to the peaceful sound of ocean waves breaking on the beach while the sun streams in through the sheer curtain panels covering the windows. At some point down the road, we will probably buy a beach house in Nantucket. When that time comes, I will almost certainly have to work with a real estate agent to find the perfect house or piece of land that fits our needs and budget.

It would be so much easier if we could just visit town hall, select an undeveloped oceanfront lot, fill out a bit of paperwork, cut a very small check to cover the registration fee, and register our property with the recorder of deeds. This is obviously not possible because pretty much every piece of oceanfront real estate is owned by someone or not available for sale. If someone wants desirable real estate to build a home or business, they will need to need to buy it from the owner and pay whatever the market rate is. This is the case whether the piece of real estate has a structure on it or is totally undeveloped.

When it comes to domain names, the same thing holds true. Just about every desirable domain name is owned by an individual or entity. Some domain names have businesses operating on them, some are used for personal websites, and others are not developed (or underdeveloped). If a person wants to buy this valuable domain name, they need to work with the owner to come up with a fair sale price based on the market value. For example, the market has established that

Apparently Kanye West and Kim Kardashian had a baby that they named Chicago West. As one might imagine, a domain name like that was long registered before the young West was born. In fact, ChicagoWest.com was registered back in March of 2015.

Since 2015, the domain name had been owned by HugeDomains.com. A Screenshots.com entry shows the domain name was for sale and it had a price of $2,095.

As of very recently, the domain name is now registered under privacy at GoDaddy. If you visit ChicagoWest.com, the domain name resolves to a generic GoDaddy landing page. This makes it unclear who bought the domain name – or even how much was paid. One thing seems clear though: someone bought ChicagoWest.com as HugeDomains.com says the domain name was sold:

I think the biggest criticism that domain industry bloggers hear / read is that the same information is posted on multiple websites. If .Club or Sedo issues a press release or contacts writers directly with something newsworthy, it is highly likely that several writers will publish an article. These similar articles (sometimes with the same headlines even) all show up consecutively on Domaining.com, and it gets people irritated for some reason. I am sure the same can be said about other, non-domain business publications that cover the same industry or field.

Most domain name writers/bloggers work independently. There are a couple of people who write for multiple websites, but for the most part, we each have our own website where we write. I can’t speak for others, but I hardly ever chat with other people who also operate blogs / news websites in the domain space. Put simply, when I receive a bit of news or I find something interesting to write about, I don’t ask anyone else if they are also writing about a specific topic.

For me to write an article, I need to either think