Domain Name Pricing: Is It Ethical?

Elliot Silver
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9

Someone posed an interesting question to me, which I thought I would pose to readers. Is it ethical to price a domain name based on who is inquiring about purchasing a domain name rather than based on the factors associated with the particular domain name?

Essentially, the person was questioning whether it was ethical to give one person a price of $250,000 for a particular domain name and a price of $25,000 to someone else when the domain owner is able to ascertain that the first person is a marketing executive at a Fortune 500 company and the second person is a small business owner.

I try to be consistent when pricing my own domain names. The prices I quote tend to be expensive, but that is due to the inherent nature of domain names being one of a kind Internet real estate

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Using the DomainTools Brand Monitor Tool

Elliot Silver
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8

One of the tools at DomainTools I have underutilized over the years is their Brand Monitor tool. This tool allows users to see what domain names are registered in various keywords they select. I recently started using this tool, and I want to share how I am using it.

I selected the keyword for one of my favorite domain names. Each morning, I receive an email from DomainTools that has a list of the newly created domain names that contain the selected keyword. I could also choose to have the deleted domain names sent to me as well, but that isn’t really necessary for my purposes.

The daily Brand Monitor email I receive is helpful for two reasons. First, it shows me the domain names that are registered that contain the keyword I am monitoring. This can help me stay aware of what new brands might be launching that use my keyword who may want to upgrade in the future. Second, I can do a Whois search on the registrations to see what companies are buying domain names with the keyword. This is helpful on names that get many inquiries because I can do more due diligence before replying. If monitoring a long keyword or multiple keyword term, it might produce a good list of

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Pillow.com Not Sold… Yet (Updated)

Elliot Silver
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4

Pillow.com is a valuable domain name. Not only is a pillow a product, but the Pillow.com domain name could be utilized as an unrelated brand name. Pillow.com is what some people would consider a “brandable” domain name.

For many years, Pillow.com has been owned by a pillow company called Pillow Menu, LLC. Smartly, the company also owns the plural Pillows.com domain name. In fact, Morgan Linton wrote an article on Medium about an interview Craig Clark (the company’s owner) did to discuss the company’s domain name strategy. You should read the interview when you have an opportunity.

Last week, TechCrunch published an article about a rental management startup called Pillow that recently raised $13.5 million in funding. CrunchBase says the startup has now raised a total of $16.15 million in funding. I was curious to see what domain name the company is using, and I saw that the startup can now be found at Pillow.com. The domain name they had been using, PillowHomes.com, now forwards to Pillow.com.

I reached out to Craig Clark

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Domain Industry Featured on BBC The One Show

Elliot Silver
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A television talk show hosted on the BBC called The One Show just had a segment about domain investing and domain name investors. The program is hosted year-round on weekdays, and it covers a wide variety of topics. Former American talk show host Jerry Springer was one of the hosts on the show.

Several domain investors and brokers were featured on this episode of The One Show, including Graham Haynes (buyer of Furniture.co.uk for $650,000), Aron Meystedt (Heritage Auctions and owner of Symbolics.com), Simon Witts, Mohammed Kahn (from Uniregistry) and Jeff Gabriel (from Uniregistry – incorrectly identified as Alan Schwartz). The show offers a brief overview about the business of domain name investing and domain name sales.

Someone posted the video on YouTube, which I embedded below.

The Dumbest Response to a Domain Name Inquiry

Elliot Silver
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33

I have to share what I think is the dumbest response to a domain name inquiry that I have seen in a very long time. I asked about the price of a domain name that had a “for sale” message on its landing page, and here is the response I received:

“If you have to ask then you can’t afford it.”

Let that sink in for a second. I simply asked the domain owner for the price of his domain name, and this is the answer he gave me.

I think this is a pretty dumb response. First off, how is anyone going to know whether or not they can afford a domain name without the price? How else is someone suppose to get the price of the domain name without asking what the owner wants for it?

A buyer may be able to afford to pay 6 or 7 figures for a domain name, but being willing to pay that much depends on the purpose of the acquisition. Having the ability to pay a price for a domain name has little to do with whether they value the domain name at that price.

I can’t imagine going into my local

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ABC News Defamation Trial Domains Registered

Elliot Silver
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1

I noticed a couple of interesting domain name registrations: ABCNewsDefamationTrial.com and ABCNewsDefamationTrial.org were registered over the past couple of days. The domain names are registered under proxy registration with the domain names registered to DNStination Inc., a brand protection business. In May of this year, ABCNewsDefamation.com and ABCNewsDefamation.net were also registered. There may be other domain registrations that I did not see.

When I saw the most recent two domain name registrations, I did a Google search to see if I could see why these domain names may have been registered. According to an article appearing on Fortune.com, ABC News is involved in a lawsuit over a report the news organization ran about “pink slime.” The defamation trial in this $5.9 billion lawsuit begins today. It seems like an interesting case and possibly one that will be widely followed given the hot topic of “fake news.”

It does not appear that

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