How Automated Appraisals Help Me Make Money

Elliot Silver
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13

Every morning, I receive several emails that list expiry-stream domain names coming up for auction that day. I receive a mix of emails from auction platforms and third-party services. The emails send me domain names that meet certain criteria I have set to help me find domain names I might otherwise miss.

Off the top of my head, at least two of these daily emails have automated appraisals in them. These appraisals are one of the factors I look at when buying domain names. I don’t take the number too seriously, but if an appraisal is higher than I might have expected to see, it grabs my attention and makes me do a bit of searching to see what signals are causing it to have more value.

I regularly participate in auctions, and I don’t typically let

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GoDaddy Auctions Login Issue

Elliot Silver
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12

For the last week or so, I have been having an issue logging in to my GoDaddy account from the GoDaddy Auctions page. I reported the issue to GoDaddy, but from what I can glean, the issue is not impacting many people – or at least not many people have reported. I am sharing this to see how many other people are also impacted by this.

When I attempt to log in to my account by clicking the “Log In” button on the GoDaddy Auctions homepage, the username and password login screen pops up. After entering this information, I immediately receive my 2 Factor Authentication code. This is where the issue begins. Instead of seeing the screen to enter my 2FA code, the GoDaddy Auctions homepage refreshes and I can’t login to my account. When I click the “Log In” button again, the process repeats.

The reason this has not been a big issue is that I can

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Legally Co Files UDRP Against Legally.com (Updated)

Elliot Silver
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25

A company called Legally Co filed a UDRP against Legally.com, a one word .com domain name. The UDRP was filed at the World Intellectual Property Organization, and it is WIPO Case D2018-1958.

Legally.com is a domain name owned by GoDaddy’s NameFind portfolio company. From what I can see, this dictionary word .com domain name appears to have a (reasonable) buy it now price of $24,999. Using DomainTools’ Whois history tool, it appears that Legally.com was acquired when the company purchased a large group of domain names from Tucows’ YummyNames portfolio. Legally.com has an original registration date of July 1997, making it over 20 years old.

The complainant in the case appears to be the company operating on the Legally.CO domain name. Assuming this is the company that filed the UDRP, LinkedIn lists its founding date as 2015. There are quite a few companies that are branded “Legally” or that have the “Legally” keyword in them, so it could conceivably be another company with the same name. In fact, a DomainTools search shows thousands of domain names registered with the “legally” keyword in them.

In order to prevail in a UDRP, a complainant will need to prove the domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith. Considering that GoDaddy

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NameFind Premiums Forwarding to Afternic Inquiry Form

Elliot Silver
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13

Every once in a while, I check out the landing pages for various high value domain names owned by GoDaddy via its NameFind portfolio company. Because GoDaddy has one of the largest domain name portfolios and probably sells more aftermarket domain names than anyone else, I visit their landing pages to see if I can learn anything valuable to help me sell my domain names.

In June of last year, I noticed quite a few of their valuable one word .com domain names had a different domain for sale landing page. The company appeared to take many of them off of a parking PPC landing page and used a different style of landing page to make it clear that the domain name was for sale.

This morning, I noticed the landing page for some of the premium names changed again. The company is no longer using the landing page that had been used before, but is now forward the domain names to what I believe is the longstanding Afternic inquiry form:

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Dispute.com Auction Winner Defaults

Elliot Silver
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44

Dispute.com sold at GoDaddy Auctions last week for $65,000. I learned that the winning bidder in this auction defaulted, and this news was confirmed to me by Paul Nicks, GM of the GoDaddy Aftermarket.

The way GoDaddy’s system works on default winning bids is that the next highest bidder would get the opportunity to buy the domain name for the next high bid as if the winning bidder did not participate. If that buyer opts to not purchase the domain name, the opportunity would go to the next high bidder. This continues until a bidder accepts the price and purchases the domain name.

The domain name was sold to the sixth highest bidder in the auction. Although GoDaddy does not disclose sale prices, the company made an exception in this case, and I was told the domain name

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GoDaddy to Host Meetup at Cambridge HQ on 9/12

Elliot Silver
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17

GoDaddy will be hosting a meetup for domain investors and customers at its Cambridge, Massachusetts headquarters. The meetup will be held on Wednesday, September 12th from 5pm – 8pm. Cambridge is a short drive or T ride (Kendall Square) from Boston. The GoDaddy office is located at 1 Main Street in Cambridge, at the end of the Longfellow Bridge.

There will be free food and drinks for people who come. There is no cost to attend the event. This is a good opportunity to meet some of the people who work on the Afternic side of the business selling domain names on behalf of investors.

Joe Styler, who is helping to organize the event, told me they

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