Performing due diligence is a critical task before buying a domain name in the aftermarket – both private acquisitions and even on auction purchases. With GDPR in force, doing the necessary due diligence is more difficult, and as time goes by, it will become even more challenging. One area of due diligence that should not be overlooked is related to the registrant’s email address.
One of the best domain investor acquisitions in the recent past that I can recall was just announced by Andrew Rosener via Twitter. His company, Media Options, acquired Clear.com. The deal was first spotted and reported on Twitter by Jamie Zoch:
Excited to announce that @MediaOptions has acquired its exact brand match .com #domain https://t.co/xYR12Bs4ZP for our new CLEAR Domain Acquisition Service. Lots more to come! #IsYourBrandClear https://t.co/dJU2TdrXFr
— Andrew Rosener (@andrewrosener) December 7, 2019
The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) is inviting its members and conference attendees to the annual ICA dinner during the NamesCon Global conference in Austin, Texas. The dinner will be hosted at MAX’s Wine Dive on Wednesday, January 29th at 7:30pm (Central), following the NamesCon opening reception. The event is being co-hosted with Braden Pollock, who previously hosted a large NamesCon dinner that merged with the annual ICA event.
While looking through my WIPO Domain Name Decisions email this morning, I saw something I do not recall seeing in a UDRP decision before. An Italian company called Advice Group S.P.A. filed a UDRP against the seemingly generic AdviceGroup.com. The domain registrant, who I believe is a domain investor, did not respond to the UDRP filing.
Elon Musk is currently on trial in Los Angeles where he is being sued for defamation. The Guardian published an article about the trial that briefly summarizes what the case is about:
“Those were the questions at the center of the billionaire’s second day of testimony in the defamation case brought by Vernon Unsworth, a British cave explorer, against the Tesla entrepreneur. Unsworth told the federal court in Los Angeles that Musk’s 15 July 2018 tweet calling him ‘pedo guy’ made him feel ‘humiliated, ashamed, dirty’.”
Over the last couple of years, I have been taking more flyers on domain names. I have been buying more names at GoDaddy Auctions in the < $100 range, and my portfolio has grown to around 1,000 domain names. I have found pretty good success in this channel as one sale can pay for almost everything. As the year is coming to an end, I have been cutting bait – letting domain names expire instead of renewing them.
When I receive the expiry notices at GoDaddy and Enom, I look at a few things before deciding whether or not to turn off auto renew or simply not renew:
