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Not Chasing the Longtail of .AI

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The aftermarket for .AI domain names has grown tremendously over the last several years. A look at Namebio shows the growing annual dollar volume of sales that were publicly reported in the aftermarket.

  • 2018: $420.8k
  • 2019: $1.1m
  • 2020: $1.1m
  • 2021: $1.2m
  • 2022: $878.7k
  • 2023: $5.6m
  • 2024: $11.7m
  • 2025 YTD: $3.2m (my guess is $20m+ for the year)

These aftermarket sales figures do not take into account the number of domain names that have been hand registered by buyers for the registration fee. The .AI registry requires a 2 year registration, and the cost is approaching $100/year. By all accounts, the number of .AI registrations is also growing at a considerable rate.

Namecheap CEO Highlights Success of .AI Expiry Auctions

Namecheap was recently named expiry auction partner for .AI domain names. The first batch of expired .AI auctions concluded last week, and hundreds of .AI domain names were sold. Namebio shows 695 .AI sales on Namecheap worth nearly $800,000 in the last month, although I can’t filter down to specifically include the expiry auctions.

One of the things people noticed was the number of seemingly new bidders who participated in the auctions. The Namecheap Market platform has a pop-up indicating the activity level of each bidder. Visitors can hover over the badge next to each bidder nickname, and a popup highlights the bidder’s activity, along with their join date.

A general concern some people may have is that new bidders could be more likely to be non-paying bidders. Obviously, bidders who can’t/won’t pay could unfairly increase the final price for other participants. Whether these bidders would theoretically join to cause problems or simply have payment processing issues on the platform, non-paying bidders can increase the cost of domain names for genuine bidders.

How Chat.com Helped Me Make ~$800

I have a $20/month paid account at OpenAi. I primarily use it to access ChatGPT – and I always use Chat.com to navigate to the website. One of the ways I use the platform is to generate keyword lists that I use to search for and register domain names.

Oftentimes, these keyword lists revolve around a specific topic, and I will append the lists to a different keyword. For instance, and this is just a made up example based on a current “hot” trend, I might ask Chat.com to generate a list of 100 popular scientific keywords that an 8th grader would know and then append AI.com to the end. I always give an example, such as MeteorAI.com in this case, so the tool can understand exactly what I am seeking.

Todd Han Shares Dynadot Growth Chart

Dynadot is a domain registrar that is a preferred choice for numerous domain investors. I have been using Dynadot’s aftermarket and now have nearly three dozen non-.com domain names registered there. The Dynadot registrar platform is very fast, and it offers investor-focused features in an easy to use user interface. The registrar is now home to a reported 6 million domain names, and the company employs 150 people.

Todd Han, CEO of Dynadot, shared a chart showing the growth of the company since its founding in 2002:

Atom.com Early Payoff Option

One of the unique features at Atom.com is the ability to offer an early payoff option to Lease to Own (LTO) buyers. You can offer a discount that amounts to up to 15% of the remaining balance. The buyer can choose to accept the offer and pay this amount to get control of the domain name earlier.

Sellers have one opportunity to offer the early payoff discount to LTO buyers. The seller can choose the dollar amount discount to offer rather than a percentage of the balance. The buyer will then have the opportunity to accept the offer and pay off the balance owed minus to discount or continue to pay the monthly payment as agreed.

Don’t “Call domain broker”

When a user searches for a domain name at GoDaddy, and it is not listed for sale via its network, the Domain Broker Service offering is shown. To utilize DBS, a customer pays north of $100 and an additional 20% fee if a deal is reached.

If a customer pays to utilize a GoDaddy DBS broker, the broker will connect directly with the prospect to understand the budget and discuss the acquisition. It is during this initial conversation, I believe, the broker understands if the buyer intended to make an offer or if the DBS purchase was in error, believing the domain name could be bought for that amount. Assuming the buyer genuinely wants to use the DBS, the buyer and broker discuss budget and offer before connecting with the domain registrant.

While these discussions do not include the domain registrant, GoDaddy customers do have a dashboard where they can see their domain names that are subject to a DBS lead. DBS.GoDaddy.com will take GoDaddy customers to a dashboard with their DBS purchase inquiries as well as purchase inquiries that were made for their registered domain names.

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