In light of what I wrote about the domain name market in 2025, I thought I would ask ChatGPT to evaluate the domain name space for last year and going forward into 2026. Here’s the prompt I used:
“Write a short article giving your opinion on the state of the domain name market and aftermarket for the last year, with an emphasis on how domain investors have been impacted. In addition, provide some commentary on how you think things will progress in 2026 for domain investors.”
2025 was a pretty good year for domain name sales. Namebio shows nearly $250 million in domain name sales closed last year, and that number will certainly jump when previously unreported domain name sales are publicized or discovered. NameBio took down the ability for me to search 2024 sales, but with just shy of $1 billion in sales over 5 years, it feels like it has been a pretty good year comparatively.
Going into the year, it seemed like we were primed for a sea change of AI-related advancements. I thought there would be improved tools related to domain name search and discovery that could help me find and evaluate domain names to buy. This did not come to fruition for the most part. Perhaps it’s my lack of prompting skills or maybe I just can’t see AI integrations in the tools I have always used, but I don’t think I am much better off with AI tools than I was a year ago.
It’s the end of the year, so I am spending a bit of time consolidating some of my domain names into my GoDaddy account, where I keep the majority of my domain names. For many of these domain names held at different registrars, a pending delete auction win prevents me from transferring for the first 60 days, and I tend to transfer these names in bulk at the end of the year.
I just transferred about 3 dozen names to GoDaddy. I like NameBright and Namecheap, but I feel like I have a better handle on them if I keep them in all in one primary account.
I don’t earn much PPC revenue, and I am selective about what domain names I park with PPC advertising. When changing parking service providers, it is important to optimize domain names that need keywords manually input to display proper advertising links.
I park some domain names because they have earned significant parking revenue. I have also parked some domain names more for defensive purposes. For example, a domain name could be considered to be infringing by some people, but with the proper PPC links for the descriptive term rather than a particular brand name, it shows the domain name was acquired because it is descriptive.
I was chatting with someone I’ve known for many years, and he started to tell me something in confidence about his business. He asked the standard, “can I tell you something that you can’t share with others?” I think my answer caught him off guard.
Instead of agreeing and listening to something that he doesn’t want to have shared, I told him not to tell me. As interested as I was (and still am) in what is happening with his business, I declined to hear the secret he wanted to share with me.
One of the more annoying aspects of domain investing is negotiating a deal, coming to an agreement, and the buyer flaking when it is time to pay. It can be disappointing and frustrating, but I do my best to forget those broken deals and put them in the past.
I’ve always set minimum offer amounts on my platform-listed domain names. I don’t want to deal with $100 offers for 4 and 5 figure domain names. I have heard great tales of brokers closing six figure deals that started with 3 figure offers, but I’ve never seen that.
