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Poll: How was your Q1?

The first quarter of the year came to an end yesterday. All in all, the domain aftermarket seems pretty strong from my perspective. I had a solid Q1, recording multiple sales at Afternic, Sedo, Atom.com, and privately. Included in this is four new Lease to Own deals – three via Afternic and one via Atom.

Compared to Q1 of 2024, I had a substantially higher volume of sales. In fact, I sold nearly 3x the total number of domain names in Q1 2024 vs Q1 2025. Notably, just one of these sales was outbound, so it’s not like I was priming the pump to induce a greater number of sales. I am not going to share the largest sale price, but the smallest was $997 (I had a few of those).

GoDaddy Rings Opening Bell at NYSE

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GoDaddy executives range the opening bell this morning at the New York Stock Exchange. The honor was given to GoDaddy to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of GoDaddy becoming a publicly traded company. At the center of the GoDaddy team is Aman Bhutani, CEO of GoDaddy for the last 5+ years.

Afternic Should Better Explain Broker Communication Process

My Afternic Lead Center is full of Stalled, Qualifying, Confused, and Unknown leads. As a domain investor, this is pretty confusing and slightly frustrating. I don’t blame Afternic brokers for this because I have become familiar with how their platform works, but I do think Afternic and GoDaddy should better educate its sellers on the brokerage process.

When a prospective buyer submits an offer or inquiry, I am pretty certain they quickly receive an automated email with information about the domain name and a broker contact. The Afternic broker will follow up various times via email and a phone call if they have the correct phone number. Afternic brokers earn a living on commissions, so they have a vested interest in selling domain names.

Atom.com Begin Adding “Domain Talk” to Domain Names

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I have a bit more than 100 domain names listed for sale on Atom.com, and a handful are listed on its Ultra Premium Marketplace (UPM). This afternoon, I received an email from Atom informing me that “Domain Talk” was added to Tangy.com, which is one of my UPM-listed domain names.

According to the email I received, Domain Talk is “a quick, spoken take on what makes the name great.” The Domain Talk graphic and play button are located below the fold on the landing page. I presume the Domain Talk feature is different for each domain name, but I only have it on one of my domain names so far.

Namecheap Adjusts Auction End Times and Closeout Process

Namecheap notified its Namecheap Market customers of an adjustment to the end times for auctions and a simplified process for its closeouts.

Domain name auctions will all end at the same time each day. The time is 11am Eastern Time and the equivalent times throughout the world. You can do the math to understand when auctions will close in your timezone. Auctions will still be extended by 5 minutes each time a bid is placed in the final five minutes of an auction.

Closeout auctions will also have a small change. If a closeout domain auction ends without any bids, the auction will automatically extend for an additional 24 hours with a minimum bid of $5. .AI domain names – which are marked “Partner” on the auction pages, are not considered closeouts, so this will not be applicable to those domain names.

The content of the email is below for those who did not receive it but are interested in understanding:

Pressure? Frank Schilling is a Top iPhone (and X) Gif

Over the weekend, I was texting some friends about buying tickets for a concert this Summer. One of our friends was suffering from a bit of analysis paralysis as he debated whether to choose tickets that were closer to the stage but towards the side or tickets in the center but a bit further back. I searched for an iMessage gif for the term “pressure” and quickly sent him the first one I found.

It was after I sent the image that I recognized the person in the gif. It wasn’t a famous athlete or actor. In fact, I would imagine most people who see that gif wouldn’t know who the person is at all. It was Frank Schilling.

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