GoDaddy has been running a private auction featuring domain names from its NameFind portfolio. I have been following the auctions and bidding on a handful of domain names I like.
Yesterday, I won the auction for Molasses.com. As I shared on X, it was won, paid for, delivered, and a landing page was launched within a few hours. I want to share how I made that happen.
Yesterday afternoon, Atom.com released its updated automated domain name appraisal tool. The tool is free to use and offers some insight into its value – as best as an automated appraisal tool may be able to do that. The company published a blog post to set expectations for the tool and how it can be used.
I spent a bit of time inputting my better domain names into the appraisal tool to see how it appraises higher value domain names. Although some of the appraisals were a bit light, some of them were higher than I expected. Perhaps I should raise some of their asking prices in alignment with the appraisal!
In addition to numeric values, the appraisal tool also highlighted some of the factors that contributed to the appraisal. The extension, number of alternative extensions registered, and number of developed domain names matching the keyword were all referenced. In addition, the tool provides some AI-generated guidance about what types of businesses would be a good fit for the domain name and what industries could make sense.
Liquidity Group, a company that is billed “as a leading AI-driven direct lender operating a multibillion-dollar portfolio globally,” made a significant domain name upgrade. Liquidity Group acquired the Liquidity.com domain name. It had been using LiquidityGroup.com for its web presence. The company appears to use the shorter “Liquidity” in much of its branding.
In a press release announcing the domain name acquisition and transition to Liquidity.com, it was shared that the domain name had a seven figure price tag. Unfortunately, the exact price of the domain name was not shared by the company so we will not see it listed in the sale charts maintained by DNJournal or NameBio.
I keep most of my domain names registered at GoDaddy because I find it is easier to manage a portfolio at one registrar. Throughout the year as I acquire domain names at auction, my other registrar accounts grow. I have domain names at Network Solutions, Namecheap, Dynadot, NameBright, and probably a few other domain registrars.
Update: After publishing this article, I heard from Freelancer.com CEO Matt Barrie (Freelancer is the parent company of Escrow.com). Matt told me the information in the article is incorrect, and these countries were added to the “do not service” list in error.
Matt’s full statement to me is here:
“The article is erroneous – we do service those countries listed today.
We updated our compliance processes yesterday and moved a few countries to a higher risk category in the database, which seems to have auto-populated the website for our “do not service” list which is incorrect and we are getting corrected immediately.
To be clear, we continue to support China and Israel.
The only restriction that I am aware of in that list is that there is a total goods embargo BETWEEN the countries of Turkey and Israel currently.”
Escrow.com maintains a list of countries / regions from which it does not support payments. Buyers and sellers in these regions can not receive payments or disburse to bank accounts from these countries. In 2019, Escrow.com made some waves when it added Russia and the US state of Alabama to this list. Since then, the state of Alabama seems to have been removed from this list.
In its most recent update, Escrow.com added 18 countries/regions to its list of countries not supported by Escrow.com. The two countries that stood out the most to me are Israel and China. I know of many domain registrants who live in these two countries, and I also know there are many businesses in these two countries that acquire and use high value domain names.
I have spent more money on non-.com domain names this year than ever before. My perspective is that startups are using them as less expensive alternatives to .com domain names, and the number of companies operating on non-.com domain names continues to grow. This, in my view, has led to more aftermarket sales of non-.com domain names – and for higher prices. That’s why I have been spending more money to opportunistically acquire some non .coms in expiry auctions.
This morning, Atom.com CEO Darpan Munjal shared a couple of graphics detailing the sales distribution of non-.com TLDs on Atom.com from the last three years. Although he did not share actual data, the illustration shows what domain name extensions are the most popular sellers on Atom over the last few years:
