The Internet Commerce Association has revealed the nominees for the Lonnie Borck Memorial Award and the inaugural Trailblazer Award. Both of these awards will be given during the ICA annual meeting in Las Vegas in January. ICA members are now able to vote for the award winners using a rank choice voting system.
The nominees, who were each nominated by members of the domain investing community at large, include the following people and industry companies:
A startup called Aries introduced itself yesterday, and its brand matching Aries.com domain name is was what caught my attention:
Introducing https://t.co/g4JFITQbYE
The first ever open platform for traders, investors, and developers. pic.twitter.com/EBVJn2Ncnh
— Aries (@Aries) November 19, 2024
From what I can tell, it looks like Aries started out on the TradeAries.com domain name. The company appears to have raised more than $1 million in funding via StartEngine in a round that closed earlier this year.
Among other things, MarkMonitor is a corporate domain name brokerage. The company often represents and advises major corporations when they are in the market to acquire a specific domain name.
In addition to domain name acquisitions, MarkMonitor helps its clients sell valuable domain names that are no longer needed. MarkMonitor publishes a list of domain names it is currently brokering, and many of the domain names have buy it now prices listed. I am particularly fond of the one word .com domain names listed for sale. I check this list from time to time to see what domain names have come on the market and possibly identify domain names that were sold.
There are some exceptional domain names listed for sale via MarkMonitor. I think my favorites on the list are:
Yesterday morning, I noticed a handful of expiry auctions on GoDaddy Auctions that had a $1 opening bid. The typical starting bid for these types of auctions is $25, so that caught my attention. Most of the other auctions I visited yesterday had the standard $25 opening bid.
$1 expiry auctions at @godaddyauctions? pic.twitter.com/a90XMe1gbQ
— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) November 17, 2024
I reached out to GoDaddy to ask about this anomaly, and a company representative confirmed this is a test. He was unable to provide additional details about the test, so I don’t know how long we are going to see $1 opening bids. I was told GoDaddy does quite a bit of testing across many variables. For instance, the commas in prices and estimated values across different GoDaddy services were recently removed as a short-lived test.
The .IO ccTLD extension could possibly be “phased out” if sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago is moved to Mauritius. My feeling is that it is highly unlikely the .IO extension will be removed given the number of businesses using .IO domain names. There is still a chance it could happen, and businesses would be forced to change domain names and possibly rebrand if the extension is terminated.
With that potential risk in mind, I was curious to know if industry colleagues are broaching this topic with clients who are interested in buying .IO domain names. I reached out to a small group of people whose companies advise on domain name deals and broker the sale of valuable domain names to ask the following:
In July of 2022, I was told about a GoDaddy change that was made with the hope of successfully delivering more GoDaddy Auction wins to customers. I believe the policy change is that if a GoDaddy registered domain name isn’t renewed 3 days before an expiry auction, it is no longer allowed to be renewed. I don’t bid on enough domain names to comment accurately, but by and large, it seems like I receive fewer refunds for GoDaddy Auctions wins.
When I buy a domain name, I list it on an Excel spreadsheet. If the domain name is not delivered instantly, I put a yellow highlight on the cell so I can keep track of it. Today, I scrolled up and saw a domain name I won at auction on October 27th was not delivered to my GoDaddy account. I paid for the domain name on October 30th. Two weeks is a long time for provisioning.
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