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One Month to Go

My wife and I did some traveling and enjoyed the 4th of July holiday weekend with friends. My wife is an incredible runner, and we did a short run together on Friday followed by a longer individual run on Saturday. I can’t hang at her 8 minute/mile pace for 10 miles – nor would I run 10 miles in the humidity.

On Sunday, we were back home and did a 30+ mile bike ride together. It wasn’t super fast, but the purpose of these rides is to get my legs into shape to be able to ride 162 miles over two days in a month from now. The Pan-Mass Challenge is coming up August 3-4.

Quality is Remembered – the Price isn’t

I was driving through town the other day when I saw a landscaping truck with a perceptive quote on the back: “Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.” It turns out that this is reportedly a quote from Aldo Gucci of the famed Gucci luxury brand.

I think the same sentiment can be felt towards a domain name acquisition.

Oftentimes, a business will spend more money than it is comfortable spending to acquire the perfect domain name. The expenditure may be significant, and it could impact business operations in the short term. It can take a company time to wrap its collective “head” around the idea of making what could be deemed as a staggering investment in its branding and web presence going forward. In the short term, this can eat a massive chunk of a company’s cash reserves and may be painful.

GOAT Foods Getting Set to Launch Cookies.com

G.O.A.T. Foods operates a number of confectionary and food-related brands on exceptional one word .com domain names. You can buy licorice via Licorice.com, you can buy chocolate via Chocolate.com, you can buy pretzels via Pretzels.com, and you can buy caramels via Caramels.com.

The company’s authoritative domain names are coupled with great branding, and they go beyond e-commerce websites. I have seen GOAT Foods’ branded vending machines at various points in my travels. The business model seems to be working for the company, as evidenced by its growth and development of new brands.

Last night, GOAT announced the forthcoming launch of Cookies.com. As you can imagine, Cookies.com will sell cookies:

How I am Using DomainLeads.com

Michael Cyger introduced me to DomainLeads.com, a recently launched domain industry tool created by the company operating Estibot. DomainLeads.com is a tool that helps identify the number of registered and developed TLDs (extensions) in specific SLDs (keywords or phrases). For instance, I can see the Logical SLD is registered in 134 extensions, and 13 of those are developed websites.

I think this data is critically important when it comes to understanding potential prospective buyers and determining the value of the .com domain name.

DomainTools Retiring Domain Monitor Tool

The DomainTools Domain Monitor tool has been an invaluable tool for me in uncovering domain name sales and transactions. I monitor tens of thousands of domain names, and when DomainTools detects a change in its Whois record, I receive an alert notifying me the following morning. The tool has been greatly impacted by GDPR and similar privacy laws, but it has continued to help discover when domain names change hands or transfer.

Fundraising with an Eye Catching Domain Name

As you know, I am riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge to raise funds for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. When people ask how to donate to my fundraiser, I give them the link, which is profile.pmc.org/es0223. It is easy enough to share the link via email or in a blog post, but it is not so easy when I mention the PMC ride to people in passing.

Domain investors know a complicated domain name or web link can make it difficult for people to directly navigate to a website. It is one of the biggest reasons why many major companies own domain names they use for forwarding. Customers can easily navigate to a business website with a memorable descriptive, call to action, brand match, or acronym domain name.

Earlier this year, I won CancerStinks.com in a GoDaddy expiry auction. I began forwarding the domain name to my PMC fundraising page. I am sure there was very little existing type-in traffic to the domain name, but using it for forwarding makes it easy for people to find my fundraising page when I tell them about it.