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18 end user domain sales up to $50,000

by — Domain Sales 3 Comments

The top known end user sale at Sedo this week was a person buying their first name.

Picture of hundred dollar bills with the words "end user domain sales"

Sedo has some nice domain name sales this past week. The top sale was Cows.com for $125,000. It’s unclear who bought it, but it might be an end user because cow.io also sold for $11,250.

I’m going to call Mojito.com a deal of the year at just $46,006. I wouldn’t be surprised if a domain investor bought the domain.

The top end user sale is someone who bought their first name for a personal/professional website.

Here’s a list of some of the end user domain name sales that were just completed at Sedo. You can view previous lists like this here.

Yamini.com $50,000 – Yamini Rangan, Chief Customer Officer at Hubspot, bought this domain for a personal website.

Payku.com €25,000 – Payku is a payments company and it forwards this domain to its website at Payku.cl.

Emersive.com $25,000 – Malaysian IT infrastructure services provider, Microfocus (M) Sdn Bhd. This could be for a client. The name seems to be a play on immersive.

Tangle.app $8,500 – Tangle is a stealth company working on something related to remote work.

Nature.xyz €7,500 – The Biomimicry Institute in Missoula, MT, bought this domain. Biomimicry is the design and production of materials, structures, and systems modeled on biological entities and processes.

PBL.eu €6,784 – PBL ProBlack is a Polish manufacturer of buckets and accessories for construction and agricultural machines.

3TO.com $5,000 – 3 Tenets Optimization is a supply chain network design company.

AH.at €4,980 – Andreas Hofer Immobilien, an Austrian real estate firm, forwards this domain to Aho-Immobilien.at.

MyCoins.io $4,500 – My Coins LLC in the country of Georgia. I believe this is a cryptocurrency exchange.

Xolo.es €4,000 – Xolo is an Estonian-based customer invoicing and business administration application with customer support for European entrepreneurs. It forwards this domain to Xolo.io.

CraneParts.de €3,500 – Forwards to CraneParts.at, an Austrian seller of crane accessories and spare parts for loading cranes.

Payday.pro €3,500 – Dataplan Payroll Limited bought this domain. It’s a UK provider of outsourced payroll, pension management and epayslip services.

Bodytrek.com $3,060 – BlueCross BlueShield of Alabama has a program about bodily health for kids called Body Trek.

FSBOAssist.com $2,888 – NextHome Legacy Group Realty in Marion, IN bought this domain. FSBO is “For sale by owner” in real estate terms.

Kieser.at €2,800 – Kieser Training is a chain of fitness studios in Austria. It forwards this domain to Kieser-Training.at.

Hackathon.us $2,500 – Forwards to Hackathon.lt, the site for a hackathon held event in Lithuania.

Moonbar.de €2,142 – Moonbar is a brand of sustainable, vegan nutritional bars developed during the pandemic by a group of German teens.

Outdoor-Cinema.com $2,000 – Forwards to Outdoor Cinema’s site at Outdoor-Cinema.net. It’s a site for video content about outdoor, adventure and nature topics.

Right of the Dot responds in Bird.com dispute

by — Policy & Law 3 Comments

Auctioneer denies counterclaims in non-paying bidder dispute.

Right of the Dot has responded to David Lizmi’s affirmative defenses and counterclaims in a lawsuit stemming from its February 25 auction.

In that auction, Lizmi bid $2.5 million for bird.com and $1.6 million for fish.com but didn’t pay. As a result, Right of the Dot and the owner of the domains sued Lizmi.

Lizmi responded to the lawsuit and countersued. His main arguments seem to be that he wasn’t authorized to bid more than $2,000 in the auction and that he received outbid notices on the domains, so he thought he hadn’t won.

Last week, Right of the Dot filed its response (pdf) to Lizmi’s defenses and counterclaims. The response denies the claims and adds a bit more color.

According to Right of the Dot’s response, “The terms and conditions to which Lizmi agreed in order to participate in the auction state that the auctioneer’s decision and hammer price supersede any and all notices bidders receive during an auction.”

While I can’t find this specific term under such wording, bidding platform HiBid’s terms give wide latitude to the seller to determine the outcome of each auction.

Unstoppable Domains launching 8 new alt-root blockchain domains

by — Services 12 Comments

Company will also airdrop $100 million + for people to buy the domains with.

Image with the word "Blockchain"

Unstoppable Domains, a company that offers an alternative, blockchain-based domain name system, is releasing 8 new top level domain names.

The new domain extensions are .blockchain, .888, .wallet, .x, .bitcoin, .coin, .nft, and .dao. Unstoppable Domains recently applied for trademarks or some of these domains.

Pre-orders are now available for the domains that will be added to the Ethereum blockchain in July.

The company is giving away over $100 million of promo credits for people to buy the domains with. The credits are equal to 3x what people have spent on Unstoppable Domains’ domains, including .crypto and .zil, to date. Customers also get credits on purchases made until 9 am on June 17.

Sites using Unstoppable Domains’ domains are not on the main root that names like .com are on. Users must use a browser plugin or the Brave browser to access them.

Some of the domains will experience name collisions whenever ICANN allows new top level domains to be added unless Unstoppable beats out other applicants for the strings.

Buying an expiring domain? Might want to check this

by — Expired Domains 2 Comments

The domain could already be subject to a UDRP.

logo for Solverde Casinos with a green background and image of a sun

A domain investor bought an expired domain that Solverde had already filed a UDRP against. The casino company won, and the domain buyer is suing to retain the domain.

Domain investors review a lot of data before buying expiring domain names. The more expensive the domain, the more data they check.

Sometimes I’ll Google the domain name to see how it’s used. I might even check a trademark database if the name seems like it might be a trademark. What I’ve never thought to do is see if the domain is subject to a current UDRP case.

After all, if a company decided to file a UDRP against a domain that was about to expire, wouldn’t they at least work with the registrar to make sure the renewal fee was paid?

Apparently not.

Turn Invest Group Ltd. bought SolVerde.com for $665 on NameJet in January after it expired. But the domain was already subject to a UDRP filed in November 2020. Despite being notified by the registrar of the pending expiration, neither World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the Complainant, casino company Solverde, S.A., apparently did anything about it.

So the domain expired and Turn Invest Group won a competitive auction.

According to the WIPO panel, the domain buyer should have searched to see if there was an active UDRP:

…The Respondent is a sophisticated domain name investor, and has been in this business since 2009.

Despite providing a detailed declaration, the Respondent did not provide any details of searches or due diligence the Respondent undertook prior to acquiring the disputed domain name at auction. A Google search of “SOLVERDE” conducted by the Panel resulted in many search results for the Complainant on the first page of the search results. Moreover, if the Respondent had searched the UDRP SEARCH database at “www.udrpsearch.com”, the Respondent would have seen that the disputed domain name was subject to an “active case”…

OK, I can buy searching Google to see if these two Spanish dictionary words are a well-known trademark used exclusively by one company. But checking for a UDRP?

The panel found in favor of Solverde, S.A.. Now, Turn Invest Group is suing to block the transfer.

The company filed a lawsuit (pdf) in U.S. District Court in Florida yesterday. It’s asking the court for declaratory relief that ownership of the domain is not infringing on Solverde S.A.’s trademarks and a finding of reverse domain name hijacking.

Howard Neu is local counsel for the plaintiff.

Google introduces Search Console Insights

by — Services 0 Comments

New data view makes it easy to see how recent content is performing.

An image of Google's Search Console Insights showing how long people are viewing new content

Google’s new Search Console Insights dashboard. Image courtesy Google.

Website owners might want to take a look at a new feature from Google called Search Console Insights.

The dashboard combines data from Google Analytics and Google Search Console to updated website owners about how their content is performing. Google explains some of the insights site owners can gain from the dashboard:

  • What are your best performing pieces of content, and which ones are trending?
  • How do people discover your content across the web?
  • What do people search for on Google before they visit your content?
  • Which article refers users to your website and content?

I tested it this morning and it provides a nice overview, particularly to help you understand how new content is performing.

In order to use the dashboard, you need to associate your Analytics account with your Search Console account.

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