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A bumper crop of end user domain sales at Uniregistry

by — Domain Sales 4 Comments

Uniregistry’s market has an active week for end user domain sales.

Website screenshot of XClean, a car wash products company

XClean bought XClean.com and forwards it to its Austrian country code domain XClean.at.

Uniregistry released its weekly top 20 sales list yesterday. Unlike the past couple of weeks, I was able to figure out who bought most of them. And at least half can be definitively tied to end users. Three of the domains are .com sales that now forward to matching domains in country code domains.

Check out the list below.

1. empresa.com $57,500 – Uniregistry Whois privacy. The domain still points to the Uniregistry parked page. Empresa means company in Spanish.

2. cospaces.com $34,000 – According to Whois, the likely buyer is a coworking company in Australia called CoSpaces. It uses the domain name CoSpaces.com.au

3. bluesuit.com $21,750 – BlueSuit is a new commercial real estate contracts system.

4. cartex.com $20,000 – CreditPilot, PLC is a FinTech company with some strong customers/partners. I suspect this name will be used for one of its partnerships.

5. macbet.com $16,675 – Eurasia Capital Holdings SARL in Luxembourg. My guess is a gambling company.

6. italgel.com $15,000 – Italgelatine SpA is an Italian company that makes gelatine.

7. stuffed.com $11,000 – The buyer appears to be a chauffeur company in South Africa. The domain forwards to its website, Occasion.co.za.

8. religiousfreedom.com $10,000 – Brandon Sample LLC in Texas bought this domain. I think this is connected to a law firm.

9. platinumcredit.com $10,000 – It has Whois privacy and still resolves to a Uni lander.

10. blackball.com $10,000 – BuyDomains sold this domain for $7,544 in February. The buyer appears to have been Black Ball Ferry Line, which is located just up the Olympic Penninsula from where I live. It connects people to Victoria, B.C. Its ship is the MV Coho and its website is CohoFerry.com. Blackball.com forwards to that website. So who bought it now? And why would the ferry company turn around and sell it?

11. ccpoint.com $9,500 – The buyer is in Kanagawa, Japan, but the site doesn’t resolve yet.

12. truking.com $9,000 – Truking is a pharmaceutical equipment company in China. It forwards the domain to truking.cn.

13. tydings.com $7,000 – Tydings & Rosenberg, a law firm in Baltimore.

14. ritespace.com $6,000 – Someone in New Jersey bought the domain. It still resolves to a Uni lander.

15. xclean.com $5,000 – XClean sells car wash products. It forwards the domain to its website XClean.at.

16. greasefilter.com $5,000 – Both this domain and the plural below are now at GoDaddy with Domains By Proxy. I suspect this is an end user.

17. greasefilters.com $5,000 – See above

18. tourcroatia.com $5,000 – It has Whois privacy and still resolves to a Uni lander.

19. towersuites.com $5,000 – Global Hospitality Services in Great Britain. It works with independent hotels.

20. desktop.app $5,00 – Accillion AS, an internet security firm.

GoDaddy launches Websites + Marketing

by — Services 3 Comments

GoDaddy’s new all-in-one online presence system launches.

Image of GoDaddy pitch for Websites + Marketing. Shows Sie Sie Benhoff with a guitar.

GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) announced its new Websites + Marketing service today as it takes aim at (or defends against) website builders like Wix, Weebly and SquareSpace.

Websites + Marketing is the company’s latest salvo in the battle, and the service seems to be an improvement on many of its attempts to date. It builds upon the feature set of Website Builder, which was originally called GoCentral.

The new service is designed to be a one-stop-shop for a business owner’s web presence. It helps them create a website and then market it.  This includes email marketing, ecommerce, SEO, online advertising, appointment booking and social integrations.

Websites + Marketing “gamifies” the process of improving a website by providing a score, which is something other web builders do.

GoDaddy announced the product in a live stream today. It was the first major public appearance for new CEO Aman Bhutani.

Man who paid $360k for 81.com says it’s stolen

by — Policy & Law 3 Comments

Dubai man files lawsuit to recover domain.

Picture of robber in black clothing, black at, black gloves and eye mask

A man who says he paid $360,000 to buy the domain 81.com alleges it has been stolen.

Sami Debizet filed an in rem lawsuit (pdf) against the domain in U.S. District Court in Virginia in an effort to recover the domain.

According to Debizet, he paid $360,000 to acquire the domain on May 7, 2013.

Two number .com domains are extremely rare and sales are infrequent, but this domain is probably worth a lot more than $360,000 today. NameBio shows just three two-number sales since 2014 and they are all for over $1.7 million. 2013 was before the big Chinese surge in short-domain investing.

One thing that’s troubling about the case is that it appears this domain has been out of the Plaintiff’s control for many years, and perhaps only in his control for a very brif period. Historical Whois records at DomainTools show the following timeline:

May 9, 2013: Japanese owner, domain at Melbourne IT

July 11, 2013: Domains By Proxy, domain at GoDaddy

September 13, 2013: Chinese owner, domain at eName

The Whois records show various Chinese owners since 2013.

Debizet’s declaration might shed more light on this, but it has not been add to the court system yet.

If anything, it seems like it will be difficult to argue common law trademark rights in a domain that was only in the owner’s control for a brief period of time six years ago.

Greenberg & Lieberman is representing the Plaintiff.

 

PIR changes its domain name as part of rebrand

by — Uncategorized 13 Comments

Non-profit that runs .org moves from PIR to TheNew.org.

Website for Public Interest Registry, including the .Org logo and two hands holding each other than have the look of the earth's surface

PIR’s new website

Public Interest Registry has launched its new branding. And although the logo is what we expected, there’s a big twist: PIR has been relegated to the background in favor of .Org.

The group has even changed its main domain name from PIR.org to TheNew.Org. When you visit, the logo in the top corner is for .Org instead of PIR and you won’t see the words Public Interest Registry until you get to the bottom of the page.

PIR launched a few domains as part of the new top level domain expansion but none of them have caught on. The new website seems to nod to the fact that PIR is all about .Org.

While this makes sense, I question the new domain it’s using. The New?

PIR’s fact sheet states:

The rebrand builds upon .ORG’s long-time support of the organizations, associations, clubs, businesses and individuals using the domain, but takes the commitment a step further by actively uniting .ORG communities around shared interests and passions.

So yes, it’s doing new things. But one of the big benefits of .org is that it’s not new. It’s trusted.

TheNew.org seems like a good domain for an individual marketing campaign, but at some point, TheNew.org won’t make much sense.

New guide: Get Started Selling Your Domains

by — Domain Sales 1 Comment

This free guide helps you list your domains for sale and get them in front of the most searchers possible.

Cover for report title "Get Started Selling Your Domains" with image of hands typing on a laptop.I get a lot of emails from friends-of-friends that have heard I’m “the domain guy.”

These people have a lot of domains they’ve collected over the years and they want to know how to sell them. I get so many of these requests that I decided to write a step-by-step guide on how to sell your domains through GoDaddy.

My new guide explains:

• How companies and entrepreneurs find and buy domain names for their business
• How to price your domain names and how to list them for sale
• How GoDaddy and Afternic’s Domain Listing Service (DLS) promote your domains to potential domain buyers
• How GoDaddy can accelerate delivery of your domains to buyers and put cash in your pocket sooner

It walks people through each step with screenshots. It will help everyone, from the person who has never heard of the aftermarket to domain investors that haven’t yet connected their Afternic account to the GoDaddy domain manager.

And if you’re tired of answering people who ask you for help selling their domains, feel free to direct them to this guide.

Thanks to GoDaddy for helping by sponsoring the report so that I can offer it for free.

The guide download page is here.