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Those domains you’re sitting on? They will probably never sell.

by — Domain Sales 12 Comments

Domainers need to think about their long-term strategy for the domains they buy.

Your neighbors here are not going to be impressed by your domain portfolio.

Rick Schwartz wrote his viewpoint on the state of domain investing today. He’s never one to mince words, and I think he has some fair points in his post.

What stuck with me is how he concluded the post. Writing about what happens when you invest in a domain, Rick noted:

“They are not liquid. You own it and there is less than a 50/50 chance you will sell it in YOUR lifetime.”

Depending on the type of domains you own and/or the prices you sell them for, 50/50 is actually overshooting the mark. This is especially the case with Rick. He owns some fantastic domains but holds out for top dollar. Unless he ultimately sells his portfolio or liquidates them, he’ll take a lot of his domains to the grave.

That might sound harsh, but it’s the reality of domain names. Some people churn through their portfolio at 1%-2% a year. Others sell their portfolio to GoDaddy to head into retirement.

What amazes me is when people hold onto their very illiquid domains, passing up great offers with no real plan for the end game.

I’ve seen multiple times where the very best possible buyer (i.e., one of the only people in the world who could possibly be interested in a domain) makes a very generous offer on the domain. Their maximum offer. It is rejected.

Let’s say that person offers $60,000 for a domain. Given the domain and the pool of buyers, there’s maybe one or two other potential buyers in the world. The domain owner passes.

What are they waiting for? What’s their goal? Do they want to wait until the one-in-a-million buyer comes along and offers $100,000?

You also have to think about your annualized return. If you pass up $60,000 and that one-in-a-million buyer actually does show up 10 years from now and you sell for $100,000, you only made about 5% a year in that decade you waited. There are plenty of other investments that can return 5% a year.

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5 things Mike Cyger learned – DNW Podcast #196

by — Podcasts 4 Comments

What DomainSherpa’s founder learned while learning about domain investing.

dnw-podcastMike Cyger did over 400 interviews for DomainSherpa before he sold the site. On today’s show, Mike recounts how he got into the domain name business, how he learned domain investing my listening to and studying what others did, and five things he learned while running DomainSherpa. If you aren’t familiar with his story, he went from knowing basically nothing about domain names to building a portfolio many domain investors would be jealous of. He currently operates DNAcademy to teach others about domain investing.

Also: Verisign and Wix report earnings and a change at the top of Neustar.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:32 — 38.9MB) | Embed

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Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play below or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

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Every domain investor should read this first-hand account of domain investing

by — Domain Sales 5 Comments

This first-hand account underscores the opportunities and challenges of domain name investing.

I was scrolling through Twitter on my mobile phone on the July 4 holiday when I came across a chart showing a .NYC investor’s domain sales. I didn’t see that it was attached to an article and questioned how much investment it took to get the sales.

This weekend I had time to go back and read the article, and I highly recommend every domain investor to read it. Not just new TLD investors. All domain investors.

Why?

First, it’s a rational discussion of a domain investor’s sales. No hatred, no assumptions, and lots of humility.

Second, it provides unprecedented transparency of the investor’s results. Lots of times we see tweets about big sales and high returns on individual domains, but they are outliers. This post gets into the nitty gritty including how much the investor, Matt Gill, has spent amassing his domain portfolio. While making sales is great, we all have carrying costs and replenishment costs to consider.

Third, it’s a good picture of the challenges of domain investing. The comments are pretty good, too, pointing out the cost of your time researching and buying domains. Matt has had to work hard to select and sell his domains.

I’m not going to give away everything that’s in the article because Matt deserves to have you read it yourself.

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Domainers: What you need to do NOW to prepare for GDPR

by — Policy & Law 9 Comments

Take these steps to avoid headaches later.

The deadline to comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is quickly approaching. Domain name registrars are announcing changes and implementing them within the next few weeks. Here’s what you need to do as a domain investor to be prepared.

Transfer your domain names. If you have domain names that you might want to transfer to a new registrar within the next couple of months, do it now. If the personal information in Whois is obscured (as is likely), transferring many domains (including .com) will be hard.

We are likely to see a variety of approaches to handling transfers. The bottom line is that it might be difficult to move your domains between registrars post-GDPR, so do it now.

Add two-factor authentication and lock your domains. A lack of personal data in Whois is likely to increase domain theft and make it challenging to track down stolen domain names. Changes in how some registrars handle domain transfers could also increase the number of domain thefts.

Don’t take any chances. Make sure your security is up-to-date.

Download any Whois data you need. If you use a program like Watch My Domains, now is the time to pull in the latest Whois records about your domain names. This will be very difficult later this month.

Add context to stop an influx of UDRPs. Complainants currently investigate domain name owners before filing UDRPs (cybersquatting complaints). This allows them to determine if the owner might have a legitimate interest in the domain (e.g. a guy named Andrew owns a domain with Andrew in it) and potentially determine why they acquired the domain. This will be difficult without personal information in Whois.

You can do a couple of things to prepare. First, see if your registrar will let you opt-in to having your Whois info displayed. Second, consider changing the content of your parked pages to make sure they reflect a proper use of the domain.

On that note, be sure that people can contact you through your parked page. It will become difficult for them to reach you through your Whois record.

Get a subscription to historical Whois data. While GDPR is going to hurt DomainTools and DomainIQ in the long run, they will actually become more critical to your business for a least the short term.

When you buy a domain name, you’ll want to verify who owns it. If you can’t do that through the live Whois, looking at historical Whois information is going to be creditical.

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Bill Karamouzis – DNW Podcast #178

by — Podcasts 5 Comments

Meet a guy who has leveraged the value of good domain names and learn what he is investing in now.

dnw-podcastBill Karamouzis, also known as Bill Kara, has made a lot of hefty domain name investments. Some of them have been for businesses. He bought CookingGames.com for $350,000 and paid $725,000 for MathGames.com for his latest venture, TeachMe. Bill shares data from these domain purchases and also explains why he thinks there’s an opportunity to buy outdated websites and fix them up. You’ll get a lot of business ideas from this episode. Also: Make Your Own Way, Purple.com, Radix data, and an airline’s domain name troubles.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:02 — 32.1MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | RSS

Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play below or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

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