Domainer Shout Out May 2019

With this post I am starting a new monthly feature of shout-outs recognizing those who have done interesting things or provided exemplary service to the domain community or beyond.  Over the months I hope to highlight businesses, organizations, writers, and domainers. I particularly want to recognize those who went out of their way to help others, who have produced tools that are valuable to domain analysis, have done important research, have done outstanding communication, or who simply are trying something new or innovative. I don’t plan to make this a place to mention high value sales, as those are already recognized within our industry at places like DNJournal. While this is a personal selection, I always am open to suggestions.

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NamePros

I think a lot of us take NamePros for granted. We shouldn’t! What a vibrant, helpful, knowledgeable community it is! Shout out to the staff and moderators who help keep NamePros the place that it is. If you have any interest in domain names you should be a member. I doubt that my interest in domains would have persisted without NamePros.

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Dofo

Dofo is relatively new but has quickly become a key resource for me. In one place you can do sophisticated searches around domains for sale across multiple marketplaces. Key people in Dofo are active on NamePros and I am regularly finding new things it can do from their posts. If you are not already using it, do check it out!

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NameBio

You can tell from my writing that I am a big fan of NameBio. A freely available database with more than 1.5 million domain name sales (about 1.7 billion dollars) all available with a fantastically powerful and intuitive user interface. If you are new here is an introduction to getting started with NameBio. Hats off to Michael and others who keep NameBio the amazing resource that it is.

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NPs Members BrandCougar and Want2Learn

The past three months have seen amazing .com hand registration contests at NamePros. The idea was started by NP member Want2Learn and then the last two months the contest was directed by NPs member BrandCougar. While many great things happen at NamePros I don’t think I have witnessed anything handled better than the contests. BrandCougar put so much effort into maintaining enthusiasm for the contests, and attention to detail to make it run well. He is absorbed with other things so won’t be running the next contest, but I wanted to recognize the incredible work that he put into this. Here is the link to the April contest.

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TLD-List

I love to save dollars, and one place that it is important to do that is with the cost of registrations and renewals and transfers. My go to tool for this is TLD-list. I particularly like that it shows me historical rates to help me evaluate how good current specials are. Dom-Comp is a similar site that is also very good.

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NPs Members Maxtra and MapleDots and GoDaddy’s Joe Styler

A long term NPs member (Dustie) found one night that her name that was also her domain name sold via quick transfer at a price she did not intend. It still is not entirely clear how this happened, but to lose a name she held for 21 years was traumatic. She could easily have lost the name forever. However as it turns out the buyer was NP member Maxtra. Within a few hours of this coming to the attention of the community another NPs member, MapleDots made a $5000 offer to buy the domain from Maxtra and hold it until the situation was sorted out, and to return it free to Dustie if an investigation showed it had been transferred wrongly. He did this without knowing the people, just to make sure the domain did not sell to someone and Dustie could never get it back. In the end Maxtra sold it back to Dustie at exactly the price of the unintended transaction and MapleDots was not out money. However, his gesture touched many at NPs, including me, as did Maxtra being willing to give up a valuable domain name that he had proerly purchased for much less than it was worth. Also GoDaddy’s Joe Styler is a hero here, both for immediately getting involved in doing a high level investigation, and in facilitating the transfer back, GoDaddy absorbed the commission fees, and compensated Maxtra and recognized MapleDots as well. You can read the details in this long thread. All around this was a feel good story of people doing generous things.

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David at WebTrading

It can be a solitary business being a domainer, so each month’s shout out I wanted to mention at least one domainer and give a bit of attention to their portfolio. David (NameMarket NPs username) is a long term member of our community (he joined NPs back in 2003) with a proven record of success (he is a TOP member of NPs). While he has mainly dealt in legacy extensions, and done a variety of other financial and web development things, of late he has, in addition, accumulated a very nice .best TLD portfolio. You can view his entire .best portfolio at this site. He has many great words and phrases from AutoLoan.best to Campgrounds.best, and Cloud.best to MedicalSchools.best. I got to know David through NPs, although we have never met in person. I like the way that a long term legacy investor decided to diversify and try a new type of domain name. We all know this comes with risk, particularly so in an extension like this with a very thin trading record. I was impressed with his open attitude and the portfolio he acquired.

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I plan to feature some new people and organizations every month or so here. There were so many I could have included, as this industry is full of good people doing innovative, interesting and generous things.  If you want to contact me, you can see the ways here. 

Note that a similar version of this post is also available on my website here.
Note that mention here does not imply endorsement or association by them of this site. Nor did I seek or obtain their permissions to be listed (if any object just let me know, please, and I will take mention out).

Why Would Anyone Want a New Extension Domain Name?

Background

A NamePros user asked this question:

"Why (would) an end-user would want to invest in a ngTLD versus a .com domain name? What are some use cases and/or selling points for a ngTLD? Aside from them being very unique and one-of-a- kind, how would you respond to a .com holder who asks this question? Thanks in advance for any insights or success stories regarding this!

A whole book could be written in response, but here are 12 reasons why sometimes new domain extensions make sense for both end users and domain name investors.

Why Use a New Domain Extension?

1. You want a powerful, single word domain name, but that name is simply not available at any price to you in .com or .net. This is probably the driving reason behind the domain name sale of blockchain(.)ventures for $42,000, for example.
2. You believe that a domain name doesn't need to have a .com tacked on, and it is more aesthetic and elegant to simply have a domain name that describes your enterprise precisely. If you listen to the interview at Domain Name Wire with Blake Janover who paid $500,000 earlier this year for home.loans that is essentially his reasoning (and he had earlier business success with a similar other name). Or about a year ago casino(.)online sold for $201,000. 
3. You can express the exact name of your company through a ngTLD, e.g. look at DXC.Technology. Their name is their website. Nothing added. Elegance defined. 
4. You do use a .com or cc for your main site, but you also want a descriptive domain name for a subset of your activity. Design is central to a business like Kohler. Surely it made sense for them to use Kohler.design, and they do! 
5. What you do can be described perfectly and concisely using a ngTLD. That is probably why earlier this year Talk(.)show sold for $50,000, and maps(.)Amsterdam sold for about $8500. Also in 2018, tax(.)help sold for $6000. In these, and many similar cases, you see the domain name and you know instantly what the site is about. With extensions ranging from loan to review, club to trade, blog to store, and over one thousand more, it is hard to think of an operation that would not fit with one of the ngTLDs. 
6. You want to use domain name phrases in a marketing campaign. Most of the legacy gTLDs and cc TLDs are difficult to make into domain name phrases. But this can express endless ideas when creatively using ngTLDs (see the recent examples over at the thread where people listed their 5 best ngTLD domain names for loads of great examples). I set up a few examples from my portfolio so you can see how they work. For example, if you enter all.curlers.win or help.diversify.science it could redirect anywhere on the web (try them out). Phrases like this are easy for people to remember and can be entered into social media as clickable phrases. The good folks over at Names.of.London (yup just click the phrase) have great possibilities available at reasonable rates. You will be amazed at the great expressions still available. 
7. You are a small (perhaps single person) business, and you can combine your name with an extension to express exactly what you do. For example if my name was Jane Doe and I was an accountant, the domain name JaneDoe.accountant would perfectly describe my business. This works particularly well for sole proprietorships where you must use your exact name. I describe this on a blog post here. 
8. You want good value in your domain purchase price. There are countless small sales of ngTLDs, many below the $100 Namebio limit so don't show up in the publicly released database (a more extensive one for small sales is DNPric.es, but it too is far from complete).. In a bit of self promotion, might we be out of step to point out the great deals in some of the new extensions that we have over at NamesThat.win? You run a roofing business, wouldn't it be cool to have the domain name roofer? Or your company produces sensors for the Internet of Things, why not the domain name sensor? Into robotics? Shouldn't your domain name be simply robotics? All of these are available right now in the gdn (global domain name) extension at great prices. You can get a memorable, descriptive name for great value in new domain extensions. 
9. You feel that the dot com bubble burst in 2000 except for the domain name business. You find this is the era to have something new, something like The.club, and are willing to pay $300,000 for that as was done in January of this year. But the really great thing is you don't need to pay funds like that to get a still pretty great name. Why not check out what we have available currently? 
10. You can purchase single letter domain names in some of the ngTLDs. For example A(.)top sold for just over $96,000. Sometimes you don't even have to pay that much for a single letter ngTLD. In 2017 V(.)photo sold for $15,000 and G(.)rich for $13,750, but in what seems to me like a huge steal of a price a(.)watch went for just $110 and u(.)holiday for $136 in late 2016. 
11. You can use a ngTLD as part of a call to action. With a two word phrase like Act(.)today (that sold for $20,000 in 2017), Our(.)place (sold for $10,000 in 2017) or Learn(.)wine ($10,000 sale from 2017) you can simply and directly urge the reader to take some action. 
12. You want to shake up things a little and stress your forward looking attitude. The parent body of company Alphabet don't have a lot of content at abc.xyz, but who can argue that it isn't a cool and appropriate domain name? Speaking of cool, isn't 2(.)cool a rather unique domain name? It sold in the Namescon auction this year for $2900.

What Else?

Please feel free to suggest your own ideas that I have left out! And of course if a reader is looking for more big ticket sales scan through lists such as this one over at DNJournal, or use the Namebio database and search on one or more of the new extensions.  Thanks to all the insightful people who keep NamePros the vibrant online domain community, as their experiences and ideas have inspired my interest in domain names.

So while most sales in the daily domain report at NameBio are certainly .com, there are good reasons for both end users and some domain name investors to consider investing in the "new" extensions.  I also did a post more from the domain investing perspective related to this topic here. The domain investing community should be large enough for those who prefer legacy domain extensions, country code domains, and the new extensions. Nothing in this post means that .com (or .org or .net) is not the best choice for certain applications, such as the main website for a business. I simply wanted to point out that there are other cases where quality new extension domain mains make a lot of sense!

Original post March 15, 2018
Minor editing July 27, 2018 and August 10, 2018

Photocredit: The image at the top of this posting is by Pixabay user qimono.  

Note: While an effort was made to make sure that this post was current and correct at time of writing, if any details are important to the reader it is their responsibility to independently establish that information. This posting is for informational purposes, and is not to be construed as individual advice for any domain investing decision.

Thoughts on Domain Market Choices

Introduction

I recently wrote a long post on the Namepros site with my thoughts regarding options for listing and display of domain names.  In particular I look at Afternic, Efty, Namecheap Marketplace and Undeveloped as options, as well as your own web site.  I have slightly refined the post for display on the blog.  You can see the thread with my comments and those of others here.

I have recently listed about 25% of my domain portfolio on Afternic, and about 60% on Undeveloped. For a somewhat longer time had Efty landing/market for the majority of my domains. I have listed a variable number of my domains on Namecheap Marketplace, and I do have all of my domains on a personal website, and most in a catalog there. So far all of my sales (20 low value ones) have been on Namecheap Marketplace, either directly or after making communication via my website. Here are my thoughts on each of the options I have tried (I have not used Sedo or Flippa so they are not covered here, even though popular choices).

Afternic

Afternic is one of the largest networks of domain names for sale (about 13 million domains listed as I write this), and they claim that they reach the largest audience  (25 million or 75 million audience according to whether your domain name qualifies for the premium network).  (to get it need both be registered with one of the fast transfer supported registrars like Namesilo or GoDaddy) AND it be an extension they support (.com .net .info .org .biz .pw and a few others but no new gTLDs) and the price be BIN and within the supported range. Their commissions are (20%), and they have a $15 minimum. I have not had a sale so can't comment on how smoothly payout is via Afternic. 

They seem to have an unusual approval process for adding new domain names - I never handle poor taste, adult themed, drug, political, or get rich quick type domains, or those with obvious trademark issues. When I list at Afternic about 90% get approved instantly, but the other 10% often sit for a week under review. I have given up and listed elsewhere several of these domain names, so I am not sure if they would eventually be approved.  Afternic really need to provide better feedback on why a name is under review and when it is likely to be approved. 

I tried parking a few domain names with Afternic, but I really dislike that even though the domains have a buy it now price, all the person entering the domain name in a web browser first sees is a page telling them to phone Afternic and they will give them the price. I think a lot of potential purchasers would like to see the price, before deciding whether to telephone an agent.  Another issue is that the user does not see any of the description of the domain name even though one is entered (and can be seen if they do a search on the domain name on the Afternic site, rather than entering it exactly in a browser).  So I no longer park with Afternic. 

With Afternic you can readily create a link that will take the purchaser to the domain names you have for sale in your portfolio - e.g. my current Afternic listed domain names are at this link. 

You don't pay fees with Afternic until your domain name sells, so why not give it a try if you have some domain names to sell?

Efty

Efty is great for handling your portfolio (note that it is not a marketplace in the sense of the others, although you can make your own personal Efty marketplace).  When you add domains to your Efty portfolio they automatically use Whois to fill in the details of your registration settings such as where registered and expiration date.  Efty is a great way to keep track of a large domain portfolio, and as such has no real competitors.

Efty allows you to have buy it now prices, and also to accept offers, with a range set for those offers. You can direct a domain name so that it acts as the central place for all of your Efty listings.  For example, mine is www.frugal.bid. Note that they only show a few recently added names at the home page, but if you scroll to bottom of page you can find see all that are available, and can search by extension, subject or other ways.

Efty recently offered a secure option for your marketplace if you have all but their most basic type of account.  It is also possible to make a link for each domain name that takes it to a secure lander.  This is an important advantage, especially in light of the upcoming Google Chrome changes requiring secure sites in order to not have a user warning.

When you sell a domain via Efty you are essentially handling the sale yourself, even though escrow options and both  PayPal and now Stripe are integrated with the platform. The plus side of this is that you don't pay any commissions (Efty do have a monthly fee, however). On the down side, there is not a third party acting as an intermediary for the transfer (unless your escrow choice does that). 

The PayPal (and I presume Stripe, although have not used that yet myself) integration with Efty is smooth. However, when you have a sale, it is not like the others with a third party handling it. So far I have not managed to get a legitimate offer via Efty. 

I like the choice of themes at Efty, and their landers are fast compared to Undeveloped. I like somewhat the text plus multiple bullet points display format at Efty, but find it too restricted on length of text (and once you implement BIN with Paypal link the bullets no longer show). You can add logo to make the market look more attractive, although the resolution is limited. 

People probably won't find your domain except by entering the exact name in a web browser or being directed from links at your own website or social media accounts. 

If you have domain names to sell and have not tried Efty you should, and they have a 30 day free trial period. The people who run Efty are very responsive, and the system is very easy to use. The service keeps getting better, and once you are past a few dozen domain names to manage it really helps to have a service like Efty.

Namecheap Marketplace

I like Namecheap a lot as a registrar, and when you have names registered with them it is very easy to place them for sale on their marketplace. I really like how fast and automatic the purchase and transfer is for both buyer and seller.  I have explained the transfer process in a previous post that you can read here. 

I have both bought and sold domain names via the Namecheap Marketplace numerous times, and without exception the process has been fast and smooth. You find a domain name that you like, add it to your cart, sign up for a free Namecheap account if you don't already have one, pay for the domain and you are done.  They will automatically move the domain name from the sellers to the buyers account.

Namecheap handle everything, which makes the transaction secure for both buyer and seller. The seller will get an email saying that the domain name was sold, and the funds are released 5 business days later (you can only take out into PayPal after you have $100, but can put any amount into your account to purchase new domains). The commission is a straight 10% (the price per domain must be between $1 and $1000).  Note that the minimum was recently reduced to $1 from $5, so it is now even better as a place to sell bargain domain names.

There are two big advantages to buying on the Namecheap marketplace. ICANN have a 60 day transfer restriction in general - after a domain name has been newly registered or changed ownership normally you can't sell it to someone else for 60 days.  However, you can sell it during this period on the Namecheap Marketplace as the ownership transfer is all done via one registrar. A second big advantage is that when you purchase on the Namecheap Marketplace ihe new owner does not need to add an extra year of registration (normally when the name is transferred to the new owner at a different registrar in addition to paying the cost of the domain name sale, the new owner needs to add a year of registration at the new registrar). As many of my domains are registered already for multiple years, this is a big advantage. 

For those buying a domain to set up a first website, the excellent hosting at reasonable prices that Namecheap offer make it easy for purchasers to buy your domain and be up and running quickly. I think we underestimate how important this is to new end users. Namecheap recently updated their shared web hosting options, and they are cost competitive for the feature set offered.

You can easily make a single link that will always be updated with what you have currently listed - e.g. mine is here. You can only list domains registered with Namecheap on their marketplace, however.

One big limitation is that the Namecheap Marketplace has its own search (under the Domains tab there is a Marketplace setting).  A lot of potential purchasers will not realize that this is necessary, and totally miss seeing your names.  I so wish they integrated their Marketplace listings with their general domain name search.  I have not figured out the conditions, but some of your domains will show up there.  I think they need to have a price that is some multiple of the renewal fee, and that they need to be set for some minimum sales period (but I may be wrong as some show and some do not).

Namecheap Marketplace has a $1000 limit, and the amount of traffic you will get will be limited to Namecheap Marketplace users and any others that you direct there. I don't find it an effective price to sell domains at more than tens of dollars in price normally.  In summary, I find the Namecheap Marketplace an excellent place to buy and sell domain low value domain names, but not a good place to find available domain names.

Undeveloped

One of the fastest growing sites for resale of domain names is undeveloped.com (although their total number of domain names is much less than Sedo or the Afternic network).  For sellers undeveloped have a really simple commission structure,  just 9% of the sale price with no minimum.

They offer purchaser assurance by handling transactions as a third party and most of the time the transfer is done within 24 hr.  They claim that since 2014 there has not been a single transfer with problems, which is an incredible record and one that gives potential buyers confidence.  They have recently made the currencies shown adapt to the region of the seller.  

As a seller I find the landing pages more elegant at Undeveloped compared to Efty.  It is easy to point your domain name servers so that those entering the domain name are pointed to your undeveloped listing. However, at least from North America their landing pages are somewhat slow to launch  (they apparently are working on improving this). Undeveloped allow you to add more text than Efty.  You can readily have offer or buy it now prices, and they provide some research on what things facilitate sales (e.g. having a buy it now price and showing who you are rather than just using a username). 

You can make a single link that will go to your portfolio of names on Undeveloped, although only a few will show up at first (my Undeveloped portfolio is here). 

There is no doubt that Undeveloped is becoming more popular, with both sellers and purchasers. If you look at the Namebio high value sales so far in 2018 they are solidly represented. I hope they will become the goto place for potential purchasers to look for domains, as I think they treat domain sellers and buyers really well. Since you don't pay until your domain sells, why not try out Undeveloped for yourself, if you have not already?

Your Website

I have recently started going back to pointing my domains at my personal website (NamesThat.win).  I think this has advantages.  I can control how the domains appear, and also highlight other domain names in the similar category.  I provide a section that lists all available names alphabetically, as well as a catalog that has them divided by theme.  Depending on the domain name I sometimes make the domain name when entered go to the alphabetical list, while at other times it directs to a catalog category . For example, if you click on www.nanodevice.co you can see how this works - you go to a catalog page with all of my nanoscience related names.

Other Options

There are of course other options, the most obvious being Sedo and Flippa, as well as selling domains to other domain investors on Namepros.  Since I wanted to restrict my remarks to sites I have actually used, I am not providing comment on them here.  Another option worth considering, especially since it does not have fees if you have only a small number of domain names to list, is Tough Domains. One of the other posters on Namepros pointed out that Namesilo have a marketplace that is similar to that of Namecheap - I may well try that out in the not too distant future, but have not done so yet. 

If you are looking to mainly sell to other domain name investors at wholesale prices, the vibrant domain community NamePros is an excellent (and free!) option. You can set up sales with buy it now prices, auctions, or even as part of a bundle of domain names. Also, don't overlook browsing the Requests section of NamePros where members post requests for domain names they are looking to buy.  

Final Thoughts

You should not think of making a single choice, as you want to get your domain names into as many eyes as possible. If you do list a domain name at more than one place, however, it is safest to have a buy it now price at only one place, so there is no chance that it can be simultaneously purchased by two different parties (and then take down the buy it now when you have an offer you plan to accept).

I think those of us in the domain community need to think carefully from the perspective of a potential end user.  That person wants a simple and attractive way they can find good options with price information available up front.  They want a purchase process that is both smooth and trustworthy and relatively fast. Finally, since most will want to establish a web presence with the domain they have just purchased, the steps to go from obtaining the domain name to hosting should be easy and reasonable in cost. 

That leads me to believe that the best option, even though it is a bit of work, is to have your own website with a wealth of attractively presented information, but have links where the actual purchase can be done through a third party such as Undevelped or Namecheap. I have done that now for  my domain names (see the alphabetical list here). 

I also plan in the months ahead to launch user services that will provide assistance with both the purchase and followup.  That is, if desired, I will help the purchaser individually with the steps in buying the domain through a linked marketplace (and make it available for a BIN at their preferred place), and also provide follow up assistance with getting the DNS settings right, and getting a hosting package, again if desired.