Domain investing tips, strategies, and industry insights
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When I'm sizing up a country-code extension, I run the same checks everybody else runs. Are there real sales, or just the same three comps getting passed around? Are actual businesses using it, or is the whole zone parked? What's renewal going to cost me if I hold for five years? Here's what has never once made that list. The country. Montenegro just gave me a reason to add it.
I spent part of a day on the South Platte in Colorado last week, fly fishing for the first time in my life, and I was bad at it in a way I didn't expect. Not bad like I couldn't cast. Bad like I was doing eleven things nearly correctly and had no idea which one was costing me. We'd hired a guide, which was the only smart decision I made all day. He'd stand a few feet off my shoulder and say something small. Move your hand back. Let it drift another second before you pick up.
NotRenewing recently crossed 500 sales, which gave me enough data to answer a question I have been curious about since launching the site. What types of domain names are people actually buying? Not what we think should sell. Not what gets the most comments on a domain forum. Not what looks good in a portfolio. What are buyers actually willing to pull out a credit card and pay $99 for? As of August 6, NotRenewing had recorded 523 paid transactions involving 520 different domain names.
NamesCon Global is getting closer, and the first look at the agenda is now available. This year's event takes place November 11-12 in Miami at Ice Palace Studios, and the agenda gives a pretty good indication of where the conversations in the domain industry are heading. There are sessions covering domains, hosting, digital assets, artificial intelligence, digital identity, new top-level domains, changing search behavior, and the broader Internet economy. Those are all areas worth watching right now.
A subscriber emailed me to say the NotRenewing daily was landing in his spam folder. That's a good email to get, by the way. Most people don't bother. They just stop seeing your newsletter and eventually forget it existed, and you never find out because your open rate drifts down a point a month and you tell yourself it's summer. My first reaction was defensive, and I want to be honest about that.
I've renewed names I knew were dead. Not by accident, either. The invoice showed up, I skimmed the list, and I clicked renew because clicking renew was easier than admitting I'd wasted the money two years earlier. That's most of the problem right there. Everybody already knows the theory. Cut the weak names, keep the good ones, stop paying rent on assets that will never produce. Nobody argues with that. Then renewal season hits and somehow the portfolio got bigger again.
The country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Anguilla that has become extremely popular for artificial intelligence companies and projects.
A generic top-level domain (gTLD) operated by Google, designed for mobile applications and app developers.
A generic top-level domain for communities, organizations, and membership-based groups.
A generic top-level domain suitable for any internet-based business or presence.
A generic top-level domain designed for e-commerce and retail businesses.
A generic top-level domain targeting the technology sector.