He also told me he'd love to migrate nslookup to the .com someday but couldn't justify the price. "Maybe one day ;)" was how he left it.

Fast forward to February 2026. Ruurtjan launched Wirewiki.com. He didn't migrate nslookup. He built something new and put it on a .com from day one. The man walks the walk.

What Wirewiki actually does

Most lookup tools answer one question. You type in a domain, you get back a record. Each query lives in its own little silo and you have to stitch the picture together yourself.

Wirewiki treats the internet like a connected system. You can start on a domain, jump to its nameserver, then see every other domain using that same nameserver. Click through to the IP, see what else lives there. It's the difference between looking up one book in a library and being able to walk the stacks.

At launch it includes DNS lookups, a propagation checker, SPF validation, MX records, TXT records, DNS trace, reverse DNS, and a zone transfer checker. Registrar data, hosting info, CDN details, and ASN data are on the roadmap.

If you've ever had twelve tabs open trying to figure out why an email isn't delivering, this is the tool that collapses them into one interface.

Why a domainer should care

If you do real diligence before buying a name, you want to know what's living on it now and what lived on it before. Wirewiki makes that archaeology faster. You can see the infrastructure relationships and spot whether a domain was parked, developed, or used for something you'd rather not be associated with.

If you sell to end users, understanding their existing setup is useful context before you pitch. Who hosts them. What mail provider they use. Whether it's a serious operation or a hobby project.

And this is the one I keep coming back to. A .com is still the price of admission if you want to be taken seriously. Ruurtjan grew nslookup.io to over 600,000 monthly users. He had the brand recognition and the traffic. When he sat down to build something new, he still went with the .com.

That's not nostalgia. That's someone who ran the experiment.

What it comes down to

Ruurtjan told me in 2023 that he doesn't buy expensive domains up front because he does everything himself and doesn't take outside investment. Then he built a business big enough to justify buying Wirewiki.com anyway.

That's the arc every bootstrapper hopes for. Start lean, prove the thing, then upgrade the address once the business has earned it.

If you haven't read the original interview, it reads differently now that we know how the story continued.

According to the company’s site, more than 150,000 candidates and 500+ teams have used the platform. Equip highlights logos including LG, Wipro, and Dunkin’ Donuts, and emphasizes a pay-as-you-go pricing model of $1 per candidate with no minimum payments. At the same time, its ATS offering includes separate pricing options, including per-user plans after an initial free tier. The broader positioning is clear: lower the barrier to structured hiring, especially for growing teams that do not want to commit to large subscription contracts upfront.

Don't just let that name expire. Take a shot at $99 for each one! ** NotRenewing.com **

Equip was founded in 2020 in Bengaluru, India under the legal name Socratease, Inc., with Jayanth Neelakanta as the founder. Before launching Equip, he built AutoProctor, an anti-cheating tool for online assessments, also under Socratease. The progression makes sense. If you are building online tests at scale, integrity and verification become part of the product whether you plan for it or not.

What interested me beyond the business model is the domain. Equip.co is short, memorable, and directly tied to the mission of equipping companies to hire better. It is not the .com, but it is clean, brandable, and easy to say out loud. For a hiring platform competing in a crowded assessment market, that matters.

I reached out to Jayanth because I wanted to understand how the name came together, how the domain was acquired, and whether building a global product on a .co instead of a .com has had any real impact.

Mike: Before Equip, you built AutoProctor and Socratease. What did you learn from those projects that shaped how you built Equip?

Jayanth: Socratease taught me the importance of distribution. It is the coolest and most unique product I have built, but I had no structured way to get new users. And though we got enough users to remain profitable for a few years, we couldn't scale. AutoProctor taught me the importance of a large TAM. We cracked distribution and had a million users within a year, fully organically! But, once COVID ended and schools returned to in-person learning, AutoProctor wasn't needed as much. With Equip, we deliberately went after a large market (hiring) and focused much more on marketing than just on building the product.

Mike: How did you land on the name Equip, and how did you acquire the Equip.co domain?

Jayanth: We equip recruiters with tools to find the right talent. We equip talent with tools to improve skills and make themselves attractive to recruiters. So, Equip felt quite natural. Also, it has a positive connotation, is two syllables, and is easy to pronounce and spell. We went through other options: Reckon (do you reckon this is a good candidate?), Parse (let's parse the candidate's CV) and so on. They didn't capture our vision and described how we were doing things rather than what we wanted to do. Equip felt like it could grow with us.

When I saw Equip.co was available and it wasn't that expensive (~$25K), I was delighted. We only had around ~$150K in the bank IIRC. And this was when our revenues were consistently dipping as schools churned off AutoProctor. However, the website we bought it from offered an EMI option, which was the main reason we could buy the domain. I told myself that if the business didn't turn around in a few months, we wouldn't lose as much. Thankfully, it did turn around!

Mike: Was Equip.com ever on the table, or was .co always the plan? How do you think about .co versus .com when you're building a global product?

Jayanth: We'd take the .com if it were priced sensibly. That's the honest answer. But it wasn't, so we didn't lose sleep over it. What matters is whether the domain is clean, memorable, and pronounceable. Equip.co checks all three. We've never had a customer hesitate because of the extension. At this point .co is well understood globally, especially in tech. Equip.com hasn't been a valid website for the past few years, I hope it stays that way!

Mike: Has the domain made a noticeable difference in how companies perceive you when you're competing against bigger names like HackerRank and TestGorilla?

Jayanth: It helps more than people expect. Equip is a dictionary word. No one asks how to spell it, no one mishears it on a call. In a category where competitors have names like "HackerRank" or made-up compounds, having a clean single word that describes exactly what you do is a quiet advantage. Also, as we launch more verticals, having a catch-all term like Equip helps.

Mike: Your pricing is $1 per candidate with no subscription. That's a pretty aggressive model. How does that work financially, and why did you go that route?

Jayanth: SaaS companies typically have great margins (at least pre-AI!). Most of our competitors charge more because their products aren't as self-serve. They require extensive account management, sales, and other support. We are a tiny team of five. All our leads are inbound, and the product is so easy to use that we don't even demo it to our customers. They just figure things out on their own. An inexpensive product means more people are willing to try it. Simple UX means you can convert and retain most of them. Hiring is a huge industry and we are willing to play the long game here. 

Mike: You've got LG, Wipro, and Dunkin' Donuts highlighted on your site. How did you land those early enterprise customers as a small startup out of Bengaluru?

Jayanth: We didn't land them. They found us. Every one of those logos came through self-serve. They signed up, used the product, asked a question or two on live chat, and converted. We just ensure the product is worthwhile. People find this hard to believe, but that's exactly how it works when the product is genuinely useful and the pricing removes friction. PLG isn't a strategy we chose because it was trendy. It's what the product earned.

Mike: The hiring assessment space is crowded. What does Equip do that the bigger platforms don't, or won't?

Jayanth: We have already expanded beyond just assessments. We offer Resume Screening, AI Interviews and an ATS. We are also launching a Sourcing module where recruiters can directly find candidates, similar to LinkedIn. Fundamentally, we want to be the Amazon of Hiring. A recruiter should be able to upload a Job Description and immediately find a list of candidates filtered by salary and location, and sorted by skills and culture match. Assessments are a tool to evaluate skills, which is what we started with. But, we have gone, and will go, much deeper. We want to solve all aspects of hiring, whereas our competitors provide a point solution to one stage of hiring.

Mike: You built an AI-native ATS and you're giving it away for free. What's the strategy behind that?

Jayanth: The ATS is the workflow layer. It's where hiring actually happens. If we own that, every assessment, every AI interview, every screening decision runs through us. We're confident that once a team is running its pipeline inside Equip, the paid features aren't an upsell, they're the obvious next step.

Mike: Where is most of your traffic coming from right now? Are people finding you by typing Equip.co into a browser, through search, or something else entirely?

Jayanth: Google search remains our largest acquisition channel. But, LLM search is growing rapidly. Typical use-cases involve people looking for assessment tools, AI resume screening, or alternatives to established players. We're also seeing more traffic from people who asked an AI how to hire for a role, or streamline their hiring and Equip showed up.

Mike: For domain investors and founders reading this, what would you tell them about choosing a .co domain for a real business? What has it done for you and what has it cost you?

Jayanth: If the .com is available and affordable, take it. But I'd always take equip.co over getequip.com Several very famous startups use .sh, .app and so on! I am sure a clean, pronounceable, meaningful name on a .co will outperform a forgettable name on a .com every time. The domain is the beginning of your brand, not the whole story. Equip.co has taken us to 800+ customers across 81 countries. The extension never came up once.

That is an important distinction and I do not think enough people make it. When a strong end-user sale gets reported, the reaction in a lot of corners of this business is immediate. The category is back. The extension is getting respect. Buyers are paying real money again. And maybe that is true. But maybe one motivated buyer found one name that was exactly right for their business and paid what it was worth to them. Those are very different things and they lead to very different decisions.

You see a number that lines up with something you own and the brain starts connecting dots that may not actually connect. Suddenly your mid-tier name in a related category feels like it is sitting on the same runway. It probably is not.

The market does not really move the way we want it to. It moves in pockets. One strong sale in a vertical tells you there is at least one buyer willing to pay at that level. It does not tell you there are ten more. It does not tell you the window is open. It does not tell you your name is next.

I like reported end-user sales. Genuinely. They are about as close as we get to seeing what real buyers will actually pay. DNJournal built something valuable around exactly that idea. But the data is only useful if you are honest about what it is and what it is not. A single sale is a single data point. It has context you probably do not have. The buyer's urgency. The negotiation history. Whether there were other bidders or just one determined company that had to have that exact name. You see the number. You do not see any of that.

I have found myself using comps to feel better about my portfolio more than I have used them to actually learn something. That is a waste of a good data point.

A sale should sharpen your eye. Not validate your wishlist.

If every strong comp is making your whole portfolio look better, you are probably reading it wrong.

That's where most of this goes sideways.

You will hear the usual responses when a four-figure offer comes in. Too low. Hold for more. Never sell a name like that for only a few thousand. Take the money. The problem is that most of that advice is based on the number, not the name. People are not evaluating the offer. They are evaluating the story they have told themselves about the asset.

That is a big difference.

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I have had names that other domainers called solid. Names that got likes when I posted them. Names that sat for five or six years without a single inbound inquiry. Domainer approval and end-user money are two completely different markets. Most of us know that and still manage to forget it the moment someone validates our taste.

A four-figure offer is not automatically weak just because it is four figures. Sometimes it is exactly what the name deserves. Sometimes it is strong. Sometimes it is the kind of offer people only appreciate after another two years of renewals and silence.

The mistake is assuming that every decent-looking domain should eventually be a five-figure sale.

That sounds reasonable in the abstract. It sounds a lot less convincing when you actually think about buyer depth, which is always where I start.

How many real buyers are there for this exact domain?

Not businesses that could theoretically use it. Not startups you can imagine building something interesting on top of it. Not other domainers who would agree it is a good name. I mean actual buyers with budget, urgency, and a specific reason to want this name more than the ten other options they could pivot to by end of day.

That pool is almost always smaller than the owner thinks.

Replacement cost matters here too. If a buyer can register something close, pick up a reasonable alternative, add a word, or just go brandable instead, your leverage is probably not what you think it is. Domainers love to talk about ideal usage. Buyers are trying to solve a problem. They are not there to validate your thesis about the name.

This is where quality and liquidity get confused constantly.

A name can be good and still not be liquid. Clean, commercially sensible, easy to spell and understand — and still have a buyer pool shallow enough that a serious offer might come around once. Maybe twice if you are lucky. Most portfolios have names like that. They are not junk. They are just not as scarce as the owner wants to believe.

And once you actually sit with that, a four-figure offer starts to look different.

Sometimes the mistake is selling too low. That happens. But domainers talk about that mistake constantly and talk almost never about the other one — turning down realistic money because you are anchored to a retail outcome that was never especially likely. That is not patience. That is misreading the asset and calling it a strategy.

Every offer deserves a few honest questions. How deep is the buyer pool, really? How replaceable is the name? How often do names like this actually close, not in forum screenshots, not in highlight reels, but in the actual market?

That is usually where the answer lives.

Some four-figure offers should be rejected without a second thought. Some should be negotiated hard. And some should be taken before you have time to talk yourself out of the best deal that name was ever going to get.

I don't have a clean formula for knowing which is which. I wish I did. What I do have is a shorter list of names I'm still holding that I probably should have moved — and a pretty good memory of the offers I let walk. The ratio on that is not what I'd like it to be.

What matters next is what you do with that kind of asset.

Vinyl.com launched as an online record store with a deep catalog, positioned as a place to shop records and discover music. Vinyl Group has been open about investing heavily into the Vinyl.com domain, viewing it as a strategic cornerstone for the business.

Germán Rodrigo has been part of that push, with a background in growth and product. I wanted to talk with him about what it actually takes to turn a category killer domain into a real operating business, how they think about trust and conversion, and what the next chapter looks like.

Let’s get into it.

Find quality domains for just $99 - or list names you're not renewing for free and cash in.

Mike: What was the biggest strategic reason to go all in on Vinyl.com versus building on a different brand?

German: The biggest reason is that Vinyl.com is instantly understandable. When someone hears it, they already know what the site is about. That removes a lot of the friction you normally have when launching an ecommerce brand.

It’s also simply a great URL. It’s short, memorable, and exactly matches the category. Domains like that are rare.

A category domain also comes with a level of built-in trust. If you’re buying records online and you land on Vinyl.com, it feels like a natural place for that transaction to happen. Our view was that instead of spending years trying to build recognition for a new brand, we could invest that time and energy into building a better product and experience on top of a domain people already intuitively trust.

Mike: What is the simplest way to explain Vinyl.com to someone who has never bought a record online?

German: The simplest way to explain it is this: it’s an online record store with a very deep catalog where you can both shop for records and discover music.

You can come with a specific album in mind and buy it quickly, but you can also browse and explore like you would in a physical record store. A big part of the experience is helping collectors find things they didn’t know they were looking for.

Mike: How do you think about the promise of a category domain? What expectations does it create that a normal brand name does not?

German: If someone lands on Vinyl.com, they expect a serious record store. That means a large catalog, competitive pricing, reliable shipping, great customer service, and a shopping experience that feels trustworthy.

With a brand name, you can define what the brand means over time. With a category domain, people already have a mental model before they even arrive. The upside is credibility, but the trade-off is that expectations are higher from day one.

Mike: How do you balance discovery browsing with high-intent shopping on the same site?

German: We think about it as two different user modes.

Some people arrive with a very specific intent. They know the exact album they want and just want to buy it quickly. For those users, search, filters, and product pages with clear information matter a lot.

Others are in discovery mode, which is closer to the experience of browsing in a record store. For those users, collections, recommendations, wishlists, and browsing categories become more important.

We also try to support the moments in between. A collector might discover a record today but only decide to buy it later. Features like wishlists and alerts when a record comes back in stock or goes on sale help bridge that gap.

The challenge is making sure both experiences can coexist without getting in each other’s way.

Mike: Do you own other domain names? How did you land this one?

German: Yes, we own and operate a portfolio of premium media and commerce domains as part of Vinyl Group’s broader strategy.

We’re in the business of advertising representation and licensing for some of the world’s most recognisable URLs, including Rolling Stone Australia, Variety Australia, Refinery29 Australia, and Rotten Tomatoes. These sit within a wider network of cultural media assets under Vinyl Group.

The Vinyl.com domain was a strategic acquisition from one of our major shareholders, Songtradr, and reflects our focus on securing culturally relevant digital assets.

Mike: What advice do you have for people looking to start an online business?

German: Focus on solving a real problem for a specific group of customers rather than trying to build something for everyone.

Be intentional about which audience you serve and who you don’t serve, at least initially. Focus is key.

Distribution matters just as much as the product. Many ecommerce businesses underestimate how hard it is to acquire customers consistently and profitably.

And try to learn from real customers as early as possible. It’s very easy to spend months perfecting something internally that customers may not actually care about.

Mike: How do you approach SEO when the domain already has the keyword? What is still hard about ranking and converting?

German: Having the keyword in the domain helps with relevance and credibility, but it doesn’t solve SEO on its own.

You still need strong product pages, good internal linking, structured data, and content that search engines can understand. Competition is also intense in ecommerce, especially for popular artists and albums.

Conversion is another challenge. Getting traffic is only part of the equation. You also need pricing, trust signals, and a user experience that convinces people to actually complete the purchase.

Search itself is also evolving. With LLMs and AI assistants, there’s now another layer beyond traditional SEO. Brands increasingly need to think about how they appear in AI-generated answers and summaries. That means being cited across trusted sources and building a strong overall presence online. In many ways it complements SEO, but it’s changing how discovery happens and how people search.

Mike: If you could rewind to before launch, what would you build differently in the first 90 days?

German: I would spend even more time talking to collectors and understanding how they actually browse and manage their collections.

One thing we’ve been working on more recently is tools that help collectors organize and explore their libraries, like our Vinyl Shelf platform. In hindsight, leaning earlier into the collector side of the experience would have been valuable.

Mike: Two years from now, what needs to be true for you to say Vinyl.com is working the way you envisioned?

German: For me, success would mean that Vinyl.com is the first place collectors think of when they think about vinyl, CDs, and music collectibles more broadly.

That includes having a very deep catalog, a strong reputation for reliability, and an experience that feels meaningfully better than a typical ecommerce store, especially for people who take collecting seriously.

At the same time, we want to go beyond just being a place to buy records and become a more modern home for collectors. That’s where things like Vinyl Shelf come in, giving people a way to showcase their collections, discover new music, and engage with the culture around it.

If collectors feel like Vinyl.com understands how they collect, discover, and manage their music, and plays a role beyond just the purchase, that’s when we’ll know it’s working.

The question is whether any of these groups actually serve investors in a meaningful way.

The ICA gets this. The Internet Commerce Association. If you care about property rights or think the secondary market deserves representation, they have actually shown up. A lot of organizations talk about domains. The ICA has actually fought for investors when it counted.

Good domains are digital property. Real economic value. When policy proposals come along that could weaken ownership rights or make the business less predictable, somebody has to push back. That is where the ICA has been most useful. They treat domains like assets, not temporary registrar entries. That alone has value.

I am not reading policy summaries for fun. Most investors are not. But that does not mean the work does not matter. It means the benefit is usually invisible until it is not. If domain investors have a seat at the table at all, it is probably because groups like the ICA have been willing to speak up when it counts.

ALAC is different. ALAC and ICANN At Large. They play an important role, but not specifically for investors. ALAC is built for registrants and internet users more broadly. Domain investors fit in there somewhere, but we are not the point. That is fine. That is what the group is supposed to do. But if you are waiting for ALAC to fight for your portfolio, you will be waiting a while.

It is not that ALAC is irrelevant. It is that its value to investors is indirect. If you care about fair treatment of registrants, transparency, and the rights of people who register and use domains, then its work has some overlap with investor interests. But the center of gravity is not on aftermarket liquidity or how policy affects resale. It should not be. That is not what ALAC is there to do.

The ICANN registrant rights framework is different. It is not an advocacy group. But it might be the most practical thing here. Transfer rules. Renewal rules. Redemption periods. These feel boring until they are not. Then they are everything.

Policy language is easy to ignore until something goes wrong. That is when suddenly the details matter. Investors especially should pay attention here because many of the problems that cost people domains do not start with a bad sale. They start with not understanding the rules around what happens after a purchase, before expiration, or during a dispute.

That framework does serve investors, even if it was not built specifically for them. It creates a baseline of predictability. In a business built on ownership and transferability, predictability matters. Buyers want to know the name can be controlled, renewed, and moved. Sellers want to know the same. Investors need both.

So the answer to whether these groups serve domain investors is yes, but in different ways. The ICA is the direct fit. ALAC is broader. The registrant rights framework is not an advocacy group, but it provides some of the protections and structure that make the whole market more stable.

Most investors do not need to become policy experts. But they should know who is actually in the room speaking for domain owners. And they should know which rules are protecting what they hold. In this business, that background layer usually matters more than people think. That is not exciting. But it is real.

Clarity.

Not tools. Not marketplaces. Not more options. Clarity about what you own, why you own it, what the market is actually telling you, and when it's time to stop protecting a narrative that stopped being true a while ago.

That showed up in all five pieces I wrote on NamePros in March.

The month started with Paul Rubillo Told Me Something That Hit Different, which was really about focus. Paul talked about consolidating hard and getting serious about what's actually worth building around. That resonated because it cuts against something a lot of investors do without realizing it — confusing accumulation with progress. A portfolio full of names can look like momentum from the outside. In a lot of cases it's just deferred decision-making. The names you keep around without conviction don't just eat renewal dollars. They eat mental space.

That led into New Platform Skepticism. Domain investors aren't difficult for no reason. The skepticism is earned. This industry has seen enough launches and hype cycles to know that trust isn't built by press releases. People want proof. They want to know who's actually using something, whether serious portfolio holders moved names there, and what happened when they did. That's not negativity. That's pattern recognition.

Then came The Middle-Class Domain Problem, which probably got closest to the thing that quietly traps the most investors. Bad names are easy to drop. Great names are easier to defend. The trouble is the middle. The decent names. The respectable names. The ones that are just good enough to survive renewal season but rarely strong enough to create real buyer urgency. A lot of portfolios get dragged down there. Not by obvious junk — by names that are always explainable and never quite compelling.

That set up New Platforms Don't Fix Weak Inventory. Once you understand the middle-class domain problem, you start seeing how often investors respond to weak movement by changing venues instead of questioning the names. Move them. Change the landers. Reprice. Relist. Tell yourself you're being proactive. Sometimes that helps at the margins. More often it's a more comfortable substitute for the harder conclusion. If nothing changes after the move, that's information. And most of us don't love the information.

The last piece, Appraisal Tools Are a Filter, Not a Verdict, pushed that into another place where investors look for comfort. A lot of people are using appraisal tools as a substitute for market evidence. On large lists, they have value as filters. But they're not market testing and they're not a replacement for judgment. A polished number is still just a number if buyers aren't engaging. The danger is outsourcing conviction to something that feels objective while missing what the market is actually saying.

When I look back at the month I don't see five disconnected topics. They're all the same argument in different clothes.

The domain market gives feedback. It just doesn't always give it in a way that's easy to hear. And I think a lot of what I kept writing about in March was what happens when investors find ways to not hear it, better tools, new venues, cleaner appraisals. Anything that lets the story stay intact a little longer.

I'm not immune to that.

I'm just trying to do it less.

The premise is simple enough. Every domain investor has names they're not going to renew. That doesn't automatically make those names worthless. Sometimes they don't fit the portfolio anymore. Sometimes the timing's off. Sometimes you're just tired of carrying them. But a lot of those domains still have value to someone. They just never found their way to that person before disappearing into the expiration cycle.

That's the gap I wanted to close.

NotRenewing isn't a premium marketplace. It's not built around auctions or bidding wars or dragged-out negotiations. The whole premise is: if you're probably dropping it anyway, give it one clean shot before it's gone. Every name is listed at a flat $99. Buyer pays, transfer starts within 72 hours, seller gets paid once the buyer confirms receipt. That's the whole process.

A few weeks in, here's where things stand: 6 completed sales, 350+ active listings, 4 sellers with completed payouts.

For something this early, I'll take it. But the number that matters more to me is that the process is working. Listings are going up. Transfers are getting done. Payouts are going out. No one's getting stuck waiting or wondering what happens next. That's what I was most worried about. Not whether the concept was interesting, but whether the mechanics held up under real use.

They have. So far.

One thing I was genuinely uncertain about was whether the inventory would be worth anything. My concern wasn't that sellers would list junk. It was that "not renewing" is a vague signal that could mean a lot of things, and I didn't know if buyers would trust it. What I've found is that the structure helps. Sellers verify ownership. Domains have to meet age and expiration requirements. The listings are standardized. And maybe most importantly, buyers know the seller has already mentally moved on from the name. That changes the dynamic in a way I didn't fully anticipate.

None of this works without people actually using it, and a lot of domainers stepped up early. Listed names, bought names, passed the link around. I'm grateful for that more than I can probably say.

There's also a broader point here I keep coming back to. Portfolio cleanup doesn't have to mean dead inventory. There's a middle ground between renewing everything indefinitely and just letting names drop quietly. That middle ground has always existed. There just haven't been many clean, simple tools built around it.

That's what I'm trying to build.

Six sales isn't proof of anything permanent. I know that. But the use case is real, the buyers are real, and the mechanics work. That's enough to keep going.

Still figuring out the inventory mix. Still getting the word out. Still giving names a shot they wouldn't have had otherwise.

That part feels right.

Check out NotRenewing.com

Browse expiring and dropping domains, all at a flat $99. No auctions, no negotiations.

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And honestly, that's not wrong. Some of the best outcomes I've seen, including ones I've had, came from holding longer than felt comfortable.

But I've also held names that had no business being in my portfolio for as long as they were. And the story I told myself the whole time was that I was being patient.

I wasn't. I was avoiding a decision.

There's a difference, and I think it's worth talking about.

I wrote recently about the EmmaStone.com deal and the fifteen years behind it. That kind of story is what people point to when they talk about patience. Buy a great name, hold it, wait for the right moment.

What gets glossed over is that the patience in that situation wasn't blind. There was clear demand. Recognizable value. An obvious buyer pool. The name had a defined role in the market. It was just waiting for the right moment to fill it.

That's not the same as holding a name because you're not sure what else to do with it.

The test I've started using on myself is pretty simple. If this name sold tomorrow, who is the buyer and what are they using it for? If I can answer that quickly and specifically, fine. I'm probably holding for a reason. If I have to talk myself into an answer, that's a signal.

Not a death sentence. But a signal.

Because there's a version of patience that looks like discipline. You understand the use case, you can picture the buyer, you're just waiting for timing to align. And there's another version that's really just hope dressed up in nicer language. The name sounds decent. It's in a real industry. It checks a few boxes. But the specific buyer? Vague. The use case? Kind of depends.

The tricky part is both situations look identical from the outside. A name sitting in a portfolio. No sale. No urgency.

The difference is internal.

One of them you're waiting for alignment. The other you're waiting for something to change that probably won't.

Time can help a strong name find its moment. I've seen that happen. But I've also watched names just get older without getting better. Trends shift. Naming patterns move. The window you thought you were waiting for quietly closes.

EmmaStone.com was worth fifteen years because the name was doing the work the entire time. Time just let the right moment catch up to it.

That's the part worth holding onto. Not the patience itself, but what the patience was actually built on.

That is what makes the journey of David Timmis especially interesting. He founded the company that would become Leasing.com in 2000 and spent years building real traction on the long, descriptive domain ContractHireAndLeasing.com. The business grew, the market matured, and eventually the name caught up with the ambition. Securing the exact-match category domain was not just a rebrand. It was a shift in positioning, perception, and long-term brand authority.

Few founders get to operate on both sides of that equation at scale. From the early internet grind to mainstream recognition, this is a story about timing, conviction, and what changes when a company finally owns the name that defines its industry.

Mike: When you first launched the business, what made ContractHireAndLeasing.com the right name at the time?

Dave: The name of the business that I incorporated in February 2000 was Really Good Domains Ltd. As the Internet so new, to me, it seemed logical for a website to be memorable, pass the radio test and do what it said on the tin. All the domains that I registered were simple, memorable and generic. The back pages of magazines and the classified pages of newspapers were where brokers advertised contract hire and leasing deals at the time and the pages were titled “Contract Hire & Leasing”. Admittedly it’s a bit of a clunky, long name but it made sense and that’s what I chose to launch the website. We didn’t own the co.uk for many years until we acquired it several years later, but we’re not too concerned if we had the .com which we did.

Mike: At what point did you realise the company would eventually need a simpler, category-defining domain?

Dave: We invented car leasing comparison in the UK, have always led the market and been the go-to for consumers looking for the best choice and prices. Likewise, we have always been the trusted platform recognised by the industry. Along with our car leasing marketplace we also operated websites in vans, fleet, car supermarkets, green cars and new / nearly new cars. Operating a relatively large portfolio of websites was constantly becoming a bigger demand on resources and in 2016 we made a strategic decision to focus the business exclusively on the leasing space. As the leasing market matured and car leasing started going mainstream we wanted a consumer friendly, category defining domain that we could build a big brand around. The brand needed to define the space, not just describe it. We could never have built such a strong brand with the original name that we are doing with Leasing.com 

It was also important for the company name and brand name to be the same. We’ve won many awards over the years and there was always confusion as to what to refer to us as. Many listings or people would refer to us as Really Good Domains T/A ContractHireAndLeasing.com! So, part of the re-brand was a change of company name to Leasing.com Group Ltd and that’s what we did in 2019.

Mike: Was Leasing.com always on your radar, or did the opportunity come unexpectedly?

Dave: It was always the dream. You can’t get more category-defining than the exact match domain. But names like that rarely come available, and when they do, it’s serious money. I’m always looking at domains and when I revisited the topic I came across leasing.com. When the chance finally came, we moved quickly — because opportunities like owning Leasing.com don’t come twice. As a separate transaction, over the same period, we also acquired leasing.co.uk, but we would never have rebranded as we did, even to a shorted snappier name like leasing, without owning the .com. 

Mike: What did acquiring Leasing.com represent to you personally after building the company for so many years?

Dave: It felt like the moment the brand caught up with the journey. It was a huge opportunity to own the leasing space online. We’d spent nearly two decades building the category — now we owned the name that articulated that leadership in one word. Pride plays a part, of course, but mostly it was clarity. The brand finally matched the scale of the business and the ambition behind it. Leasing.com has the opportunity to be the global brand and central marketplace for leasing in all its forms – starting with automotive and expanding into other areas of huge opportunity such as property, consumer products, equipment, technology, plant and so on.

Mike: What changed most after the rebrand: traffic quality, conversion rates, partner perception, or something less obvious?

Dave: All the above. A single word .com English dictionary domain makes for a so much better and more trustworthy brand. The Leasing.com brand is so much more memorable. Our name can’t really be misspelled, passes the radio test, oozes credibility and as I often say, ‘You’d have to be stupid to forget it!’ Upgrading & rebranding to Leasing.com was a significant but worthwhile investment and one that makes the marketing budget deliver a significantly improved ROI, and extremely strong visitor to enquiry conversion rates. Partners can see that we have and continue to invest in our brand. With so much noise in the market and everyone shouting about being ‘The Number 1,’ ‘The biggest’ and ‘The best,’ it’s easy for people trust us and to see that we actually are. Our brand, reputation and website demonstrate that…trust and credibility with consumers are key. The shift in credibility and opportunities that a premium domain like ours bring cannot be underestimated!

Mike: Did owning Leasing.com make media coverage and partnerships easier to secure?

Dave: Without question. Journalists, partners, event organisers — everyone instantly “gets” what we do and remembers the name. It’s so easy to refer to Leasing.com either verbally or in writing 

Mike: What surprised you most after operating on the premium domain for a few years?

Dave: The rebrand took the best part of a year and the launch of leasing.com was now 6 years ago, but Leasing.com sounds and feels like it’s always existed. Consumers quickly adapted to and trusted the new brand. As I said earlier the name oozes credibility and is easy to trust. Part of the rebrand was a big launch campaign starting with a national outdoor billboard campaign, a fleet of promotional trucks, radio, TV, and of course online and social media. Our new brand opened a lot of doors, created a lot of interest and new commercial opportunities such as sponsorship of the English Football League and the Leasing.com Stadium. Opportunities present themselves that hadn’t done before. Brands want to be associated with you. 

Mike: How do you evaluate whether a premium domain is worth the price tag?

Dave: I would look at brand credibility, ease of recall, does it pass the radio test, the long-term strategic value and of course the purchase price.

Does the domain communicate trust, credibility, position you as market leader, give a significant uplift on return from your marketing spend, increase site conversion rates, improve paid search efficiency, shorten your marketing funnel? The right domain will do all of this if you invest in the brand and will be worth multiples of whatever you paid.

Mike: What advice would you give founders deciding between a descriptive domain and a category brand-defining one?

Dave: I’m a big fan of simplicity and it being easy to immediately understand what a company does. Descriptive/generic domains are fine and served us well for a long time. Investing in a category-defining domain and building the brand though is game-changing. A great brand name removes friction, builds trust, and gives you room to grow. If you want to lead a category, own the name that defines it

Mike: From a long-term brand perspective, what does owning Leasing.com allow you to do that was harder before?

Dave: It lets us think bigger and grow bigger. A brand like ours can expand internationally, partners take us more seriously, and consumers trust us immediately. It also future-proofs the business — no matter how the market evolves, Leasing.com will always feel relevant and authoritative. It’s a platform you can build anything on and has huge, untapped potential

Howard Fellman, a highly respected educator and domain expert, draws compelling parallels between domain names and prime real estate. Just as a Manhattan or beachfront property commands extraordinary value due to its limited supply, visibility, and prestige, so too does a one-word, industry-defining .COM. Furthermore, as he often states, “If you don’t own the .COM, you are simply helping the one that does”—a truth especially pertinent to a term as universal as “Leasing.”

I buy a name that feels right. Clean. Logical. Real industry. Nothing embarrassing about it. I'd show it to another investor and they'd probably nod and say that's a good name.

And then it sits.

Not because it's bad. Because it's mismatched.

That's the thing nobody really talks about when they're honest about their portfolio. Most of us don't have a junk problem. We have a mismatch problem. There's a gap between what we own and what end users actually move forward with, and a lot of names live quietly in that gap for years.

Letting that domain drop? List it here to get back some of your investment!

Buyers don't evaluate names the way we do. They're not thinking about scarcity or comps or what sold on NameBio last quarter. They're asking something much simpler. Does this help me build what I'm trying to build right now?

That question eliminates a lot of names that feel perfectly reasonable to hold.

A name can be logical, clean, and genuinely valuable in a general sense and still not connect with how a real buyer is making a decision. If it's not obvious, specific, or immediately useful to them, it falls behind alternatives that are. Even alternatives that are technically worse by every metric we use to evaluate names.

That's the part that's hard to accept.

You might own a name that describes an industry, but the buyer wants something that describes their exact product. You might own a polished brandable, but the buyer wants something more literal. You might own a keyword with real search volume, but the buyer cares more about clarity than traffic.

From our side, these feel like small differences. From the buyer's side, they're the entire decision.

I've had names I was genuinely proud of that never got a single serious inquiry. Not because the market was slow. Because the fit wasn't there. The name made sense to me. It didn't make immediate sense to the person who needed to write the check.

That's the mismatch.

The easiest way I've found to spot it in my own portfolio is to stop asking "is this a good name" and start asking "who is this for, specifically, and what are they building?" If I have to think too hard to answer that, the name is probably sitting in the gap.

Another signal is how I talk about a name when someone asks about it. If I'm explaining why it works instead of just seeing immediately how it gets used, that's usually a sign. Strong names tend to explain themselves. The use case is obvious without effort.

This doesn't mean every unclear name is dead weight. Some of them just need time and the right moment. But there's a difference between a name that has a defined path to a buyer and a name that could theoretically work for someone someday. I've spent more time than I should have convincing myself the second kind was the first kind.

Bridging the gap isn't about chasing trends. It's about being more honest about the connection between what you own and what someone is actually trying to build today.

Names that match how companies position themselves right now tend to move. Names that require interpretation tend to sit.

The gap between what you own and what the market wants isn't always obvious when you're buying. It gets very obvious when you're holding.

I have names my portfolio that fall into that second category. Some of them I've had for years. At some point, you have to stop calling it patience and ask whether the fit was ever really there.

It does not.

I have been investing in domains since 2006 and I still cannot give you a clean formula. What I can tell you is that the tools most people rely on are often wrong, the signals that actually matter are learnable, and the honest answer for most domains is somewhere between "not much" and "it depends on who wants it."

The Uncomfortable Starting Point

Most domains are worth very little.

That is not cynicism. It is just how the market works. Millions of domains get registered every year. A small percentage have real buyer demand. The rest sit in portfolios getting renewed year after year because the owner believes in them more than the market does.

At the same time, some domains sell for serious money. I have watched names change hands for five figures, six figures, occasionally more. What separates those from the ones that never get an inquiry usually comes down to the same handful of signals every time.

Why Appraisal Tools Will Mislead You

GoDaddy has an appraisal tool. Estibot has one. There are others.

I check them occasionally. I do not trust them much.

The problem is that domain value is almost entirely driven by buyer demand, and an algorithm cannot predict that. A tool might tell you a domain is worth $1,200. The right buyer comes along two years later and pays $40,000 because it was the exact name they needed for their rebrand. The opposite happens just as often — a domain with a strong automated appraisal sits untouched for a decade.

Experienced investors lean on comparable sales and market instinct, not automated numbers. The tools can be a rough starting point. They should not be your answer.

What Actually Determines Domain Value

These are the signals I look at when I am trying to figure out what a name might realistically be worth.

The extension. .com still dominates. Businesses trust it. Customers expect it. There are exceptions — some country extensions perform well in their home markets, a few niche extensions have carved out real use cases — but if you are holding a strong keyword on a secondary extension and wondering why it is not moving, the extension is probably part of the answer.

Length. Shorter names are easier to remember, easier to type, easier to brand. That is not a rule without exceptions, but it holds up more often than not. The most valuable domains ever sold tend to be short. There are simply fewer of them, which makes the good ones scarcer.

Commercial demand. Not every word carries the same weight in a business context. Domains connected to industries where companies spend heavily — insurance, finance, real estate, software, legal — tend to command higher prices because the math works for the buyer. If landing one client is worth $10,000, paying a premium for the right domain is an easy decision. Narrow hobby phrases rarely have that kind of buyer on the other end.

Brandability. Some domains are valuable without being dictionary words. Google, Stripe, Zillow — none of those are real words. What they share is that they are clean, simple, and easy to build an identity around. Brandable domains are harder to evaluate than keyword domains, but the strong ones can become very valuable.

Search demand. In the right industries, a domain that sits directly on top of a high-volume search term carries real weight. CarInsurance.com reportedly sold for around $49 million. That number reflects both the domain and the industry behind it. Search demand alone is not enough, but in competitive verticals it amplifies everything else.

Comparable sales. This is the most grounding signal I use. NameBio tracks thousands of real domain transactions. If you can find sales of similar names in the same category, you have a much more honest starting point than any automated tool will give you. Comps are not perfect — context matters, timing matters, the specific buyer matters — but they beat guessing.

When a Domain Is Worth Nothing

This is the part nobody wants to hear.

Most domains have no resale value. Not because they are poorly registered, but because there is no buyer for them. Long phrases do not sell well. Hyphens hurt. Very narrow niche terms rarely attract real demand.

A domain can be meaningful to you and still be worthless to the market. Those are two different things, and confusing them is one of the more expensive habits in this business.

How Investors Actually Think About Pricing

There is a difference between what another investor might pay for a domain today and what an end user might pay if it fits their business perfectly.

Investors think about both numbers. A domain might trade wholesale for $500 and still be worth $8,000 to a startup that wants it as their brand. When I price something, I am thinking about comparables, industry demand, how liquid the name actually is, and what kind of buyer is realistically on the other end.

That last part takes time to develop. You get better at it by studying sales, making mistakes, and staying honest about what the market is actually telling you versus what you want to believe.

Tools Worth Using

NameBio for comparable sales. That is the one I use most.

GoDaddy and Estibot for rough automated estimates, with low confidence attached to whatever number they return.

Neither replaces judgment. They just give you something to push against.

What Makes a Domain More Likely to Have Value

Strong .com when possible. Keywords tied to real industries with real budgets. Short, clean, easy to say out loud. Avoid long phrases and complicated combinations. Study what the market has actually paid for, not what you think things should be worth.

And be patient. Some of the best names take years to find the right buyer. That is not failure. That is just how the market works.

The Honest Answer

Domain value is not a formula. It is a read.

A small number of names become genuinely valuable because they represent strong brands or sit in powerful industries. Most never find serious buyers. The difference usually shows up in the signals above, but even when all the signals are right, timing and luck still play a role.

If you want a real number, study comps. If you want a clean number, use an appraisal tool. Just know those are not the same thing.

I have been there.

You get an inbound. Then another one a few weeks later. Maybe something closes. You start telling yourself your instincts are working, your pricing is solid, your portfolio is stronger than you thought. And maybe that is true. But sometimes the name is just doing the work and you are mostly staying out of the way.

That took me a while to admit. It takes me a while to admit most things, but eventually I do.

If you own a handful of genuinely good domains, they can carry you for a long time. They can create the appearance of a real process even when your process is mostly vibes. Buyers will forgive bad landers, slow responses, and pricing that does not quite make sense. Not always, but often enough. The name pulls them in. You close the deal. You feel like you did something.

Sometimes you did. Sometimes the domain just wanted to sell.

The dangerous part is when you stop being able to tell the difference.

I have watched my own portfolio from that angle and it is not always flattering. A few strong names can quietly subsidize a lot of marginal ones. The renewals keep going because the good stuff is covering the bills. The weak acquisitions never get examined because nothing is forcing the conversation. The portfolio looks active. It is not always healthy.

And inbound makes that easy to ignore.

When inquiries are coming in, you feel momentum. Momentum feels like confirmation. It is not always that. Sometimes it just means you got lucky on a few names early and have been coasting on them longer than you realized.

The question I try to ask now, and do not always answer honestly, is whether I would buy the same names again today. Not the ones that have already sold. The ones still sitting there. The ones I renewed last month without really thinking about it.

That is where the real accounting happens.

Inbound tells you something. It tells you a name has pull, that someone wanted it badly enough to find you. That matters. But it does not tell you whether your pricing logic is sound, whether your acquisition habits are improving, or whether you are actually building something or just riding a few good early calls.

Some investors never have to figure that out because the good names keep rescuing them. I understand the appeal. I am not immune to it. And honestly, if you are in that position, it is not a bad position to be in.

But I think about what happens when the inquiries slow down. When the market gets quieter. When the names that used to carry everything stop carrying it. That is when you find out what your actual process is worth.

If you're buying or selling domains seriously and not checking comps, you're guessing. Sales history matters. Price memory matters. I use it every week. It keeps me honest.

But newer investors fall into a trap with it.

They think the spreadsheet is the whole story.

It's not even close.

NameBio shows you what sold and for how much. What it doesn't show is why that number happened. And the why is almost always where the real lesson is.

A sale is never just the name.

It's who the buyer was. How badly they needed it. Whether the seller had patience or got tired of waiting. Whether a broker was involved and knew how to create tension. Whether it was one clean deal or part of a portfolio move where the per-name math got messy.

You don't see any of that. You just see the number.

A $25,000 comp could mean a lot of things. Funded startup on a deadline. Defensive buy. Auction with two motivated bidders who drove each other up. Sometimes it's just luck and the timing lined up. NameBio doesn't know the difference and neither do you when you're using it as a baseline.

There's also a graveyard the data doesn't show you.

For every name that sells, thousands don't. They get renewed. And renewed again. No inbound. No offers. Nothing. The database records exits. It doesn't record the years of registration fees on names that looked like that $25,000 comp but never found a buyer.

That's survivorship bias. And in domain investing it's expensive.

I've bought names because the comps looked right. The category made sense. The keywords matched something that sold. And then nothing. Year after year. At some point you're not holding an asset, you're just paying rent on a bad decision.

The comps didn't tell me that was coming.

Two names can look identical in a spreadsheet and get completely different reactions from real buyers. Same length. Same extension. Similar keywords. But one sounds like a company and one sounds like a parked page and buyers feel that before they can even explain it. None of that fits in a filter.

Venue matters too. A sale in a curated marketplace after a broker campaign is a different animal than a cold outbound deal you ground out yourself. Auction heat is different from a quiet private transaction. The number might be the same. The circumstances usually aren't.

And negotiation skill skews comps more than people want to admit. Patient sellers anchor higher. They don't panic when it goes quiet. They know how to frame value. The price you're looking at might say as much about who sold it as what they sold.

None of that is in the data.

I don't have a clean way to wrap this up because, honestly, I don't think it's possible. NameBio is a tool. A good one. But it shows you outcomes, not reasons. And if you're trying to build real judgment about what names are worth and why deals happen, the data is a starting point, not an answer.

The rest you learn the slow way.

Solid names. Sensible prices. Familiar comps. Nothing reckless, nothing embarrassing. A portfolio that looks responsible on paper and probably is.

I built portfolios like that for years. Still have some of that inventory if I'm honest.

The middle feels safe because it mostly is safe. The problem is safe tends to produce average. And average is fine until you start doing the math on what your time and capital are actually returning.

At some point I started drifting toward both ends and away from the center. Not intentionally at first. More like I kept noticing where my best outcomes came from, and it wasn't the middle.

It was either the obvious name I held too long before someone had to have it, or the early weird bet that looked questionable until the space developed and suddenly it didn't.

That pattern has a name. The barbell.

Do you have domains that you are not going to renew? Then list them here to make some money!

Heavy on both ends. Almost nothing in between.

On the premium end, I want names that don't need a pitch. Category words. Exact match terms. The kind of asset where the buyer isn't comparing ten options in a spreadsheet. They're deciding whether they want the obvious one or not. That's a different conversation than most domain sales.

These names are slow. They tie up capital. They don't give you much to post about. But when they move, they change your year. Sometimes more than one year.

On the other end, I'm looking for asymmetry. Lower cost entries in spaces where something is starting to develop. New terminology, emerging products, funding flowing into a category before the language around it solidifies. You're not buying what's already obvious. You're paying a small amount for the right to be early.

Some of those don't work. Most of them don't, honestly. But the pricing reflects that going in, and when one connects it can outperform a long stretch of careful mid-tier trading.

The middle is different. Mid-quality names at fair prices that sell occasionally and keep things moving. I know that portfolio well. It makes you feel productive. Active. Like the business is running.

It's just usually not where anything interesting happens.

I think a lot of investors stay in the middle because it's easier to defend. You can always point to comps. You can always explain the logic. Premium names require conviction you can't always back up with data. Asymmetric bets require you to be early in ways that look wrong before they look right.

The middle never looks wrong. It just quietly doesn't do much.

Barbell portfolios don't look balanced. That's kind of the point. A few heavyweight positions you're genuinely committed to. A cluster of smaller bets with real upside if you're reading the market right. Not much sitting in the comfortable center just because it seemed reasonable at the time.

I don't think I've fully arrived at this. I still own names that belong in the "why do I still have this" category. Old habits.

But the outcomes that have mattered, the ones I actually remember, came from one end or the other.

The middle is easy to live in. I just don't think that's where the edge is anymore.

That said, there's one thing from Issue #1 that I do want to share publicly.

A tool.

NotRenewing.com is now live.

This project has been sitting in my notebook for years. I've written about the idea in passing. I've mentioned it in conversations. I even brought it up once during an X Spaces discussion about expired inventory and aftermarket inefficiencies. The problem always felt obvious, but the execution took time to get right.

Here's the gap.

Every day, domain investors make renewal decisions quietly. Names fall off portfolios for all kinds of reasons. Cash flow. Strategy shifts. Portfolio cleanup. Opportunity cost. Some of those names still have real utility and real buyers. But the path between "I'm not renewing this" and "someone else can use it" is messy.

The drop cycle is slow. The visibility is low. And most of the time, potentially useful domains disappear into the expiration pipeline without ever being seen by the people who might actually want them.

NotRenewing.com is built to sit in that space.

It's a simple concept. If you know you're not renewing a domain, list it. Buyers get a clear, time-sensitive marketplace of names that are about to become available. Sellers get one last chance to extract value from assets they've already decided to let go. No auctions. No long holding periods. No pretending a name is premium when your renewal decision already says otherwise.

I also want to be very clear about something.

This is not a money maker for me.

There's no premium tier. No upsells. No listing fees. It's free to list. Every name is priced at $99. If a domain sells, the platform keeps $2 to cover basic operating costs. That's it. This isn't a jackpot business model or some hidden-margin marketplace play. It's a utility. A tool I wanted to exist because the workflow didn't make sense.

Sometimes something should exist simply because it's useful.

Now, it's important to acknowledge that I'm not the only one thinking about this stage of the lifecycle. Atom has a program where sellers earn a percentage when names listed on their platform eventually drop and get registered again. That's a smart system. It recognizes that expiration still has value and it shares upside with the original holder.

But the models are fundamentally different.

Atom's approach monetizes the backend of the lifecycle. The name drops, someone else registers it, and revenue gets shared after the fact. It's passive and platform-centric.

NotRenewing is proactive and market-driven.

Instead of waiting for deletion and re-registration, this creates visibility before the drop. It turns a silent exit into an active marketplace moment. Buyers see what's coming. Sellers signal intent. Transactions can happen while control still exists, not after the asset resets.

This is not a replacement for premium marketplaces. It's not an auction house. It's not trying to be another lander platform. It's a pressure valve for portfolio churn.

If you've ever dropped a name and later wondered who picked it up, you know the friction I'm talking about. If you've ever scanned expired lists hoping to catch something useful before it disappears into backorder systems, you've felt the inefficiency.

I don't know how much traction it gets. I don't know if the domain community will use it the way I'm imagining. But I kept running into this problem, and building the thing felt better than complaining about it. So here it is. Go list something. Tell your friends.

Arif Ullah is not treating Exertion.co like a trophy. He is treating it like infrastructure. The word itself carries weight. It implies output. Effort. Measurable push. That choice alone tells you something about how he thinks.

In a space where conversations often revolve around acquisition price and resale strategy, I am more interested in what happens after control changes hands. What vision gets attached to the asset. What risk gets taken. What work actually follows.

Exertion is not a passive word. It demands movement.

I wanted to understand why Arif chose it, what he sees in it, and how he plans to turn that energy into something durable. This is a conversation about conviction, execution, and what it really takes to build around a strong name.

Mike: What is Exertion.co today in practical terms, and what does it become if everything goes right?

Arif: Exertion.co is a domain name that we acquired to represent our company and brand, named simply as “Exertion.”

We continue to work relentlessly to expand its growth from small beginnings, originally starting with myself as the sole founder from the UK to hopefully something that is internationally recognised.

The domain name, “exertion.co” is one of a handful that we own. We’ve also put to use “exertion.us,” “exertion.ltd,” “exertion.co.uk” and “exertion.uk.”

Exertion is effectively the foundation and branding for all the work we release into the world. Incorporated in the UK as a software development company and for a brief period also incorporated in Delaware, US, which was beneficial during our Y Combinator application.

Our purpose with Exertion is significantly greater than software development. We are committed to our self-imposed Corporate Social Responsibility, contributing to all aspects of our society from philanthropic efforts to upholding morally oriented practices. We are always continuously exploring new means of contributing to the world around us, benefiting the lives of as many people as possible.

Mike: When you secured Exertion, what did you see that others may have overlooked?

Arif: With the work that we all undertake during our lifetime, ultimately, we’re working towards building a better life for the generations after us. I believe that the work we conduct should be aligned with our individual values and objectives, therefore building a company and brand for me has been personal.

With the consideration of the substantially unfathomable goals and visions we have, starting in a small town in the North of the United Kingdom, to aiming to become something internationally impactful in a positive direction, I knew would require exertion.

Exertion, to us defined as “something that requires physical or mental effort,” was naturally inevitable for us given our vision. When we discovered that this name was available during our time of company incorporation, we took it. Others may not have necessarily overlooked the term, but rather did not have a vision and purpose that we see.

Mike: Was this domain the starting point, or did the business concept exist before the name?

Arif: The mindset ultimately did exist before the brand name and consequently before our domain names too. However, by establishing the brand name and acquiring a matching domain enabled us to commence on the development of our brand, initiating our traction and first point of digital presence.

I do recall personally being excited in the specific acquisition of exertion.co, exertion.us and also exertion.co.uk throughout the years.

Mike: What does the word Exertion signal to you emotionally and strategically?

Arif: The term “Exertion” for us ultimately defines our philosophy in a single word, representing discipline, progress, pioneering of innovation and new perspectives of mental thinking that leave a positive lasting impact in this world for generations to come.

Strategically, it communicates momentum, activity and action, which implies embarking upon work which tackles and solves real world problems.

From a branding perspective, we’re leaving behind the world better than we found it, attracting people who are also motivated and inspired to build or improve in their lives.

Mike: Why .co? Was that a branding decision, a strategic one, or both?

Arif: Since 2010 when the registration for the .co TLD had been opened worldwide and not restricted specifically for Colombia, it was trendy, popular for use with businesses and a great alternative to the .com extension. When the chance to acquire exertion.co came around and was presented to us in 2019, we decided to buy it and begin using it as our primary domain name.

For us it works synonymously from a branding perspective, as our Instagram handle is @exertionco, which unintentionally mirrors our domain name too.

Mike: Where have you seen the most traction so far?

Arif: Most of our traction for our brand has been from in-person interactions and social media, along with a smaller amount of traffic being driven to our website through search engines.

We have our offices in the UK, outside the border of Manchester, which is Exertion branded. We’re also offering free public WiFi in the surrounding area for other local businesses, we’ve produced branded clothing and even assigned a vanity registration plate to our vehicle. All these factors combined so far have contributed to garnering attention to our vision and for the public to recognise our brand, naturally sparking curiosity and having people gravitate towards our mission, becoming something memorable in the process.

Mike: How do you define leverage inside this project?

Arif: For us being in software development, an innovative field in the technology space, we’re able to reach and serve thousands or even potentially millions of people simultaneously once we produce tangible or intangible offerings, such as software, apparel, marketing or even posting on social media.

Leverage for us is being able to reach a large audience, which ties in with our vision to be of greater service to as many people as possible whilst also being internationally recognised as a positive brand.

Mike: What role does brand authority play in your long term thinking?

Arif: Branding for us plays a key role, as we’re producing products and services to an exceptionally crafted quality. We’re more focused on quality rather than quantity, therefore when people see our name or logo in public, we’re aiming for an association to reliability, trust, enthusiasm and execution.

Even for the future, we’re expecting ourselves to look back and contemplate that the work we undertook and produced five years ago was pioneering for the time.

Mike: How do you measure whether the name itself is helping or hurting conversion?

Arif: Ultimately, I believe the market answers this question. The name plays a supporting role but initially if the services we’re offering provide value, the name tends to strengthen the story rather than solely carry it, especially early on in a company’s offering.

I also believe that if we stay convicted to our vision and remain relentlessly driven towards our purpose, the public will naturally gravitate towards our mission regardless. Exertion in name itself requires this, to not be shaken by the opinions of others whilst we primarily focus on our objectives and deliverables.

Mike: If someone offered you a strong price tomorrow, would you sell or keep building?

Arif: The domain name is one of our assets we own, which we worked towards acquiring in our portfolio therefore we would be reluctant to sell. For us, the focus is on continuing to build.

Mike: What mistake do you see domain investors make when they try to transition into operators?

Arif: Owning a portfolio of domains and building businesses which scale are two different disciplines, however trading domain names can become a lucrative business. It is a unique niche to be within and as domain names are internationally exclusive, the world is effectively the oyster.

It needs to be considered that domain name investing can be a slow market and not one expected to provide fast returns, as domains need to attract the correct buyer who are willing to pay the price. I do foresee domains becoming more exclusive as more are registered and them only continuing to increase in value.

Mike: Five years from now, what does Exertion need to represent in order for you to consider this a win?

Arif: As the purpose with Exertion is greater than ourselves, to contribute to the world and leave it better than we found it, inspire and motivate others to improve their lives and to nurture a better future for generations after us, we are relentlessly determined in our growth and impact.

Therefore, the greater the audience size we develop leads to exiting obscurity, the tremendously positive impact we can make, the more substantial the win naturally becomes as a result and conclusively an astonishing success story we leave behind. The win for us is not what we can have, but what we can give.

They screenshot well. They fit neatly into sales threads. They make your year look sharp in a recap post. Everyone understands a clean exit and a strong multiple.

Regret is different. Regret is quiet. Personal. Lingering.

And if you've been investing in domains long enough, you know it's the better teacher.

Every serious investor has a mental list they don't share much. Names we passed on because they felt a little expensive. Names we sold because the number felt "good enough." Names we dropped that later showed up attached to real companies with real momentum.

You don't forget those.

I still remember specific decision points. The price. The inbox thread. The internal logic that felt reasonable at the time. "Take the profit." "Free up capital." "There will be more like it."

Sometimes there aren't.

Wins feel like validation. Regret feels like exposure. It forces you to look at how you actually make decisions.

When you sell a name and later watch it anchor a brand, you start asking better questions. Did I price it for liquidity or for leverage? Did I understand who was buying it and why? Did I treat a strategic asset like inventory that needed to move?

That kind of reflection doesn't come from wins. Wins just reinforce what you already believe.

Regret interrupts the story you tell yourself.

Same thing on the buy side. Passing on a domain because it feels "a bit rich" stings differently when it trades again at multiples. You start examining your filters. Were you anchored to old comps? Playing defense after a cold stretch? Optimizing for comfort instead of upside?

That's not theoretical learning. That's tuition.

Earlier in my investing life, I valued motion. Activity felt productive. Buying. Selling. Turning the portfolio over. The spreadsheet was alive and that felt like progress.

Looking back, some of my most "efficient" moves were mistakes.

I exited names that needed time. I treated premium inventory like it had carrying costs that demanded urgency. I confused movement with strategy.

The regret showed up later when those same types of names resurfaced stronger, better positioned, owned by people who simply held.

That changes how you hold.

Regret also teaches portfolio construction in a way no playbook can. You feel the pain of being underexposed right before a category matures. You remember dismissing a niche because the end users weren't obvious yet. You remember thinking a trend felt early, or weird, or too speculative.

Then the market moves anyway.

Companies form. Funding shows up. Language shifts. Demand catches up.

And you're watching instead of participating.

You don't forget that feeling either.

So your approach evolves. You build exposure to ideas, not just extensions. You balance liquidity with conviction. You leave room for positions that look early but make sense if the world moves a certain way.

Regret sharpens your judgment. It knocks your confidence down a notch. It changes how you think about risk — sometimes permanently.

Wins can actually hide weaknesses. A lucky sale can validate a sloppy process. A hot streak can blur the line between timing and skill. One outlier deal can distort your whole sense of demand.

Success feels smooth. Mistakes leave texture.

Over time, that texture becomes experience. You get better at pricing. Better at negotiating. Better at waiting. You start noticing value that isn't obvious on the surface — the kind that doesn't show up in comparable sales or extension trends.

You stop chasing activity. You start building position.

That shift is subtle, but it's where experienced investors separate themselves. Not because they win more often, but because they learn more precisely.

The names that got away still matter. The deals you think about years later still shape how you operate today.

Handled the right way, regret compounds.

Mike: Jay, what is Detectives.com today in plain terms, and what kinds of cases or clients make up the core of the business right now?

Jay:  Detectives.com is a nationwide network of local investigators. Through our national network, we can deploy a local agent on-site within minutes of case intake. This rapid-response capability, combined with our access to industry-leading tools and specialized experts, ensures we maximize every opportunity for our clients. No two cases are alike, which is why we offer over 100 investigative services. Whether you need discreet surveillance, skip tracing, insurance fraud investigation, or a comprehensive background check, our team is equipped to handle your unique situation

Mike: Your site highlights nationwide coverage and a network of investigators. How does a case flow from first contact to assignment, and what determines which investigator gets it? 

Jay: When local referrals require field work, we engage our network of licensed affiliates to provide boots-on-the-ground presence. Depending on the scope, our affiliates handle the initial setup and background research or bring in one of our specialists for more complex needs. The result is a seamless blend of local expertise and elite investigative resources—delivered quickly and at a reasonable cost.

Mike: When someone lands on Detectives.com, what is the single most common problem they are trying to solve, and has that changed over the years? 

Jay: Tough to answer as our clients' needs vary by perspective:
For consumers, we handle sensitive family law matters including child custody investigations, surveillance, and background checks.
For corporations, we focus on non-compete enforcement, theft of intellectual property, security vulnerabilities, and technical countermeasures such as bug sweeps.
For attorneys, we serve as an extension of the firm—providing the legwork, witness location, and evidence gathering that builds stronger cases.

Mike: Public listings show you as the owner. What did the business look like in the early days compared to now, and what changed first: the service mix, the scale, or the way you acquire customers? 

Jay: I started in the insurance investigation business for many years, and one thing is clear: the internet has completely transformed how we work. From faster case intake and streamlined payment options to secure email and cloud delivery, technology has made the entire process more efficient. Add AI-powered tools that handle after-hours inquiries, and we're able to offer a level of consumer convenience that simply didn't exist before. It just keeps getting better.

Mike: The domain is the brand here. Do you remember when you first realized “this exact-match .com is an unfair advantage,” and what early evidence proved it?

Jay: We understand that for many, hiring a private investigator is a new experience. The name itself carries a weight that instills confidence and trust. Even the search engines seem to agree, rewarding our expertise and helping clients find us. But while that visibility brings people through the door, it’s our commitment to quality work and genuine customer service that makes them want to stay.

Mike: Did you acquire Detectives.com directly, or did the domain come later after the business existed? If it was acquired, what made you confident it was worth the price?

Jay:  We acquired the domain name in the mid-1990s. We were the first to launch a website for the name. While we recognized its value from the outset, the internet had yet to mature. It also took time for our clients to become accustomed to—and eventually rely upon—emerging technologies.

Mike: How do you think about trust in this category? What are the top trust signals you’ve learned actually move the needle for a person who is nervous about hiring an investigator?

Jay:  The nature of our work is built on discretion. Our clients come to us during deeply personal crises—situations they often cannot bring themselves to share with close friends or family. We are honored by the trust they place in us, but that trust is earned through absolute privacy. Our Domain instills a reputation that rests on creating a space where clients feel safe enough to confide.

Mike: The site also promotes a Detectives.com network program. What does an investigator have to do to qualify, and what do you screen for that the public does not see? 

Jay:  They must have proven investigative experience, licensed and insured, strong ethical standards, and discretion. Look for specialized expertise, courtroom testimony ability, advanced surveillance skills, and a track record of solving complex cases while protecting client confidentiality.

Mike: You’ve been doing investigations since the 1980s, according to other materials tied to your work. What has changed the most in the craft itself, and what has not changed at all? I imagine related technology has grown tremendously over the years.

Jay: While specialized databases, social media tools, and advanced equipment—from cameras to trackers—have evolved by leaps and bounds, the human element remains constant. Top PIs still rely on strong intuition, a calm demeanor, and conversational control. They listen more than they speak, adapt to personalities, recognize inconsistencies, and create comfort that encourages voluntary disclosure.

Mike: What percentage of your leads today come from the domain and organic search versus referrals, repeat corporate work, or paid advertising?

Jay: Our lead sources have remained consistent across repeat customers, referrals, and advertising. However, our most significant area of growth is coming from organic search and our online presence.

If you manage a real portfolio, the registrar is not just where the names sit. It is where you renew, transfer, bulk edit DNS, toggle privacy, organize inventory, point landers, and close deals. Those little clicks compound. And most of us just accept the friction because we have been dealing with it for so long we stopped noticing it.

Unstoppable Domains has been getting attention lately. I am not here to hype anything. What matters to me is whether the tooling and economics actually improve the day to day experience of running a portfolio. After spending time with it, a few things stand out.

Pricing That Actually Changes the Math

Let me put real numbers on this.

They are doing $7.99 .com registrations daily, up to 10 per day if you are not in the Domainer Club. If you are in the Domainer Club, you get $5.99 .com registrations and $5.99 .com transfers. No rotating promo codes. Just consistent baseline pricing.

Full pricing details here: https://unstoppabledomains.com/dns-pricing

Worth noting: pricing is going up on March 9th. If consolidation was already on your list for this year, this is probably the cheapest window you are going to get. At scale, even a dollar per name adds up faster than people think.

Fast Transfer Distribution Through Afternic and Sedo

Distribution is where a lot of marketplaces quietly fall apart.

Unstoppable supports fast transfer through major networks including Afternic and Sedo. That matters for one reason. Fewer deals die at the finish line. When a buyer finds your name through a registrar-integrated network, smooth delivery is everything. Fast transfer removes friction from fulfillment and cuts down on the chaos that sometimes follows a sale.

It is not a sexy feature. But it is an operationally important one.

Expireds Tab and Free Backorders

They have launched an expireds marketplace tab: https://unstoppabledomains.com/marketplace/expireds

And they offer free backorders: https://support.unstoppabledomains.com/support/solutions/articles/48001280538-domain-backorders

For investors who actively hunt inventory, having expired supply and a cost-free backorder option lowers the barrier to experimenting. You are not burning fees just to place interest on a name that might not drop.

I will be honest, it is still early compared to established drop platforms. The depth of inventory is not there yet. But the direction is worth watching.

Bulk Tools That Actually Respect Your Time

Most registrars treat bulk management like a checkbox. Something they can say they offer without putting real thought into it.

Unstoppable built their bulk tools around the stuff you actually touch on a weekly basis. Auto-renew toggles, nameservers, DNS records, forwarding, tagging, transfer locks, privacy settings, sales settings. All in bulk.

On the transfer side, they support batches of up to 500 domains at a time. If you have ever tried to migrate a portfolio in awkward chunks of 20 or 50 names because the UI would not let you do more, you know why that matters. It turns consolidation from a painful multi-day project into something you can realistically knock out.

Bulk transfer info: https://unstoppabledomains.com/domains/dns/transfer-in/bulk

List Without Transferring and Bring Your Own Buyer at 3%

This is one of the most practical features I have seen from any registrar in a while.

You can list domains you own at other registrars without transferring them first. You verify ownership, generate a hosted for-sale lander, get a checkout link, and send it directly to your buyer. The commission on that bring-your-own-lead flow is 3%.

Listing page: https://unstoppabledomains.com/domains/dns/list

When the domain sells, fulfillment is flexible. They support push at other registrars too, so you are not forced to transfer the name into their system just to complete delivery. Normal transfer restrictions still apply if you do go that route, so keep that in mind for names that are locked from a recent registration or transfer.

This is a selling layer. It is not magic escrow. But it solves a real problem for people who want to sell without ripping their entire portfolio out of wherever it currently lives.

Self-Brokerage Landers With Built-In Chat

If you prefer direct negotiation, their self-brokerage landers are set up for that. They include live chat, WhatsApp integration, Telegram integration, and email contact options.

The built-in chat matters more than most people realize. Serious buyers often want immediacy. If everything gets funneled through slow email threads, you lose momentum. I have seen deals slip away simply because the back and forth took too long and the buyer moved on. This setup keeps negotiation direct without removing structure.

Lease-To-Own Up to 10 Years With No Extra Fees

Lease-to-own only works if it does not create more problems than it solves.

Unstoppable supports installment plans up to 120 months. More importantly, there is no extra charge to enable it. For higher ticket inventory, that can widen your buyer pool without turning your process into a mess of custom invoices and manual follow-ups.

You set the terms. They handle the execution. That is how LTO should work.

The Mobile App Is More Useful Than You'd Expect

This part is underrated.

They have a mobile app that sends renewal reminders, pushes notifications for self-brokerage chats, and lets you stay responsive to live buyer conversations without being chained to your laptop.

If you have ever missed a message from a real buyer because you were not sitting in front of your dashboard, you know how fast small delays can kill a deal. Being able to respond from your phone is not a luxury feature. It is operational.

How I Think About This Compared to GoDaddy and Dynadot

I am not going to pretend any single registrar is perfect. They all have tradeoffs.

GoDaddy has massive distribution and deep aftermarket liquidity. Their fast-transfer network is strong. But pricing gets expensive when you are managing volume, and the interface has always felt like it was built for the general public first and domainers second. If you have ever tried to do something simple in bulk on GoDaddy and ended up clicking through five screens, you know what I mean.

Dynadot has strong domainer tooling. Clean bulk tools, competitive pricing, and a very capable expired and backorder ecosystem. I have a lot of respect for what they have built and I still use them.

Unstoppable is doing something a little different. The pricing is aggressive right now, especially before the March 9th increases hit. The bulk tools feel like they were built by people who actually manage portfolios. The external listing feature solves a real workflow problem. The built-in chat on landers gives you negotiation tools most registrars do not even think about. LTO at no extra cost. Mobile notifications that actually matter.

Where they still have room to grow is expired inventory depth compared to legacy drop platforms, analytics and reporting, and broader aftermarket liquidity over time. Those things take years to build. But if they keep shipping at this pace, they are not going to stay in the "Web3 company pivoted to DNS" category for long. They are going to be a legitimate registrar competitor for domain investors.

Two Ways to Think About Using This

The first is as a portfolio home base. Transfer names at scale while the pricing is discounted, consolidate everything, and run renewals, DNS, and sales tooling from one place.

The second is as a selling layer without migration. Keep your names wherever they are, verify ownership, generate checkout links, and close deals through Unstoppable without moving everything first.

Both are valid. Which one fits depends on where you are and what your portfolio looks like right now.

Where I Land on This

I am not interested in platforms just to be early. I have been doing this long enough to know that hype fades fast and tooling is what sticks around.

What I care about is reducing friction and increasing closes. Right now, Unstoppable is offering $7.99 .com registrations for everyone, $5.99 .com registrations and transfers for Domainer Club members, meaningful bulk tooling, Afternic and Sedo fast transfer distribution, built-in chat landers, free LTO, external listing at 3%, expireds with free backorders, and mobile renewal and negotiation notifications.

That is a real pitch. Not a gimmick.

If you were already thinking about consolidating inventory or tightening up your workflow this year, the timing on this is worth paying attention to. Especially before March 9th.

Disclosure: Unstoppable Domains provided credits for testing the platform.

February's NamePros articles weren't random. They all kept coming back to the same thing: how easy it is to look at the right data and still draw the wrong conclusion.

Comps mislead you. Inquiries get your hopes up. Corporate registrations get misread. Patience gets confused with inaction. And sometimes not selling makes people think you don't know what you're doing.

Here's what each piece was really about.

When Comps Become Noise

Comparable sales are supposed to help you price smarter. Most of the time they just give people permission to ask for numbers that don't make sense for their situation.

I wrote this one because I keep seeing the same thing. Someone finds a $50,000 comp and suddenly their domain is worth $50,000. That is not how it works. That comp happened under specific conditions. Specific buyer. Specific timing. Specific motivation that you probably know nothing about.

Comps are supporting evidence. They are not the argument. When you build your entire pricing logic around what someone else paid for a different name in a different deal, you stop paying attention to the buyer sitting in front of you. You start negotiating with a spreadsheet instead of a person. That is where deals die.

What Happens After the Inquiry Comes In

Everyone gets excited when an inquiry hits their inbox. Almost nobody thinks about what happens next on the buyer's side.

This piece was about the gap between "I'm interested" and an actual transaction. Because a lot happens in that gap. Budgets get reviewed. Partners weigh in. Someone finds an alternative. The urgency that drove the initial email fades. Life gets in the way.

An inquiry is curiosity. That is it. A deal requires internal alignment on the buyer's end, and you have zero control over that process.

When you understand that, it changes how you respond. Instead of leading with price, you learn to figure out where the buyer actually stands. Do they have authority? Budget? A timeline? Or are they just poking around?

And when they go quiet, it does not always mean no. Sometimes it means they are dealing with friction on their end that has nothing to do with you. Knowing that keeps you from panicking or dropping your price for no reason.

Defensive Domain Registration

A lot of domainers assume companies think like investors. They do not.

I wrote this to explain why corporations register domains defensively and why it rarely has anything to do with speculation. It is about risk. Brand protection. Keeping competitors or bad actors from squatting on something that could cause confusion or legal headaches.

A defensive purchase is not emotional. It is math. Companies weigh the probability of misuse against the cost of acquisition. They think about legal exposure, brand dilution, and whether ignoring the problem is cheaper than solving it.

Understanding that logic matters because it keeps you from falling into the "they have to buy this" trap. Sometimes they do not. Sometimes they have already decided the risk is not worth the price. Sometimes they just let it sit and deal with the consequences.

That awareness alone will sharpen how you position yourself in a negotiation.

EmmaStone.com, the Super Bowl, and an 8-Day Deal with 15 Years of Patience Behind It

This one was not really a celebrity domain story. It was a timing story.

Someone held a name for 15 years. Then it moved in eight days because a bigger cultural moment created the window. From the outside that looks fast. From the inside it is years of sitting on something you believe in while nothing happens.

Patience in domain investing is not passive. It is not just holding names and hoping. It is positioning. You do not force liquidity. You wait for the moment when buyer motivation and asset relevance line up. That alignment does not happen on your schedule.

Most portfolios do not fail because the names are bad. They fail because the person holding them runs out of patience before the right window opens. This deal was a good reminder of what long-term conviction looks like when it finally connects with short-term opportunity.

Why We Don't Sell

This one got people talking because it challenges something most domainers take for granted: that selling is always the goal.

Sometimes the best move is not selling. Not every inquiry deserves a counter. Not every offer is worth engaging with. Some domains represent leverage, future optionality, or strategic positioning in a portfolio that is worth more as a whole than any individual sale would justify.

Selling too early can cap your upside. I have done it. Most experienced investors have. You take the quick win because it feels good, and then you watch the name become worth multiples of what you accepted.

In an industry that celebrates sales screenshots, restraint does not get much attention. But restraint compounds. Knowing when to hold is just as much a skill as knowing when to sell. Maybe more.

The Bigger February Takeaway

All five of these pieces point to the same thing.

Data matters. But understanding the behavior behind the data matters more.

Comps are data. Inquiries are data. Corporate registrations are data. Public sales are data.

The edge is not having better data than everyone else. The edge is reading the psychology behind it. Understanding how buyers actually think, not how domainers talk about how buyers think.

That gap between investor assumptions and buyer reality is where most of the money gets left on the table. And it is where most of the opportunity lives if you are paying attention.

When we talked the first time, we got into her early deals, her philosophy on domains, and why she believed so strongly that the right name could change the trajectory of a business. A lot has changed since then. The domain market looks different, branding has become a bigger conversation, and Kate has been right in the middle of all of it. I wanted to catch up with her and find out what's shifted in how she thinks about this stuff, what the landscape looks like from where she's sitting, and what she's building next with Defining.com.

Mike: In our 2018 interview, you alluded to the power of a great domain. Has that belief strengthened or evolved over time?

Kate: If anything, it’s strengthened. Another way of describing it is alchemistic—a great domain has the power to change or transform a company in an impressive way. I often think of gestalt theory when I’m describing the power of great domains: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That’s what a great domain does for a company: it’s both a force multiplier and a moat. The right domain doesn’t just describe a company, it propels the company forward. It clarifies the story internally, aligns the team, and signals authority externally. It removes friction in a way that’s impossible to ignore. Domains are far more than marketing assets, they’re foundational assets—ones with immense power to fuel your dreams.

Mike: The rebrand to Defining.com feels deliberate and bold. What problem does this new identity solve that Buckley Media Group did not?

Kate: As we grew, our clients weren’t just hiring a boutique brokerage, they were relying on us as strategic partners at the highest level of brand and capital allocation. Defining.com conveys that in a very unique way. Defining is a verb. It’s what we actually do. We help companies define their category, their positioning, and often their future, through the right name, branding and positioning, and the right digital real estate. It also reflects our belief in the credibility, authority, and long term brand equity that a one word dotcom provides. Moreover, it signals that we’re building a brand at a global level.

Mike: You now describe Defining.com as synergizing brokerage, corporate domain services, and branding. Why was it important to unify those under one roof?

Kate: Because from the client’s perspective, those things were never separate. A domain isn’t just a transaction. It’s tied to naming, legal, brand architecture, investor perception, M&A strategy—all of it. Historically, companies have had to stitch that together themselves: an agency here, a lawyer there, a broker somewhere else. We unified it because strategy breaks when it’s fragmented. When one team understands the whole chessboard, the outcomes are simply better.

Mike: What does a modern CEO misunderstand most about domain strategy in 2026?

Kate: Many CEOs still treat it like a cost center. Whereas it’s one of the only assets you can buy once that appreciates, compounds trust, and reduces customer acquisition costs forever. A CEO will spend millions optimizing performance marketing, but hesitate on the one decision that permanently lowers the need for it. The irony is that the most sophisticated companies already understand this. The rest usually learn after they miss out on the name they wanted. Happily, more and more founders and CXOs understand this. We’re seeing a greater sophistication of how premium domains are being evaluated internally by end users, as well as a deeper understanding of what the right domain name brings to the table.

Mike: How has the buyer profile for ultra-premium domains changed since we last spoke?

Kate: Buyers are more sophisticated and more strategic. Ten years ago, many purchases were reactive, “We finally have budget, let’s upgrade.” Today they’re far more proactive—often tied to fundraising, repositioning or rebranding, launching a new product or service, or preparing for acquisition. There’s also less ego, though that will always be a factor, and more math. Teams are modeling brand equity, conversion lift, and defensibility. It’s become a boardroom conversation, not merely a marketing one. As more companies quantify the downstream value of owning category authority, and education is always a big part of what we do, there’s a shift in viewing premium domains as balance-sheet assets rather than marketing expenses.

Mike: Are you seeing more strategic buyers, more PE-backed buyers, or more founder-led buyers today?

Kate: All three, though we are seeing the growing influence of PE and late stage Venture Capital in naming and rebranding decisions. PE-backed buyers have become especially disciplined. They view domains the way they view any asset: if it strengthens the moat and increases exit value, it’s worth doing. Founder-led companies still tend to move fastest, though. Founders understand instinctively that identity matters, and they’re less constrained by corporate bureaucracy. Some of the best deals we’ve done happened because a founder simply said, “This is who we are now, and we need to own the name,” and didn’t overcomplicate it.

Mike: What separates a company that “buys a domain” from one that truly leverages it as an asset?

Kate: Great question. I’d have to say intent. Some companies just change the domain name and move on. The smart and strategic ones rebuild around it, using it to simplify their messaging, consolidate sub-brands if applicable, tighten positioning, and signal maturity and category-dominance to the market. A great domain is a platform that can and should color all downstream decisions, email, subdomains, branding, marketing, positioning, and more. If you treat it like a cosmetic upgrade, you miss most of the value.

Mike: Has AI altered the naming and branding process in a meaningful way, or is human intuition still the differentiator?

Kate: AI is fantastic at generating options, but it’s not great at judgment. It can give you thousands of names, but it can’t tell you which one will still feel right in 20 years, or which one carries emotional weight, or which one signals authority without trying too hard. Naming at the highest level is still deeply human. It’s cultural and intuitive and shaped by taste and experience. AI speeds up the search, but it doesn’t replace taste. And taste is still the moat.

Mike: How do you balance data-driven naming trends with instinct and narrative?

Kate: The best names don’t sound trendy—they sound timeless. Data tells you what has worked, and helps chart our course. Instinct tells you what will last. Narrative ties it all together. Experience matters as well. Doing this for as long as we have, we’ve developed the gut-level instinct to know what will work and why, and what probably will not.

Mike: In a world obsessed with short-term growth metrics, how do you convince founders to think in decades?

Kate: I remind them that brands outlive tactics. You can’t performance-market your way into legacy. The companies we all admire made decisions early that looked expensive at the time and obvious in hindsight. A great domain is one of those decisions. It’s not about next quarter. It’s about whether you want to look inevitable ten years from now. Are you building for next quarter, or are you building a legacy? It’s about vision, ambition and strategy. How do you want the world to remember you?

They get into it because they saw a screenshot. Some five-figure sale on NamePros. A guy on Twitter talking about a hand-reg he flipped for 50x. A blog post about someone who turned $10 into $15,000. And I get it. I really do. It looks like the most accessible business on the planet. Low overhead, no employees, digital inventory you can buy from your couch at 2am. What's not to like?

What nobody sees is the quiet disappearing act. People register a bunch of names, renew them once, maybe twice, sell nothing, and just kind of fade out. No dramatic goodbye post. They just stop logging in. I've watched this happen dozens of times over the years and I'm not going to pretend I was some kind of exception when I started. I wasn't. I made most of these mistakes myself. Honestly, I'm probably still making some version of them, just with better excuses.

The first purchases are almost always emotional. I think this is just human nature. You see a name and your brain immediately starts designing a logo for it. Picturing a landing page. "This would make a great startup name." "This just sounds premium." But that feeling isn't demand. A domain is only worth something when a real business actually needs it and is willing to write a check. Not when you can picture it on a business card.

Here's what I wish someone had told me early on. There's a massive gap between what impresses other domainers and what actually sells. I spent way too long optimizing for peer approval. Getting "nice reg!" comments on threads. Feeling validated. Meanwhile the names sitting in my portfolio that eventually sold were boring. They were the names nobody on NamePros would ever get excited about. Two-word industry terms. Straightforward service names. Nothing clever. Nothing futuristic. Just obvious names for obvious businesses.

Then there's the math, which is probably where the most damage happens.

A new investor buys 40 names and figures at least a few will sell in the first year. Seems reasonable. It's not. Sell-through rates for a typical portfolio sit somewhere in the low single digits annually. I've written about this before but it bears repeating because people still don't internalize it. If you own 40 average names, you might sell one this year. Maybe. And that one sale might not cover what you spent on renewals. The model works. I've seen it work. But it works when the inventory is strong, the pricing is realistic, and you give it actual time. Not Twitter time. Real time. Years.

And look, every hype cycle makes this worse. I've watched it with crypto names. NFT names. Metaverse names. Web3. Now AI. Same pattern every time. New domainers pile in late, register a bunch of trend keywords, and sit back waiting for companies to start calling. But the best inventory in any trend gets locked up early by people who were already paying attention. By the time you're reading the third TechCrunch article about a trend, the best domain names in that space were registered six months ago.

Can trend names work? Absolutely. But you need to know who the buyer is before you register the name, not after. If you can't name the buyer profile in one sentence, you're not investing. You're buying lottery tickets. And that's fine if you know that's what you're doing. Most people don't.

Side note on this. I see a lot of portfolios from newer investors and there's this pattern that comes up constantly. The names are all... replaceable. Two generic words pushed together. Synonym swaps of a stronger name someone else already owns. Slight variations that feel close to something good but aren't quite it. Here's a test I use. If a business could easily pick a different name without losing any clarity or brand power, your name isn't that strong. The best domains feel like the only option. Average domains feel like one of many options. And one of many options doesn't command premium pricing. It just doesn't. I've got names like this in my own portfolio that I'm trying to get rid of. The difference between me now and me five years ago is I'm at least honest about it.

Pricing is where ego really takes over.

A new investor buys a name for $12, falls in love with it, and lists it at $4,999. Not because there's any market data supporting that number. Because they want it to be worth that. Because they spent three hours researching it and convinced themselves it was a gem. Then an offer comes in at $400 and they reject it because it feels insulting. Name expires. Or worse, they renew it for another year out of spite and then it expires.

I get this because I've done it. Not once. Multiple times. You anchor to your own expectations and stop listening to what the market is actually telling you. And what the market is telling you, almost always, is take the money. Build the cash flow. Let that confidence and capital fund better decisions next time. The compounding effect of actually selling things is worth more than any theoretical perfect sale you're holding out for. It took me an embarrassingly long time to learn that.

Actually, here's the thing about that. Early cash flow changes your entire psychology in this business. When you've sold a few names, even at modest prices, you stop white-knuckling every listing. You start buying differently. You start seeing your portfolio as a business instead of a collection of personal bets. That shift matters more than any individual sale.

Scaling too fast is the other trap nobody warns you about.

Someone makes their first sale , maybe $500, maybe $1,000 and they immediately plow it all back into 30 new registrations. Or worse, they haven't sold anything yet but they read a thread about how volume is the key, so they go from 40 names to 200 in a month. All you've done is make your renewal bill bigger. Portfolio growth should follow proof of concept. If you can't sell from a small portfolio, a bigger portfolio just means you're losing money faster. I know that sounds harsh. It's also just true.

I've been working on this myself. I've been dropping names that haven't gotten a single inquiry in three or four years. Every time I drop one there's this little voice that says "watch, someone's going to want that next week." It hasn't happened yet. What has happened is my renewal bill went down and I stopped feeling guilty every January when the invoices show up.

Which brings up the thing I think about more than almost anything else in this business. Renewals.

Every domain in your portfolio is a recurring bet whether you think of it that way or not. You're re-buying that name every single year. Ask yourself honestly: would I register this name today if I didn't already own it? If the answer is no, you're paying to hold a mistake. And that sounds brutal but it's actually freeing once you accept it. Letting names go isn't failure. It's how you run a portfolio instead of a museum.

I know a guy, met him through some DMs years ago, who told me he'd never dropped a domain. Ever. Not once. Wore it like a badge of honor. I remember thinking that's either the most disciplined person I've ever talked to or the most stubborn. He's probably spending more on renewals annually than some people make in sales. But he can't let go because every name represents a decision he made, and dropping it would mean admitting the decision was wrong. I get it. I just can't afford to think that way.

So what actually works?

Honestly? Boring stuff. Start smaller than you want to. That's not exciting advice and I know it. But the people I've watched succeed in this business over years, not months, almost all started tight and expanded slowly. They focused on who the buyer was before they bought anything. They owned names they could explain to someone who isn't a domainer. They priced based on what similar names actually sell for, not what they wished the market would pay. They expected long timelines and they were right to.

And this is the part I keep coming back to. Stop trying to impress other domainers. The market that pays you isn't on NamePros. It's not on Twitter. It's a business owner in some industry you might not even think about very often, who needs a name to launch something or rebrand something and is willing to pay because the right domain solves a real problem for them. That's the whole game. Everything else is noise.

This business isn't gambling. But it punishes impatience the same way. Most people lose money because they sprint when they should be playing probability over years.

If you're new and you've lost money in your first year, join the club. Seriously. That's normal. Almost expected. But if you're five years in and still bleeding, that's not bad luck. That's a pattern. And the fix usually isn't intelligence or some secret strategy. It's restraint. Knowing when to buy, when to hold, when to drop, and when to take the offer sitting in front of you instead of the imaginary one you keep telling yourself is coming.

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That last part is what made me want to do this interview. Leaving a sure thing to start over is not something most people in this industry do. Jeffrey didn't just want to keep brokering deals for someone else. He wanted to build his own shop, keep the team small, and do it on his own terms. Saw.com isn't trying to be the biggest brokerage in the space. It's trying to be the one that actually picks up the phone.

I reached out to Jeffrey because I wanted to get past the resume and into how he actually thinks about deals, negotiations, and what separates brokers who close from brokers who just send emails. His answers did not disappoint.

Mike: What was the moment you realized it was time to build Saw.com? What was the driving force?

Jeffrey: I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit, even long before entering the domain industry. After spending seven great years at Uniregistry, I was approaching 40, and I felt it was now or never.

Mike: When a buyer says, "That domain is too expensive," what is the best response, and what is the worst response?

Jeffrey: There are really two kinds of buyers: those who will never become buyers, and those who are interested and could become buyers. When someone appears qualified, I believe it's critical to dig a little deeper to understand where they're coming from.

That's why I still rely on something simple: the phone or Zoom. I introduce myself, explain what Saw.com does, share my background and years in the industry, maybe provide some context about the domain and the owner, and then I turn the conversation over to the buyer. Ideally, they open up about their business, their goals, and where they are in their journey.

At that point, I'm listening intently, not just to what they say, but to what it tells me about their stage, their plans, and their constraints. When the conversation turns to price, I tailor the discussion to their situation. I introduce options, possibilities, real-world stories, and practical realities that might help this investment make sense to them. There are countless reasons why the price is too high. Hopefully, we get to the bottom of it and overcome it.

No silver bullet works every time. But there is a common theme: people don't want to be sold; they want you to solve their problem(s). Our job is to solve them, build relationships, and educate. Hopefully, this will point them toward success.

Mike: What separates a broker who closes from a broker who just follows up?

Jeffrey: What separates the wheat from the chaff is simple: calling, connecting, educating, and having the conversation. This is a significant decision/investment for most buyers.

When I've managed brokers, the red flag is effort allocation. If a broker treats a newly funded CEO the same way they treat an unqualified lead, with equal effort and generic communication, it's probably time for that broker to be successful somewhere else. I'd rather see five calls, emails, and real follow-up on the qualified lead, and maybe a light automated touch on the unqualified one, or nothing.

And if you don't have enough to work on, go get more business. Call past buyers. Call our sellers and get some names to sell. Call newly funded companies and tell them to hire you. Write an article. Get your ass out there.

Mike: How do you set expectations with a client when the owner's price is unrealistic or the owner is unresponsive?

Jeffrey: For every buyer-broker opportunity I personally work on, a call is mandatory. I need to explain who I am, who we are, and understand their business. I want to know if they've inquired before, hired someone else, what was said, what was offered, and when. All that matters.

From there, I do my homework: ownership history, past use, and where I realistically think the deal will land. I give the buyer a clear idea of the cost and outline the next steps so there are no surprises.

If someone won't spend 10 minutes on the phone, there's no reason to believe they'll wire $20k, $30k, or $50k later. Based on their answers, the domain's history, and their budget, I can usually tell them upfront whether the seller is likely to engage. I try to paint that picture early. Giving bad news isn't fun, but facts are facts. The no-response outcome or the very high price is one you can sometimes see a mile away.

Mike: What negotiation tactic do you see buyers overuse that actually hurts their leverage?

Jeffrey: Buyers who label sellers as squatters and begin the relationship with legal threats and demands are starting at a disadvantage…(Oh, why did you have to go and do that!) Even after being informed that the seller owned the domain long before their business existed, they often continue to make outlandish demands. I always wonder where they are getting this information to think that acting this way is a good idea.

Mike: What negotiation tactic do sellers overuse that kills deals unnecessarily?

Jeffrey: Sellers who do not respond or give straight answers.

Mike: What is the biggest operational bottleneck in domain deals that outsiders never see?

Jeffrey: Nothing specific jumps out, but I've seen just about everything: sellers who've passed away, sellers who will only sell to certain groups of people, domains tied up in divorces, domains stolen while already in escrow, buyers whose partners outbid them on another platform after terms were agreed, employees trying to buy and flip a domain back to their own company, domains caught in bankruptcy, sellers changing their minds at the last minute, buyers changing their minds, buyer's lawyer finding a trademark issue in the 11th hour, the board disallowing the offer that was made and accepted, buyers inquiring under multiple identities across different platforms, a buyer getting bit by a spider, lawsuits being filed, the government not permitting the buyer to buy, war, natural disaster and much more.

Mike: What role does your appraisal tooling play today, and what do you want it to become over the next year or two?

Jeffrey: Our domain appraisal tool was built to help buyers answer a simple question: why? Why does one domain cost this much while another costs that much?

Is it perfect? No, and it never will be. I could dedicate my life to refining the algorithm, and it still wouldn't be flawless. Over the next year or two, my goal is to make it more consistent, particularly for AI-related domains and new gTLDs. To do that, we need more data, especially comparable sales.

Mike: What is a deal you are proud of, not because of the price, but because of how it was handled?

Jeffrey: I was working with a startup that wouldn't need the domain for six to twelve months. All they really wanted was to understand the price and have me check back in three to six months if the project actually moved forward. When I asked what they'd be comfortable paying now, the answer was essentially nothing, but if necessary, they could put up $3,000 to $5,000. We expected the full price to land in the $30,000 to $40,000 range.

I proposed a purchase option to the seller's representative. At first, the seller wasn't interested. But I explained that if he passed, the buyer would likely keep shopping, and if they found a comparable domain at a similar or lower price, the opportunity would be gone. That changed the conversation.

The seller agreed to take the domain off the market. We structured the deal through Escrow.com as a simple two-step payment plan: a small upfront payment and a final payment months later. If the business moved forward, the buyer could complete the purchase at the pre-agreed price. If it didn't, they walked away having spent only a few thousand dollars. It was low risk for the buyer, fair compensation for the seller, and it worked out well for everyone. The domain was workstation.ai

Mike: You are not only a domainer, but an entrepreneur. What advice, mentors or experiences have molded you into the person you are today? What value do you place on that?

Jeffrey: "I stood on the shoulders of giants," Isaac Newton once said. I've been incredibly fortunate to have supportive parents, a great wife, family, and friends. Before entering the domain industry, I learned from some of the best salespeople I've ever met and carried those lessons with me throughout my career.

I also had the rare opportunity to learn from the most successful domainer of all time, Frank Schilling, and his right-hand man, Vern Jurovich. Very few people get teachers like that, and I don't take it lightly.

As both an entrepreneur and a salesperson, I'll say what I've always said: hard work pays off. Ignore the talk about hacks and shortcuts. Put your head down, do the work, and grind.

John says the messages were not just random signups. They included password reset traffic, one-time codes, and notifications that appeared to be connected to internal tools and environments at major companies. In several cases, the emails suggested that sensitive systems were being set up with @local.io as if it were a safe placeholder, not a domain owned by a private individual.

John believes the root of the problem is simple and stubborn: documentation and sample configuration habits that treated local.io as “safe to use,” then spread through copy-paste culture across teams, contractors, and companies. What started as a normal registration turned into a front-row seat to how bad assumptions travel, and how quietly they get repeated.

Sully's note: This interview discusses misdirected email, account recovery flows, and security-adjacent scenarios. We’ve avoided operational details, identifiers, and anything that would help replicate access. The purpose is awareness, not instruction. John says he focused on notification and remediation, not exploitation, and we are not publishing any private data. We reached out for comment where appropriate and will update if we hear back.

Mike: You registered local.io in 2007 for programming projects. When did you first realize something unusual was happening with the domain?

John: As a network professional, I used to run my own email server. The domain used to receive over 6,000 spam emails a day, and fighting the spam required me to run a dedicated system. Over time, the volume dwindled, and when I moved the mail server to Google (on paid plans) it became manageable.

Since I was only using named accounts, most of the spam was just statistical noise. I assumed this was normal mail server admin life, not an anomaly.

Mike: Walk me through what you saw when you turned on the catch-all email in September 2024.

John: The first sign something was off was that I started receiving a lot of one-time passwords from IBM. I realized I could completely bypass password authentication by using the “forgot password” routine on the affected accounts.

I tried to contact IBM, but I was paywalled. All the relevant support contacts required paid support plans, and without that, the contact forms just threw errors.

Mike: IBM's documentation recommended @local.io as a secure throwaway domain for testing. How did that even happen?

John: Apparently, in IBM’s own variant of OpenLDAP (likely distributed along with other products), they listed “local.io” as the example domain name. It became an internal culture at IBM to believe “local.io” was safe to use without double checking it.

The domain always had a placeholder web page indicating it was owned by a private individual, so it would not have been hard to detect. People just blindly trusted internal documentation for test emails.

Mike: You mentioned OpenLDAP configuration files from 1998 used local.io as a sample domain. Did OpenLDAP ever actually own it?

John: Even with Google, it is difficult to search for records older than 25 years ago. It is unknown whether OpenLDAP owned it.

That said, considering the upkeep fee for the domain, I find it unlikely an open source project would own it long-term. They could easily pick another domain with a lower maintenance fee.

Mike: What's the most sensitive system you accidentally gained access to through these emails?

John: The most sensitive would be IBM’s own internal network, FYRE, which is used to set up demonstration environments for their customers. IBM qRadar SOAR (security orchestration, automation and response) environments were often imbued with real security credentials that were used to demonstrate effectiveness on a potential customer’s system.

Mike: You said this spreads like malware, people see @local.io works and keep using it wherever they go. How common is this?

John: You see consistent patterns. There are currently about 10 people (contractors) who work for organizations, set up test accounts using the “local.io” domain, end the projects, then move on to a different project in another organization. You see additional new sites using that email address every few months, and patterns in the names they choose and the language settings they apply.

We know that banks in the UK like to pick names of famous British actors. Cryptographic currency handling sites use names of high-ranking EU officials. Advertisement agents use obvious pseudonyms like “Max Mustermann.” A Swiss network security training company uses real names of security professionals (likely previous customers). Vietnamese orgs tend to use real employee data pulled from an organization-wide employee database, along with real single sign-on credentials.

The patterns suggested that the financial use of the “local.io” domain was exclusively in Europe, indicating that someone was spreading the misinformation.

Mike: What would happen if local.io fell into the hands of someone less ethical than you?

John: It depends on where you are located. If you are from a country with strong data protection laws, picking a fight with a multi-billion dollar organization with a strong legal department can land you in very hot water.

The best damage you could do would be administrator access to cryptographic currency handling sites, but even then it depends on how each organization implemented failsafes. It also does not help that my information is published at the local NIC (Network Information Center) as a known networking professional.

Mike: Has anyone from IBM or any financial institution offered to buy the domain from you?

John: No one at all. People liked to silently fix the issue without bringing it up to their financial departments.

Mike: Do you think IANA or IETF should reserve certain domains like local.io to prevent situations like this?

John: I would disagree. Having IANA or IETF reserve such domains would make the internet a much less enjoyable place. We all know the stories of the most spammed email address “nobody@nowhere.com,” and there already are “safe to use in documentation only” domains such as example.com.

It amazes me that some people had the foresight of reserving and maintaining special domains such as “x.com” or “www.com.”

Mike: Do you own other domain names? If so, which names?

John: I also have domains that are my full name (minorutoda.com), several domains that are hardcoded in firewall rules as nonexistent names (not very useful, they simply don’t work since software is hardcoded to reject them), and a three-letter domain as a remembrance of the days when you could obtain any domain without paying thousands in reserved domain name fees.

Mike: What's your plan for local.io long-term? Keep it? Donate it? Try to get it reserved?

John: The .io domain is a ccTLD allocated for the British Indian Ocean Territory. The territory was annexed into Mauritius in May 2025, ending decades of dispute and British colonial rule.

The domain is destined to be dissolved as the geographic region is no longer in existence. When that time comes, “local.io” will again be a truly safe (but improper) imaginary domain to dump your sensitive financial emails.

Sully's note: Reporting on .io’s future generally describes it as uncertain. Even in a scenario where the extension ever faced retirement, any transition would likely be multi-year and dependent on ISO/IANA policy decisions and potential exceptions. Either way, the broader lesson stands: do not use real, registered domains as “throwaway” placeholders in documentation or test environments.

Step 1: Risk check first

Before I get excited, I try to talk myself out of trouble.

• Any obvious trademark landmines, brand confusion, celebrity names, or “sounds like” a protected brand: silence, or I drop it.

• If the only buyers are the trademark owner or their competitors trying to block them: silence. Not worth it.

If it passes that, I move on.

Step 2: Can I explain it in one sentence?

I ask a simple question: can I tell a normal person what this domain is for without a paragraph of explanation?

• If it is a clear product, service, category, or outcome, it is a candidate for outbound.

• If it is “brandable” but vague, I usually lean silence unless it has unusually strong qualities (short, clean, easy to say, no spelling traps).

Outbound works best when the value is obvious fast.

Step 3: Buyer density in 15 minutes

This is the big filter. I open a doc and try to build a real buyer list quickly.

• If I cannot find 10 legitimate prospects in 15 minutes, it gets silence.

• If I can find 25+, outbound moves way up the list.

I’m not looking for “might be interested” companies. I’m looking for businesses that already sell the thing the domain describes, or are clearly building toward it.

Step 4: Do the buyers have money and intent?

I only outbound when the buyer profile supports a real price.

Quick signals I use:

• They run ads, have a serious SEO footprint, or have a mature product lineup.

• They are hiring in marketing or growth.

• They have funding, strong revenue indicators, or obvious commercial intent.

If the list is mostly small side projects, local one person shops, or early ideas, I go silence and wait for inbound.

Step 5: Can I defend the price without wishful thinking?

Before I email anyone, I need a pricing story I can stand behind.

• If I have comps, great.

• If comps are thin, I need a logical anchor: lead value in the niche, conversion intent, category size, and what the name replaces (ads, clicks, brand confusion).

If I cannot justify a range confidently, I do not outbound. Silence protects me from negotiating against myself.

Step 6: Can I make it about them, not me?

If I can’t write a personalized reason in one line, I do not send.

Good outbound is: “Here’s why this name fits your situation.”
Bad outbound is: “I own this domain, are you interested?”

If I cannot connect the domain to something specific they are doing, I stay quiet.

Step 7: Tight outreach rules

When I do outbound, I keep it disciplined:

• 20 targets max per domain.

• Short email. One clear ask.

• One follow up, maybe two if the fit is perfect.

• If it is not moving, I stop and let inbound do its job.

The truth is this: silence is not laziness. Silence is portfolio management. Outbound is reserved for names with clear use, dense buyer lists, and buyers who can pay. Everything else gets a clean lander, a fair price, and time.

I'm guilty of it too. For years I'd get a rejection and just... absorb it. File it under "people are cheap" or "they don't get it" and keep scrolling. Somewhere around 2019 I started actually writing them down. Now I write down everything. Not because I'm organized, I'm really not, but because I kept making the same pricing mistakes and couldn't figure out why.

Turns out rejections are data. Good data. Not the kind that changes your day, but the kind that changes your next price, your next conversation, your next renewal decision.

The Five Flavors of No

I sort rejections into five buckets. Nothing fancy. I just need it to be consistent enough that I can spot patterns later.

Budget mismatch. The classics: "too expensive," "we're bootstrapping," "can't justify that spend." I write down what I quoted and what they countered, if anything. Do this long enough and you'll notice certain niches balk at $7,500 but convert at $4,950. Others live above $25k or they're not serious. You won't see it in one rejection. You'll see it in twenty.

Not the right fit. This one sounds vague because it is. "We went with a shorter name." "Legal flagged it." "The team just isn't feeling it." But vague doesn't mean useless. These tell you about market preferences—length, spelling risk, whether a two-word brandable even competes in that vertical against acronyms or dictionary words.

Timing. "We'll revisit next quarter." "Fundraise first." "Just changed direction." Timing isn't a loss. It's a calendar entry. Honestly, a third of my later wins started as timing rejections. The trick is logging them properly and following up without being annoying. Which I'm still working on.

Operational friction. Procurement hoops, payment rails, escrow aversion, "we can't buy without a PO." These aren't objections to your domain. They're objections to your process. Fix the process—offer familiar escrow, payment plans with guardrails, a clean transfer checklist—and these flip more often than you'd think.

Trademark concerns. If their counsel is nervous, I don't argue. I note the concern, make sure my own risk screen is solid, and move on. Get enough of these in a niche and I stop acquiring that pattern entirely. Life's too short.

What I Actually Log

I keep it short. For every serious inquiry that ends in a no:

• Buyer type (founder, agency, broker, corporate counsel, or "no idea")

• Industry or niche, however they described themselves

• What I quoted and what they countered

• Which bucket it falls into

• A few signals, "preferred -ly suffix," "asked about trademark twice," "pushed hard on payment plan"

• Next action, "follow up Q2," "lower BIN to $4,950," "archive and forget"

I use a CRM for this, but I'll be honest, I fought it for years. A spreadsheet works fine. The point is turning rejections into something you can sort through later, not a vague feeling that "people don't like longer names" or whatever story you're telling yourself.

What Pricing Lessons Actually Look Like

Budget pushback is obvious. The nuance is what matters.

Here's something I've noticed: SMBs respond better to odd-priced anchors. $4,950. $6,750. Funded buyers are the opposite. Round numbers read as confidence to them. If I get a string of "too expensive" at $8,000 from small teams in a vertical, I'll test $7,500 with Make Offer visible. If I get "too expensive" at $25k from PE-backed rollups, I raise to $35k and remove Make Offer. Totally different game.

Another pattern that took me way too long to learn: the first counter on a quality two-word .com usually predicts the ceiling. If they open at $1,500 on something I've sold similar names for $9–12k, this is either a six-month project or a pass. I don't waste calendar time anymore. I offer a respectful floor and move on. The no goes in the pile, and the pile shapes future BINs.

Fixing Your Landing Pages with Rejection Data

"Not the right fit" is usually a landing page problem. If I hear it twice on the same name, I rewrite the page.

I keep it to three things now:

What the name signals. "Short, clear, pronounceable. Reads well in pitch decks, easy on the phone."

Where it plays. "B2B SaaS, fintech, operations tooling."

Some kind of proof. "Similar names from my portfolio were acquired by companies in [category]."

That's it. No hype, no jargon. One tight paragraph and a clean call to action. If I'm getting "legal flagged it," I pull the category examples and keep it generic.

The rejection told me what to fix. I just had to listen.

When No Should Change Your Renewal Decision

We all have blind spots. A string of rejections helps cut through them. Here's how I think about it at renewal time:

If I keep getting budget pushback at low anchors like, the name can't clear $2–3k after real attempts, it's probably not a $10k asset. Either reposition it or let it go. I've held names for years hoping the market would "get it." The market got it fine. I was wrong about the price.

If I keep getting timing rejections with strong signals,same buyer type hitting the name multiple times over six months, I carry it. That activity beats comps every time.

If multiple unrelated buyers raise the same trademark concern, I don't renew unless organic traffic is unusually strong. Three separate people don't all have bad lawyers.

If the only obstacle has been payment friction or contract language, I keep the name and fix my process. Not my price.

Rejections give you the courage to drop average names. And sometimes the conviction to hold winners a little longer than feels comfortable.

Following Up Without Being Annoying

I'm still figuring this out, honestly. But here's what I do now:

90 days out, a quick check-in. "Still relevant? Happy to hold the price we discussed through [date]." Short. No pressure.

If they mentioned a fundraising round, I note the month and congratulate them when I see the news. No pitch. Just the congrats. The domain in my signature does the reminding.

If they ghost after that, one final note: "Moving a few names to Buy-It-Now at month end. If you want a courtesy hold, reply by [date]."

That's it. Polite, not needy, gives them a path to say yes. Also keeps me from living in my inbox refreshing threads that aren't going anywhere.

A Few Real Examples

The $7,900 lesson. I had a two-word .com priced at $7,900, perfect for SMB software ops. Three founders in eight weeks came back with $3–4k counters. I kept trying to negotiate each one up. Wasted a lot of time.

Finally I just set BIN to $4,950 and removed Make Offer. Sold in thirty-two days.

The rejections were the market talking. I was just too stubborn to hear it for two months.

The trademark pattern. Had a trendy health-adjacent name. Good cadence, decent traffic, I liked it. Four solid inquiries. Three of them explicitly mentioned trademark concerns.

I wanted to keep it. The pattern was undeniable. I sold it wholesale and stopped acquiring that naming construction entirely. Probably saved myself from renewing a whole cluster of similar risks I would've talked myself into.

The agency feedback loop. Twice in a row, an agency passed on a snappy two-word because "client wants shorter." Stung a little, but I wrote it down.

I relisted three similar names with cleaner consonant clusters. Tightened the copy to "ideal for product lines and campaigns"—something they could put in a deck for their client.

Same agency came back six months later for a related project. Closed in a week.

The no told me how they pitch. So I wrote for their pitch, not mine.

What Actually Changes

You stop guessing. Your prices start making sense to buyers, not just to you. Your landers say more with less. Your renewals get less emotional.

And your pipeline develops a rhythm. Timing rejections become scheduled opportunities instead of threads you vaguely remember from last quarter.

Most people keep rejections in their head as a feeling. "Buyers are cheap." "Nobody gets it." "Agencies are flaky." I did that for years.

Feelings don't turn into better decisions. A few lines of notes do.

Look, I still screw this up. I still hold names too long because I like them. I still price based on vibes sometimes. But I screw it up less than I used to, and the rejections are why.

A no isn't the end of the conversation. It's just the part where you start paying attention.

This month’s four NamePros articles all circled the same underlying theme from different angles: most domain mistakes are not technical. They’re emotional, structural, and learned from the wrong feedback loops.

Here’s a quick recap of what I explored, and what the conversations around them revealed.

What Expiring Domains Teach Us

Expiring domains are usually framed as failure. Someone didn’t value the name. Someone mispriced it. Someone ran out of patience. That framing misses the point.

The real lesson of expiring domains is selection pressure.

Every name that drops teaches you something about what did not clear the market, even after years of optionality. That doesn’t mean the domain was bad. It means demand was either weaker than assumed, misaligned with pricing, or dependent on a buyer that never materialized.

The response to this piece was telling. A lot of investors admitted they rarely study their own drops. They just let them go and move on. That’s a mistake. Expiring inventory is one of the few honest datasets in domaining because it reflects what the market refused to support long term.

If you want to sharpen your buying instincts, spend less time celebrating sales and more time dissecting why certain names quietly died.

If I Had to Cut My Portfolio in Half Tomorrow

This article struck a nerve, which usually means it landed somewhere uncomfortable.

The premise was simple. If I had to cut my portfolio in half overnight, I would not start with tools, comps, or formulas. I would start with honesty. Which names am I defending because they are actually strong, and which ones am I defending because I do not want to admit I was wrong?

Domaining culture loves optimization. Spreadsheets feel productive. Dashboards feel safe. But no tool can tell you whether you are emotionally attached to a domain that should have been dropped two years ago.

The strongest responses came from investors who admitted they had never run a forced liquidation thought experiment on their own portfolio. Doing so exposes a brutal truth. Many portfolios look diversified but are really just collections of unresolved decisions.

Cutting inventory is not about pessimism. It is about making room for better judgment going forward.

Finding Real End Users Is the Hardest Skill in Domaining

This piece addressed something I see misinterpreted constantly. Finding end users is not about scraping emails or blasting outreach. It is about understanding who actually buys domains when no one is watching.

Real end users are rarely the loudest voices. They are not posting on forums. They are not debating valuation theories. They are building quietly and solving problems.

The conversation around this article highlighted a gap that keeps widening. Domainers often learn from other domainers, then wonder why their outbound efforts feel disconnected from reality. You cannot reverse engineer buyer behavior from seller-only conversations.

If you want to find real end users, you have to leave domainer spaces occasionally. Read founder forums. Look at small business sites. Study how people name things when no one is trying to impress an audience.

That skill compounds far more than any outreach script.

You Are Learning From the Wrong People

This was the most direct article of the month, and probably the easiest to misunderstand.

It was not an attack on newcomers or educators. It was a warning about incentive alignment. Many of the loudest voices in domaining are not actively selling domains. They are selling courses, tools, attention, or certainty.

Learning from people who are no longer exposed to market risk leads to outdated playbooks. Advice that worked in 2015 can quietly poison decision making in 2026.

The healthiest responses came from investors who admitted they had never checked whether the advice they followed was coming from active operators or commentators. That distinction matters more than reputation.

Markets evolve. Tactics decay. If the person teaching you is not adapting in real time, you are learning history, not strategy.

January’s articles all pointed to the same conclusion. Progress in domaining rarely comes from better data alone. It comes from better judgment about what to listen to, what to hold, and what to let go.

The market is not cruel, but it is indifferent. It rewards clarity, liquidity, and adaptation. Everything else is optional.

February will build on this theme, with more focus on decision making under constraint rather than theory under ideal conditions.

As always, the best feedback comes from disagreement. If something in these pieces made you uncomfortable, it probably deserves another look.

I’ve watched both happen for years. But those waiting for the perfect buyer have almost a bigger probablem that is harder to recognize. Smart people. Solid portfolios. Reasonable acquisition costs. And yet nothing moves. Not because the market is broken, but because expectations quietly drift away from reality.

Somewhere along the way, the idea of the “perfect buyer” became a trap. The unicorn end user. The venture-backed startup with a massive budget. The marketing team that instantly understands the value of the name and happily pays full retail without blinking. That buyer exists sometimes. Just not often enough to build a healthy business around.

The uncomfortable truth is that waiting for the ideal buyer often costs more than it pays.

Every year you hold a domain, you’re making a decision. You’re choosing to pay the renewal. You’re choosing to keep capital locked up. You’re choosing to delay liquidity. Most investors frame this as patience. In reality, it’s often indecision dressed up as discipline.

Renewals add up. Even modest portfolios bleed quietly over time. A hundred domains at ten dollars a year does not feel painful in isolation. Over five or ten years, that same portfolio can swallow the profit from several good sales. The math is boring, which is why people avoid it, but it matters.

There is also opportunity cost. Capital tied up in stagnant inventory cannot be redeployed into better names, new trends, or cleaner opportunities. Liquidity gives you options. Illiquidity forces you to hope.

The myth of the perfect buyer convinces investors that every decent domain deserves a premium outcome. That mindset blurs an important distinction. A good domain does not automatically deserve a great buyer. It deserves the best buyer the market will realistically produce within a reasonable timeframe.

Most real buyers are not perfect. They are bootstrapped founders. Small agencies. Side projects. Regional businesses. Developers building quietly, not loudly. They care about utility more than status. They value speed and clarity over brand theater.

These buyers may not pay top dollar, but they pay consistently. And consistency is what builds a real domain business.

I’ve sold plenty of names that never would have attracted the mythical ideal end user. No venture round. No press release. No big logo reveal. Just a practical buyer who needed a name that worked and was willing to pay a fair price to stop thinking about it.

Those sales matter. They pay renewals. They create momentum. They fund better acquisitions. They keep you in the game long enough to catch the occasional larger win.

Liquidity is not a consolation prize. It is infrastructure.

One of the most dangerous assumptions in domaining is that holding longer always increases value. Sometimes it does. Often it doesn’t. Markets change. Language shifts. Trends cool. A name that feels obvious today can feel dated in three years. The buyer you are waiting for might never arrive because the use case moved on without you.

The “good enough” buyer solves a different problem. They convert potential into reality. They turn theoretical value into cash. They validate that the domain had demand at all, not just in your head.

Experienced investors learn to segment their portfolios. Some names are long-term holds where patience is justified. Others are working inventory. They are meant to move. Treating every domain like a future flagship asset is a fast way to build a portfolio that looks impressive and performs poorly.

Pricing plays a big role here. If your pricing only makes sense for a perfect buyer, you are filtering out everyone else by default. Fixed pricing, reasonable ranges, and clarity invite action. Ambiguity invites hesitation. Most buyers do not want to negotiate for weeks just to feel like they won something. They want to solve a problem and move on.

There is also a psychological element. Selling to good enough buyers trains discipline. It forces you to confront what the market will actually pay, not what you hope it should pay. That feedback loop sharpens your acquisition strategy over time. You start buying names that are easier to sell, not just easier to justify.

Ironically, liquidity often leads to better outcomes long term. Investors who sell regularly can afford to wait on the rare name that truly deserves patience. Investors who never sell are always waiting, whether the name merits it or not.

The perfect buyer is a nice story. It makes holding feel noble. It turns inaction into strategy. But domaining is not a fairy tale business. It is a capital allocation game with carrying costs and uncertain timelines.

Good enough buyers are not settling. They are the engine.

If you want to stay in this industry for the long haul, stop building your portfolio around who you hope might show up someday. Start building it around who actually shows up, pays, and moves on with their business.

Liquidity compounds. Hope doesn’t.

That lesson took me longer to learn than it should have, which is why I share it. I see newer investors making the same mistake now, just with different buzzwords attached. The sooner you let go of the perfect buyer myth, the sooner your portfolio starts working for you instead of against you.

I spent my first few years carpet-bombing every company that vaguely related to my domains. Generic info@ emails. Hundred-name lists. Templates I thought were clever. You know what I learned? Most outbound doesn't fail because of pricing or timing. It fails because I was emailing the wrong people at companies that would never care.

Who actually wants this thing?

The question I should have asked earlier: Who would realistically use this domain?

Not who could afford it. Not who might find it interesting. Who would actually build on it, brand on it, or buy it defensively because losing it keeps them up at night?

For most domains, that list is tiny. Maybe ten companies. Twenty if you're lucky. When I catch myself building a spreadsheet with hundreds of targets, that's usually me avoiding the real work of figuring out who the actual buyers are.

I look at whether the domain fits an existing business model. Does it replace a clunky name they're already using? Does it make their paid ads cheaper? Does it match something they already sell?

If I can't answer those questions, I'm probably wasting my time.

The decision maker problem

Even when I nail the company, most of my outbound dies in info@ inboxes.

I've sent probably a thousand emails to generic contact addresses over the years. Know how many real conversations came from that? Maybe five. Maybe.

You need someone who understands branding and has budget authority. Founder, CEO, CMO, Head of Marketing. For small companies, it's almost always the founder. For bigger ones, marketing leadership is the entry point.

LinkedIn helps me find names and confirm roles. I don't pitch there. That feels gross, but it gets me to real people instead of support queues.

Even then, most people ignore me. That's just the game.

The brutal math of cold email

Here's the part that almost made me quit outbound entirely: I'd send fifty emails and hear back from three people. One might be interested. One would tell me they already owned something similar. One would ask my price and then ghost.

Five to ten percent response rates are normal. Sometimes it's lower. That doesn't mean my domains suck. It means everyone is drowning in email and mine looks like spam.

What finally clicked for me: relevance beats volume.

I stopped sending polished templates to hundreds of contacts. Now I write one or two sentences explaining why the domain matters to them specifically. That's it. No hype. No artificial urgency. No six-paragraph stories about brandability.

Professionals spot BS immediately. Plain truth works better.

Spam filters hate me

The silent killer of every outbound campaign I've ever run: spam filters.

New domains trigger them. Bulk sending triggers them. Links, tracking pixels, and "limited time offer" language. All of it increases the odds I never reach the inbox.

I learned this the hard way after sending what I thought was a perfect campaign and getting zero responses. Not because people weren't interested. Because Gmail decided I was spam.

Now I go slow. Manual outreach. Plain text. No links. No images. I send from domains that have real websites and normal email activity, not fresh registrations.

It's boring as hell. But boring emails actually arrive.

What this actually looks like

My response rates are still depressing. I still email the wrong people sometimes. I still get ghosted by companies I was certain would bite.

But the sales I do close through outbound come from finding that tiny group of people who already understand the value. They don't need to be convinced. They just need to see the opportunity at the right moment.

That's the difference between signal and noise in domain investing. Most of what we do is noise.

The trick is finding the signal before giving up entirely.

More recently, Fred added another major chapter to that story with the sale of Beef.com, the largest domain transaction of his career and one that sent a strong signal about the enduring value of premium, category-defining .coms. While the terms of the deal remain under strict NDA, the impact of the sale itself speaks volumes. It was not just a personal milestone, but a meaningful moment for the premium domain industry as a whole, reinforcing that scarcity, clarity, and category ownership still matter at the highest levels.

What makes Fred especially interesting is that he has lived multiple sides of this industry. He is not just a domain owner, but a developer, strategist, and broker who understands how media, branding, cities, and generics intersect in the real world. His perspective has been shaped by cycles, mistakes, wins, and evolution. That long view makes his insight particularly valuable at a time when many domain investors are reassessing what long-term success in this business actually looks like.

Mike: What first drew you into domain investing, and how did your journey begin?

Fred: I came into domain investing from a very practical, entrepreneurial angle rather than from speculation. In the early 2000’s, I was building real businesses online and quickly realized that the domain name itself often determined how much success I had. When customers instinctively trusted a name, conversions were easier, partnerships came faster, and marketing costs dropped.   I’ve always considered myself a “brand name” guy; I always wanted to “stack the deck” in my favor to make revenue generation easier.  Ironically, in 1996 the first domain name I developed was Desert-Golf.com.  Yes….with a hyphen!  It wasn’t until I acquired Scottsdale.com did things get serious.

Mike: Can you share the story of how you came to acquire Scottsdale.com and what made you see its potential at that time?

Fred: Luxury real estate, golf, tourism, dining, health, and lifestyle all are part of where I live:  Scottsdale.  I contacted the owner of Scottsdale.com and offered him $1,000 per month to become the Official Golf Partner of Scottsdale.com.  I owned a company with 75 employees that generated 500,000 tee times annually, along with another $8M in golf package vacations, covering both lodging and preferred tee times at all the top courses.  My team created a 52 page Golf Guide that was downloadable, with printable score cards and more.  Being an avid golfer and someone who routinely travelled with friends for golf vacations, we knew what to do.  

Our sales and closing ratios greatly were improved from Scottsdale.com leads and inquiries.  

At the time, very few people were thinking about cities as digital platforms rather than static websites. I saw Scottsdale.com not as a brochure, but as the digital front door to an entire local economy. The long-term potential was obvious: real estate leads, travel and hospitality, local commerce, events, and partnerships—all anchored by a name that was the official digital billboard for Scottsdale.

Mike: How did your previous entrepreneurial experiences, like your golf vacation business, shape the way you approach domaining?

Fred: I’m not sure I ever considered myself a domainer, but I guess I am!  To me, it was always whether or not a domain name could power an actual business, and generate revenue.

Mike: What is it about geographic domain names that appeals to you compared to other types of domains?

Fred: Well, I loved the fact that pure City .com names had so much credibility and authority, and something else that rarely gets discussed:  direct type-in organic traffic.  Our revenue for many years was in the upper 2-3% of developed City sites; our traffic was exceptional….and we never paid a penny for PPC or sponsored links or placement on Google.  We viewed a city name as inherently resilient—largely insulated from Google’s algorithm changes and short-term SEO fluctuations—because its value is rooted in brand authority, direct recognition, and real-world relevance rather than search tactics alone.  

My world began to be heavily involved in City domains; my membership, Board Member participation, and ultimate President roles at 2 major trade associations brought me in touch with 300+ City owners from around the world, with the majority of these trusted relationships remaining intact now in 2026.  

Mike: In your view, how has the geodomain market changed since you first started?

Fred: We still are in a transition period from entrepreneurs owning these valuable brands into major media and corporations with massive resources stepping up and owning these for the coming generations.  The newspaper print industry really missed the opportunity to acquire these names over the past 2 decades.  They didn’t get it.  They believed all they needed to do was register their paper name as a .com, and they would succeed.  They could not have been more wrong.  Major reason why?  While being hyper local is important, so are opportunities from visitors from outside the city and state; vacations, hotel bookings, real estate relocations, restaurants and so much more valuable traffic that can be monetized at the highest levels are missed because visitors have no idea who the local paper is.  Case in point:  Scottsdale.com versus AZCentral.com.  I spoke at a conference with 300 people in San Francisco and asked everyone if anyone heard of AZCentral.com.  Not one hand raised.  Who are they?  The local Gannett Arizona Republic newspaper digital brand.  

We have seen major success in certain markets.  The Vivid Seats acquisition of Vegas.com for $240M is one.  Another is Boston.com, who generates close to $400M annually digitally alone; the Boston Globe newspaper generates another $500M+ in revenue, but what Boston.com has done is extremely impressive, and proved the business model.  I am part of an investment group and development organization developing NewYork.com at this very moment.  So, City development has evolved from entrepreneurs to major companies, and we will see this more and more in the near future.  

Mike: What makes a city .com domain truly valuable, beyond just traffic, and how do you develop it into a thriving business?

Fred: Traffic is only one aspect, as traffic can be monetized at high levels.  The real value comes from trust, authority, and market positioning.  All of the traditional monetization partnerships exist today, with strong demand from companies that desire to be featured in the real estate, restaurant, legal, local business, hotel and vacation packages along with sponsored content and much more.  Social media is now playing a major role in brand awareness and traffic sourcing.  Being a transactional monetization platform is also important.  With New York approving 3 new mega-casino projects, NewYork.com will soon become the #1 source for all casino booking packages in the New York market, along with Broadway tickets, tickets to 7 professional sports teams and much more….similar to Vegas.com.

Mike: How important is branding vs. SEO vs. direct type-in traffic for a geodomain?

Fred: I touched on this earlier, but at the highest level, the domain name itself is the foundation. Branding comes first, because it establishes trust and authority before a user ever sees a search result. With AI now reshaping how people search and how answers are delivered, platforms increasingly prioritize credibility over tactics. AI systems want to surface the most accurate, authoritative source, and that naturally favors trusted, exact-match brands like NewYork.com. SEO and direct type-in traffic still matter, but they are amplifiers. The name—the brand—is what makes everything else work.  

Mike: How has AI and new technology changed the way you do domain research, marketing, and brokerage?

Fred: The tools available to me today versus 3 years ago is a major game changer.  For my main business, domain brokerage, whether it is for Beef.com, IVF.com, TheMiddleEast.com, SanDiego.com and 50+++ other brands, AI can immediately research and tell me who the likely Buyers are.  Tools like Apollo.io and RocketReach.co are able to quickly provide C-Suite verified emails for me, and I craft all of the outreach messages, that then get enhanced and improved by AI.  Canva and other platforms help with graphics, and quite frankly, I can accomplish in one hour what it would have taken me 8 hours 3 years ago.  I start early; usually by 6:00 AM, and my goal is to reach in some manner a minimum of 300 contacts by 9:00 AM offering either my clients names or names that I own or am partnered with….with quality, insightful and compelling messaging….and I usually exceed this production.  While I am very active in marketing on LinkedIn and X, it represents only the tip of the iceberg of my true outreach.

Mike: Beef.com is one of those rare, category-defining domains. From your perspective, what characteristics made it the kind of asset that attracts serious, long-term buyers?

Fred: 

What makes Beef.com so compelling to serious buyers is that it sits at the center of an industry facing enormous structural challenges and transformation.  I did not know what I was getting into for the first couple weeks; I just knew the market size was enormous, and I had developed a friendship with the owner since 2014.

The global beef industry is dealing with pressure from every direction—consolidation among the Big Four processors, margin compression at the rancher level, political and regulatory scrutiny, supply-chain fragility, export and import dynamics, sustainability concerns, animal health, and growing consumer demand for transparency and trust.

In an environment like that, control of the category name matters. 

Beef.com isn’t a marketing site or a niche brand—it’s the authoritative digital front door to the entire industry. It’s neutral, instantly credible, and broad enough to support ranchers, processors, policymakers, exporters, health and nutrition voices, and consumers on a single platform.

The obvious Buyers, which included the Big Four processors, fast food giants, US Cattle Rancher Associations, Direct to Consumers leaders for their Ranch-to-Table subscriptions, and nations that desire to expand their beef exports were all in play; we even had communications directly with the USDA to make Beef.com a US owned asset to support US cattle ranchers….and with my many contacts in the Middle East, we were close with a sovereign fund there, as presently the region imports 85% of their beef and they really need to establish their own ranches to stabilize their food supply.  

So I entered a massive marketplace with many qualified buyers.  

Mike: How did the Beef.com transaction differ from past deals you’ve been involved in, either as an owner or a broker, in terms of complexity or buyer profile?

Fred:

This transaction was fundamentally different from most others I’ve been involved in because the buyer profile and the underlying vision went far beyond a traditional acquisition. Beef.com wasn’t purchased as a marketing asset or a short-term revenue play—it was acquired as an industry platform with generational implications.

What makes this deal unique is the depth of domain expertise on the buyer side. As Beef.com is developed, the industry will see just how thoughtful and ambitious the plan is. Texas Slim and his team bring rare, firsthand knowledge of the beef ecosystem—ranchers, supply chains, policy pressures, and consumer trust—combined with a sophisticated understanding of technology and AI. That combination is exceptionally uncommon.

Equally important is the long-term mindset. This isn’t about quick monetization; it’s about strengthening an industry, supporting cattle ranchers, improving transparency, and contributing to the health of future generations through better food systems. From my perspective, that level of alignment between asset, buyer, and mission is what made this transaction stand apart. All I can say is: watch what happens next.

Mike: What do you think the Beef.com sale signals about buyer demand for category-defining .coms in today’s market?

Fred: I think the Beef.com sale is another important data point confirming that demand for true category-defining .coms is very real—especially among serious, obvious buyers—even when pricing remains confidential. Assets like this don’t trade on impulse. They require understanding, and an actionable game plan.

What this sale underscores is that buyers of top-tier domains aren’t just acquiring a name; they’re underwriting a business strategy. They need a clear development roadmap, a defensible ROI story for internal stakeholders or shareholders, and confidence that the asset will compound in value over time.  That diligence takes time.

Even in 2026, there’s still a wide difference of opinion on how premium digital assets should be priced, which is precisely why the most meaningful transactions often take years to come together. Against that backdrop, closing Beef.com in roughly 16 months speaks to both the quality of the asset and the preparedness of the buyer. It signals that when vision, economics, and category authority align, the market is very much there.

.

Mike: Is there anything about the Beef.com sale that you can share that surprised you, even after decades in this industry?

Fred: I’ve spent most of my career operating in the super-premium space, so working with upper-echelon brands and pricing was comfortable for me.  I understand how rare assets behave at that level. What truly surprised me in the Beef.com transaction wasn’t the caliber of interest or the valuation dynamics—it was the depth and complexity of the global beef industry itself.

As the process unfolded, it became increasingly clear just how many unresolved issues the industry is grappling with: pressure on independent ranchers, consolidation among processors, regulatory and political forces, supply-chain fragility, export and import tensions, food security, transparency, and long-term public health concerns. The number of stakeholders—and the urgency of their needs—was eye-opening.  

That realization reframed the transaction for me. Beef.com wasn’t just a super-premium digital asset changing hands; it was a platform that needed to land with the right steward. In that sense, the most important outcome wasn’t the sale itself, but that the ultimate buyer was the right buyer—one with the credibility, technical capability, and long-term vision to address those challenges in a meaningful way. That alignment is rare, and it’s what made this deal especially satisfying.  Now, I’m ready for the next one!!!!!

Mike: What advice would you give to entrepreneurs considering building a business on a city or regional domain?

Fred: You need to do it right, which requires significant investment, time and resources.  You do not have to reinvent the wheel, just execute at the highest level with quality content, partnerships and technology….with a strong emphasis on social media.  If done right, you just may have an exceptional exit to a larger media company….but basically, multiply the time you believe it will take to profitability, along with the investment you project to get to profitability….and multiply them by 3!  But building a major City will be exciting, rewarding and you have have a massive amount of fun along the way!

I've been hearing it since I started. The dot-com crash hangover. The 2008 recession. When Facebook took over the world and nobody needed websites anymore, remember that? The flood of new TLDs that was supposed to kill .com. The pandemic. Now it's AI that's going to make domains irrelevant.

Same song, different decade.

Here's the thing though. The people saying it's dead aren't always wrong about what they're experiencing. They're just wrong about what it means.

Domain investing isn't dead. But the version they wanted it to be? Yeah, that's gone. It's different.

There was a time when you could hand-reg something decent, throw it on Sedo, and just... wait. You didn't even need to know why it was valuable. Someone would eventually email. I'm not going to pretend I didn't benefit from that era. I absolutely did. Bought names I had no business buying and got lucky when someone needed them.

That market is dead. If your entire strategy was built on that, you're going to be disappointed. Markets mature. The easy stuff gets arbitraged away. Happens in every industry.

But here's where people get it wrong. They think because the easy version is dead, the whole thing is dead. That's like saying real estate investing is dead because you can't flip houses in 30 days anymore like you could in 2005. I'm not a real estate investor, so take that for what it's worth.

What hasn't changed is why domains actually matter. Businesses still need names. Startups still need credibility. A strong domain still shortens the gap between "who are these people?" and "okay, they're legit." If anything, that's gotten MORE important as the internet gets noisier.

What's changed is who gets paid.

The market rewards operators now. People who understand end users, who know how to price, who can negotiate without getting emotional about it. It punishes collectors. I learned this the hard way. Actually I'm probably still learning it even though I don't want to admit it. I've got names in my portfolio right now that are there because they "feel premium" but if I'm being honest, I have no idea who would buy them. That's expensive thinking.

I made a mistake a few years back. I turned down a $4,000 offer on a name because I was convinced it was worth $10K. Anchored to my own expectations instead of what the market was actually telling me. The domain eventually sold, but not for what I passed on. Took another year and sold for $3,500. I basically paid renewal fees to make less money. Not the best business move.

The market taught me that lesson. I didn't need to learn it twice, but I probably did anyway on some other names.

One thing that trips people up. They see fewer public sales announcements and think sales have dried up. That's not what's happening. The best deals often happen completely privately. Direct outreach. No press release. No tweet. No NamePros thread. When someone says "nobody's buying anymore," what they often mean is "I'm not seeing the signals I used to see."

Which brings me to something I've been thinking about. I think liquidity expectations are the biggest disconnect in domain investing.

Domains aren't stocks. They never were. But people treat portfolio numbers like stock tickers. Expecting fast flips across a wide portfolio is how investors burn out. The ones still doing well? They've accepted longer hold times on higher conviction names. Fewer renewals. More intention. Less spray and pray.

I'm trying to do this myself. I've written about it before. Dropping names that haven't gotten a single inquiry in three years. Hurts every time. What if I drop it and someone wants it next month? But you know what hurts more? Renewal fees on names nobody will ever want.

Actually, side tangent. I was talking to a guy I met through DMing after reading some tweets a few years back, and he told me he'd never dropped a domain. Ever. Like it was a badge of honor. I remember thinking "that's either incredibly impressive or incredibly expensive." Probably both. Trends also move faster now than they did 10 years ago. Keywords that mattered in 2019 might be completely irrelevant today. New industries pop up overnight. AI, climate tech, fintech infrastructure, creator economy tools. This rewards people who stay curious and punishes people who locked in their strategy in 2012 and never updated it.

The real skill isn't chasing hype. It's recognizing durable demand. I'm always working on improving that skill.

Here's a hard truth that people don't want to hear. Most failures in domain investing are self-inflicted. Overpaying at auctions because you got competitive. Renewing names you should have dropped years ago. Refusing to listen to market feedback. Blaming "the industry" instead of your own decision-making.

That's not a broken market. That's poor discipline. I know because I've done all of it. I'm not going to lie.

Brandability also matters more now. Exact-match keywords still sell, don't get me wrong. But companies increasingly want names that feel flexible and ownable. This requires taste. You can't automate taste. You learn it through exposure, mistakes, and pattern recognition. And even then you're going to be wrong sometimes.

So when someone asks "is domain investing still worth it?" the better question is whether they're willing to treat it like an actual business.

That means tracking renewals like inventory costs. Knowing your real all-in price including every renewal. Understanding why each domain is in your portfolio. Being comfortable with long stretches of silence. Improving outreach instead of spamming every contact form you can find. Walking away when a deal doesn't make sense even if you need a win.

The people declaring domain investing dead usually fall into two groups. Those who expected quick wins and didn't get them. And those who stopped adapting.

The investors still doing well? They're too busy to declare anything. They're negotiating. They're pruning portfolios. They're compounding quietly.

I don't know if domain investing is "worth it" for everyone. It depends what you want from it, how much time you have, whether you can stomach long hold times, whether you have the capital to play the game properly.

What I do know is it's not dead. It's just different than it used to be. Which is true of basically everything else too.

Think I'm wrong? I still make dumb decisions. But I'm still here. That's either persistence or stubbornness. Probably both.

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“Open to offers.”

It sounds harmless. It sounds flexible. It sounds like you are easy to work with.

In reality, it makes you invisible.

Here is what most domain investors miss: buyers do not reward uncertainty. They avoid it. When someone lands on your page and sees “make an offer” or “open to offers,” you are not inviting a conversation. You are giving them homework. You are asking them to price your asset for you, with zero context, while they are also trying to run a business.

Most serious buyers will not do that. They will leave, open another tab, and choose the option that feels simple and safe.

“Open to offers” signals you are not sure what you own

A real buyer is always asking a quiet question: is this seller professional, or is this going to be weird?

When your pricing is vague, it raises risk. They do not know if you want $2,500 or $250,000. They do not know if you will respond quickly. They do not know if you will take their inquiry and turn it into a drawn out negotiation marathon.

If I am a founder, the last thing I want is to get trapped in an awkward back and forth with a stranger who might be unrealistic. I have a product to ship and customers to close. So I move on.

Even if the buyer loves the name, uncertainty adds friction. Friction kills deals.

“Make an offer” attracts the wrong crowd

When you do not set an anchor, you get more low quality inquiries. That is not a win. It is noise.

You will see the same pattern over and over. $100. $250. “What is your lowest?” People fishing. People who want a bargain. People who treat domains like garage sale items.

Meanwhile, the real buyer who could pay five figures never even emailed you. Not because they are cheap, but because they do not want to guess. They want a number or at least a clear range.

In other words, “open to offers” does not increase demand. It changes who feels comfortable contacting you.

You lose leverage before the negotiation starts

Every negotiation starts with an anchor. If you refuse to provide one, you hand that power to the buyer.

That is not “being flexible.” That is being passive.

If the first number in the conversation is the buyer’s number, you are immediately defending your position instead of framing the deal. You end up explaining why the name is worth more than whatever random figure they typed into an email.

And if you counter too high, they feel baited. If you counter too low, you leave money on the table. Either way, you are negotiating uphill because you skipped the simplest move: set expectations.

Pricing creates velocity

Domains sell when they feel easy to buy. The easiest purchase is a clean BIN with clean terms.

I know some investors hate BIN pricing. They think it caps upside. They worry about leaving money behind.

Here is the truth: most portfolios die from lack of velocity, not from underpricing one winner.

A strong BIN does a few things immediately. It filters unserious buyers. It signals confidence. It lets serious buyers move quickly. It makes distribution networks work better. It turns a domain into a product instead of a mystery box.

Even if you want to negotiate, a BIN still helps. It is a public anchor. It creates gravity. It tells the buyer what kind of conversation this is.

What to do instead

If you are sitting on “open to offers,” pick one of these and commit.

1. Set a BIN that you would be happy to accept today. Not a fantasy number. A number that reflects comps, quality, and your holding costs.

2. If the name is truly high value and you want to keep flexibility, set a range. Something like “pricing in the mid five figures” or “offers above $25,000 considered.” You are not locking yourself in. You are giving the buyer a lane.

3. Use payment plans strategically. A $12,000 BIN with a plan often beats hoping for a $20,000 offer that never arrives.

The market does not punish you for pricing. It punishes you for being unclear.

If you want to stop being invisible, stop being “open.” Put a stake in the ground. Give buyers certainty, and you will be shocked how much easier the whole business becomes.

Turns out it's Adam Smith, co-founder and CEO of the company behind it. Adam built his reputation in the UK hosting industry as a founder of Paragon Internet Group before launching Enhance, which (as I've now learned) helps web hosting companies move away from older systems like cPanel and build modern, scalable hosting platforms. He's using a killer domain to build a real business in a competitive space.

So I reached out. I wanted to know how he ended up with Enhance.com and whether the domain actually mattered in building the company. Because here's the thing, premium domains like this one aren't just nice to have. They're trust signals. They're marketing leverage. They're the kind of assets that can make or break a brand in the early days.

Mike: Let's start with the obvious one: How did you acquire Enhance.com, and what did you pay for it?

Adam: The domain was purchased directly from a private domain investor. I can’t disclose the exact amount but it was a considerable investment. We were fortunate to acquire the .net at roughly the same time.

Mike: Did you consider other names before landing on Enhance, or was this always the one?

Enhance.com was always the one - it’s a dictionary word, it’s phonetic and it encapsulates our mission - to help our hosting partners Enhance their product offering.

Mike: How important has the domain been in building credibility or getting customers?

Adam: Hugely important. We operate all over the world so having a memorable, phonetically spelled domain helps potential customers to find us more easily. Having an obviously “premium” domain helped establish trust with potential partners in the early days of Enhancewhen the product was still unproven.

Mike: If you had to launch this business on EnhanceHosting.com or GetEnhance.io instead, how different would things be?

Adam: In the long term, probably not much different. But we would be taking the risk that a competitor might acquire enhance.com or enhance.net.

Mike: When you started Enhance, what scared you the most?

Adam: Honestly there was no fear. I have an amazing co-founder, wonderful investors, an excellent team and a clear mission.

Sully's Note: Hey, I'm days away from launching my new monthly newsletter. If you want what no one else is learning about domains, then sign up now.

Mike: What's the hardest part of competing against cPanel and Plesk when they've been around forever?

Adam: The biggest challenge for Enhance is helping our larger partners to mass migrate from legacy panels. Where a hosting company is forcing customers to migrate, the process has to be perfectly seamless. Any attrition due to the migration would wipe out the cost savings instantly.

Mike: What feature or capability are you most proud of that your competitors don't have?

Adam: Enhance has clustering - you can choose to run Enhancemonolithically like the legacy panels or you can build a multi server cluster of almost limitless size behind a single control panel, migrating websites/emails between the servers at will.

Enhance also integrates advanced containerisation and hard resource limiting so you don’t need expensive 3rd party addons to achieve this functionality.

Mike: How important is branding in a technical, B2B industry like hosting?

Adam: It’s of much lesser importance than it would be to a B2C, especially at the stage we are at now. Everyone in the industry knows about Enhance, the only question is whether or not to make the switch.

Mike: What advice would you give to someone trying to build a tech company in a crowded market?

Adam: You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to enter a crowded market, you just need to be better or cheaper than your competitors - ideally both.

Mike: Is there a book, video, or conversation that you've had that you feel has had a major impact on you as an entrepreneur and leader? Can you share the details?

Adam:
Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever read a book on leadership or entrepreneurship, my reading genres lean more towards history, sci-fi or fantasy. My biggest source of inspiration has always been my business partners and co-founders.

But a “good” name and a name that actually pulls inbound inquiries are not always the same thing.

Inbound is a buyer raising their hand. That is different from an investor nodding in approval. Your job is to spot names that get emailed about, not names that win debates.

Say-it-once clarity

If someone hears the domain once and can type it without asking follow-up questions, it has an edge. Most buyers are moving fast. If your name creates friction, they bounce.

I like names that survive being spoken in a room. No hyphens. No numbers. No “is that with a K or a C?” problems. A quick test: tell the name to a friend and have them text it back. If they hesitate, buyers will too.

Obvious category fit

Some names are “cool.” Others are useful. Useful names get more inquiries because the buyer instantly knows what the business is about. Not exact match garbage. Just clear meaning.

Two-word category .coms with a clean rhythm tend to get steady pings. If the buyer has to explain the name to their cofounder, it is a harder sell.

Active demand

If nobody is building in that space, nobody is emailing you. I’m not trying to predict the next decade. I’m trying to buy where companies are being formed right now.

I have watched names I personally liked sit dead for a year, then suddenly get attention when a category heated up. The name did not change. The demand did.

A buyer set you can picture

Names that “could work for anything” usually get inquired on by no one. The best inquiry names have a buyer set you can picture without strain.

Ask yourself: who is the buyer? A marketplace? A SaaS tool? A consumer brand? A media site? If you cannot list five buyer types in 30 seconds, it might still sell, but it is less likely to pull inbound.

It feels safe to own

This is where extension, spelling, and overall vibe matter. A clean .com makes buyers feel like they will not have to defend the choice later. They imagine telling their team, sending it to investors, putting it on a banner. If that mental movie plays smoothly, they reach out.

If the name feels like it could be misunderstood, or constantly corrected, or explained, you will get fewer inquiries even if the “value” is there on paper.

The inbox test

When a buyer emails you, the subject line is often just the domain. If the domain looks credible in plain text, it attracts inquiries. If it looks like spam or a typo, many people do not even start the conversation.

And here is the real moment: can they forward it to a partner, boss, or investor without writing a paragraph to justify it? If it feels safe, it gets forwarded. If it feels risky, it dies quietly.

What good inquiries look like

Most real inbound is boring, and that is a good sign.

“Is this domain available?”
“How much are you asking?”
“Can we buy it today with escrow?”

If your inquiries are mostly “What’s your lowest?” or “I can offer $200,” you might have traffic, but you do not have the right kind of demand.

Bottom line

If you want more inbound, stop grading domains like an investor and start grading them like a founder on a deadline. Names that get inquiries remove friction, match active demand, and feel instantly ownable.

Everything else is a fun argument and an expensive renewal.

Then they try it.

They send 50 emails, get ignored, maybe get one reply that says “Not interested,” and conclude outbound is dead. Or worse, they conclude the market is rigged and buyers do not understand value.

Most outbound fails before the first email because the email is not the problem. The email is just the moment you find out your targeting and your offer were never real.

You are pitching the wrong buyer, not the right name

The most common outbound mistake is thinking “industry match” equals “buyer fit.”

You own a domain that sounds perfect for a dentist. So you email 40 dentists.

That is not outbound. That is spam with better grammar.

Real outbound starts with a simple question: who would actually benefit from owning this domain in a way that creates economic value?

A local dentist does not need a premium domain. They need patients. They can buy patients with ads. A premium domain does not solve their immediate problem. If you pitch them a four figure or five figure domain, you are asking them to make a branding decision they do not want to make and do not know how to evaluate.

I've sold geo-domains to dentists because they help them get patients, not rebrand.

Outbound works when you target buyers who already think in terms of positioning, brand protection, and customer acquisition efficiency. That usually means funded startups, scaling companies, category leaders, marketplaces, and groups playing offense, not a local operator trying to keep the lights on.

If you target people who cannot win with the domain even if it is a good name, your email is irrelevant no matter how well written it is.

You are selling a name, not an outcome

Most outbound emails are basically “I own this, do you want it?” That is a commodity pitch.

Nobody buys a domain because you own it. They buy because it helps them win something. More trust. Better click through. Cleaner brand. Fewer leaks to competitors. A simpler story.

Your job is not to convince them the domain is “premium.” Your job is to connect the domain to a believable outcome they already care about.

That starts before the email. You should know what the buyer is trying to accomplish and why this domain moves the needle. If you cannot explain that in one sentence without hype, you do not have an outbound candidate. You have a hope.

Your pricing makes the conversation impossible

Outbound is not the place to “see what happens.” It is not a fishing expedition.

If you do not have a clear price or a tight range, you are forcing the buyer into the least comfortable position possible: they have to guess what you want, worry they will insult you, and assume you will waste their time.

In outbound, ambiguity is friction. Friction kills replies.

I am not saying you need a BIN in every email. I am saying you need a confident anchor. If the right price is $9,500, say it. If the right range is $15,000 to $25,000 depending on terms, say it. Serious buyers respect clarity. Time wasters fear it.

Most outbound fails because the seller is afraid to price like a professional.

You have no proof you are worth engaging

From the buyer’s perspective, you are a stranger offering an asset in a market full of scams, inflated prices, and weird behavior. If you do not reduce perceived risk, they will ignore you.

This does not mean writing a paragraph about how honest you are. It means acting like someone who has done this before.

Use a real name. Use a real signature. Use a clean landing page. Offer escrow. Be direct. Do not oversell. Do not write like a marketer. Write like a businessperson.

Credibility is not something you ask for. It is something you signal.

Outbound is not a numbers game, it is a selection game

If you want outbound to work, stop thinking in terms of volume and start thinking in terms of selection.

Most domains should never be outbounded. They are fine names, but they do not create urgency or advantage for a specific buyer. Those names belong on landers and in distribution. Let inbound do the work.

Outbound is for names that have a clear, specific buyer set where ownership changes the story. When you have that, the email becomes simple.

If your outbound is failing, do not rewrite the email ten times. Step back and ask the real question: did I pick a name that creates an obvious advantage for a buyer who can act on it?

If the answer is no, it already failed. You just have not hit send yet.

Learn more about outbound domain sales with Domain Sales Emails That Work!

I like operators who show their work. Maureen’s reputation is built on that: clear communication with both sides, quiet persistence, and a feel for when to push or park a conversation. If you care about the craft of brokering, pricing discipline, buyer qualification, landers that convert, and the psychology of seven-figure negotiations. This conversation should speak for itself.

Mike: Tell us how you found your way into domains—and what made you stay?

Maureen: I got hired in 2005 by Buydomains.com.  They had just bought Mike Mann’s portfolio of domains and they needed someone to handle inbound leads.  I was the first of a team of 4 salespeople to join the company. I had NO idea “domains” were a thing.  In that first year?  All we did was answer calls asking, “what’s a domain name?”.  It was crazy.

But to this day: It’s the most dynamic and resilient industry out there, and after 20 yrs?  It’s why I’m still here and enjoying every minute of it!

Mike: Do you remember the first deal that made you think, “Okay, this is a real business for me”? What happened?

Maureen:  Honestly I think within the first month I knew that this was an incredibly viable business that was only going to grow over time.  I wasn’t wrong!

A lot of the sales I handled then were $1500-$5000 USD and 95% .com sales. Keep in mind back then there were very few extensions for options: com, net.org and clearly .COM was king. 

Within 6 months I was moving on to “bundle deals’ and was handling bigger priced domains and closing them for 5-6 figures.  

I remember my first 6 figure deal that was done on the LAST day of the month and quarter!  

Talk about pressure…. but the outcome of driving and meeting a guy at his bank to ensure the wire transfer was done?  SO worth it!

Mike: How do you split your time between inbound interest and outbound targets, and what tells you which path a name deserves?

Maureen: For most of my sales career I only worked on INBOUND leads and was very busy and successful with that.  Many companies would hire me to handle that side of the business for them, like .CO domains.

I didn’t handle outbound then and still really don’t.  It’s a much different sales pitch and process.

Mike: Everyone seems to have their own strategy when it comes to pricing discipline—how do you set an asking price, a quiet “walk-away,” and the middle you aim to land?

Maureen:  I’m know in the industry with whoever I’ve worked with – to HOLD to price.

I truly believe in the value of the domain and its potential whether .COM, AI etc.

In 2025 alone I’ve helped in selling some of the highest priced names in .AI, ,CO .NET and even .Capital. 

My strategy has always to find the best outcome for both sides = middle ground. 

But I also have no problem saying “no that won’t work” to people and walking away.  

I believe over the years I’ve found the delicate balance of holding firm on price, and yet in the end many times getting a deal done thru relationship building, trust and compromise.

What I tell people to remember: This isn’t an Iphone store with many versions and colors.  There is only ONE specific domain you want-on the shelf.

Thus, I spend a lot of time with clients making them understand the “realistic” value of their domain name and what it would take to sell it OR buy it.  I have had tons of conversations recently with clients making them understand the value of AI and why the prices are skyrocketing.

Mike: What are two of your go to negotiation moves that work more often than not?

Maureen:  I have many, but I think the top 2 are explaining how domains are “Online real estate” and just like when you drive by a house on the street and can’t believe the price…it still ends up selling, because there’s always demand, and the right fit for someone.  I also tell people there is only “one” of these domain names, so it can easily be snapped up by someone else-like your competitor…never to be for sale again. 

And finally, I constantly remind buyers that the OWNER is in control of the price and whether to agree to sell it…. because “they own it-you don’t.”  

Mike: When do you take a name public on marketplaces and when do you keep it quiet and targeted  

Maureen: I only place a domain out there as a public sale, if it’s a game changer for price or a top seller of that TLD for the year.   Quiet is good, and many clients like it that way!  

I frequently use recent targeted sales on DNJournal.com and Embrace.com as a part of conversation w/buyers to help them realize the value of the keyword or TLD.

Mike: We all want to think we have that one domain that will allow us to retire. How do you reset expectations without breaking trust when their dream price isn’t in the cards?

Maureen: This happens sadly all the time. I use tons of data points and recent sales to explain why the price they want is NOT realistic.  I’m known for being brutally honest with people. And in the end?  Many thank me for that and rethink the pricing strategy.

Mike: How do .co, .io, and .ai buyers differ from .com buyers when it comes to urgency and price?

Maureen: .AI domains are in high demand.  In my view, it’s the hottest extension out there and will continue to grow in value. There’s urgency for sure, but when the prices are revealed the value in the customers eyes vs the Owners: Doesn’t convert.  So, it can be a challenge.  

As to .CO – sadly I see the value and demand going down.  I was part of the .CO team when they launched the extension, so I’ve been part of the history of high demand, vs. now becoming lost in “other alternative extensions”.  It’s still a favorite extension of mine though!  

.IO is holding its own but what’s interesting to see this year is XYZ value going UP. 

Check out urlPurchasing.com if you want to get in touch with Maureen.

A price is not a model. A model explains why a price exists, when it should change, and how it behaves across a portfolio. Without that, pricing becomes reactive. You raise prices after a sale. You second guess them after silence. You hold firm because lowering feels like admitting you were wrong.

Pricing bands solve that problem. Maybe.

At a basic level, pricing bands are predefined ranges that group your domains by realistic market value. Instead of asking what a single name is worth in isolation, you decide what category it belongs in and price accordingly. Low, mid, and high. Wholesale, retail, premium. Fast movers and long holds.

This sounds simple. It changes everything.

Without pricing bands, every negotiation feels personal. Every inquiry forces a fresh decision. Every counteroffer becomes a moment of doubt. Over time, this leads to inconsistent outcomes. Two similar names sell for wildly different prices because they were priced on different days with different emotions involved.

A pricing band removes that emotion. You're not deciding the value of the domain in front of you. You already decided the value of domains like it.

Pricing bands start with pattern recognition. Length. Structure. Extension. Buyer type. Historical comps. You're not looking for the perfect comparable sale. You're looking for clusters. Names that tend to transact in similar ranges, even if the exact wording changes.

A clean two word .com with commercial intent might live in a mid five figure retail band. A niche three word brandable might live in the low four figures. A strong but narrow industry keyword could sit somewhere in between. The exact numbers matter less than the consistency.

Once you define those bands, pricing becomes mechanical in the best way. New acquisitions get slotted into a range. Existing names get reviewed against their band performance. If nothing happens after a meaningful amount of exposure, the question isn't "Is this name good?" It's "Is this band wrong for this name?"

Pricing bands also clarify the role of BIN pricing. A BIN is not a promise. It's a signal. It tells the market where the name lives. It filters tire kickers. It aligns you with distribution channels that require fixed pricing. Without bands, BINs are arbitrary. With bands, they're consistent and defensible.

Payment plans fit naturally here too. A name in a higher band can justify longer terms. A name in a lower band might be better served with a fast close discount. You're not inventing terms on the fly. You're applying rules you already trust.

One of the biggest benefits is portfolio awareness. When you look at your names through this lens, patterns emerge quickly. You see where most of your capital is concentrated. You see which bands convert and which ones just consume renewals. You see whether your acquisition strategy actually matches your sales reality.

A lot of investors discover their portfolio is top heavy. Lots of names priced like premiums, very few that behave like them. Pricing bands expose that imbalance fast.

They also make negotiation cleaner. When a buyer pushes back, you're not scrambling. You know the floor for that band. You know how often you deviate and why. That confidence shows. Buyers can feel when a counteroffer is grounded versus improvised.

The market isn't fooled by confidence alone, but it does respond to coherence. A seller who understands their own pricing logic is easier to do business with than one who's guessing.

If you don't have pricing bands, you're not managing a portfolio. You're managing a collection of hopes. Each name is its own debate. Each sale is a surprise.

A pricing model doesn't guarantee success. It does guarantee clarity. And in a market that rewards consistency over time, clarity is an edge.

My bands aren't perfect. But they're better than guessing every time.

After enough years doing this, you stop treating silence as a problem to solve. You start treating it as information.

When a buyer goes quiet, most domain investors assume something went wrong. The offer was too high. The timing was bad. The buyer lost interest. So they follow up too quickly. They lower the price. They justify the value. They try to restart momentum that may not have been lost at all.

Silence rarely means no.

More often, it means the buyer is thinking.

Serious buyers do not respond the way casual buyers do. They do not fire back instant replies. They are usually juggling internal conversations, budgets, partners, and timing. The domain is one line item in a longer list of decisions. When the price is meaningful, the response time slows down.

That pause is not rejection. It is processing.

I have seen more domain deals die from sellers filling silence than from buyers walking away.

When you receive an offer and respond with your price, you have done your job. The ball is in their court. Silence at that point means the buyer is recalibrating. They are deciding whether the domain fits the problem they are trying to solve. They are weighing cost against regret. They are testing how badly they want it.

Your job during that silence is to do nothing.

That is harder than it sounds.

Most domain investors want to be helpful. They want to explain why the name is strong. They want to provide comps. They want to justify the price. But justification is often a signal of insecurity. It tells the buyer you are more motivated than you should be.

Silence from a buyer can also mean they are waiting to see if you blink.

Buyers understand psychology, even if they do not call it that. They know many sellers will follow up with a discount or a softer position if enough time passes. They wait because waiting costs them nothing. Every day you fill that silence with explanation or price movement, you teach them patience pays.

There is another kind of silence that matters.

When a buyer goes quiet after making an offer, it often means they have reached their comfort ceiling. They want the domain, but they are hoping time will move you closer to their number. If you hold steady, one of two things happens. They either come back with a better offer, or they disappear entirely. Both outcomes give you clarity.

Clarity is valuable.

A disappearing buyer after silence was not a buyer you were closing anyway. A buyer who comes back after silence is showing you intent. They have thought about it. They have weighed alternatives. They are still in the conversation.

That is the buyer you want.

The mistake many sellers make is treating silence as something to overcome. In reality, silence is part of the negotiation. It is a pressure point. Whoever feels it less has the advantage.

This does not mean you never follow up. It means you follow up with intention, not anxiety.

A short, neutral check in after a reasonable amount of time is fine. Something that reopens the door without changing the terms. No discounts. No essays. No urgency. Just a reminder that the opportunity still exists.

The longer you do this, the more you realize that strong domains do not need constant defense. If the buyer truly needs the name, silence will not stop them. If they do not, nothing you say will manufacture that need.

Silence is not the enemy. It is a signal.

Learning to read it, and more importantly, learning to sit with it, is one of the quiet skills that separates experienced domain investors from everyone else.

If you want to really learn more about negotiating and how to get the most money from your efforts, check out STOP LEAVING MONEY ON THE TABLE: Exact Scripts, Psychology, and Closing Tactics That Add $2,000–$5,000 to Every Domain Sale

I don't remember the first time I saw one of his posts, but I remember the feeling: "Oh. This guy is one of the few. This guy actually knows what he's talking about." Which is rarer than it should be.

What kept pulling me back to his writing was that he never sounded like he was selling anything. Not a course, not a service, not even his own portfolio. He was just genuinely interested in figuring out how domains actually work. Which patterns repeat. Which assumptions are wrong. How to think about risk when outcomes take years to show up. And not keeping it a secret.

He's helped thousands of investors think better about this space. I'm one of them. I wanted to talk to him about how he got here, what he's learned, and what he thinks most people get wrong. 

Mike: Do you remember the first moment when domains clicked for you as more than just URLs? 

Bob: First of all, let me thank you for reaching out for this interview. I admire your writing, both on your own blog and at NamePros. You have a rare ability to write with impact and clarity. I am also a fan of the one-liners that you share on X.

Now to answer your question. I am not sure there is a specific instance, but early on I was attracted to how powerful it could be to have a two-word phrase that worked across the dot. When Twitter, now X, and other social media began making those clickable to go directly to the site, just with the two words and the dot between, it became even more powerful. I don’t think the digital marketing professionals have fully taken advantage of these possibilities. It works with some of the country codes, things like .it, .us, .me, etc., and with many of the new extensions. 

Mike: Which metrics do you see domainers rely on too heavily or incorrectly?

 Bob: I understand that most of the best domain names are also aged, but I think we tend to respect age of the domain name too much. Age on its own is not a complete metric. The vast majority of aged domain names will not find a use. It is compelling to see a name at that someone has held for 20 years as more valuable. Don’t let domain name age alone impress you too much. 

Mike: Can you share a moment where your thinking about domains changed significantly?

Bob: I think it was when I realized that sales data is only part of the picture. We should be thinking about sales relative to the number of domain names of that type or category that are listed for sale. For example, NameBio has 122 sales including the term ‘agentic.’ If that was from 500 names actively for sale, it would be highly significant for a newly trending term. Fortunately, DNX now gives us a way to check the number listed for sale on the main marketplaces, and this morning it showed about 16,500 active listings that contain the term ‘agentic.’ 

Join The Sully Report newsletter for monthly domaining advice that challenges conventional wisdom, plus bonus interview content you won't see anywhere else. 

Mike: Most of my learning in domaining has come from my mistakes. Have you made a bad decision that later turned out to be valuable because of what it taught you?

Bob: I specialize in mistakes! Seriously, I am a big believer that the best way to learn anything, including domains, is to truly struggle through it, and that will always come with mistakes. 

 My biggest early mistake, and one I think many new to domain investing make, is that I thought names would sell because I could see a specific use for that name that excited me. Names like this might sell, but it is also important to think about how likely they will be to sell. To know that, you need to, as part of the acquisition research, look at how often names that are similar have been adopted in businesses. Resources such as OpenCorporates and CrunchBase, or even a company search on LinkedIn, are ways to assess this, along with using NameBio to see what has sold in the past.

Mike: What is one of the most underrated skills a domain investor can develop?

 Bob: I would say that it is thinking about decisions quantitatively and in terms of probability. Everything from ‘do the odds favour making this acquisition?’, to ‘should I renew this name years in advance?’, depend on thinking in terms of probability. 

 I wrote about this back in 2022 at NamePros with a number of specific examples: What Are The Odds? Applied Probability For Domain Investing.

No one can predict the future exactly, but thinking in terms of probability will help us make better decisions. For example, ask yourself what is the retail price this name would probably sell for, and what would you estimate the probability that it would sell in any one year. Let’s say I am looking at a specific .io name that I think would sell for $4000, maybe $3200 net after commission. But the term is specialized and I think the odds it will sell in any one year is 0.8 %, maybe slightly less. When I multiply $3200 x 0.008 = $25.60. But the renewal cost per year for .io is more than that. Therefore,  based on these numbers at least, it’s not a smart hold. Now this is just part of the story, of course, and if you believe the term will trend upwards in future years, it could still be a wise acquisition. The longer we are in domain investing, and the more careful our record keeping and more detailed the analysis of comparable sales, the better we all get at estimating the values that go into the formula. 

Mike: What has been your most rewarding piece to write and why?

Bob: It’s not the most important article, certainly not the most viewed or innovative, or one I put the most hours into, but my clear personal favourite is a 2020 article: Catching Trains and Avoiding Train Wrecks . It is essentially about the risks and possible rewards in trend investing. It starts with Gary Kremen, who was one of the very first domain name investors. He recognized that the Internet would replace newspaper classified ads, and that the prime terms would be valuable. This was of course long before search engines as we know them now. 

I am terrible at writing clever title and section headings, but in that article they just seemed to fall into place. I think the article an enjoyable and worthwhile read with an important message. 

I should add, I most enjoy writing analysis type articles, though. I look forward each year to my January article that places sales from the previous year in a multi-year context.

Mike: Has teaching, explaining, and analyzing domains changed the way you invest personally?

Bob: Yes. Completely. When I was a teacher, long before I got into domains, I came to realize that teaching or explaining something will help you truly understand it. That is why peer learning experiences, where students help each other master a topic, are so effective. 

When I was writing a new article each week at NamePros, and trying to write on a variety of topics to better serve the NamePros community, I often wrote about things that, at the outset, I did not know at all. While those articles were the most work to write, they also influenced my own investing the most, and definitely the ones that I learned the most from researching.

I find that it is easiest to be truly balanced and open minded when I have not already invested in something. For example, when I wrote the two-part series on .io domain names back in 2020, Why is the .IO Extension So Popular? and Types of .IO Domain Names That Sell and Where, I had not invested in a single .io domain name. After researching the articles, I have now invested in a few dozen .io domain names, influenced by what I found in putting those articles together. 

Mike: Is there a domain you passed on that still haunts you?

Bob: Actually, not really. Sure almost weekly I second-guess a name that someone registered while I researched the metrics for it, or someone outbid me, but  I know there is an almost limitless number of domain name possibilities, so I am not fixated on any one domain name. 

 I am haunted by not getting into .ai at the right time, though. I knew how big a thing artificial intelligence was, even wrote numerous articles on the topic and AI domain names, but kept thinking we must be near the top of a demand curve for AI related domain names. But .ai demand and sales volume has kept increasing. I finally invested in a handful of .ai about a year ago, but almost entirely missed the .ai trend. My biggest regret by far. 

Mike: Does your own data ever tell you one thing, but you buy on feeling anyway? What does that tension feel like?

Bob: Sure. Pretty well every week I do things that are counter to what the data says. Often, it turns out unwise, but it is also where true opportunity can lie. The numbers only take you so far. This is an art, as well as a science. There is a bit of tension, particularly since I write so often about using metrics and analyses to guide acquisitions, I feel guilty about not following them. 

Now and then going against the metrics turns out well. A recent sale was for a term used in zero companies or organizations according to OpenCorporates. The .com I held was the only one extension registered according to dotDB. There is zero advertiser interest in the term, with the high CPC of $0.00. When I did a quotation mark search for the term, it appears in fewer than 10,000 web pages in all the globe, a ridiculously low number. Yet, when I saw the name drop a few years ago, I knew I had to acquire it. The name felt special to me, full of positive potential for some end user. The name? spiritfully.com 

Mike: As more AI and automation enter the naming world, where do you see human creativity still holding the advantage?

Bob: This is the key question for the domain world. If we don’t have it already, we will soon, I am sure, have semi-autonomous, or fully autonomous, agentic domain name systems that evaluate, buy, present and sells domains, all with little or no human intervention. How well will it do?

 Early in January, I plan to read the just-released book, written by Joseph Bradley and Don Tapscott, You to the Power of Two: Redefining Human Potential in the Age of Identic AI. As I understand it, the book is about the next step after agentic systems and agents. In identic systems the AI assistant comes to know your personal identity and becomes an extension of you. It isn’t that AI is doing things for you, it is doing things with you. 

Over the last number of months, Rick Schwartz, The Domain King®, has been talking about a similar idea through his The Betty Project. I think he was the first in the domain community to see AI in this important way. 

So my answer is the following.  

While AI assistants will take over more and more tasks we do now, they will do it in concert with our own identity. That includes our knowledge, our creativity and in particular our ethical standards. I am very concerned with the increasing tendency of AI by itself to deceive and outright lie. Existing guardrails seem woefully inadequate. 

But AI is also incredibly powerful in making the case for a name, helping me see the pros and cons of a potential acquisition, or presentation. I see the role of the person will always be a higher level of creativity, and an ethical and disciplined bedrock for decision making and actions. 

Follow Bob on NamePros and X, and check out Rename.one

The problem is not that the advice was wrong back then. The problem is that the market it was written for no longer exists.

In 2012, domains were still benefiting from a simpler internet. Fewer startups, fewer naming options, less noise, and far less competition for attention. A good keyword domain could sit on a landing page, wait patiently, and eventually attract a buyer who had not yet been trained to overanalyze every purchase.

The gap between investors and buyers was smaller. Expectations were lower on both sides.

Fast forward to today, and buyers are sharper. They have more data, more alternatives, and more internal pressure to justify every decision. Founders are not buying domains in a vacuum anymore. They are weighing naming against brand risk, SEO considerations, funding optics, trademark exposure, and whether the name will still work three years from now.

Yet much of the advice aimed at domain investors still treats buyers as if they are operating with a 2012 mindset.

One of the clearest examples is pricing guidance. You still see blanket advice that encourages either extreme pricing or racing to the bottom. Price it high and wait forever, or price it cheap and move volume.

That framing ignores the fact that buyers today are evaluating value, not just cost.

They want to understand why a domain is priced the way it is. They expect context. When pricing advice fails to account for buyer psychology, negotiation dynamics, and real world use cases, it does more harm than good.

Another outdated idea is the obsession with trends for the sake of trends. In 2012, jumping early on a hot keyword or extension could work simply because the market was immature. In 2026, chasing trends without understanding who the actual buyers are is a fast way to build a portfolio that looks exciting on paper but struggles to sell.

Real demand is quieter than hype. It shows up in inbound emails, not forum threads.

I also see advice that overemphasizes tools and metrics while underestimating judgment. Automated appraisals, keyword scores, and search volume can be useful inputs. But they are not substitutes for experience.

Buyers do not purchase domains because a tool told them it was valuable. They buy because the name solves a problem, removes friction, or creates leverage for their business.

Advice that treats domains like abstract assets instead of practical tools is stuck in the past.

What has changed most since 2012 is the importance of credibility. Buyers today expect professionalism. They notice how you communicate, how you present your domains, and how you handle negotiations.

The idea that you can throw up a parked page and wait is largely outdated for serious sales. Trust matters more now, not less.

Yet much of the advice being shared barely acknowledges this shift.

I have made plenty of mistakes assuming buyers thought like they did ten years ago. I held names too long at prices that made sense in 2015 but not in 2023. I watched opportunities slip away because I was following advice that was already outdated when I found it.

The fundamentals of domain investing are not broken. Patience still matters, but so does positioning. Quality still wins, but quality now includes context and clarity, not just a good string of characters. Negotiation is still an art, but it is grounded in understanding how modern buyers think and operate.

If domain advice feels stale, it is because too much of it is frozen in time. The market moved on. Buyers moved on.

The investors who continue to do well are the ones who figured this out years ago, adjusted quietly, and stopped relying on playbooks written for a different era.

In 2026, success in domains is less about copying old formulas and more about applying experience to a changing landscape.

That is the part that still works, no matter how much else changes.

The Job Isn’t Domains. It’s Knowing

A reminder that domains aren’t the skill, judgment is. This one is about pattern recognition, learning cycles, and building the kind of “knowing” that makes your next move obvious (and your mistakes less expensive).

The Silent Epidemic: Most Investors Don't Track Their Numbers And Why It Hurts Them

If you’re not measuring, you’re guessing, and most portfolios are being run on vibes. This post breaks down the core numbers that actually matter and why tracking turns domaining from a hobby into a business.

Domain Pricing Advice Fails in the Real World

A lot of pricing advice sounds great until you try to use it on a real portfolio with real buyers. This one digs into why generic rules collapse, and how to think about pricing in a way that survives contact with reality.

Trends Domain Investors Talk About vs Trends Buyers Actually Act On

Investor trends and buyer behavior are not the same thing. This post separates what’s loud in domainer circles from what buyers consistently spend money on, and how to avoid confusing attention with demand.

Your Portfolio Isn't Diversified, It's Unfocused

“Diversification” is often just a clean label for random. This one argues for depth over breadth, why a concentrated portfolio in niches you actually understand can outperform a scattered list of names across industries you don’t.

That might sound obvious, but it runs against how most people enter this space. The instinct is to buy volume, chase trends, register names across every extension, and hope something sticks. I did some of that early on. Most long term investors I know did too. It is understandable. Domains feel inexpensive individually, so mistakes feel small. Over time, those small mistakes add up.

If I were starting fresh today, the first thing I would do is narrow my focus aggressively. One or two industries. One buyer profile. One way those buyers actually use domains. Not what investors talk about on forums, but what businesses pay for when it is their money on the line.

Experience teaches you that clarity beats optionality. The more specific your lens, the faster you learn what matters and what does not.

The second thing I would do is study buyers before I bought inventory. Not after. I would read acquisition announcements, look at how companies brand themselves, note how often founders use exact match names versus invented brands, and pay attention to who upgrades their domain and when. I would look at who buys aftermarket names quietly without announcing it.

Too many investors try to reverse engineer value from past sales alone. Sales data matters, but it is backward looking. Buyers tell you more through behavior than through comps. If you understand why someone buys, pricing becomes easier and holding decisions become calmer.

Third, I would treat renewals as a strategy, not an afterthought. One of the biggest shifts in my thinking over the years has been realizing that dropping names is not failure. It is discipline. If I were starting over, I would set strict rules around what earns another year in my portfolio.

Does this name still match a real buyer profile. Has demand improved, stayed flat, or quietly faded. Would I buy it again today at renewal cost if I did not already own it. If the answer is no, I would let it go without emotion.

Capital tied up in weak inventory is capital that cannot move toward better opportunities.

Next, I would price earlier and more deliberately. Many newer investors underprice out of fear or overprice out of hope. Neither helps. I would decide what kind of buyer I am targeting and price accordingly. Strategic buyers do not behave like bargain hunters. Bargain hunters rarely become strategic buyers.

Clear pricing also filters conversations. It saves time. It positions you as someone who understands what they own. That alone changes how inquiries feel.

Another thing I would do differently is write and share my thinking sooner. Not to build an audience for the sake of it, but to sharpen my own judgment. Explaining why you bought a name or why you passed on one forces clarity. Over time, patterns emerge. Those patterns become instinct.

Some of my best insights came not from sales, but from articulating why something did not sell.

Finally, I would play a longer game emotionally. Domains reward patience, but they punish impatience disguised as activity. Buying feels productive. Learning feels slow. In reality, the opposite is often true.

If I were starting over in 2026, I would spend more time watching, fewer dollars testing blindly, and more energy building conviction in a narrow lane. I would aim to be boring and right, not clever and busy.

The industry has changed. The fundamentals have not. Good domains still solve problems, reduce friction, and signal credibility. The investors who win over time are the ones who understand that and build their portfolios accordingly.

That is where I would start.

I want to break down what I think this really means. Why it matters. How you can actually use it.  Dynadot just released survey data that lines up with what I've been saying for years about your day job being your biggest edge.

What Industry-Specific Actually Means

Here's the thing. Demand comes from buyers. Buyers don't buy generic names for search volume anymore. They buy names that fit their business, their industry niche, their actual audience.

Dynadot surveyed 75 active investors. Thirty percent now prioritize industry-specific domains over broad generic keywords when they're buying names. That's not a small number. That's the whole game changing.

But what does industry-specific really mean?

It's not just slapping a business category onto a keyword. It's not BusinessConsulting.com or MarketingSoftware.com. That's still way too broad.

I work in enterprise software consulting. I specialize in cloud implementations specifically. Over 10 years now. And every industry has vocabulary that nobody outside of it understands or cares about.

Procurement specialists talk about "tail spend." HR teams obsess over "time-to-fill metrics." Finance departments need "journal entry automation." These aren't sexy terms. They'll never trend. But companies will actually pay for domains that speak their language.

That's what industry-specific means. The actual terminology people use when they're solving real problems in their jobs.

Who's Actually Buying Domains

Tech startups account for 44 percent of all domain purchases according to the survey. More than double any other category. Local businesses came next at 20 percent, brand agencies at 13 percent.

But here's what jumped out at me. Fifty percent of domain purchases are for starting a business or brand. Only 8 percent are buying to flip.

Your buyers aren't other domain investors. They're founders building actual companies who need a domain that immediately tells people what they do.

When I'm working deals or talking to other investors I always ask one question first. Who is the end buyer? If it's someone launching a SaaS product then something like SaaSMetrics.com is going to work way better than some generic phrase that might show up in search results.

Industry-specific domains speak to what that buyer is actually looking for.

Your Day Job Is Your Best Asset

Every industry has its own language. Business people know what "change orders" are. Medical practices deal with "prior authorization." Manufacturing folks talk about "lot traceability."

When you work somewhere for years you stop noticing how weird the vocabulary is. You think everyone knows these terms. They don't. That's your edge.

I can spot a valuable ERP domain because I'm in those meetings every day. I know which features clients constantly ask about. I know which problems cost companies serious money to fix. I know what people are searching for late at night when they're trying to figure out if there's a better way.

You can't get that from keyword tools. You get it from actually doing the work.

Where To Actually Find These Domains

The survey showed that domain marketplaces and expired domain services are the tools investors use most. Thirty-seven percent said they use them constantly. That makes sense because that's where industry-specific terms actually show up.

I've been using Dynadot's marketplace for years now. Not because they're sponsoring this post but because when you're managing a serious portfolio you need tools that don't get in your way. Their expired auctions are where I've found some of my best industry-specific pickups. Domains that dropped because the original owner didn't renew but that have real value to someone in that specific field.

The difference between hunting on a marketplace versus hand-registering is you can see what's already been validated. Someone registered it before. It had enough value that it existed. Now it's available again and you can grab it if you understand the industry.

The Long Game

Forty-eight percent of investors hold domains for three years or more according to the survey. Only 8 percent are flipping quickly.

Industry-specific domains take time to find the right buyer. But when they do the sale actually happens. The buyer isn't comparing your domain to 50 generic alternatives. They're looking at it thinking this is exactly what I need.

Sixty-five percent of investment is still going into .com domains. Five times more than any other extension. Businesses want credibility. They want what people remember. They want a domain that clearly says what they do.

Put those together. Industry-specific .com domains. That's the opportunity.

The survey showed 59 percent of investors manage portfolios of 200 domains or more. Thirty-five percent hold over 500. That's not hobby stuff. That's focused buying where people are deliberately targeting specific keywords in industry verticals they know will attract real users.

When you're managing that many domains you need a registrar that makes bulk management actually work. I've moved most of my portfolio to Dynadot over the past few years because their bulk tools don't make me want to throw my laptop. Small thing but it matters when you're dealing with hundreds of renewals.

A Real Example

A few years ago I registered a domain about audit trail automation. Super specific. Super boring to most people. But for companies implementing enterprise software? That's critical. That's something their compliance team actually loses sleep over.

Haven't sold it yet. But I'm not worried. The buyer is out there and when they find it they'll know immediately why they need it.

Compare that to something like BestSoftware.com. Sure it's got search volume. Sure it's easy to understand. But it's competing with thousands of other generic alternatives. And the companies that could afford it are building a brand, not buying a description.

Why Similar Names Have Different Values

This explains why two domains that look similar can have completely different values.

Say you own CloudSecurityTools.com and SecurityTools101.com. Both have security in them. But one speaks to the cloud security industry which has massive growth and funding. The other could be anything. A hobby blog. A YouTube channel. Generic advice content.

Buyers in actual business categories gravitate toward domains that signal where their product fits.

How To Find These Domains

Start with your day job. Write down every specialized term you use regularly. Not the obvious stuff. The weird terminology. The acronyms. The things that would make your friends' eyes glaze over.

Then look at what problems your industry is solving right now. What keeps coming up in meetings? What are vendors pitching? What are clients asking about?

Those are your domains.

Look for names that match those verticals. Use marketplace data to check if there's interest. Be patient. Nearly half of investors hold domains three years or more because this stuff takes time.

The Mistake People Make

They think industry-specific means narrow. They worry there aren't enough buyers.

But think about it. How many Cloud ERP implementation firms exist? How many companies use cloud software? That's not small. And they're all dealing with the same problems, using the same language, searching for the same solutions.

Same logic for almost any industry. Blue-collar businesses, healthcare specialties, financial services, manufacturing. These aren't tiny markets. They're massive markets most domain investors ignore because the terminology doesn't look impressive in a spreadsheet.

Why This Matters

We're in the era of niche domain investing. Industry-specific beats generic not because it's trendy but because the buyers changed.

Entrepreneurs want names that help them tell their story. That's what industry-specific domains do. The Dynadot data backs this up.

Generic keyword domains might still have value if they're perfect one-word .coms with clean history. But those are disappearing fast and they only work if you can tie them to actual buyer intent.

Industry-specific names naturally attract buyers who already know what they want to build.

What You Should Do

Stop chasing generic keywords. Stop trying to predict trends. Stop competing with thousands of other investors for obvious terms.

Look at the industry you already know. The one you work in every day. Where you understand the real problems and the actual language and the urgency behind solutions.

That's where industry-specific domains come from. Not keyword research. Real experience.

Thirty percent of investors are doing this now. Seventy percent aren't.

If you're serious about building an industry-specific portfolio check out Dynadot's expired auctions and marketplace. That's where the real opportunities are hiding. Names that already got validated once and are ready for someone who actually understands the industry they serve.

Use what you already know. Nobody else has that.

This post is sponsored by Dynadot. I've been using their platform for portfolio management and domain acquisition for years. All opinions and strategies here are mine.

Sometimes that worked. Often it did not.

I learned the business that way. Taking shots, missing most of them, slowly figuring out what actually moves the needle. I bought hundreds of names I could not explain to anyone, including myself.

Over the past few years, I have noticed a shift. The investors who are still here and still making money are no longer guessing as much. Domain investing has moved from pure speculation toward something more deliberate, and that change is separating professionals from people who treat this like a lottery.

Speculation is easy. You see a trend, you register names, you hope demand shows up later. It's still an option.

Strategy starts with a different question. Who is the buyer? Why would they need this name? What problem does the domain actually solve for them?

That is a very different mindset.

Early on, I bought plenty of domains that sounded good but had no clear buyer. They were clever, brandable, keyword-rich, but I could not explain who would realistically pay for them. If I could not identify the buyer upfront, I was gambling. I just did not want to admit it.

Today, strategic domain investing starts with context. You look at industries, not just keywords. You pay attention to how companies are naming products, raising capital, positioning themselves in their markets. You notice patterns before they become obvious.

That context informs what you buy and what you avoid.

Another shift is how investors think about portfolios. Speculation leads to bloated portfolios filled with long shots. Strategy leads to tighter holdings. Fewer names. Higher quality. Clearer paths to sale.

That discipline alone can change your results.

Pricing has evolved too. Strategic investors do not rely on automated appraisals or arbitrary price tags. They price based on use case, buyer sophistication, and urgency. The same domain can be worth very different amounts depending on who is on the other side of the negotiation.

I have learned this the hard way more than once.

Outbound behavior reflects this shift. Blind mass outreach is giving way to targeted conversations. Strategic investors know which companies to contact and why the domain matters to them specifically. The message is not about selling a domain. It is about solving a business problem.

This does not mean speculation is gone. There will always be room for calculated bets, especially around emerging technologies or new naming conventions. The difference now is that those bets are backed by research, not hype.

Strategy does not eliminate risk. It makes risk intentional.

If you are newer to domain investing, you no longer need to guess or follow loud voices online. You can build a repeatable process based on observation, patience, and clarity.

If you have been around a while, this is a reminder that experience only compounds when you apply it deliberately.

Domain investing has matured. The easy money stories are mostly behind us. What remains rewards those who think like investors, not gamblers.

Strategy is not as exciting as speculation. But it lasts longer.

I think that matters more.

That alone felt like a reason to dig deeper.

One of the biggest mistakes domain investors make is confusing familiarity with understanding. Just because you have not participated in a niche does not mean it lacks merit. It just means you have not done the work. So instead of dismissing the idea or repeating someone else's opinion, I decided to learn what .vc actually is, who uses it, and whether there is a real investment case behind it.

The first thing I learned is that .vc is the country code top level domain for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. That fact alone explains why it often gets lumped into the same mental bucket as other repurposed country code extensions. But the real story has nothing to do with geography. In practice, .vc has been positioned and adopted as shorthand for venture capital.

That is not an accident.

In startup and tech circles, "VC" is universally understood. It is written in pitch decks, bios, job titles, and headlines every day. Because of that, .vc has found a small but very specific audience. Venture funds, angel groups, startup studios, and individual investors who want a clean and obvious signal of what they do.

That focus matters.

One of the reasons many new extensions struggle is because they try to be everything to everyone. .vc does not do that. Its relevance is narrow, but it is also clear. When you see a domain ending in .vc, you immediately know the context. That alone gives it more legitimacy than many extensions that rely on explanation.

I also noticed that adoption, while limited, is real. There are active venture firms and startup related projects using .vc domains in the wild. Not parked pages. Not experiments. Actual businesses. That is an important distinction. Usage does not guarantee resale value, but the absence of usage almost guarantees the opposite.

From an investor standpoint, pricing was the next reality check. Most strong .vc keywords are not cheap. The registry understands its niche and prices accordingly. This is not a bargain hunting extension. If you are used to picking up speculative inventory for ten dollars and hoping for volume, this will feel uncomfortable.

That is probably by design.

The more I looked at it, the clearer it became that .vc is not an investor playground. It is a branding choice. That shifts the risk profile significantly. You are not betting on broad adoption. You are betting on a very specific buyer type recognizing value and being willing to pay for clarity.

That also explains why aftermarket data is thin. Sales happen, but quietly. Many deals are private, negotiated directly, or never reported. That makes it harder for investors who rely heavily on comps and public data. You need conviction and patience to play here.

So would I suddenly start investing heavily in .vc domains? No. It does not match my core strategy, and that is fine. But I no longer dismiss it either.

What I discovered is that .vc is a tool, not a trend. It works when it aligns perfectly with the buyer's identity. For venture focused brands, it can make sense. For everyone else, it probably does not.

The real takeaway for me had nothing to do with .vc specifically. It was a reminder that staying sharp in this industry means questioning your assumptions. Even after decades in the game, there are corners of the market worth understanding, if only to know why you are choosing not to participate.

Sometimes learning confirms your instincts. Other times it challenges them. Either way, the work is what separates investors from spectators.

Most people do not set goals for their domain business. They tell themselves they will buy smarter names or they will sell more or they will clean up their portfolio, but they never write any of it down. They drift into the new year and hope momentum carries them. It rarely does.

Clear goals give you two things. The first is direction. The second is accountability. Without both, domain investing becomes a reactionary hobby. You buy what crosses your feed or catches your eye and you justify it later. You renew everything, even when you should not. You chase sales instead of building a strategy that creates sales.

When I talk about goals, I am not talking about vague ideas. I am talking about measurable targets that actually guide your decisions. For example, you might decide you will hold no more than 300 names by the end of 2026. Or you might decide you will only buy names that match three specific criteria. Or you might commit to a minimum sell through rate. You might set revenue targets, renewal budgets, education goals, or networking benchmarks. The type of goal matters less than the discipline of committing to it.

If you are newer to the space, start simple. Decide how many names you want to buy this year and what you want your total spend to be. Decide what categories you will focus on. If you are more experienced, you should be thinking about portfolio quality, average acquisition cost, and how your pricing strategy needs to evolve. Do not drift through 2026 with the same habits that held you back in 2025.

Once you set your goals, the next challenge is staying accountable. I learned a long time ago that relying on motivation is a mistake. Motivation fades. Accountability systems do not. You need something that forces you to review your goals regularly and measure your actions against them.

FYI - I am launching my newsletter in January. Sign up now to get access to members-only information, draft copies of every chapter of my updated books, sneak peeks at new guides, tools, insights and more! Sign up here!

There are a few ways to do this effectively. You can build a simple spreadsheet that tracks acquisitions, sales, categories, and spending. You can create quarterly check-ins where you review your portfolio with brutal honesty. You can partner with another domainer and meet once a month to compare progress (highly recommended). The point is not the tool. The point is that the tool anchors the behavior.

One thing that has helped me is keeping a short list of questions on my desk. When I am considering a purchase, I ask myself whether the name aligns with the goals I set. When I am pricing a name, I ask whether the price reflects my strategy or my mood. When I am reviewing renewals, I ask whether the domain still fits who I am as an investor now, not who I was when I registered it.

Goals will not guarantee success, but they will absolutely guarantee clarity. And clarity is what prevents waste. It prevents bloated portfolios, emotional pricing, and random buying sprees. It also increases your confidence because every decision is grounded in something intentional.

If you want 2026 to be your best year in domains, do not wait until January to start thinking about it. Set the goals now. Write them down. Build a simple system to keep yourself accountable. Then show up every week and follow the plan. The investors who treat this like a business will outpace the investors who treat it like a hobby. The choice is yours.

Not because I didn’t think I had anything to say, but because I didn’t want to add to the noise. The domain industry already has plenty of loud opinions, recycled advice, and surface-level takes that feel helpful until you try to apply them in the real world.

That’s not what I want to build.

In January, I’m launching a "mostly" monthly SullysBlog newsletter, and I want to be very clear about why it exists, who it’s for, and what it is not.

This isn’t a shortcut.
It isn’t a promise of easy money.
It isn’t a replacement for doing the work.

What it is meant to be is a way to reduce wasted motion, shorten the learning curve, and help serious domain investors think more clearly about decisions that actually move the needle.

Twenty+ Years of Lessons, Compressed

I’ve been around domains for roughly twenty years.

That doesn’t mean twenty years of constant wins. It means twenty years of trial and error, bad assumptions, slow realizations, deals I overthought, deals I underpriced, opportunities I missed, and patterns I only recognized in hindsight.

Most of the real learning didn’t come from blog posts or conference panels. It came from watching what actually happened after the deal closed, or didn’t close. From seeing how buyers behaved when money was on the line. From noticing what repeated over and over, even when the names or the market cycle changed.

If I could go back and talk to myself ten or fifteen years ago, I wouldn’t tell myself to work less or hustle harder. I’d tell myself to stop guessing at certain things and start paying attention to different signals.

That’s the gap this newsletter is meant to fill.

Who This Newsletter Is For

This newsletter is for domain investors who understand that there is no cheat code and is not expecting to find one.

If you’re looking for a list of magic keywords, guaranteed flips, or “buy this name and get rich,” this won’t be a fit.

If you’re someone who wants to think more clearly about pricing, negotiation, portfolio construction, buyer psychology, market shifts, and why some domains quietly outperform others, this will be useful.

It’s especially for people who feel like they’re doing a lot of work but still second-guess key decisions.

Pricing that feels arbitrary.
Negotiations that stall for unclear reasons.
Names that seem good on paper but never attract real buyers.

I’ve lived in that space. I still do at times. This newsletter is about navigating it more intentionally.

What You’ll Actually Get Each Month

This will be a monthly newsletter by design. Not weekly. Not daily. I don’t want it to feel like another obligation in your inbox.

If there is a month where I don't feel I have something of value to share, I'll let you know, and we'll skip that month.  The point is to add real value. Not just an excuse to get my name in front of you.

Each issue will focus on a small number of ideas that matter.

That might include:

• How I think about pricing when comps are weak or misleading
• Patterns I’m seeing in buyer behavior that don’t show up in public sales data
• Negotiation mistakes I see domainers repeat without realizing it
• Why certain niches quietly perform better than hyped trends
• The difference between names investors love and names buyers actually buy
• Strategic decisions I’ve changed my mind on over time and why

Some of this content will be familiar if you’ve followed SullysBlog for years. Some of it will not. I'll probably include access to some things I am working on as well.

There will be subscriber-only insights that I don’t publish publicly, including frameworks and observations that people often pay for through consulting, courses, or private conversations.

Subscribers will get that information free.

Not because it has no value, but because I believe the right people using it thoughtfully benefits the entire ecosystem.

This Doesn’t Replace Learning. It Refines It.

One thing I want to be very explicit about.

This newsletter does not remove the need to learn. It does not remove the need to make mistakes. It does not remove the need to put in work.

What it can do is help you avoid learning the same lesson ten times when once would have been enough.

It can help you recognize when you’re stuck in a false dilemma.
It can help you see why a negotiation feels off before it collapses.
It can help you understand why two domains that look similar on paper are not valued the same by buyers.

That kind of clarity compounds over time.

Why I’m Doing This Now

I’ve written publicly for years. Blog posts, interviews, long threads, conversations behind the scenes.

What I’ve learned is that the most meaningful exchanges often happen quietly. In emails. In direct replies. In conversations where people feel comfortable asking questions they wouldn’t ask publicly.

A newsletter creates that space.

It allows me to share what I’m seeing in real time, without needing to frame everything as a polished article or a hot take. It allows for nuance. It allows for uncertainty. It allows for honest reflection.

And it creates a direct line between me and readers who actually want to think deeply about this business.

If That Sounds Useful, You Should Subscribe

I’m not trying to convince everyone to sign up.

If you’ve gotten value from SullysBlog over the years, this is simply a more focused extension of that work.

If you’re serious about domains and want fewer distractions and better signal, you’ll find it worthwhile.

The first issue will go out in January. It will be free. You can unsubscribe anytime.

No hype. No spam. No manufactured urgency. No drama.

Just thoughtful, experience-driven insights from someone who’s been learning this the long way for a long time.

If you’d like to be part of it, you can sign up here.

Branding Is Meaning, Not Design

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Look, I'm not saying metrics don't matter. A 15-letter domain with perfect branding is still harder to sell than a 6-letter domain with decent branding. Length matters. Extension matters. Pronounceability matters. All the technical stuff still counts.

But here's what I've learned. When you're comparing two domains with similar metrics, both short .coms, both clean, both memorable, the one with stronger brand meaning will sell faster and for more money. That's where most investors miss the opportunity. They're optimizing for metrics that get them to "good enough" but never thinking about the branding layer that gets them to "this is exactly what I need."

What Founders Are Really Buying

The Questions I Ask Now

Brand Archetypes That Actually Predict Sales

Why Some Names Sit Forever

Emotional Tone Is Everything

The Most Common Branding Mistakes I See

How Branding Knowledge Changes Negotiations

What Founders Tell Me

Why This Matters Now

The Real Shift