Domain Investor

Domain investor with premium assets. Let’s connect.

[Domain Shane | Winterline @cultra]

First time I've seen this

.Tech @dottechdomains is giving away grants of $10K, $50K, and $100K, for a total of $1M to startups.

The only catch is they have to be operating on a .tech domain, and real operating company. Not an idea.

They don't want equity, they want visibility. What a great use of marketing dollars. Instead of waiting for a unicorn to use your TLD, finance the next one.

[Paul Rubillo @paulrubillo]

Buy the Domain Now or Pay Millions Later.

This is what the new owner of https://t.co/z4ljRDj556 realized after paying $100K to secure the brand he was building.

He gets it. Most entrepreneurs don't. If you can't bet on yourself and make life a little uncomfortable at times, you only make the odds harder.

[Andrew Rosener 🛒 🔁 @andrewrosener]

A thought (or two) on the .si and .ai market:

A beach house on the sand in Malibu is dope… until you wake up and it’s been swept out to sea...

.si was never the next big trend.
It’s the needle that just popped the .ai bubble and sent everyone sprinting back to .com.

Uncertainty is way more dangerous than bad news in any market! You can run pretty far off a cliff… until you look down.

Anguila is one thing...a small Caribbean island whose core business is tourism. Selling .ai domains is now a beloved export!

Slovenia is a whole other bail of wax! This is an industrial European nation and those local businesses are going to revolt against all these foreigners speculating on (or even using) their domain names! Local businesses can no longer get a good domain in their country code. The registry is non-commercial, it's academic & administrative! This will have blow back and rules will change. Mark my words...

Now picture every European AI startup right now:
Slovenia = EU = support them?
But it’s growing because of a Trump mandate = must boycott? Right?
Meanwhile your only real capital sources and customers are American....so...? What a conundrum! Just one of them.

One solution is get on .COM and stop playing the game. Neutral ground. Strong ground. Permanent ground.

Some companies will still brand on .ai or .si. Of course.

Most, however, just relearned the lesson they learn once a decade: .COM is bedrock. Everything else is wet sand in Malibu...sexy as hell until your sea view drowns you.

[Turan Selvi @turanselvi]

just bought https://t.co/Yu8l29uOHS domain for $100K.

It took us 13 months of back and forth.

Right when i was about to give up, the deal went through.

We’re growing fast and I’d rather own the domain now than pay millions later.

[Atom.com @atomHQ]

Three-letter domains often sell as acronyms, with buyers searching for a specific set of letters.

But some buyers are simply looking for a great short name. That's where discovery comes in.

Congrats to the buyer and seller.

[Richard Kirkendall @namecheapceo123]

Starting today at Spaceship we are making a new commitment to our customers. Domains at cost going forward including all renewals and complete Freedom to choose where and with who you host them always! 🚀💙

[Domain Investor @Webpoxcom]

@nexatweb @afternic Consgrats! It was inbound or outbound?

[Domain Investor @Webpoxcom]

@justdropped Congrats

[Doron Vermaat @doronvermaat]

I'm seeing a lot of FOMO right now, and some people are saying they miss the days when .com was the only thing to chase.

Personally, I think chasing new extensions can be very profitable if you have the understanding, capital, and conviction to do it right. These opportunities have created an entirely new class of successful domainers, and I love it.

A lot of my profits as a domain investor came from getting early into .co, .io and, more recently, .ai.

But I’ve always done the same thing with those profits: I reinvested a large part of them into domains I consider much more timeless.

Mostly premium and also strong .orgs.

Because trends change.

I started to compound because of .co profits; .io had a huge run. .ai is having one now. And another extension will come next, without a doubt.

But I don’t want my entire business to depend on correctly predicting which extension will be hot next year.

So by all means, ride the trends if you can spot them early.

Just don’t forget to ride the wave; move some of the profits into assets you’d still be happy owning if the momentum dies.

For me, that’s mostly .com and .org.

If your market is local, that can just as easily be .nl, .de or another strong ccTLD.

Ride the waves and make sure a large part of your portfolio sits in assets where you can sleep through the next hype cycle.

[Mike Mann @mikemanndotcom]

"Premium .com domains sit at the intersection of trust, memory, and money. They function like prime digital real estate: scarce, instantly recognized, and useful on every channel a business already pays for.⁠

They are the default people already trust. Consumers treat .com as the “real” address. Surveys put implicit trust in .com around 70%, far above newer extensions. Stanford-style credibility research has long ranked domain quality as a first-impression signal. That trust shows up as higher click-through rates in search, better email deliverability, and less hesitation at checkout.⁠

They are easier to remember and type. In a 1,500-person study, .com scored the highest recall (44%) and the highest trust rating. When people forgot the extension, they guessed .com about 3.8 times more often than any other TLD. Browsers still treat .com as the shortcut. Radio ads, podcasts, billboards, and word of mouth therefore convert more cleanly: people hear a brand and type brand-com.⁠

They generate unpaid traffic. A short, exact, or category-defining .com captures type-in visits that never hit an ad auction. That traffic arrives with high intent and zero media cost. Businesses that upgraded to a premium .com have reported overnight traffic jumps and lower blended customer-acquisition cost because paid campaigns no longer have to compensate for a forgettable URL.⁠

They make every other marketing dollar work harder. The same name appears on invoices, packaging, investor decks, press mentions, and ads. A clean .com needs less explanation, spreads more easily by word of mouth, and lifts branded search volume. Higher CTRs and Quality Scores can cut CPC. Conversion-rate studies on comparable businesses often show double-digit lifts on direct-navigation traffic versus .net, .co, or country-code alternatives. One widely cited Shopify observation: moving from .co to .com raised conversions about 11%.⁠

They signal permanence to customers, partners, and investors. Owning the category word or the exact brand on .com reads as commitment. Investors treat it as a credibility and focus signal. Documented cases include Hive seeing a large traffic jump after securing Hive-com, Public paying a large sum for Public-com to look instantly established, and Atom reporting a 240% revenue rise after rebranding onto Atom-com, plus lower CPC. Category names such as Hotels-com or Crypto-com also become self-reinforcing marketing: every mention of the category is a mention of the brand.⁠

They compound instead of decaying. Ads stop when the budget stops. A premium .com keeps collecting type-ins, links, citations, and brand search for as long as the company exists. Historical aftermarket data shows .com dominates high-value sales (often the large majority of six- and seven-figure transactions). The same string on another TLD typically trades at a fraction of the .com price. That liquidity also supports higher exit multiples: buyers pay for a brand they do not have to rebuild.⁠

They protect the brand at scale. There is only one exact-match .com. That scarcity blocks look-alike confusion, phishing lookalikes, and competitor parking of the “obvious” address. Global recognition means one name works across markets without teaching customers a new suffix.

Relative to other marketing options, the asset is durable. A six-month ad campaign expires. A logo refresh can be copied. A premium .com is a one-time (or amortizable) purchase that then sits on every future campaign, email, and press hit. Buyers often frame the price as cheaper than a few months of inefficient ads spent explaining a hyphenated, long, or unfamiliar URL. For category-defining or exact-match names, the domain itself becomes the slogan.⁠

In short: premium .com names reduce friction at every step of discovery, trust, and purchase, then keep paying those dividends as an appreciating brand asset rather than a recurring media line item."

[DataCube @datacubecom]

@HarryStuck77 @afternic @NameBio I don't really have a miracle formula to makes sales.

I basically -

1.) Buy decent to good domains.
2.) List them on popular venues.
3.) Wait.

The more domains you have, the more likely sales will come.

That is assuming the quality is there and pricing is realistic.

[Snagged @snagged]

In 2005, Bob Innes paid $9.20 for https://t.co/FzJdRgT658.

He had a totally legit IT-security business in mind, where "hit" meant website traffic, and the plan was to offer network penetration testing and cybersecurity.

The business never launched, but the domain did its own thing anyway.

A few years later, Bob checked the inbox tied to the site and found hundreds of messages.

Some people wanted to FIND WORK AS HITMEN.

Others were asking, in all seriousness, to have someone killed.

The site was an obvious parody with fake testimonials, a fictional operator named Guido Fanelli, and nearly 18,000 "field operatives."

And, somehow, people still filled out the request form with their own information, details about their targets, and what they wanted done.

The first request Bob treated as a real threat came from a woman who wanted three relatives killed.

He asked if she wanted to be connected with a local field operative, and she said yes. The field operatives were law enforcement, and she was arrested.

Since then, Bob has kept forwarding credible requests to the authorities, and the site has contributed to arrests, prosecutions, and convictions.

He describes himself as accidentally becoming customer service for criminals, which might be the best job description on the internet.

It's also a wild example of how much a domain can say before anyone sees the website. In this case, people read three words, decided exactly what the business was, and acted on it.

Most companies spend years earning that kind of clarity. https://t.co/FzJdRgT658 got it for $9.20… it just attracted the worst possible customers.

Read Full Story 👇
https://t.co/AGZ3pExJq7

[Doron Vermaat @doronvermaat]

I just published a completely hopium-free guide to selling a domain name.

There is some history here.

In 2018, I wrote a nine-part guide on DN Geek that reached the first page of Google within a few months.

I later sold DN Geek, the guide disappeared, and so did the ranking. Its framework lived on, though. Search for “how to sell a domain name” today and quite a few results will look strangely familiar.

Eight years and hundreds of domain sales later, I decided to write it again from scratch.

This guide won’t tell you what most domain owners want to hear.

The fact that you love your domain doesn’t make it valuable. The business idea you once had for it doesn’t add to the price. An automated appraisal is not proof of value. Listing a domain on a marketplace doesn’t create demand...

Sometimes a great domain needs years to find the right buyer.

Sometimes the price is wrong.

And sometimes the domain simply isn’t as good as you think.

Knowing the difference is what selling domain names is really about.

If you own domain names you want to sell, whether it’s one or a thousand, I think this is worth reading:

https://t.co/4Wc36BIIt7

[Logan @loganflatt]

Your lack of monthly #domain sales comes down to two main factors:

1. Quality of your domains is too low.

2. Size of your domain portfolio is too small.

Fix #1 before you fix #2 — you’re gonna win 🏆.

Fix #2 before you fix #1 — you’re screwed 🪛.

[Jakob Speeder @JakobSpeeder]

Bought https://t.co/bHZVurxBYZ for $20,000.

Short, global, memorable and I see so many ways it works with .ai.

My 4-year underwriting:

Price: $20,000

End-user target: $500,000

Annual STR: 1.5%

Wholesale value in year 4: $40,000

Renewals: $180 total

Cost of capital: 7%

That gives me a probability-weighted present value of roughly $53,000.

I also have an idea I might build on it, so let’s see ;)

Where do you think I’m wrong in my assumptions?

[Domain Investor @Webpoxcom]

Hey @airasia @askbo any updates on when you will restart the direct flight route from Lucknow (LKO) to Kuala Lumpur (KUL)? Currently only seeing connecting options. Thanks!

[Bob Hawkes @AGreatDomain]

If you are an end user looking to secure a domain name, DomDB (https://t.co/2e61wP3Fe4) covers many different marketplaces and will show price comparisons. e.g. here is listing for one of my domain names. 1/2

[Akshay Kothari @akothari]

We're finally shedding the .so (thank you Somalia!), and using the .com for @NotionHQ. And for this beautiful moment, I want to share a fun story:

Back in 2018, I had just joined Notion, and one of the first things @ivan asked me to do was figure out how we could own https://t.co/BxoFvc83VG. I had never done a big domain purchase before, so I reached out to a few domain brokers to understand the landscape. We tried different brokers, kept things anonymous, and attempted to surface a price the seller might consider.

A year went by… nothing. Meanwhile, it was pretty clear this was only going to get more expensive as we grew. We needed a different approach. A fellow founder connected me to a broker who took a very different tack. Less transactional, more long-term relationship builder. He spent months getting to know the domain owner. Turns out owner was a fellow entrepreneur in the west coast… and a huge Grateful Dead fan.

So we figured, why not get creative? Something beyond just price. So I called up our investor Ronny Conway and asked if there was any way he could help set up a private meeting between the domain owner and the Grateful Dead. Ronny is one of those people who somehow makes impossible things possible. A week later he calls me back: “New York City. Halloween. 15 minutes after the concert. Done.”

The broker went back to the owner with an offer: some cash, some equity, and a private meeting with the Grateful Dead. That got his attention. He didn’t take the band meeting in the end, but he did lean into the equity (great call, in hindsight). We shook hands, and a few weeks later, the deal was done.

I’ve been waiting years for the day we move our product to https://t.co/BxoFvc83VG. Looks like 2026 is finally the year. Safe to say I’m unreasonably excited about this update!

[Domain Investor @Webpoxcom]

@Dynadot For me bulk search & domain monitor features.