Domain Reading List for Early January 2020

Each week many great articles about domain names are published. With this post, I am starting a NameTalent series called Reading List that highlights particularly worthwhile content from a variety of sources. 

In this issue I highlight articles on single letter .co domain names, how to effectively hand-register domain names, risks associated with leasing of high-value domain names, how to perform an analysis on your portfolio performance, and an opinion piece that addresses the question of whether it is time to give up domain investing. 

I also look at the agenda for NamesCon Global 2020. 

All the Single Letter .co Domain Names

Jason Franklin researched who owns each of the single-letter .co domain names, and published the resulting article on his website. While most of us probably know that Twitter uses T and Google G, there are other end-users that may surprise you. I was somewhat surprised by the large number that were for sale, including a number through GoDaddy’s NameFind portfolio. 

How to Hand-Register a Domain Name

A thread on effective hand-registration was started by long-term NamePros member Oldtimer. Both through a detailed original post, and via numerous contributions from various members, some great perspectives on how to optimize the process. 

Possible Domain Leasing Risks

The topic of payment plans, domain rental and domain lease is getting much more attention lately. In this thread started by another experienced NamePros member, Targetpro,  looks at the possible risks associated with lease arrangements for valuable digital assets. You may also want to check out my NamePros blog post on domain name payment plans. 

Annual Analysis of Portfolio Performance

Highly successful domain investor Nikul Sanghvi of Hypernames just posted at NamePros the most recent edition in his series taking a deep dive into domain name sales for the year. Nikul looks at everything from average prices to the venues where most sales took place. I found his data on how the ratio of the sales price to the acquisition cost depended on that cost particularly interesting. This is a great model for doing your own analysis. 

I also did a NamePros Blog post on the topic of numerical analysis of domain portfolio performance, looking in particular at the question of how to properly account for annual changes in the worth of your domain portfolio. 

Do You Still Want  to be a Domainer?

Raymond Hackney starts the new year off with an honest and important commentary at TheDomains that addresses the question of how to decide whether you should still be in domain investing. I like the following quote.  Why not give the entire article a read?

So work on your plan, be smart, get help from those willing to help and change things up if you are not making sales. –Raymond Hackney

In Other News – NamesCon 2020

In case you missed the announcement, the full agenda is out for NamesCon 2020. It looks like a great conference. Relatively new GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani is delivering one of the keynotes. 

I need to miss NamesCon 2020 for personal reasons, but really enjoyed NamesCon 2019. You can read about some of the ideas I took away from NamesCon 2019 in this NameTalent post.  

I hope that many of my readers will be able to attend NamesCon 2020. I look forward to reading about the conference on NamePros and through the various domain blogs. 

If you want to suggest an article for inclusion in the next issue in this series,  just reach out to me either with a direct message at Twitter or at NamePros, or via comments to this article.

I also highlight articles on a daily basis on my Twitter account, @AGreatDomain.