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⭐ See if you can spot the opportunity in the statistics that follow.

Relax, grab a drink and enjoy this dive into a world you didn’t know existed.

Want your mind blown?

There’s a multi-billion-dollar market that you don’t know exists, yet you encounter it every day. I’ve been on the front lines of this niche’ industry for 20 years, and what I’ve learned is… stunning.

I’m talking about the Internet’s invisible asset class.
It is 100% digital.
It’s a commodity that has minted countless millionaires - yet doesn’t trade like a traditional asset class. There are no indices, there are no exchanges.

So, it’s not crypto.

It’s actually more wild-west than crypto, if you can believe it.
Sounds perfect, yes?

Welcome to the insane world of domain name investing.

You’ll see, below, that ‘insane’ is the most accurate description possible.

A bit of background on the domain name aftermarket

Domain names are traded daily for outstanding sums of money.
From four-figure names to more than $1million each, this commodity class is:

Unregulated: little oversight, no central authority, very few protections

Illiquid: there’s no public exchange, no bid/ask spread, and no daily volume posted

Opaque: most sales are private with undisclosed terms and valuations

Non-fungible: every name is a 1-of-1, even if it feels generic

Emotion-driven: value is often determined by perception, timing, ego, or strategic branding

And, my friends, those final two points are what makes this the most interesting and lucrative market imaginable.

Imagine a market where every asset is a unique creation - where there are no comparable sales and the final sales price solely depends on the dynamic between the buyer’s motivations and the seller’s motivations. All working in a free-market unregulated playground.

Good lord, right?

This is how fortunes are made. And lost.

⭐ We’re talking about the domain name aftermarket here.

The primary registration market, dominated by domain registrars like GoDaddy is itself a several-billion-dollar-a-year market. There are approximately 360 million registered domain names across all top-level domains (TLDs). Think .com, .net, .org, .xyz etc. and this part of the domain industry is more transparent.

Is anything transparent?

ICANN is the governing body that oversees the digital naming space. They are less involved in the aftermarket, more involved in the primary market. Once a name is registered, the aftermarket kicks in and you may as well be walking into an 1880s saloon in Dodge City, Kansas.

Sure, there are places like Namebio.com that track aftermarket sales... but they only witness a fraction of the activity that takes place. Most transactions are never spoken about… and the buyers range from small time speculators to Fortune 500 companies and major startups looking for a rebrand.

There are resources for those looking to learn and meet other ‘domainers’ as they are called.

Namebio.com is a great forum, as is DNForum.com 

DNAcademy.com is the place to learn about the market of domain investing. It was purchased by GoDaddy three years ago.

Domaining.com aggregates all of the domain blogs (yes, that’s a thing… and they are really popular) so you don’t have to search for them.

DomainInvesting.com , DomainNameWire.com and DNJournal.com are the most popular of the blogs. The latter having existed for more than 20 years.

🤯 Are you asking: “Where have I been?” Don’t worry, you’re not alone.
It’s about to get crazy around here in 15 seconds…

Eye popping sales

DN Journal does their best to track publicly available information about top aftermarket domain name sales. Here is their year-to-date top domain sales list: DNJournal YTD Top 100 Domain Sales Chart

Yeah, that’s $12,000,000 for Icon.com - sold by a friend of mine named Andrew Miller who is a domain broker for Hilco Streambank, a company that sells IP. The buyer? An AI startup looking for a branding flex.

Andrew also recently sold Rocket.com for $14,000,000 to Rocket Mortgage,
Gold.com went to JM Bullion for more than $8,000,000 and he has countless 7-figure transactions that have never been spoken about. I know of many of these including Odyssey.com which just sold two weeks ago (the seller of that name is a friend of mine).

Andrew is overseeing the sale of one of my prized domains: March.com 

And that’s just ONE broker.

There are dozens of them.
MediaOptions.com actually brokers more aftermarket domain names than anyone else.
More than the guy mentioned above!!?? Yep.

Most brokers love to represent the buyers. When someone shows up with a budget and a dream, that’s when brokers get paid incredible transaction fees.

I represent those types as well, and I make the entire experience private. Usually a startup comes to me with a budget and a requirement: “Aron, we need a one word .com name and we’re willing to spend up to $500,000”.
Then, I tap my network in a call for domain submissions that fit the requirements. This unearths the digital gold that isn’t listed on any marketplace or with any broker. It’s a fun process.

Wait, you said marketplaces?

Oh yeah,

Sedo.com is the world’s largest domain name marketplace. Having to search through millions of names is burdensome though…

So, Dan.com saw an opportunity and built a better marketplace, which GoDaddy happily acquired for $71million two years ago and then abruptly shut down, killing an up-and-coming competitor.

GoDaddy did the same thing when they paid “well-known-in-domain-name-circles” Frank Schilling 9-figures for his domain registration business, his popular aftermarket platform and his personal portfolio of 375,000 domain names.
NINE. FIGURES.

You can read about that here: GoDaddy acquires Uniregistry and Frank Schilling's domain portfolio - Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News

Wait, wait, wait….

375,000 domains? Owned by one guy?


Oh, I forgot to mention another aspect in the domain name aftermarket…

The portfolio play

Instead of buying a domain name for 6-figures and sitting on it for a decade waiting to sell it for 7-figures… many people opt to build portfolios of thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of mid-tier domain names. They acquire them for $100-$1000 each and flip for them for 10X and more.

It’s been found that the average sell-through rate of this type of business is 2-3%, so if you own 100,000 domains, you sell 2000-3000 per year. As long as you’re in the black, you’re good. You have to factor in holding costs - domains are around $10 per year to renew - so a 100,000 name portfolio costs *gulp $1,000,000 per year just in registration fees.

So… you need to sell 2000-3000 per year at $1000 each for this to make sense.

And there’s always the chance of selling the entire portfolio in one massive deal.

Yun Ye was the first to do so back in 2004. Yeah, 21 years ago. This mysterious investor was unknown until he sold his portfolio of 100,000 domains for $164,000,000 to a company called Marchex - who then sold the entire portfolio a decade later to

drum roll

GoDaddy.

Mike Berkens, who ran the blog TheDomains.com sold his portfolio of 70,000 names for a reported $35,500,000 to…

GoDaddy.

And we mentioned Frank Schilling who sold his entire company to GoDaddy. As part of that major transaction, GoDaddy assigned a value of $88,500,000 to the domain portfolio.

(In case you wondered: HugeDomains.com owns the world’s largest private portfolio of domain names: 4 million domains… under one ownership group. What is that portfolio worth!!??)

Ok, so, where do these portfolio people get their domains?

You know how I mentioned it costs $10 per year to keep a name registered?
Well, sometimes people and companies forget to renew their domains - or they intentionally let a name expire.

Does that expired name go back into the registration pool?

ARE YOU CRAZY?

Are you hearing how lucrative and competitive this business is?

NO - there are companies that ‘catch’ these expired names and auction them.

DropCatch.com
NameJet.com
Dynadot.com 

and others hold auctions for these names.

Guess who else holds domain auctions?


GoDaddy.

Instead of selling an expired domain for a $10 registration fee, GoDaddy throws them into auctions, where those names sometimes sell for $1000 or more.

But there is even something more interesting in the domain space…

The domain registry business

Ok, really quick.


Did you know there are almost 2000 new domain extensions?
Beyond .com, .net and others, there are hundreds of new extensions like:

.xyz.
.top
.online
.store
.app

etc.

Have you encountered any of these? Did you know you can own an entire extension?


Sites like NTLDStats.com track all of the registration numbers for these new suffixes. Pretty interesting data to comb through.

 
I could write an entire newsletter just about this new GTLD (Global Top Level Domain) market. It’s amazing because…

In 2012 ICANN, mentioned earlier, launched an open application for new extensions. As long as you could meet the requirements for operating capital and tech, you could apply for your own .whatever. The application was a non-refundable $185,000, and 2000 applicants jumped in.

Applicants were:

Companies that launched their own top-level domains like
.amazon
.DHL
and
.cannon

Investment companies sent in multiple applications, landing dozens of extensions in a portfolio play. One such company, called Donuts Inc., landed 240 extensions and used economies of scale to run their company. Quite successfully, I might add. They peaked at 4 million registered domain names under their umbrella - each giving them recurring domain registration revenue.

In 2018 Donuts sold their entire business to….

GoDaddy.

Just kidding.

Worse. A private equity firm.

Other applicants were small teams that wanted just one cool name like .club.
A guy named Colin Campbell ran .club with a small team and did very well.
They marketed the ELS out of this extension, having about 500,000 domains registered - quite a nice little business.


*long exhale…

In 2021

.club was acquired by

GoDaddy

And finally, some individuals acquired their own extensions thinking, “Simple math… if it costs me X to run this thing, I only need Y registrations to make this profitable.”

My favorite such case is a regular guy from Arkansas named Bill Doshier. He’s probably reading this at the exact same time as you. He registered .buzz, a cool name to attach to any marketing campaign.

Bill is basically a one-man team. He had no expertise in the domain name industry but saw and opportunity and jumped on it.

Bill, by himself, operates one of the most popular new domain extensions -- here are his stats:
.buzz | Top-Level Domain Breakdown
Bill is sitting on over 300,000 .buzz domain registrations — all above board.

Why do I say that - all above board?

Well, at the beginning of this naming expansion companies were ‘stuffing’ their names into the accounts of unsuspecting people at domain registrars. They did this in order to boost their registration numbers - hoping the inflated numbers would entice more people to adopt their extension.

Bill never did that. But many did - and it was a pretty big scandal.

⭐ There’s another round of applications occurring in April 2026.
The ICANN fee has increased - but the real question is: Is there opportunity here or is the naming space too crowded with 2000 extensions?

My involvement and experience

I’ve seen the aftermarket madness firsthand.

For five years, I held high-end domain name auctions for the world’s largest collectibles auctioneer: Heritage Auctions (HA.com). They hired me to start the Domain Name and IP Division - effectively making Heritage the first mainstream auction house to sell digital goods. Now, Sotheby’s and Christie’s have followed with NFT sales but holding auctions for assets (like domain names) that might have only one perfect buyer has proven to be a bit tricky.

Regardless, we moved some serious digital assets during my time there including:

MutualFunds.com
Digital.com
Timeless.com
Quick.com
NL.com
Luxe.com
Cute.com
Classic.com

and countless others.

The difference maker was that we seriously tapped my network to find sellers wanting liquidity, and Heritage’s high-end client buyers were the perfect fit.

FAQ: This sounds amazing. Why aren’t you still doing this?

ANSWER: Entrepreneur at heart, here. Just like you. I enjoy what we’re doing right now (you and I talking about cool stuff). Plus, as mentioned earlier, auctions are a bit tricky for domains - you’re looking for that buyer/seller motivation mismatch, and it’s tough to land that within an auction timeframe. So, I left to pursue a few ideas of my own.


Side note: Heritage is an amazing company. Their leadership gave me latitude to try anything I wanted in order to make the category successful. Really enjoyed my time there, and building relationships.

Personally, I’ve sold many of my own assets and advised on lots of amazing transactions like:

XF.com
Democracy.com
Pete.com 
Advisor.com
OC.com

and literally dozens and dozens of others.

It’s amazing how much a ‘domain name expert’ can build a network.
My network is full of entrepreneurs, investors, collectors, venture capitalists - all, at some point, are drawn to the lure of a top tier domain name.
Many of these people are reading this newsletter with you.

Final note: I advise everyone to NOT buy a domain name that matches the established brand trademark of a company. That’s not what we’re discussing here. I’m discussing generic words and phrases, like the ones mentioned above.

Did you catch the opportunity buried in the stats?

The above domain market summary is similar to a case study you’d read in graduate school. You have all the info - now can you spot the opportunity?

The statistic that stands out to me is:

People that hold portfolios of domain names have a 2-3% annual sell through rate.

That means… pretty much everyone with a name they want to sell has a 2-3% chance of it selling in a year.

That means… there are tens of millions of domain names that are in the hands of investors and speculators… just sitting.

That means… there is a major need to increase the liquidity of domain names.



What if:

Someone created a more liquid marketplace.
AI could score the quality of domain names from 1-100.
Investors could bid on names that score above a certain threshold, offering instant liquidity.

Everyone is happy.
Portfolio owners get liquidity, increasing their annual sell through rate.
Investors get deals on domain names, without having to hunt and bid in the drop auctions, and there’s still a 3-4X return potential on these purchases.

Then what?

GoDaddy buys you for $50,000,000, clearly. 🙂 

⭐ Perhaps you have a better idea of how to increase liquidity in the domain name aftermarket. Everyone that participates in this market wishes they could increase their sales volume.


Figure out the model here, and there’s a $50million business waiting to get started.

Then, it’s a matter of distribution (getting everyone in the market to know about it and use it).

I could write 10 more newsletters on the domain market.


There’s an even BIGGER opportunity in this space that I might share with you in an upcoming newsletter - the timing is right - something just changed in the domain name industry that left the door wide open for someone to launch something big.

Want to hear about it?

In the queue to share with you:


How I’d Rig the NBA Using a Single Employee
This is How I’d Implement AI in Your Company Today
Confession: This is Why I Gathered You Here
How Companies Make Decisions Based on Avoiding Pain
Why I Thought About a Random Football Box Score for a Week Straight
How to Establish Trust on Day One and Resolve Future Conflicts
Every Pitch Starts the Same Old Way — One Opening Line to Draw Them in
The Insane World of Domain Investing

* I don’t share these newsletters online. If you missed one, listed above, that you want to read email me and I’ll send it to you.

Take care,

Aron Meystedt

Aron’s LinkedIn
ValidatorAI.com
Symbolics.com