I have been in this business for over 15 years. During that time, I have served as a broker, a manager, a VP of Sales, and now as an entrepreneur, CEO, and broker by founding Saw.com, a boutique domain brokerage and marketplace. In that time, I have seen the industry evolve…When I joined Oversee.net, it owned the lion's share of the market, owning a vast portfolio of domains, a parking platform, and a registrar – essentially the “GoDaddy” of its time…and I watched it fall. I saw the .MOBI gold rush and its steep crash as smartphones rendered the extension irrelevant—much like today’s hype around AI domains. I have seen different types of names skyrocket in value and crash just as quickly.
Game-related names (not gambling, flash games)?
When I worked for Frank Schilling as VP of Sales of Uniregistry, the Harlem Shake went viral. He owned HarlemShake.com….We even got a 100k offer!… As shocking as it was that he said no to the offer, how did he have the foresight to register it? What is it worth today? A whole lot of nothing…
Below is a picture of Google Trends search volume on Harlem Shake:
.NOW domain extension seems to be the talk of the town.
Gambling names are very hot.
AI domains are as well…Time will tell.
Jeff, why the hell are you telling me this? What does this have to do with Catch Club? Glad you asked, and while we are on the subject, what is the first rule about Catch Club? Always talk about Catch Club.
What will be the next trend?
.NOW domain extension seems to be the talk of the town.
Gambling names are very hot.
AI domains are as well…Time will tell.
Jeff, why the hell are you telling me this? What does this have to do with Catch Club? Glad you asked, and while we are on the subject, what is the first rule about Catch Club? Always talk about Catch Club.
Rule #1: Always talk about Catch Club:
Let me preface this before you dig into it too much…I do not buy expired domains very often. I have realized that I am much better at selling other people’s domains than I am at what a domain investor does day after day. I think it mirrors the same issue I have with Texas Hold ‘em, I get bored and feel like I need to go for it because I haven’t in a long time. Then I make costly mistakes. Soon after, someone has all my money, and I sit off to the side, bored, and watching.
Rule #2 of Catch Club:
If you're serious, treat this like a real business. Spend a few bucks on tools—or better yet, have a developer on Upwork build something custom.
Let’s say you’re spending tens of thousands annually—why not invest a little to streamline your process?
Set your search. Mine would be:
I would create filters that the Estibot value needs to be greater than X, the number of registrations in that term needs to be greater than Y. If either of those are met I would use a scraping tool to see how many companies use those keywords in their domain that come up in Google Search. If it is 1 or 2, that is a limited number of possibilities. You might be chasing. If it turns into 5/10/15+, you might be onto something, especially if you can get it cheap.
- Filters: .com, .net, .ai — no dashes, no numbers
- Automated Checks: Run lists through Estibot, DotDB, and your own metrics
- Value Thresholds: Only include names with Estibot scores above X and/or DotDB counts above Y
- Demand Verification: Scrape Google to see how many actual businesses use those keywords. If it’s just 1 or 2? You’re chasing. If it’s 5–15+? You might be onto something.
I know there are many different extensions, and each has its own flavor and specialty. Com IMOP is like the US Dollar; everyone takes it and uses it. Liquidating it or having the largest buyer pool possible comes with that extension.
AI is very hot right now, and those domains are selling at a huge premium. .NET IMOP I call it “My father’s domain extension.” Meaning it is not cool or trendy anymore. The reality is it is the second most popular extension with (most likely) over 100,000,000 registrations. People trust that extension; they are comfortable with it, and you can get some fantastic deals on .NET right now. Am I saying buy a two word .NET with low DOT DB results and a low Estibot value? No. You might be able to get a great one-word .NET for short money. Those won’t sell as fast, but they are still good.
Rule #3 of Catch Club:
Remember what I said earlier about me and Texas Hold’em?
Don’t force it. Don’t chase after domains that aren’t good—especially just because you haven’t bought or bid on something in a while. In my opinion, it’s better to potentially overpay for an excellent domain than to end up with a pile of weak ones that, a day or two later, you barely remember purchasing—until the credit card bill shows up.
This also means avoiding domains with awkward action words, incorrect tenses, irrelevant brand alignments, or misspellings that don’t make sense—throwing in adjectives like “Best” or stacking keywords just to make something work? That’s chasing. That’s forcing it.
Rule #4 of Catch Club:
If you plan to build a long-term portfolio that you believe you will own for many years and receive full retail value for each domain, then you should pay attention to the terms, keywords, technology, and other factors that you are investing in.
Will the term “Prompt” be used in another year? Will that term go away as quickly as it came?
The same applies to ringtones, which I mentioned earlier.
Domain extensions rise and fall in popularity.
When the landscape shifts and those domains you paid $1,000s for are now just racking up renewal fees, take the loss and liquidate them. Just because you spent thousands on a batch of domains doesn’t matter. They are weakening you.
The best domain investors—especially the ones actively buying—regularly auction off lower-end names or let some expire. It’s part of the game. It happens.
If I had dropped serious money on ringtone-related domains ten years ago, it’d be time to accept reality and cash out. That money’s just sitting there, dead—waiting on hope or a miracle.
Rule #5 of Catch Club:
False Positives do exist!
If your Estibot appraisal comes back high, and the number of domain extensions taken is high, and the commercial demand search is high, but the domain is too broad, you might have a problem. An example for this post would be CarWashes.com. There are hundreds, if not thousands, in the United States, but the market is segmented, with target audiences local to their specific locales. Despite being a multi-billion-dollar business, it would be challenging for a Car Wash to buy it. It is not an exciting, memorable domain. Looking at the data, you might think this is worth a lot. In reality, who is your target market? The suppliers to carwashes? Do the car washers already know these suppliers? It's a very hard sale. I am not saying it isn’t worth a decent amount of money, but probably not as much as the data is telling you.
If you have to write a 500-word essay to convince a broker or buyer why a domain is valuable—and who it’s valuable to—you’ve probably bought a bad name.
If you call me or any other broker to sell a domain, or if you want to identify targets yourself, your first step should be a quick Google or Crunchbase search. The right buyers—the ones already using that brand—should be easy to spot.
But if all that shows up are dictionary definitions or vague, non-specific results, your audience is too broad. That usually means it will be tough sledding to get it sold.
If you got this far in the article, let me remind you of the rule that my friend, Tyler Durden, always said, “The First Rule about Catch Club…Always talk about Catch Club.” .png&w=3840&q=75)
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