What is domaining?

Buy, hold, renew, sell: the trade and its odds

A domain investor buys names that a business may want later. Some of them are registered new, and others are bought from their holders. Every name costs a yearly renewalRenewalThe yearly fee that keeps a domain yours. You pay it for as long as you hold the name, and on some endings it costs far more than the first year did.Read the definition, whether it sells or not. When a buyer comes, the sale goes through a marketplace or an escrowEscrowA neutral third party that holds the buyer’s money and the domain until both sides have done their part, then completes the swap. It is how large domain sales avoid either side going first.Read the definition service, which holds the money until the name has moved.

The odds of a sale are low. Andrew Allemann wrote of having heard sell-through ratesSell-through rateThe share of the names somebody holds that sell in a year. Two names sold out of a hundred held is a rate of 2%.Read the definition of 1% to 3%, reported by large holders that wait for buyers rather than seek them (Domain Name Wire, 6 November 2014). That rate is the share of a portfolio that sells in one year. At a rate of 2%, Allemann worked out, half of a portfolio is still unsold after about 35 years.

A Boston Consulting Group estimate, relayed by Allemann on Domain Name Wire on 14 April 2021, put the names resold in 2020 at 1.25 million, against 27.7 million .com names owned by investors. That implies a rate of 4.5% a year for .com, which is well above what investors achieve, Allemann wrote, perhaps because the study also counted expired names.

Sedo's median sale was $818 in the Global Domain Report 2026, which it publishes with InterNetX (Domain Name Wire, 23 March 2026). Escrow.com's own index put the median price of a domain at $5,369 in the first quarter of 2026 (Domain Name Wire, 29 May 2026). Across the sales we track, the .com median over 12 months is $810.

So a typical sale runs from hundreds to a few thousand dollars, in our reading. The stories are about the rare large ones. On Domain Name Wire on 9 August 2021, Allemann warned against copying only those who made it. Investors have succeeded with many mediocre names, and with a few great ones. Lots of investors failed with each approach.

Investor or squatter: where panels draw the line

A founder who finds the word taken may call its holder a squatter. Elliot Silver, an investor who writes, noted that many people see domain investors as middlemen between a founder and the exact name, and that the animosity can affect negotiations (DomainInvesting, 27 April 2026).

Critics have said so in print. On Domain Name Wire on 3 March 2010, Allemann relayed an interview with an author of a report on typosquattingTyposquattingRegistering a misspelling of somebody else’s brand to catch the people who mistype it.Read the definition, which means registering misspelled brand names. The author, who was also co-counsel in a typosquatting lawsuit, said that domainers add little genuine value and make names costlier for entrepreneurs.

WIPO's Overview 3.0 sums up panel views on the UDRPUDRPThe usual procedure for a trademark owner to claim a domain that copies their mark.Read the definition, the procedure a trademarkTrademarkA registered right over a name inside one line of business. Owning a domain gives you no trademark, and a domain can collide with somebody else’s.Read the definition owner uses against a name registered to abuse its mark. It says panels have generally accepted that holding dictionary words, acronyms or common phrases, usually for resale, can be bona fide, meaning in good faith, when no trademark is targeted. Registering to resell, even for profit, would generally not by itself show bad faith.

Panels weigh dates too. Where a name was registered or bought before the complainant had trademark rights, they will not normally find bad faith. In certain limited circumstances they have, when a name was registered to capitalize on rights just forming, around a merger announcement, a product launch or a trademark filing. Panels have held that bulk buyers and registrantsRegistrantThe person or company the official record names as the holder of a domain. Changing the registrant can block a move to another registrar for a while.Read the definition have a duty to avoid names that abuse a trademark.

Trademark owners filed a record 6,192 cases with WIPO in 2023, under the UDRP and national variations. WIPO said on 24 January 2024 that transfer of the name to the trademark owner remained the dominant outcome, and that cases increasingly tackled fraud and phishing. None of this says how a claim on your own name would end. For that, take your case to a lawyer.

Why parking no longer pays for a name

Parking means pointing a held name at a page of ads that pay its holder per click. It has been shrinking for years. In a Domain Name Wire survey of more than 1,000 respondents, reported on 27 February 2012, 57% earned under $10 per thousand visitors. In 2007, before the parking bubble burst, about a third earned that little.

Then the advertisers left. Parking revenue had dwindled to next to nothing for most domain owners, Allemann wrote on 4 September 2024. In February 2025, Google said it would opt all existing advertisers out of showing ads on parked domainsParked domainA registered name that shows only ads or a for-sale page instead of a site.Read the definition. The last batch was opted out in September.

In Allemann's review of the year, published on 31 December 2025, that final purge brought parking revenue down to pennies on the dollar. In our reading, a parked page earns close to nothing toward its renewal.

The founder course: one name, in order

"Name your company" is for a founder choosing the one name a company will run on. It follows that decision in the order it happens, and each chapter ends with an exercise in Unique Domains. The trademark chapters of both courses come later.

1. 1"Why the .com you want is already taken": who registered your word before you, and when.
2. 2"Know which of three prices you are quoted": a registration, a premium or a holder's asking price.
3. 3"Start on a short word, buy the .com later": which ending to build on now, and which day to buy the .com.
4. 4"Read the renewal price before the first-year price": what a name costs over five years.
5. 5"Check social handlesSocial handleThe name of an account on a social platform, such as @word. The platform controls it under its own terms, so it is not yours the way a registered domain is.Read the definition before the name is final": how much a taken handle should count in your choice.
6. 6"Register and secure your name in ten minutes": the settings that keep the name yours.
7. 7"Choose a registrar you can leave without trouble": its renewal price, and how easily you can leave.
8. 8"How to buy a name someone already owns": your top price, and your first message to the holder.
9. 9"How to pay for a name in instalments": a plan's total, and what a missed payment costs.
10. 10"Which three endings to register for your name": the .com, the one you build on, your market's country code.
11. 11"Which spelling variants to register, and which to skip": the few variants worth registering.

The investor course: names to resell, in order

"Buy names that sell" is for anyone buying names to sell them again. It follows a name from its estimate to the money: what to pay, what holding it costs, how to buy it as it expires, and how to sell it. A founder buying a held name finds the holder's side here.

1. 1"Est. value is an estimate, not a promise": what the figure is, and how to read the sales beside it.
2. 2"Never bid above a name's Est. value": one maximum bid, set before the auction opens.
3. 3"Pick names that sell, not a large est. profitEst. profitThe gap between a name’s estimated value and its price today, before fees.Read the definition": why the chance of a sale comes first.
4. 4"Renewals are the real cost of names you hold": a written rule for renewing a name or dropping it.
5. 5"Read a name's ownership history before you buy": checking for a theft, an earlier company's use of the name or a spam past.
6. 6"Read an ending's rules before you hold names there": who may hold a name there, and whether it may be resold.
7. 7"Bid in the registrar's auction before the drop": where expired names sell first.
8. 8"A backorderBackorderA paid request to register a name the moment it is released. It is a bid, not a claim: if others ordered the same name, it goes to an auction among you.Read the definition does not guarantee you the name": what your order buys you when the name is released.
9. 9"List your names where buyers already search": listing on the marketplaces at one fixed price.
10. 10"Price your name with the buyer's renewal in mind": what your name costs the buyer over five years.
11. 11"How you answer a buyer decides the sale": your reply, your lowest price and one follow-up.
12. 12"How to close a domain deal safely through escrow": how escrow works, how the name is delivered, and which scams to refuse.

What Unique Domains does, and does not do

On the Founder plan, Browse shows a word's open and listed names on the endings we track, with their status and price. A row opens the name's drawer, which shows its five-year costCost to holdWhat a name costs over five years: the first year plus four renewals.Read the definition, Est. value and Similar sales. You can run the full analysis, which is counted once against your month, Watch a name and read Business IdeasBusiness IdeasA daily edition of open names, each with a business idea a founder could build on it.Read the definition.

The Investor plan adds WHOISWHOISThe public record of who registered a domain and when. Most owner contact detail is hidden by privacy rules, but the dates are not.Read the definition and the availability checker in Product, Registrars, Auctions, Sales, AppraiseAppraiseA value estimate for one name or a whole list, with every name placed on one shared axis.Read the definition, WatchlistsWatchlistEvery name you watch, on one page, sorted into lists of your own. When one of them changes price, status or deadline, you are told.Read the definition, RadarsRadarA search that keeps running and brings back names: on a word, a trend, an ending about to launch or a search of your own, so you never rebuild the same search. A founder’s project also keeps a deadline, saved names, finalists and a client review link.Read the definition and Trending DomainsTrending DomainsA daily edition of open names on words that are rising in search.Read the definition. On the website, without an account, WHOIS and the availability checker give one live lookup a day each. Registrars shows 40 endings a day with one ending lookup, and the daily editions show five open names.

We register nothing, bid nothing, list nothing and park nothing. We hold no money and keep no portfolio of the names you own. Register, Buy, Bid and Backorder each hand you to the registrar or the site selling the name. The evidence is ours. The decision and the money stay yours.

Before your first name

• Pick your course: one name to build on, or names to resell.
• Write down the yearly renewal bill for everything you plan to hold.
• Read the count and the median of past sales before you buy any name.
• Expect one to three sales a year for every hundred names you hold, the rates of large holders that Allemann wrote of in 2014.
• Skip any word that a company, a product or a person already trades under.
• Read the ending's rules on who may hold a name and resell it.
• Count parking income at zero, and plan for the sale.
• Ask anyone selling you names or advice for their own figures.
• Close every deal through a marketplace or an escrow service.
• Take a dispute or a demand to a lawyer before you answer it.