Excited to share my first public interview in over 20 years in the domain industry! 🙏 Huge thanks to Bob Hawks (@AGreatDomain) for the detailed article about my journey and the story behind dotDB. If you're curious, feel free to read and share! namepros.com/blog/interview-…

One guy. No coding or art background. Two days. A world full of monsters. 🐾 I just built MonsterPet.com, a game where you can raise your own monster, grow crops, craft items, explore, and battle. The part that still feels a little unreal? I built it with AI tools helping me handle both the code and the art. My workflow: 💻 Claude writes the code. 🎨 Codex generates the 2D art. 🧊 Those images go into an automated Blender workflow to create 3D models. My job? Design the gameplay, decide how the systems fit together, and keep refining the UI until everything feels right. And yes, “one more small UI change” has taken up a very large part of these two days. 😂 What makes this exciting to me is how quickly an idea can become something you can actually play. A creature you imagined becomes a pet on your screen. Then you give it a world to explore, things to grow, and enemies to fight. There’s still plenty to improve and build, but seeing all these systems come together in just two days has been incredibly rewarding. Come raise your own Monster Pet: 👉 MonsterPet.com #GameDev #VibeCoding

Hello Türkiye! 🇹🇷 Just sold HelloTurkiye․com for $5,000! Anyone here from Türkiye? Say hello in the comments! 👋 My domain sales have now passed $200,000 this year, already beating last year’s total! With more than two months left, I’m hoping to reach $300,000 and set a new personal record. 🤞 This month also came with a surprise. I received a $100,000 offer for a US geo .com domain and accepted it. But the buyer suddenly backed out, then came back with a new offer of just $40,000. From $100K to $40K after I’d already said yes? That was an easy no. 🙂 You win some, you lose some. Still happy to celebrate this $5K sale! @afternic @NameBio #DomainInvesting

Just acquired Aggregators․com. Funny enough, much of my work and business over the past 10+ years has revolved around aggregators. I worked in digital marketing for an ecommerce price comparison site, then built my own projects, including a vertical search engine for real estate and sites aggregating everything from restaurants to plumbing services. For years, aggregator businesses were my main source of income. The playbook was fairly straightforward: build large numbers of searchable pages targeting long-tail queries, like “[location] homes,” “[product name] prices,” or “Thai restaurants in Taipei.” Each page might attract only a little traffic, but across thousands or millions of searches, it added up. Between 2015 and 2020, this worked incredibly well for me. Combined with Google’s AdSense for Search ads, it honestly felt like a money-printing machine. But as Google kept changing its algorithms, that model became less and less effective. In my experience, new sites could no longer launch and quickly pick up huge amounts of search traffic the way they once did. I eventually stepped away from the aggregator business entirely. Of course, aggregation itself is still everywhere. Google News brings together news from publishers around the world. Indeed gathers job listings from company career pages and other sources into one searchable platform. So, what should I build on Aggregators․com? I’m still figuring that out. I asked AI, and it suggested a directory of aggregators. An aggregator of aggregators. 😂 It fits the name, but I feel there’s more potential here. Maybe a SaaS platform that brings multiple data sources and APIs together, making them easier to search, combine, and use? I have the domain. Now I need an idea worth building on it. What would you build on Aggregators․com? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

I got 7 bookings in the past 9 hours, mostly from the 100 new sites I launched earlier this month. Here’s a fun detail: one African destination has been bringing in more bookings than any of the others lately. I hand-registered its .com domain and built its site as part of that batch. It’s a perfect example of the long tail. A destination doesn’t have to be world-famous to attract travelers. There are people looking for all kinds of places, and the internet makes it possible for them to discover destinations they might never have heard of otherwise. Even in a far-flung corner of Africa, if there’s something worth visiting and people are traveling there, there’s an opportunity to connect them with the right local experiences.

I’ve just rolled out memberships, XP and levels, coins, leaderboards, skins, and character customization across my minesweeper sites, including Buscaminas.com and MinesweeperAI.com. I’ve also introduced in-game purchases for the first time. Until now, I’d monetized my games through ads alone. Recently, a friend who was inspired by my work launched AlchemyPuzzle.com. Just a few days later, he got his first in-game purchase. Seeing how much that encouraged him to keep building inspired me to give it a try, too. Now I’m hoping to get my first purchase soon. I’ll keep you posted! My friend uses Lemon Squeezy as an indie developer. I decided to use PayPal, since it’s a payment platform I know well. A large share of the traffic to my minesweeper sites comes from Latin America and Spain. I think the Spanish-speaking gaming audience is often overlooked, despite its huge size. It could be amazing to connect all these players across our games! #GameDev

Got 4 more bookings in the past 24 hours, from destinations across 3 continents: France, Indonesia, Cabo Verde, and Vietnam. Yesterday’s post got far more attention than I expected, and several SEO experts asked how these sites are getting traffic. I’ve also received a lot of DMs. One person told me they’re doing something similar and have already built more than 700 websites. I’d better get moving if I want to catch up! 😅 Sorry I can’t reply to every message individually, but I really appreciate all the interest. Here’s a quick explanation. I build on exact-match, pure geo .com domains. I’m not relying on SEO alone. A strong destination domain can attract visitors on its own, while SEO is an added benefit. I haven’t done anything special to optimize these sites for search engines. This also didn’t happen overnight. I’ve spent more than 20 years collecting pure geo .com domains, investing over $300,000 in hundreds of them. I used to monetize their natural traffic through domain parking. When Google retired its domain parking program earlier this year, I shifted my focus to developing the domains into websites. A good geo .com is like a prime spot on a destination’s main street. The name is clear, memorable, and immediately tells visitors they’re in the right place. That also helps build trust. Since I started developing these travel sites, local businesses have reached out to ask about working together and advertising on them. Many offer airport transfers, taxis, and other local services. I think the domain itself helps: it’s a clear, credible sign that the site is focused on their destination. The right domain doesn’t just give a site an address. It gives it a head start.

One of my domains has been on hold at Afternic for over 3 days. Does anyone know what might be going on? I’ve never had an on-hold status take this long without an update. Hopefully it’s good news. 🤞

I launched around 100 new travel sites last week, all built on pure geo .com domains, and they’re already starting to bring in bookings. Today, I got three bookings within about an hour, two from the new sites, including GiliAir.com. That’s not typical, though. Lately, I’ve been averaging one or two bookings a day. My favorite among the new sites is ArcticOcean.com. Polar adventure trips can bring in a high commission per booking, but they’re niche, long-tail products, so bookings tend to be few and far between. The idea behind these pure geo .com travel sites is to capture long-tail demand at scale. One or two sites might bring in only five to ten commissionable bookings a year, which wouldn’t amount to much. But with 100 sites? Or 500? That could add up to more than 1,000 bookings a year. I now have 160 of these sites, and I’m still building. My latest acquisition is PortGrimaud․com, named after Port Grimaud, a canal-side town in southern France known as the “Little Venice of Provence.” I’m planning to turn it into a travel site over the next few days. If you own any .com domains that consist purely of a tourist destination name, with no extra words, feel free to let me know. I may be interested in buying. I generally only consider .coms with a dotDB EMD count of 10 or higher. 👉 dotdb.com

This is crazy! Is .si the next big thing, or just short-lived hype? 👀 Either way, come play at Rever.si! 🎮

I’m in Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city! 🇰🇷 For some reason, Korea has always been the biggest market for my web games. Across all my games, I get around 50,000 visitors from Korea every day! Last month, even Peyz, a famous Korean esports player, streamed himself playing one of my games! I also built JanggiOnline.com, a website for Janggi, a traditional Korean chess game. The funny thing is, I don’t speak Korean at all! 😂 So right before this trip, I built KoreanSchool.com to learn some Korean myself. I even added a section for useful travel phrases. And it already came in handy on my first day here! We also tried Skyline Luge, a fun downhill ride that’s a bit like go-karting. We saw the same attraction in Queenstown, New Zealand last year, but didn’t get a chance to try it. This time, we finally did! 🏎️

I don’t chase trends like .ai or .si, but I’m bullish on India for the long haul. 🇮🇳 Sell me your best India/Bharat-related .com domains! The keyword must be registered in at least 10 extensions according to dotDB.

Finally! After yesterday’s nameserver battle, my one and only .si domain is now a live website: Rever.si 🎉 Rever.si is a domain hack for Reversi, also known as Othello, a classic strategy board game with roots in England and over 140 years of history. Today, it’s especially popular in Japan, home to a thriving community of players. Simple rules, surprising depth, and plenty of “wait, how did I just lose?” moments. 😂 Everyone’s chasing .si domains. I figured I’d give people one to actually play on! Come flip some discs and see if you can take the corners. ⚫⚪ #Reversi #Othello #si

I've just launched DouShouQi.com! 🐯 Dou Shou Qi, also known as Animal Chess or Jungle Chess, is a classic Chinese board game that many people in China grew up playing. It's easy to learn, yet surprisingly strategic. The elephant can capture the lion, the lion can capture the tiger, the tiger can capture the leopard... but the smallest animal, the rat, can capture the mighty elephant! 🐭🐘 With DouShouQi.com, I hope to bring back childhood memories for those who know it and introduce this wonderful game to people around the world. Whether you're revisiting an old favorite or discovering it for the first time, come give it a try! 👉 DouShouQi.com

Just picked up CosmeticDermatology․com. According to @NameBio, it sold for $10,000 through Uniregistry in 2017, then for $7,588 at GoDaddy in 2021. Now it’s landed in my hands in 2026. 😄 Yes, it’s long at 19 letters, but it’s a category-defining domain in a healthcare niche I really like, and one where people spend serious money on treatments. My wife spends more on a full course of cosmetic skin treatments than I paid for this domain, so I’m pretty happy with the price! dotDB also shows 21 EMDs taken and over 300 registered domains containing “cosmetic dermatology.” In my experience, .com domains with numbers like these tend to have solid value. Sometimes, the right 19 letters are worth more than a much shorter name.

Why do exact-match domains still matter? Five months ago, I launched several localized Minesweeper sites. Same game, same features, same underlying code. The main differences were the language and domain name. For Spanish, I used Buscaminas․com, the exact Spanish name of the game. For English, I used MinesweeperAI․com, a domain I hand-registered. I launched the sites, submitted them to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and let them grow. Today, the sites collectively passed 1 million games played. But look at the difference: 🇪🇸 Buscaminas․com: 465,586 games, or 46.4% of the total. 🇺🇸🇬🇧 MinesweeperAI․com: 17,699 games, or 1.8%. That’s roughly 26 times as many games on the Spanish site. What makes this especially interesting is the search demand. The global monthly keyword estimates according dotDB put “minesweeper” at approximately 6.12 million searches, versus 1 million for “buscaminas.” The English keyword has about six times the search volume. Yet the Spanish site generated far more play. This isn’t a controlled experiment that isolates the domain’s effect. Competition differs across languages, domain histories may differ, and games played aren’t the same as unique visitors. But the contrast is striking. To me, it illustrates why a good exact-match .com can be such a valuable starting point: • Instant clarity. People immediately understand what the site offers. • A memorable address. The word they already know is also the name they need to remember. • Easier sharing and repeat visits. No extra prefix or suffix to explain or forget. • A natural destination for type-in traffic. • Strong category positioning. The name can feel like an obvious home for the product before you’ve spent years building a brand. These advantages can reinforce one another: discovery, recognition, sharing, and return visits. An exact-match .com doesn’t guarantee rankings or replace a great product. But it can reduce the effort required for people to understand, remember, and find that product. Would Minesweeper․com outperform XYZBuscaminas․com if I reversed the setup? I’d expect the English site to be in a much stronger position, though I’d need to test it to know. My takeaway: the biggest market isn’t always your biggest opportunity. Sometimes, a smaller market with the right domain gives you a much stronger foothold. When choosing a domain, you’re choosing the address every future customer will encounter, remember, and share. That decision deserves as much thought as the product itself.

Four days after launching Karts.com, players have already raced thousands of times! 🏎️ Huge thanks to everyone who’s been playing, finding bugs, and sending feedback. Most of those bugs are now fixed, and today I added 22 more languages and 10 new city tracks! 🌍 This part has been especially fun: bringing my travel memories into the game. Las Vegas, Amsterdam, Queenstown, Venice, Kyoto... I’ve wandered around these places in real life, and now I get to race through them! I’ve tried to recreate the sights, little details, and feelings that made those trips so memorable. Then there are Mumbai, Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, and Cape Town, where I’ve never set foot. Building them has only made me want to visit more. 😂 If you’re from any of these places, come take a lap around your hometown! Did I get it right? Miss something obvious? Put something in completely the wrong place? Let me know. I’d love your help making these cities feel more like home! See you on the track 👉 Karts.com

If you own great domains, consider building on them. And if you’re a developer, the domain you choose might matter more than you think. I’ve built hundreds of websites with AI, many on domains I previously had parked or listed for sale. Lately, I’ve received emails like the one in this screenshot from people interested in acquiring my sites. They ask about traffic, where visitors come from, and revenue because they’re evaluating the site as a business. I’ve also heard back from domain buyers who previously rejected my asking price. One buyer offered $18,000 for an exact-match game .com. I countered at $25,000, and they declined. After I built a serious game on it, they came back willing to pay $25,000. This time, I declined: the site’s rapidly growing traffic had shown me that its potential was worth more. Similar things have happened more than once. If AI makes websites easy to build, couldn’t someone just copy the game? They could build something similar. But they couldn’t use the same domain or instantly recreate the audience growing around it. A game at a-new-game.vercel.app is harder to remember, share, and return to. That makes it harder to build a lasting audience around the name. A memorable .com gives a project a clearer identity, may bring direct traffic, and makes it easier to find when people search for its name. Even the iPhone’s URL keyboard offers a shortcut for “.com”. Of course, the product still has to give people a reason to come back. I usually start with the domain, then think about what it could become. Peter Askew (@searchbound) inspired much of that thinking with his story about DudeRanch.com. It’s worth reading whether you already own great domains or are just starting to look for one: deepsouthventures.com/dude-t… I’ve already sold one AI-built project, SpeedQuiz.com. xitter.cf/KenLin1985/status/2032… Experiences like these have convinced me that developing a domain can increase its value. I’m looking forward to seeing what else I can build from the names I already own.