Update: I recently discovered that (on Godaddy anyway) you can skip having to change the Nameservers to Godaddy long enough to add and verify the TXT record, by using the alternate DNS ownership verification method DAN provides.
Settings > Ownership > Verification via .hn tld
It looks like this and automatically verifies. Looks like this will be my preferred method moving forward. (P.S. Isn’t TaskMeAnything.com an awesome domain for an AI platform that learns to accomplish whatever you need done!)
I had a domain, dumster.com (isn’t this an awesome name for a trash brand) listed for sale at Dan.com but for some reason adding it to the Afternic distribution network would not stick. It would revert back to not submitted. It turned out there was an old listing at Afternic by a previous registrant. After an inquiry to Dan’s CS (always quick and very helpful in my experience) it was suggested I add either a verification Nameserver or TXT record. I tried the Nameserver method but ran into the same problem I’ve had trying to do this at Godaddy previously.
So I tried the TXT Record method. Thing is you have to revert the Nameservers to Godaddy’s before you can access the DNS. Which I did. Note TXT record in last row.
But before you change the nameservers back to Dan (ns1.dan.com etc.), you need to have let Dan support know you’ve added it. Only after confirmation of them verifying the domain is yours do you revert the nameservers to Dan.
If I missed something please let me know in the comments.
Author: John Humphrey
Hubsbot for Dharmesh
That feeling of familiarity that comes from listening to someone’s podcast or interviews. In fact I don’t know Dharmesh at all. But I’ve been following along and know for a fact that he loves a good domain name. So when I saw Hubsbot.com coming up for the drop I kept an eye on it. And today it did drop.
If not for a fun project I am thinking Hubspot would at least like to keep it out of the wrong hands.
A gift to you Dharmesh. Just contact me john@domainnoob.com to set up a transfer.
Back In Fashion – BackInFashion.com
Secondhand clothes are big business. You can read all about it here:
How Wearloom simplifies secondhand shopping I like the name Wearloom, a nice portmanteau combining wear and heirloom. It’s the kind of name you might be lucky enough to find available. Though I see that it’s been registered on and off since 2011.
But you know what a great name for a secondhand clothing startup would be? Back In Fashion. BackInFashion.com (Buy it Now at DAN) It’s got all the gravitas of a phrase that goes back a hundred years, and it perfectly matches the use case in a classy way.
Goodwill Domaining – Payineer
How It Started

How It’s Going
A few weeks after I nabbed Payineer.com, I noticed that Payoneer(correct spelling).co was picked up on the drop. A few weeks later I followed that link to a SafeNames.net landing page. From there I filled out a contact form and was contacted shortly thereafter by friendly staff who were happy to receive the domain.
SKULZ
Wow, love this one for fashion, skateboard, snowboard… Has a great ‘outsider’ vibe. SKULZ.com (Buy it Now at DAN)
Urin8.com – Why John, Why?
Because this revolutionary process/product needs a great name!
Our family has a cabin with a compost toilet. Urine is diverted to separate 5 gallon tanks and later discarded. The poop is mixed with peat and 2 years after composting in 45 gallon drums, it is the best potting soil you can imagine. But human urine contains a ton of nitrogen. Somehow, in the West, we are only now becoming aware of its value and how we can put it to use. Are you the startup bringing this to market? You need a name and Urin8 is perfect. Let’s talk!
We found a way to turn urine into solid fertiliser – it could make farming more sustainable

Prithvi Simha, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences; Björn Vinnerås, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and Jenna Senecal, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
It’s likely that most of the food you’ll eat today was not farmed sustainably.
The global system of food production is the largest human influence on the planet’s natural cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus. How much crops can grow is limited by the amount of these two elements in the soil, so they’re applied as fertilisers.
But the majority of fertilisers are either made by converting nitrogen in the air to ammonia, which alone consumes 2% of the world’s energy and relies heavily on fossil fuels, or by mining finite resources, like phosphate rock.
A solution to this problem could be much closer than people realise. Most of the nutrients we consume in food are passed in our urine, because our bodies already have enough. But instead of being recaptured, these nutrients are flushed, diluted, and sent to wastewater treatment plants where they’re scrubbed out, leaving effluents that can be safely released into the environment.
Paul English Talks Domains With Andrew Warner
Great insights from Paul English, (Kayak.com, Lola.com) on domains and branding. Interviewed by Andrew Warner on his always excellent Mixergy .
Full interview here.
Andrew mentions as an aside that he owned Grab.com ‘for a while’, and paid $125k for it. I wonder what he sold it for!
Leveraging Domain Names – John Legend, Kanye & Nabil Elderkin
John Legend tells Marc Maron on the WTF Podcast episode 1137 how a young Nabil Elderkin leveraged ‘squatting’ the KanyeWest.com domain into a career changing relationship. Meeting Nabil lead to John meeting his future wife Chrissy Teigen!
From wikipedia:
His big break came when he befriended the then relatively unknown rap artist Kanye West. Elderkin had heard a Kanye West mixtape and had tried to contact the rapper by looking up www.kanyewest.com. The website came up as unregistered but available for registration, so he bought the domain name on an impulse. Three weeks later an executive from Roc-A-Fella Records contacted Elderkin to tell him the label had just signed Kanye West to a multi-album deal and wanted to know how much he was asking for the domain name. Elderkin wasn’t interested in a payment for the domain and preferred to transfer the domain name provided he could meet the new artist and do a photoshoot with him, these images went on to be the artist’s first publicity photos.[1] John Legend also happened to be at the photoshoot which led to the two forming a relationship, and future video work together where Elderkin introduced Legend to his future wife, Chrissy Teigen.
Naming and Domains – Rev.com’s CEO Jason Chicola with Shaan Puri on the My First Million Podcast


Excerpt from the ‘Getting a Billion People Working From Home‘ episode of the My First Million podcast with Shaan Puri. The entire episode (linked to above) is great but I wanted to focus on what Jason Chicola shares about naming his company and acquiring the domain. He demonstrates some hard-earned wisdom in his approach.
Chicola spent $400k to acquire Rev.com (a huge part of their assets at the time).
- Started off with a funky (animal + keyword) $12 Godaddy domain to make clear and specific their initial product offering. Knew it was temporary. “Spend no time at the beginning thinking about a name because the odds that your business is going to work are not super high”.
- Only later when the business was working and they’d found a good product/market fit did he prioritize naming the company.
- “It’s really a two part problem. One is picking a name that you love, and then figuring out can you get the domain name”.
- Hired two domain brokers to research his name list.
- Used Mechanical Turk to evaluate names…”What three words does this name evoke?”
New Names For Startups
Links to Buy It Now Prices at DAN.com
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