I broker Freename TLDs for a living. That means I see a lot of inquiries from people who want to sell, and a lot from people who want to buy. The single most useful skill I’ve developed in this work isn’t sales technique or contract drafting — it’s qualification.

Qualification is the art of figuring out, in the first ten minutes of a conversation, whether a deal is real. Whether the buyer can afford it. Whether the seller will actually transfer. Whether the string has the bones to support the price they’re talking about.

I’ve watched a lot of buyers waste a lot of money on TLDs they shouldn’t have bought. Bad qualifications. Wishful thinking. Not asking the right questions before wiring funds. The five questions in this article are the ones I wish every buyer was asking before they ever messaged me.

If you’re thinking about buying a Freename TLD — whether through me, directly from the platform, or off-market from another holder — these are the qualification questions to run yourself through first.

“In every transaction, the question is not what is the price. The question is what is the value.”

— Howard Marks

That’s the framing. Let’s get into it.

Question 1: What is this TLD’s category, and is the category big enough?

This is the question 80% of buyers skip, and it’s the single most important one.

A TLD’s value isn’t determined by the string alone. It’s determined by the category the string represents, and the size of the audience that will eventually want to register names under it.

Here’s the test:

“In 5 years, how many people, brands, or organizations will plausibly want to register a name on this TLD?”

If the answer is “thousands,” you might have a real asset. If the answer is “millions,” you might have a category-defining asset. If the answer is “I don’t know” or “a few hundred,” you don’t have an asset.

Worked examples:

  • .broker — category: financial intermediaries, real estate brokers, insurance brokers, sports agents, talent agents, M&A advisors. Audience: millions of people in dozens of professional categories. This is a real category.
  • .esports — category: competitive gaming. Audience: 600M+ viewers, hundreds of thousands of pro/semi-pro players, thousands of orgs. This is a real category.
  • .queensland — category: Queensland, Australia. Audience: 5.46M people. Smaller, but cohesive and identity-rich. Real category.
  • .surf — category: surfing. Audience: ~25M global surfers, millions of surf brands, surf-adjacent businesses, surf media. Real category.

Now contrast with strings that LOOK valuable but aren’t:

  • .bestthings — category: nothing specific. Audience: nobody specific. Not a real category. No matter how short or “premium” the string sounds, there’s no audience.
  • .metaverse2024 — category: a specific narrative from a specific year. Audience: rapidly disappearing. Not a real category. Time-decayed.
  • .dao — category: decentralized autonomous organizations. Audience: a few thousand people who use the term. Borderline. Might be too niche to support pricing at scale.

The question to ask yourself: not “is this string cool?” but “is this string a category-defining string for a category that has millions of paying participants?”

If yes, proceed. If no, reconsider.

Question 2: Who is the buyer universe, and what would they actually pay?

Once you’ve qualified the category, you need to qualify who specifically will buy registrations under this TLD, and what they’re willing to pay.

This is where I see most amateur buyers get into trouble. They imagine a buyer universe that doesn’t exist. “I’ll just sell dr.medical to a doctor for $X!” But have you talked to a doctor? Most doctors aren’t going to spend money on a TLD they’ve never heard of. Their identity is their credentials, not their domain.

The right buyer for any TLD is:

  1. Aware of the value of digital identity (most aren’t, even in 2026)
  2. Willing to pay for category specificity (most prefer the cheap default option)
  3. Has the budget for a non-essential premium identity (most don’t)
  4. Has decision-making authority (most don’t)

For each TLD you’re considering, write out the specific buyer profile:

  • Who would claim under this TLD?
  • What’s their budget for a domain registration?
  • Who in their life makes the decision (themselves, IT, marketing, legal)?
  • What channels do they hang out in where they’d discover this option?

For .broker, my buyer profile looks like: “financial professional, 35-65 years old, owns or is partner in a small-to-medium firm, values trust signaling and category specificity, willing to pay $200-1000+ for a premium personalized address that elevates their professional identity.” That’s a real profile. There are millions of them.

For .bestthings, the buyer profile is: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. There isn’t one. Anyone who wants .bestthings would also want .cool, .amazing, .thebest, or just .com. There’s no specific buyer.

If you can’t write a one-paragraph buyer profile in 60 seconds, the TLD doesn’t have a real buyer universe, and the only people who’ll buy it are other speculators hoping to flip to a third speculator.

Question 3: What are the comparable transactions, and what does the spread tell me?

Now you need data. Comparable transactions (comps) are the bedrock of any TLD valuation.

A few sources I use:

  • Freename’s own marketplace — public listings give you a floor for what sellers are asking (rarely what they actually get)
  • Public deal announcements on X / blog posts (when deals are publicized)
  • Onchain transaction history — every Freename TLD transfer is recorded onchain with its sale price, if you know how to read it
  • Direct conversations with other operators — most of us share rough comps with each other, off the record, when relevant

Once you have 3-5 comps for the category, you’re looking at the spread.

“The spread is the conversation.”

If comps in your category range from $5K to $50K, the spread is 10x. That’s a developing market with significant room for value-driven deals. The best names in the category will price above that range, the worst will price below.

If comps are all around $10K-$15K (small spread), the market has matured and there’s not much arbitrage left.

If comps are all over the place ($500 to $200K, no clear pattern), the market is unsophisticated. Be very careful — both upside and downside are real.

Practical move: when I valuate a TLD, I find the 3 closest comps and benchmark against them. The string I’m valuating is either better, similar, or worse than each comp. I use those judgments to triangulate a fair price.

If you can’t find a single comparable transaction in the same category, either the category isn’t real, or you’re stupidly early, or the market is too thin to price anything reliably. Any of those should make you slow down.

Question 4: What’s the royalty potential, and is the registration economy real?

This is the question that separates Freename TLDs from traditional domains, and most buyers don’t think hard enough about it.

When you own a Freename TLD, you don’t just hold a name. You hold the registry rights. Every time someone registers a second-level domain under your TLD, you earn a royalty.

So the question becomes: “Will people register names under my TLD?”

This is downstream of the category question, but it’s not the same. A real category can have a slow registration economy if:

  • The category isn’t aware of TLD ownership as a primitive
  • The category has alternative identity layers (Twitter handles, etc.) that are good enough
  • The category is fragmented across geographies or sub-cultures

For each TLD you’re considering, ask:

  • What’s the addressable population that might register?
  • What’s a realistic conversion rate from population to registrations? (Rule of thumb: 0.1% to 5%, depending on category maturity)
  • What’s the average revenue per registration?
  • What’s the time to mature volume? (Usually 3-7 years, sometimes longer)

Worked example: .queensland

  • Addressable population: 5.46M people + 600K businesses ≈ 6M
  • Realistic conversion at maturity: 1-3% (state-specific TLDs perform well in mature markets)
  • Average revenue per registration: $25-50
  • Math: 6M × 2% × $35 = $4.2M lifetime revenue, spread over years
  • Time to maturity: 5-10 years

That’s not a fast number. But it’s a real number, and it justifies operating the TLD seriously rather than flipping it.

Worked example: .bestthings (the bad one)

  • Addressable population: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • Realistic conversion: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • Average revenue: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • Math: undefined × undefined × undefined = undefined

If you can’t model royalty potential, the TLD’s only value is whatever the next speculator will pay. That’s not investment. That’s a hot potato.

Question 5: How time-sensitive is this deal, and why?

The fifth question is about deal dynamics, and it’s the one most buyers underweight.

When a TLD comes to market, the price is determined by:

  1. The asset’s intrinsic value (everything we’ve talked about above)
  2. The seller’s situation (motivated vs. passive)
  3. The buyer’s situation (urgent vs. patient)

The intersection of these three is the price.

Some questions to ask:

About the seller:

  • Why are they selling now? (good reasons: portfolio rebalancing, focus on other projects, life event. Bad reasons: distress, regret, panic)
  • How long have they held it? (short hold = often speculative, long hold = often serious operator)
  • Have they listed it publicly elsewhere?
  • What’s their reservation price (the lowest they’d accept)?

About yourself as buyer:

  • Why do you want this now and not in 6 months?
  • What happens if you walk away from this deal?
  • Are you prepared to negotiate, or will you pay the asking price?
  • What’s your exit horizon? (3 years? 10? Never?)

Time pressure cuts both ways.

A motivated seller with a passive buyer = buyer’s market, expect a discount. A passive seller with an urgent buyer = seller’s market, expect to pay up. Both motivated = fast deal, sometimes at fair price, sometimes at compromise price. Both passive = deal probably doesn’t happen.

The fifth question isn’t really one question, it’s a posture: slow down. Most premium TLD deals shouldn’t close in less than 10 days, because that’s the minimum time to do real diligence. If someone’s pushing you to close in 48 hours with vague urgency, walk away.

Real opportunities almost never have artificial deadlines.

The five-question summary

If you take nothing else from this article, take these five:

  1. What is this TLD’s category, and is the category big enough?
  2. Who is the buyer universe, and what would they actually pay?
  3. What are the comparable transactions, and what does the spread tell me?
  4. What’s the royalty potential, and is the registration economy real?
  5. How time-sensitive is this deal, and why?

If you can answer all five with confidence and concrete data, you’re ready to make an offer.

If any answer is “I don’t know,” stop. Either find the answer, or walk away.

How peaky.broker fits in

Some people read articles like this and think “this seems hard, I should hire someone.” That’s where peaky.broker comes in. We do this qualification work for buyers and sellers full-time, professionally, with a paper trail.

Specifically, we offer:

  • Free TLD valuations based on the five-criteria framework above
  • Buyer outreach to qualified parties (corporations, funds, brand owners) with email-documented communication
  • Deal documentation with onchain proof, transfer confirmation, and complete settlement records

We don’t do public listings. We don’t do speculation. We don’t do bulk anything. 48-hour response, free initial valuation, all conversations confidential by default.

If you have a Freename TLD you want to sell, or you’re a buyer looking for something specific, the desk is open.

If you want to handle it yourself using the framework above, more power to you. The framework is the same whether you DIY or hire it out.

Final thought

I started this article saying that 80% of buyers skip the category question. The reality is that most TLD purchases happen on vibes — “this is a cool string, I’ll buy it” — and most of those purchases never see a return.

The 20% of buyers who start with category, work through buyer profile, validate with comps, model royalties, and respect deal dynamics — those are the ones who buy assets that compound.

Be in the 20%. Ask the five questions. The framework works.