Famous Domain Industry Media: News Sites, Sales Reports, and Podcasts Worth Following
A guide to the news outlets, sales-data sites, and podcasts that cover the domain name industry as journalism — DomainNameWire, DNJournal, TheDomains, NameBio, DomainSherpa, CircleID, and more.
- domains
- media
- news
- community
- domain-investing
If individual domainer blogs are personal voices, domain industry media are the outlets that operate more like newsrooms — sometimes one-person newsrooms, but with the editorial posture of journalism rather than a trader's diary. They cover deals, policy, registry/registrar moves, ICANN, and the occasional drama, and they are the sources other people quote.
This is the short list of media properties worth knowing in 2026.
The news outlets
DomainNameWire — domainnamewire.com
Founded by Andrew Allemann in 2005. The closest thing the domain industry has to a wire service: short, fact-first posts about deals, lawsuits, registry policy, and ICANN. If a story matters across the industry, DomainNameWire usually has it within a day. Also publishes the long-running DNW Podcast, which is one of the better interview shows in the space.
TheDomains — thedomains.com
Long-running blog originally founded by Mike Berkens (one of the largest domain portfolio holders in the industry) and now edited primarily by Raymond Hackney. Mix of news, analysis, and opinion. Strong on policy stories — UDRP cases, registry contract changes, ICANN moves.
DomainGang — domaingang.com
The industry's satire-and-news outlet. Edited by Theo, who has an irreverent style that you either love or hate. The news coverage is real even when the framing is sharp; DomainGang frequently breaks stories that the more polite outlets are slow to touch.
OnlineDomain.com and DomainInvesting.com (overlap)
Both OnlineDomain and DomainInvesting sit on the boundary between individual blog and industry media — see the famous-domainer-blogs post for context. Listed here too because they regularly break news that the formal outlets pick up later.
CircleID — circleid.com
Not strictly a domain investor publication — CircleID covers the broader DNS, ICANN, internet-governance, and infrastructure beat. But if you care about the policy layer (registry contracts, new gTLD rounds, WHOIS regulation, DNSSEC), CircleID is where the substantive writing happens, and the bylines include many of the same names that show up at ICANN meetings.
Sales data and reference sites
These are reference works rather than publications, but no media stack is complete without them.
DNJournal — dnjournal.com
Edited by Ron Jackson, with sales archives reaching back to 2003. The report was weekly for many years, but the archive labels the 2021-2025 columns as bi-weekly, and current 2026 reports generally cover two-week periods. It is a long-running curated record of publicly reported sales, not a complete or audited ledger; DNJournal itself says private deals make a complete list impossible. The site also runs The Lowdown, a long-form interview column.
NameBio — namebio.com
The industry's searchable sales archive. When you want to know "what has this kind of name sold for in the past?", NameBio is where you look. Not editorial — pure data — but absolutely essential.
Podcasts and video
DomainSherpa — domainsherpa.com
The longest-running domain interview show. Founded by Michael Cyger, later carried by Drew Rosener (MediaOptions). Long-form interviews with investors, brokers, and registry executives. The archive alone is a kind of oral history of the industry.
The DNW Podcast (DomainNameWire)
Andrew Allemann's interview show, attached to DomainNameWire. Shorter-format than DomainSherpa, more news-driven. Good background listening.
Forums and aggregators
These are not strictly media, but they are where most published stories land and get debated.
- NamePros — covered in detail in the forums post. The discussion threads on any major story are often more informative than the original article.
- Domaining.com — aggregator of domainer blogs. Useful as a single page that shows the day's headlines across most of the sources on this list.
How to read this list
A few things to keep in mind.
Some outlets are also businesses. Brokerages, marketplaces, and registries publish content too, and the line between "industry media" and "content marketing" is not always clean. The outlets on this list are independently owned and have been around long enough to have an editorial reputation; if you read content from a brokerage's blog, treat it as informed but interested.
News breaks on X first. Big stories — a major sale, a registry policy change, a lawsuit — almost always appear on X before they appear on any of these outlets. The outlets are where stories get recorded, not where they break. Pair the media list with the X hashtags in the forums post.
Sales numbers are reported, not audited. Public sale figures come from registrar/marketplace press releases or seller disclosures, not from any neutral clearinghouse. DNJournal and NameBio are the most disciplined about labeling unverified sales — but even there, the underlying data is self-reported.
Choosing a starting set
If you want a single recommendation: subscribe to DomainNameWire (RSS or newsletter), check DNJournal when its next sales report lands, and bookmark NameBio for lookups. That gives you news, recurring sales context, and a searchable history — enough to follow the industry without needing to refresh ten sites a day.
Add DomainSherpa's archive when you want depth on a specific investor, and CircleID when policy issues start affecting your portfolio.
Sources and further reading
- DNJournal — Domain Sales Archive, including weekly and bi-weekly historical columns.
- DNJournal — Latest Domain Sales Report, including the report's date range and disclosure limits.
Related reading:
- Famous Domainer Blogs, Substacks, and Newsletters — individual voices, vs. the outlets on this list.
- Top Domain Trader Forums in English — where stories get debated after they are published.
- Complete Domain Name Terminology Guide — vocabulary that shows up across all of these outlets.
Contributors
Fenwei Bian is a software developer in her thirties who spends her working hours in pull requests and her weekends with her hands in soil or sawdust. Years of open source on GitHub taught her that names are interfaces: a good one is clear, honest about what it does, and kind to whoever has to use it next.
She gardens because it rewards patience and punishes wishful thinking, and she does woodwork because a joint either fits or it doesn't. Both habits show up in how she writes about naming — measure twice, check the source, and don't sand over a rough spot and hope no one notices.
For Namefi she writes about how domain markets actually move, the practical trade-offs of tokenizing and flipping names, and picking a domain you'll still be glad you own in twenty years.
Victor Zhou is a technology founder and standards editor focused on digital identity and trust. He founded Namefi, edits Ethereum Improvement Proposals, and previously led smart-contract architecture work at Google Labs.
His work sits at the intersection of naming, ownership, and the systems people use to establish identity online. That perspective makes him especially interested in the way names move between personal meaning, public recognition, and digital infrastructure.
For Namefi, Victor edits and writes about domains as durable digital identity: how names become ownable onchain assets, how tokenization changes custody and trust, and what naming can learn from the systems people use to establish identity online.
Related guides
- Famous Domainer Blogs, Substacks, and Newsletters: Who to Read in 2026A curated list of the individual domainers, brokers, and traders whose blogs, newsletters, and Substacks are worth reading in 2026 — what each one is known for, and how they fit together.
- Top Domain Trader Forums in English: Where Domainers Actually Talk in 2026A practical guide to active English-language domain-investing forums and other public channels in 2026, with dead forum listings removed.
- How Much Is a Domain? Understanding the Holding CostA practical guide to domain holding cost: first-year price, renewal, transfer, restore fees, privacy, taxes, payment methods, and registrar pricing models.
- Brandable vs Keyword Domains: Which Sell Better?Brandable invented names vs exact-match keyword domains: who buys each, which resells more reliably, and the trademark angle every flipper should know.