Opinions

Attorney invests $500k+ in new domains (Dui.attorney for $100k+, etc.)

Here is what domains attorney Charles Gucciardo bought with more than $500,000.

Attorney Charles Gucciardo of The Gucciardo Law Firm, PLLC discussed his interest in new TLDs and motivation for registering dozens of domains in Rightside’s My Side of the Dot.

Charles Gucciardo from Manhattan heard about the new .NYC domains from an ad on Pandora radio:
“I knew this was a tremendous opportunity and jumped on it immediately. I bought about 40 some odd different lawyer type names.”

“I then met Jebidiah Burnett (Senior Domain Consultant at Rightside) and learned more and more about the opportunities with these new TLDs that were doing so well with search engines.”

Charles Gucciardo’s new gtld domains

Charles Gucciardo said to have registered sixty to seventy domains at the moment and spent over half a million dollars to buy them. He only revealed 9 of his domains but I was able to dig a bit further and find that he owns at least 32 .nyc domains, 5 .attorney and 2 .lawyer domains. He also owns 17 .com domains including Guccilaw.com. Some of his domains are behind privacy so they are not so easy to find.

Here is the list of new gtlds I found that Charles Gucciardo owns:

Dui.attorney
Dwi.attorney
Injury.attorney
Malpractice.lawyer
Medicalmalpractice.lawyer
medicalmalpractice.attorney
malpractice.attorney

Autoaccident.nyc
Malpractice.nyc
Superlawyer.nyc
Bestattorney.nyc
BACKINJURY.NYC
BESTLAWYER.NYC
BIKERLAW.NYC
BIKERSINJURIES.NYC
BIKERSINJURY.NYC
BROKENLEG.NYC
BRONXLAWYER.NYC
BROOKLYNLAWYER.NYC
CARACCIDENT.NYC
CONSTRUCTIONACCIDENT.NYC
GOTHURT.NYC
GUCCIARDOLAW.NYC
GUCCIARDOLAWFIRM.NYC
GUCCILAW.NYC
HEADINJURY.NYC
LABORLAW.NYC
LEGALMATCH.NYC
MANHATTANLAWYER.NYC
MAXIMUMAWARD.NYC
MEDICALINJURY.NYC
MEDICALMALPRACTICE.NYC
MEDICALNEGLIGENCE.NYC
MEDMAL.NYC
NEWYORKLAWYER.NYC
NYCLAWYER.NYC
QUEENSLAWYER.NYC
SCAFFOLDINJURY.NYC
SUPERLAWYERS.NYC

How much Charles Gucciardo paid for them?

Rightside revealed last year that the domain name Dui.attorney sold for 6 figures.

I believe that the other 6 .attorney and .lawyer domains were expensive too but not in the 6 figure range. All 7 domains have a renewal of about $1,200 each.

Most of the 32 .nyc domains were bought in the landrush phase of .nyc which had a cost of about $100 for each domain. So that would be another $3,000.

But some of the domains went into auction. Here are some of the auction prices paid by Gucciardo that I found in Sold.Domains:

CONSTRUCTIONACCIDENT.NYC $4,800
CARACCIDENT.NYC $2,050
MEDICALMALPRACTICE.NYC $1,060
LABORLAW.NYC $475
BESTLAWYER.NYC $363
Bestattorney.nyc $115

His total investment in .nyc domains (from what I see) is at about $13,000 so far including renewals. So the bulk of his investment went to Rightside’s .lawyer and .attorney domains and a few domains I wasn’t able to discover.

Sold.Domains

About Konstantinos Zournas

I studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London, UK and I am now living in Athens, Greece. I went online in 1995, started coding in 1996 and began buying domain names and creating websites in 2000. I started the OnlineDomain.com blog in 2012.

27 comments

  1. Ouch, what a waste of money :/

  2. It’s nice to see lawyers waste their own money for once.

    Gucci really no DPML block

  3. His fees just went up to cover costs

  4. IMHO Mr Gucciardo should have first purchased Gucciardo.com for his law firm.
    GucciLaw doesn’t sound so professional in my view, and not exactly matching his and his company name, besides clearly recalling Gucci, which I know very well, and only at that point going after specific legal niches names.
    As regards 6 figures for Dui.attorney and those $1,200 annual renewals, that’s a rip-off … 🙂

    • @ Andrea

      While I would agree that he should secure the name of his firm, that’s not the angle he’s concerned about. 99.999% of med-mal or personal injury clients searching for a lawyer won’t know to search for “Gucciardo” – but they will know enough to type in CAR ACCIDENT, MANHATTAN LAWYER, or MEDICAL MALPRACTICE.

      So I really don’t get why everyone here is being critical of this guy. Instead of spending his ad dollars on large billboards in NYC he’s placing his bets online — you know…where lots of people spend their time nowadays :-/

      And frankly, for all those who would insist that he should have spend those same dollars (or some portion of them) on a ‘quality dot-com’ (e.g., MedicalMalpractice.com) instead, I think his scattershot approach will likely be more effective in his particular situation. That’s because his site isn’t going for massive traffic volume, a la Amazon.com; it’s a collection of ‘honey traps’ that each only need to generate a handful of decent leads.

      • “And frankly, for all those who would insist that he should have spend those same dollars (or some portion of them) on a ‘quality dot-com’ (e.g., MedicalMalpractice.com) instead, I think his scattershot approach will likely be more effective in his particular situation. That’s because his site isn’t going for massive traffic volume, a la Amazon.com; it’s a collection of ‘honey traps’ that each only need to generate a handful of decent leads.”

        I don’t think I agree here. He isn’t going for massive traffic volume but more is better and I would think that buying MedicalMalpractice.com would get more traffic than some of the other domains he bought.

        I think that people aren’t critical of the domains he bought but rather for amount he spent for some of them.

      • @ Gene
        Probably you didn’t read accurately what I wrote.
        I was clearly questioning the price paid for DUI.attorney and the expensive $1,200 renewal fees.
        That said, I never said he can’t afford them, I know those legal niches pay very well.
        As for the price paid, DuiAttorney.org went for 35k, so paying 6 figures for Dui.attorney is a no-no for me, even if buyer is an end user.
        I’m not a fan of the “right of the dot” and as regards exposure on search engines, time will tell, I think someone will have a bad surprise … 🙂

  5. gucciardolawfirm.com is still available by the way.
    🙂

  6. Clearly Gucciardo is not an idiot if he had $500k to spend on some names that clearly it’s his business were clearly he is successful.

    • Big difference between knowing Domains, and knowing your career business.

      Everyone things just because they spend a lot of money it makes them an expert.

      Clearly he is not a domain expert. If you want to lick his nuts by all means.

  7. Nice research! Great work. Hope it works out for him, since at 1200 a pop at renewal and 480k+ upfront, he better have some strong end user plan.

  8. While he might have overpaid for most of these names, and I’m no fan of dot-NYC, keep in mind the following: If he gets one lead for a huge case from these he’ll have covered this investment very easily.

    A single, winning construction accident case or med-mal verdict that exceeds $1.5mm will translate into a $500,000 fee for his firm (at the std. one-third of winning fee). And there’s an excellent chance that, over the next few years, he’ll bring in 10, 20, or even 50 such cases. So he’ll likely have the last laugh, and look like a genius marketer in retrospect.

    With targeted keywords like these, there’s no doubt that Google will be friendly to his rankings over time.

    • Agreed completely with you gene .

      So many make comments without knowing the persons ability. The dui.attorney is so much better than .org

      Plus he can have such great head start for lead gen Chicago.dui.attorney with great content … Miami.dui.attorney and every city in the country 100k was a steal and 1200 a month in renewal is high in general and I don’t like them , but as far as a hinderance to the name one extra case picked a year could pay for 5 years of renewals.

  9. Rich@
    If i were you i would shut up and learn.
    Clearly you are an idiot that came into this industry 6 months ago and would live like others in 6 months.

    You had a chance to state your different opinion yet you are using obscene language to state your point?
    All your comments have no substance yet after 6 months of writing on these blogs YOU are the expert?
    Please…..do us all a favor.Write less.

  10. Konsta@
    So you want me to change my name that i have for the last 7 years?
    How can you ask me to do that ???
    I tell you what….i will stop writing on your blog.This way there is no more confusion.

  11. No you didn’t,but i would have expect form you to say who ever was first,keep the name and the second guy who came later ,have it changed.That would have been the proper way of doing it.

    • These are not reserved nicknames. I would have said the same if people were named John or Bob and were talking to each other.
      And I can’t force anyone to do it.
      If you want people who is who then you do something about it. If not then it is ok.
      Maybe you can sign with something on every message.

  12. He could be rich aka anti gtld everyone would know who he was .

    • Phil there is no pro gtld or anti gtld, there is make money, or lose money.

      Yes, you make sales, yes you have renewals that exceed your sales.

      There comes a point where you have to decide is this a hobby, or is this a business.

      Some people like to invest in penny stocks, they think it is a great idea, the majority of them lose money.

      From all the domain experts here would they invest $500K in these names, then pay $1200 per year in renewals, NO as they are not the end user.

      This does not look like one of those large law firms, that will use the domain for any upside.

      They don’t even know how to forward a domain to their homepage, the only winner is Rightside.

      Not everything that is GTLD shines like Gold, just because you go and register $500, $1000 renewal terms that look good on paper, they do not look good on financials.

      We are not selling Chevrolets here, these are domains, once the money is sunk, I can’t drive it back to your lot, and get offered 50% of what I paid yesterday.

  13. Sorry .commies this guy is on the right track.
    He’s a NYC Attorney Duh.
    Completely wrapped up his area of expertise in his location
    He will be doubling his money year after year after year after year.
    Locals will choose .NYC the whole point of his purchases !
    Isn’t this what others do with country codes when they want users to know where the service or product is offered ?
    Why would he want a generic .com ? to get leads from texas or oregon?
    geez.
    This is a great example of the divide between old school and new school.
    End users are educating the domainers not the other way around.
    Cheers

    • He paid just a few grand for his .nyc compared to the 500k for a handful of .attorney and .lawyer domains.

    • As Konstantinos said, he spend a fraction of a fraction on .nyc names (and i think his .nyc investment on the money, since he can use those domains for marketing ,seo or just redirects to get leads) the other extensions with high five and low six figures, he just gambled on.

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