Privacy became a default choice for understandable reasons, but I still think the tradeoff gets discussed too narrowly. It solves one problem while sometimes creating another: direct discoverability. That matters most for owners who still get occasional inbound contact outside landers or marketplaces. I am not arguing that privacy is the wrong move. In many cases it still makes complete sense. I just think some portfolio holders underestimate how much casual buyer outreach used to happen because ownership was easier to identify. The harder question now is whether that lost discoverability is really being replaced elsewhere. How are people here looking at that tradeoff now: privacy first, or discoverability first?
Both, depending on the domain. The split that's worked for me is privacy on parked or speculative domains, public on developed sites where I want inbound contact. Privacy on a domain that's just sitting there costs nothing because nobody was going to find me through WHOIS anyway. Privacy on a domain with a real site behind it kills the casual "hey, want to sell?" emails that turned into deals when I had public ownership listed. The lost discoverability isn't really being replaced elsewhere for most owners. Sedo and Afternic landers catch some buyers, but the people who would have WHOIS-emailed you tend to be a different cohort: smaller acquirers, end users buying for a specific use case, people who don't browse marketplaces. Those buyers needed a path that started with curiosity about your URL and ended on a contact form. Privacy collapses the front half of that funnel. Landers only catch the back half, where the buyer already knows they want it. The angle most domainer threads miss is that "privacy first" became default before everyone rebuilt the discoverability layer to replace what WHOIS provided. The owners who still get inbound deals are the ones treating their domains as mini-businesses, with a one-page landing, a public email or contact form, and a low-friction "is this for sale" path. Privacy stops mattering when there's a clearly signposted way to reach you. The portfolio holders who hide behind privacy AND leave the domain blank are getting the worst of both.
Exactly. Privacy is not the real problem. Privacy protects the owner. A visible sales path helps the buyer.