Monthly Archives: April 2008

Dropped List Domain Name Steals

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Hardly a day goes by that I don’t search dropped (i.e., expired) domain name lists for great domain name bargains. Today was no exception. Every search always ends up uncovering domain names that attract my attention. If I’ve got one weakness when performing dropped domain name searches, its my tendency to always gravitate to searching the same keywords that hold my personal interests. For example, I’m always looking for domains that include the words cash, money, riches, wealth and moneymaking. The result of this weakness is that I own far too many domains that cover the moneymaking niche.

I often have to remind myself to search for domains that cover niches that have higher pay-per-click ad payouts, given that I place many of my domain names on cash parking. But that’s just one domain name investing rule to consider or follow. Other domain name investing rules I try to follow are listed below:

  • Concentrate on buying dot com domain names
  • Shorter is better than longer
  • 2-word domains are more valuable than 3-word domains
  • Don’t waste time looking for 1-word or 3-letter domains, they’re taken
  • Spend little time looking for 4-letter domains, they’re taken as well and even the bad ones are back-ordered
  • Although you won’t be able to find a one-word dot com or dot net domain, a one-word domain name is always a safe investment, regardless its extension, and can almost always be sold for a profit with a little promotion.

Although I don’t like to buy 3 or 4 word domain names, I have made exceptions – particularly when they represent search phrases or popular subjects with lots of Adwords advertisers. Today was one of those exceptions, as I picked up 2 excellent 3-word domain names and 1 excellent 4-word domain name from dropped lists. The domains I found and purchased were:

  • OnlinePrintingAndGraphics.com
  • GraphicsAndClipart.com
  • FastFoodCenter.com

I also picked up 3 very good 2-word dot com domain names today:

  • StationeryGraphics.com (can you believe this was available?)
  • FastingJuices.com (search phrase and popular way to lose weight)
  • FastFasting.com (another weight loss domain)

So, how did I go about finding these domains off an expired domain names database? As you have likely already guessed, I was searching the words “fast” and “graphics.” Of all the domains on the list, only one is bad for Adsense revenue possiblities – FastFoodCenter.com. However, I have no doubt that I could easily sell this domain for a nice profit. It would make a great business name for a fast food franchisee, the fast food court in mall, the fast food area of a town or city, etc.

The Key to Earning Top Dollar for Your Domain Name

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Without a doubt, domain names are typically worth much more than what they normally sell for over 95% of the time. I have no scientific or statistical data to back up this statement, but if I’m off on my 95% estimate, its because its even higher, not lower. I know because I’ve been at this game for a while, make thousands of observations, and sold and bought domain names on multiple forums. I’ll offer the following observations and examples to demonstrate why I believe this to be true.

To demonstrate what I’m talking about, let’s consider as examples a few domains of my own, as well as some recent domain name sales on Sedo.com. Among some of the great domain names I own, ones I particularly like that I feel are valuable include: CashJackpot.com, InternetHighSchool.com, eSalesman.com and URL1.com. I own many that are better and more valuable, but these are three that quickly come to mind to prove my point. Of the four, I’ve only attempted to sell one of them in the past — CashJackpot.com. I placed it on Sedo a couple of years ago and it drew several offers over the 3-month period I parked it at Sedo. But all the offers ranged from $500 to $1,500 — far less than the true market value of this domain, which could be used to promote a casino, gambling, a lotto or lottery, etc. None of the offers I received were from people willing to negotiate higher.

I am the original domain owner of all 4 of these domains and have renewed them every year since buying them several years ago. Given the success of online education and high schools offering courses online, one would think that InternetHighSchool would be of value to any number of educational companies or institutions wanting to offer GED curriculums or online high school courses. So how many offers have I received for this memorable domain name and search phrase. Precisely — NONE!

eSalesman.com is a great domain name that could be used as a portal for people interested in Internet marketing and sales, a community site that focuses on people who sell online, etc. It could even become a new dictionary word in the future to label anyone who does business online. So how many offers have I received for this domain over the course of years I’ve owned it? Precisely — NONE!

URL1.com can be viewed in two lights. One could view is as not worth more than $200 or $300 because its (1) 4 letters, and (2) is not all letters, but instead is a mixture of numbers and letters. However, one could also place a very high value on having it because of its brandablity and marketability. URL1 could literally be marketed and advertised as the “Number 1 address on the Internet.” It will always have sites linking into the domain name because hundreds of sites that offer information to webmasters and web users, often use in as an online example, URL1 and URL2 when comparing one site verus another, or explaning how to install or point software on one site versus another.

So how many offers have I received for URL1.com since I first registered it 10 years ago? Precisely — NONE!

Now what do all 4 of these domains have in common? The answer is this — with the short-lived exception of trying to sell CashJackpot.com on Sedo for a very brief period, all 4 of these domains have not been promoted as being “for sale.” That is, I have not tried to market them. But if I did choose to market them, I would need to spend a little time developing a plan and strategy on how, where and how long I would promote them to increase the chance of selling them for something approaching their true value.

The Key to earning top dollor for your domain names is in finding and getting matched with the right buyer. For what a domain name is worth to one person is very different to what it is worth for someone else. Getting exposed to the right group of prospects and ultimately finding the perfect match for a buyer is not as easy as it might sound. But when you do luck up and get exposed to the right buyer at the right time, the outcome is always a high sales price that will surprise most people.

To offer proof of this acclamation, consider 2 very recent sales on Sedo.com for HandyDude.com and BuilderZone.com. I can assure you from my personal experience in selling domain names on Ebay, that neither one of these domains would sell for over $50 on Ebay. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say that depending on time of day, length of auction and the prices you normally see domains sold for on Ebay, these 2 domains would have sold for no more than $50 on Ebay, and more likely would sell somewhere between $8 and $30. But because of the greater exposure they received on Sedo after they got their initial bids, and because the right buyer happened to come along while the domains were still for sale, the actual selling prices for thee two domain names was: $1,800 for HandyDude.com and $5,800 for BuilderZone.com. The sales prices for both shocked me, but without a doubt they are classic examples of being at the right place at the right time.

The moral of this story is this: If you own a valuable domain name, you really need to promote it and get all the exposure you can for it before you start pushing to sell it and before you can hope to get a price something close to the true value of the domain.

Dollars.com Auction Takes a Setback

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In my last report of the 7-day Dollars.com auction, the price had risen to 750,000 Euros with 15 bids. I dropped by Sedo.com yesterday to notice that 2 bids had been removed and the price had fallen to 300,000 Euros. I would like to be a birdie on the wall at Sedo to know what provoked either the withdrawal or cancellation of two bids.

The Dollars.com auction set at 300,000 Euros for several hours, but by yesterday evening had risen back to 500,000 Euros. It was a huge jump, yet the number of bids had only risen by 1, to 14 total. Help me here folks, why would anyone place a bid 200,000 Euros higher than the last bid price? Hard to figure that strategy, but so far it is working, as the price still sits at 500,000 Euros with only 13 hourrs to go.

If the price doesn’t move higher for Dollars.com, the owner/seller of this domain must feel very deflated. After seeing his domain jump to 750,000 Euros so quickly, and on the heels of the recent sell of Pizza.com for $2.6 million greenbacks, I’m sure he or she has got to be disappointed in the way this auction has gone the past couple of days.

Two 2-Letter .com Domains Go on Auction

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You don’t often see two-letter dot com’s for sale, but 2 just went on auction today at Sedo.com. Both XU.com and ZR.com currently have bids of $80,000 each and have 6 days and 13 hours left on their respective 7-day auctions. It will be very interesting to see what they finally go for in 7 days.

Although both contain unpopular letters (i.e., X and Z), I would think that XU.com will end up selling for a higher price because it is pronounceable, which is rarely the case with 2-letter domains. The U in XU.com could stand for “unlimited,” while the R in ZR.com could stand for “resources.”

Avoid Buying Blacklisted Domain Names

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iBanks.com sold for $38,000 on Sedo earlier this week.  In determining why this domain went as high as it did, I uncovered a lot of talk about the domain on various forums, with a lot of emphasis being placed on the fact that the domain had been continuously registered for 11 years to the same person. 

So why would this point be of meaning to a potential domain name investor?  Well, it all has to do with knowing the domain has a clear history.  Since the beginning of Google’s Adsense program there has been a proliferation of spam-page websites with useless content aimed at drawing revenue form Adsense ad clicks.  For a while these search engine savvy marketers were fetching high search engine rankings for hundreds of thousands of keywords.  There was a bried period when you simply couldn’t make a search for any valuable keyword without finding several of these sites on the first page of search results.  None of their content was original content.  They were just spam pages.  Google constantly adjusts their algorithms to find such sites and essentially blackball them from their search engine rankings.  Once this happenes the domain is no longer of value to the spammer, and he either sells the domain name or drops it.  This is the risk you take when buying a domain name off an expired or “dropped” list.  You really don’t know if you’re buying a domain name that can get quick ranking, or one that will never get ranking in Google’s search engine.

What’s that you say, “never get ranking?”  Yep, you heard me right.  I know about it first hand.  In the past 2 years I’ve purchased a handful of domains off a dropped list and launched them as original content blogs that simply never ever get ranked or searched by Google’s engine.  My stats reveal that Google avoids these domains like they have a plague. 

Such websites are what SEO experts refer to as “blacklisted” sites.   Presently, Google doesn’t appear to have a way to recognize that a domain is owned bya legitimate owner and has original content.  For the past 3 years it has appeared to me that Google has too many millions of good domains to worry about to focus on domains that now owned and operated by persons with good intentions.  In otherwords, there is no apparent process for getting Google to de-blacklist a domain.  Stated more precisely, if you buy a domain name that has been blacklisted by Google you are dead in the water.

When choosing the domain name for this blog I purposely picked a domain name that had never been registered, making it up off the top of my head, researching the Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org to ensure the domain name had never had a website, etc.  This is a good trip for determining the history of a domain name.  It’s okay to have a history, but if the history reveals a website with spam content running Adsense ads, avoid buying it at all cost.