One-Word Domain Name Purchased for $5

Yep! That’s right, a one-word domain name was recently purchased for only $5. And the good news friends, it was purchased by me. While browsing a long list of domain names for sale on TDNAM.com over the weekend, I decided to search the closeouts bin to see if anything of value was worth picking up for $5 or $10. Lo and behold I couldn’t believe my eyes, but about to expire in a couple of hours was resells.info — a single dictionary word domain name for only $5. I honestly had to rub my eyes to make sure the l’s were not 1′s. Of course I already knew that the word resell often gets spelled resale, and visa versa. Nonetheless, I checked before my purchase and confirmed that while the word “resale” is found 26.3 million times on Google, the word resell is found 11.7 million times, and its plural form, “resells” is found 657,000 times. I’ll take a domain name that fits that profile for $5 every opportunity I get.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Big deal, it’s a .info domain name, not a dot com.”  Well, that’s true.  But a one-word domain name is worth a lot of money, regardless its extension.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, the dot com and dot net versions of this domain name are worth much more, but mark my word — this baby is worth some bucks.  Currently, the 7-day domain name auction of printer.info is up to $21,500, parier.info is currently sitting at 1,100 Euros, and connect.info has a high bid of $2,500.  So any way you cut it, I stumbled across a good deal picking resells.info up for only $5 plus renewal fee.

Although I’m not a big advocate of selling domains via TDNAM, as I noted in yesterday’s post, I do screen their auction occassionally for good deals. My most recent acquisition at TDNAM.com was tonight. I purchased GreenCoup.com for $5. With the large push for everyone to “go green, think green and live green,” I think a short 2-word dot com like GreenCoup.com will prove to be a great name for a blog, magazine, club, alliance, forum or portal covering green issues.

With 4 Days to go, Dollars.com Roars to 750,000 Euros

In case there were any doubters, Dollars.com now has 15 bids with a high bid of 750,000 euros — about $1,185,460 at today’s currency rates. The reserve price has been met, so this domain name will sell. I’m curious, however. It occurred to me today that the singular form of this dictionary word domain name could possibly be as valuable and could pull traffic away from this domain name in the future.

What is your take on this? I welcome your comments. If you owned Dollars.com you would more than likely also want to own Dollar.com. But wait, Dollar.com is the home of Dollar Rent a Car. Would you want Dollar Rent a Car getting some of your traffic if you owned Dollars.com? I don’t think so.

Give me a good ole one-word domain name like pizza.com anyday. Oh wait, maybe not, what if someone was searching for pizzas, should I have also tired to purchase pizzas.com when pizza.com went for $2.6 million. Crazy, huh?

Selling Domains on TDNAM.com is an Unpleasant Experience

Godaddy.com has a great domain name management control panel. It’s fairly intuitive and offers lots of functionality. I’ll also give them kudos on keeping their prices competitive. And, if you’re like me, you likely regularly complain of their constant need to upsale other services. For example, do you recall the first time you ever purchased a domain name using Godaddy? It was like walking through a mine field to avoid clicking the wrong button and ordering something you really didn’t want.

I sell lots of domain names and use Godaddy almost exclusively these days — for registrartion services, that is. Oh, I still have about 84 domains registered with EnomCentral, but I still with Godaddy to save money and just put up with the multiple pages I have to plow through each time I place an order or renew a domain name with Godaddy.

So what does this have to do with my post title about TDNAM.com. Well, for one thing, Godaddy owns TDNAM.com. TDNAM represents Godaddy’s attempt to compete with the likes of Sedo, SnapNames, Moniker and others in the domain name auction business. It’s also another way they try to sell expiring domain names. And if for some reason you think Godaddy sucks, think again. The Godaddy customer experience versus the TDNAM customer experience is like comparing a Lexus to a Yugo.

Godaddy needs to bring in some consultants and let them show Godaddy programmers how to make the TDNAM site more user friendly, and more customer friendly. I’ve sold domain names through Sedo and I’ve sold them through TDNAM. Sedo makes the whole process smooth and easy, with no questions that come to mind because email correspondence keeps you informed of the process and leaves little doubt as to what is going on.

I recently sold 10 domains through TDNAM on March 10. I still don’t have my money from Godaddy/TDNAM. It’s in their terms. They’re not doing anything purposely to delay payment. But I’m told I want get my money until April 22, despite the fact my customer’s paid soon after the sale. When the sales were made, I received no verificatiton via email of the sales price, who the winner bidder was, how I could contact the winner, etc. Nope, if you want that you will need to login to your TDNAM.com account and confirm the sale and selling price. If the winner has paid you’re allowed to email him through their online form system, but only after he has paid.

As soon as I saw someone had paid I emailed them instructions on what I needed for the transfer and transferred the domains quickly. Wrong thing to do, however. As there are other processes going on with TDNAM that takes several days to complete. That’s right, even after the winner pays it may be a week or two before you get an email from TDNAM telling you it is now safe to transfer the domain name to the winner. The winner is just as in the dark as you are.

If you buy a domain name through TDNAM you will be just as in the dark as if you were selling domains through TDNAM.com. In short, there simply isn’t enough communciation, the whole process takes many days to weeks to complete, and you’ll wait 45 days for your money. If none of these things bothers you, go for it. I still use TDNAM.com to spot good deals on domains, and was lucky enough 2 or 3 days ago to purchase HomePCCash.com for $5 plus the renewal fee. Not a bad deal at all.

Dot Info (.info) Domain Name Rockets to $21,500

Who says .info domain names are not worth much.  Printer.info is currently for sale on a 7-day auction at Sedo.com and with 4 days and 3 hours left it has one bid of $21,500.  The reserve price has already been met.  Now what this tells me is that some negotiating has already taken place on this domain, and once the bidder finally reached his highest price, or what the seller thought was the highest price, the seller pushed the domain name into a 7-day auction.  Personally, I can see the value in this domain name, but not $21,500 big ones.  It wouldn’t be surprising to see this domain coast through 7 days with no additional bids. 

Of interest to 3-letter dot com collectors is two 7-day auctions currently at Sedo.com with over 5 days left.  MNO.com is another single-bid auction with the bid price currently at $13,500.  SEU.com has 8 bids and currently sitting at $12,500.

2 years ago I could have registered all the 3-number numerical names I wanted for $6 to $7 each, depending on the registrar.  They were easy to find.  Not any more, as the value of 2 and 3 letter numerical domains are running at record high levels these days.  Need some examples?  Try 736.com, which is being sold on Sedo.com and with 3 days and 10 hours left on the auction has 13 bids with the high bid price currently at $6,300.  Also on Sedo is a couple of 2-number dot net domains, 30.net and 79.net.  Both currently have 1 bid each of 7,000 Euros.  It’s going to be interesting to see how these domain names settle or close out.

Dollars.com Soars to 55,000 Euros!

Sedo.com has been awarded the rights to auction Dollars.com.  On the heals of the $2.6 million dollar sale of Pizza.com, the single dictionary word domain name, Dollars.com, is sure to be another big hit.  The domain was just placed in a 7-day auction today.  I think we all know it will easily sell above $1 million, but we must consider how it can be used to predict within a decent range where it will end up.  I can easily see it being used for a currency exchange site, maybe a new name for an online dollar store, it’s really anyone’s guess. 

I’ve decided to run another contest.  If you will simply submit a comment to this article and guess what you think the final bid will be for this great domain name, I’m giving away a 4-letter domain name to the person who submits the closest estimate to the final bid price.  I’m purposely saying “final bid price” because we don’t yet know what the reserve price is and whether or not it will be reached.