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.

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.

The sale of several 4-letter dot com’s on Ebay recently netted average sales prices of over $100 each, far below their true value, but considerably better than what I experienced selling 4-letter domains on TDnam.com this week. For example, today I had six 4-letter domain name auctions expire on TDNAM.com. The six had a very disappointing average sales price of only $56, a low sale of $50 and a high sales price of $75. Three of the 6 went for only $56 each.

This was a research project I conducted to compare TDNAM.com with Ebay.com using similar types of domains. Two of my 4-letter domains went for over $107 each on Ebay. A 4-letter dot net went for $43 on Ebay. I have several 4-letter dot com’s being auctioned now on Ebay and they appear to be promising much higher values than TDNAM.com