Posts Tagged ‘Domain’
September 7th, 2010 | 
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The following are some tips that will help to ascertain if your domains expired are worthy:-
Frequency of Search: This is perhaps an important indicator by which you can know the real worth of your domains. More popular the search term, the more numbers of site visitors and better volume of type-in traffic. You may wish to buy one that is rich with niche keywords. Sensitive and critical keywords are very important to your web domains expired. Two worded search terms are desirable for your domain names as they are the current standard for domain name industry.
Trademark infringement: If you have a web domain that is trademark of other people, then you may land in a legal mess. Such domains are useless and utter waste of money. No one will buy this kind of domains from you. You can avoid buying a trademark domain as no one will be interested in buying it from you.
Top Level Domain: The type and kind of TLD is of paramount importance if you want to make money from your domain name. .com seems to be the right type of TLD at the moment and it is possible to buy very good .com TLD and later sell to other people at very high prices. .com is also the default type-in type of domain now.
Income Inventory: Any additional income built into your domain is an added advantage. The availability of income making opportunity with your domain will convince a potential buyer to purchase the domain. Many well known expired domains have been recognized for their ad inventory revenue streams and they have had a solid income generating scheme built and streamlined over them.
Demand for .com type of domains: Obviously, these are the domains that are in huge demand. However, you can also sell other domain extensions like .biz and .info provided they make sense to your potential buyers. Demand for .com extensions has been rising gradually over the last few years, but other extensions are also catching up very slowly with the emergence of businesses and corporate that deal with information and services.
Blacklisted and abused web domains expired: These web domains are a strict no-no for any domain name trader. More than 20% of the available domains have had a ban or black listing slapped on them in their previous avatar. You will need to be extra careful about these domains and never, ever make an effort to buy these domains.
Finally, it is your desire and motivation to succeed in this exciting business that make you streamlined for future success. Expired domain gains are possible only when you know how to choose and buy the right type of domain out of millions of expired domains.
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Expired traffic plays an important role in expired domain business. It is a critical element that can create immense value to your domains. All famous domains invariably had tons of incoming traffic attached to it. People are very eager to buy it if it has traffic and links attached to it. Buying and selling domain traffic is a profitable idea that can result in an ongoing online income to your business. Before you wish to sell it to other people, you may need to acquire domain traffic on a consistent basis. There are actually two different modes of acquiring it to your domain. One method is to purchase the traffic from a reseller by paying a price while the other is to accumulate it by redirecting the traffic to your domain. Purchasing and using expired traffic involves lots of effort, investing time and money.
This method is also a mode of flipping your domains by adding commercial value to the web pages. While flipping your domain, you may need to collect organic type of traffic that is real and well recognized by major search engines. Once you purchase them, you will need to create a redirection mechanism on them so that anyone who makes a visit to your defunct sites will be redirected to your main site.
Selling expired traffic through your expired domains require lot of patience and effort as building quality links will always take lot of time. Domain flipping to add traffic is a value based activity that will eventually end up in selling an expired domain for a very high price. Some of the well-known methods that can bring in lots of traffic are:
a) Affiliate a program that not only provides you an ongoing type of income, but also brings a considerable amount of traffic.
b) Flipped domains with a catchy web site and keyword enriched content will provide you an opportunity to sell them at premium prices. Such domains are very good candidates for PPC campaigns and Google AdSense programs. When you use these innovative methods to promote your expired domains, you are adding quality traffic and inbound links.
c) Placing individual web pages based on defunct and non-functional domains over the internet and insert outgoing links to your main websites. This simple action may result in redirecting traffic to your other web sites. In the meantime, all defunct domains will add invisible value to themselves resulting in increased domain gains.
In essence, expired domain traffic helps you in two distinctive ways:
a) Inflating the inherent value of the domain. Traffic enriched domains can yield you better profits as well.
b)You can also act as an domain traffic reseller by selling traffic to other people. However, collecting such traffic is a dicey affair and a difficult task.
In the end, you may need to search for an effective domain flipping system to add commercial value to your domains. Traffic enriched expired web domains can help you set up a strong and highly profitable domain trading business.
Multi-language sites:
French/English versions of the site can have a French domain name pointing to the French home page and an English domain name pointing to the English home page. This is an advantage when advertising your URL in language specific situations such as a French language newspaper.
Specializing:
If you have a large product line and you want to attract attention to a particular product, you could get a domain name especially for that product. For example, www.carparts.com would be your main domain name and www.radiatorcap.com could be the domain name that you have pointed to the radiator cap section of your web site. This could be preferable to having to advertise a URL like www.carparts.com/products/engineparts/radiators/caps.html which would be another option.
Merging companies, or historical considerations:
You may want to keep an old domain name for with the sake of your old clients, or to help keep the clients of the company you just purchased. In this case, just pointing the old domain name to the new web site will automatically direct the old clients to your new company.
Key word searches:
Having key words (words that relate directly to the thing you do or sell) in your domain name will help with the search engine optimization of your web site. If you are Rob Brown the plumber and your business name is RB Services Inc, and your domain is rbservices.com, you could take advantage of this tactic by also registering the domain rbplumbingservices.com. This way, the word “plumbing” is in the domain and will be found by search engines when someone does a search for the word “plumbing.”
Multiple spellings:
If your preferred domain name has multiple spellings, such as “colour” or “color” for example, you may want to register your domain name with both spellings. With a company name like Back2Front, for instance, some people may type out “backtofront” instead of the correct spelling.. In this case, getting both domains is a good idea. This will make your web site easier to find for anyone who is just going by memory or by a verbal recommendation.
Domain Prefixes:
To get some of the advantages of additional domains without the extra cost of registering separate domain names, you can add prefixes to your domain name. For example: using the www.carparts.com example again, you could add a prefix like this: www.radiatorcap.carparts.com. Depending on the context, this prefix may be referred to as: Sub Domain, Domain Prefix, or Hostname. The domain registry is not involved in the set up of a domain prefix. The only person involved is the person looking after the name service for your domain.In many cases, this will be your hosting service provider. If you are a Back2Front client just ask and we will set it up for you.
Multiple TLDs :
In addition to getting multiple domain names or using domain prefixes, you may also want to consider multiple TLDs (Top Level Domains) of your domain name. For example: www.carparts.com, www.carparts.ca, www.carparts.net, www.carparts.org. The registry is involved in this case. Reasons for this are:
Defending your online identity.
If you only register one TLD, other companies could register using the same name with a different TLD, and your clients could get confused and do business with them instead. For example: If you registered the domain name ABCaccounting.ca, then someone else (another accountant) registered ABCaccounting.com, you can see how some of your clients may go to ABCaccounting.com and not realise that they are visiting the wrong web site. At Back2Front, since we do business primarily in Canada, we encourage our clients to get both the .com and the .ca names. Some of our clients have gone so far as to register all the TLDs they can get their hands on to prevent other companies from using them.
Sharing a domain name by using a different TLD.
What if the domain name you want is already taken? If the company that has the “.com” version of the domain name is not a competitor, and therefore the likelihood of confusion is small, you may want to register the “.ca” version of the name or any of the other TLDs that make sense to you. For instance, we have back2front.ca but we do not have back2front.com (they are a stage back drop company in the UK.)
When considering domain names for your web site, it is not necessary to narrow it down to just one name. For the many reasons listed above, having more than one domain can be very useful.
For more information visit: www.back2front.ca
By Candace Carter – Back2Front – The Website People 2009
You want to picking domain name to monetize by parking or selling, a strategy is to choose a domain that is typo-generic quality. Better said, a sure way to do this is to register a domain name that has a “type of traffic” quality. Your ability to find a domain name with a generic shell quality before register always traffic, which turns into cash when you park with a parking sites for pay per click or Cash sale. A typo traffic domain is an area that visitors to type right on the address bar of a browser instead of searching for the domain or keywords on search engines. For example, an area such as reviewlocator.com can be typed on the address bar instead of being searched on the Google search engine, because it is a typo-generic domain. A type of “traffic domain” surely convert into cash easily because it attracts rate conversion since prospective visitors already have in mind what they want when they visit on the Internet and type the name of the domain the address bar.
The fact is that the domain parking companies pay more on the type of traffic, as it is natural that the traffic referred traffic. In the same vain, prospective buyers of domain takes keen interest in the acquisition of typo-generic domain names because they are very particular in the areas of procurement for the purpose of immediate traffic too. Domain names are being broken all the time so if you have thought of a cool domain name for a future project, it might be wise to register now. While you planning your own site too, you can park the domain name. Domain parking is a unique process where you can register a domain name and does not enter the domain name server of your provider. Usually the domain name have to register on their server, meaning that if you type your domain name in a web browser, you arrive at a default page provided by the register.
If you go to take the field for a while or not develop a site straight away, you want May to consider a parking area, which offers recipes for your domain names. Domain parking services such as traffic and parking quiet offer revenue sharing for your domain names. Revenue sharing of parking by the circulation of works being directed to a search page or pay per click page where any visitors to your parked domain in May click on ads and you receive a percentage of revenue from this situation. Traffic parking claims that a domain receives on average 8 hits per month, but a popular domain name in May thousands of visitors due to direct type ins and miss typed domains. Unless you have a popular domain name, it is probably not worth the effort to use a revenue sharing parking and use of recording your default-parking page. The main point is domain parking is a way where you register a domain name until you rare ready to use it.
In common internet parlance, the term domain name has multiple related meanings. It may mean a hostname that identifies a computer or computers on the Internet, Registered domain names, which are obtained from domain name registrars or names used for other purposes in the Domain Name System (DNS), for example the special name which follows the @ sign in an email address, or the top-level domain names like .com, or the names used by the session initiation protocol (VOIP), or domain keys.
Therefore, the main purpose of a free domain name is to provide a recognizable name to mostly numerically addressed Internet resources. It allows any resource, and in this case a website, to be moved to a different physical location in the network globally. The DNS is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. Its purpose is to associates various information with domain names assigned to such participants and translate them for the purpose of locating and addressing these devices world-wide. This system thus makes it possible to assign domain names to groups of Internet users in a meaningful way, independent of each user’s physical location. It is an essential component of the functionality of the Internet. It stores other types of information, such as the list of mail servers that accept email for a given Internet domain.
It is the DNS distributes the responsibility of assigning domain names and mapping those names to Internet Protocol addresses by designating authoritative name servers for each domain. It is here that the idea of free domain comes in. Normally, authoritative name servers are assigned to be responsible for their particular domains, and in turn can assign other authoritative name servers for their sub-domains, essentially, they usually charge for this service. However, there are projects developed to provide Free Domain Names or Free Sub-domain domain name to those who wish to get a customized and free domain name, free sub-domain or free short Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that looks like a real paid domain name. a URL is a type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular language, a URL is also referred to as a Web address.
A person then uses this free domain name to access his website, no matter where it is hosted. This is usually a combination of the host’s local name with its parent domain’s name. For example, “free.tools.domain.com” would consists of a free local hostname “free”, the local hostname “tools”, which now actually hosts the person with the free domain name and the domain name “domain.com”. This is then translated into an IP address through the local hosts file, or the Domain Name System (DNS) resolver. It is possible for a person to have several free domain names, unless there is some regulation from parent host that is providing the free hosting. It is also possible for the single host computer to have several hostnames; but generally the operating system of the host prefers to have one hostname that the host uses for itself.
http://www.dom.ir
Selling expired domain names forms an important aspect of domain trading, and a domain trader who excels in this activity can accumulate internet riches within a short time. A domain trader who is also a seasoned web master will have an edge over an inexperienced trader. An expired domain name that displays a considerable amount of traffic tend to have a lot of commercial value and it may sell for a very high price. There are a few numbers of domain-trading entrepreneurs, who are earning thousands of dollars every year. With little bit of basic knowledge and trading skills, even you can buy and sell domains to make a handsome amount of profits.
Here is some basic information and details that will help you conduct your domain trading business:
Step# 1: The first right step in domain trading business is finding a good and relevant keyword attached with the domain. Ensure that you are choosing a keyword not used frequently by people. A good keyword analyzer will help you evaluate and assess the commercial viability of a particular keyword. You can find a number of free keyword search tools in the market. But, they may not offer the best of features required to conduct a research. As far as possible, buy a good keyword tool that offers additional utilities to make your research better and complete. Paid keyword trackers also offer you additional details on a selected keyword like density, search probability and keyword demand placed by people. A carefully chosen keyword will assist you choosing the most suitable expired domain name.
Step# 2: Monetizing an expired domain name means adding value and empowering it to earn more money for your efforts. Monetization is an economic activity of entailing an expired domain with an opportunity to earn meaningful income. Hence, you may wish to buy a web hosting package and design a good web site. You may ask why you need a web hosting package and a dedicated web site. You can use the designed web site to drive traffic from that site to the purchased expired domain. Your overall focus should be to ensure enough traffic to the domain.
Step# 3: Selecting a good themed web site works wonder for your site visitors. You can even design a web site with a page or two to attract your visitors. If you wish you can add and incorporate relevant content to your web site.
Step# 4: You will also need to help and assistance of other service providers to monetize the expired domain name. Possible ways of monetizing your expired domain are enrolling your web portal with a good affiliate program or other commercial programs like Adsense. These lucrative programs provide you an opportunity to earn income by the way of click-through commission.
Step# 5: Traffic building is perhaps the best known monetization technique. If you are confident, you can even buy traffic from a commercial seller; ensure that you are buying a good pack of organic and generic traffic and not incentive ones. A good traffic pack will enable you to increase the overall traffic to your site by other portals. To enhance the viability of your traffic, you can register and upload the domain with major search engines and online directories. The ultimate secret to your expired domain trading business is to build links over a period, so that the domain becomes commercially ready to reap a rich harvest.
Finally, when you feel that your expired domain is ready for auction with a rich deposit of traffic, you can initiate the process by subscribing to major auction sites. If the expired domain based site is good, you can expect to sell it for a premium price.
The domain name for your business is your online identity. You should be very careful about choosing a domain name that is memorable, scores quite well with search engine listings, has a trust factor attached to it, and commands a brand value. A domain name is quite important for your business correspondences and emails. A long one can cause problems in communication, especially if the domain name seems complex. Here are some tips in choosing a well-meaning domain name that captures the essence of your brand image or business:
1. Keyword oriented or a unique domain name? If your website is going to have a crucial role to play in your business, then it is important to have an adequately researched keyword incorporated within the brand name. Use the most searched-for term in search engine queries, within your domain name. Prior to launching your online business, you should do some research through website tools to find out which keywords register the most number of traffic during a month. For example, if you want to make a website based on advising people, you will find that the keyword help is normally typed in the search engine query window a lot more frequently than the word aid. If your domain name includes targeted keywords, than you will get higher rankings in the search engines like Google and Yahoo. You should bear in mind that, apart from having the targeted keyword in your domain name, you should also have keywords in other parts of your site as well.
2. Use a company name only if you are famous: That is right. If your company name overwhelms the basic product name, then by all means go for the company name as your domain name. For example, people normally use the term Xerox rather than photocopy and if you are Xerox, then you should go for Xerox as a domain name because of the sheer popularity of the brand name. This is usually not the case, so using a keyword-rich domain name is a better move for most people. To be on the right side of balancing your business well, you should buy a set of two domain names, one that represents your business/brand name, and another that represents keywords or key phrases.
3. Keep your domain name short: The shorter your domain name, the more memorable it is. If your domain name has an every-day lingo, the better it is! More often than not, you may find that a simple two-word domain name is already taken. The alternative in this case, is to put a hyphen (-) to your targeted keyword and then add the other word. SEO experts are of the belief that hyphenating two or more words makes a long domain name more search engine friendly. The flip side is that people do not tend to write words with hyphens naturally, and there is a chance that if someone has recommended your site to a friend, the friend may find himself going to a competitor’s site. So one has to understand and undergo a lot of study while choosing a domain name. After all, it is one prominent thing that can dictate the flow of your business. Also, you should avoid putting numbers like 4 instead of for in your domain name. It will only lead to confusion.
4. Dot.com only: If you intend to have a website for commercial or business reasons, then by all means go for a website which ends in extension .com. The domain name companies will market other options like .org, .us, .net, etc. However, by all means try stick to .com for better mass appeal.
5. Register similar domain names: If you believe that in the future you are going to have a huge amount of people visiting your website through word-of-mouth advertising, then you should consider registering similar domain names that direct to your main URL (e.g. www.datinginformation.com and www.datinginfo.com). There are cyber-squatters who register domain names in the hope that they will be selling them for a profit to someone who really needs that domain name. Before they do this, you should register the domain names if you think that such a possibility can occur.
6. Be patient: You should not choose a domain name in minutes merely just to get it done and over with. A hasty decision may cost you a lot. It is better to invest time in research and arrive at the right kind of domain name. You should also discuss the comprehensibility and usage of the domain name with friends, neighbors and well wishers to find how simple and commonplace it really is.
You need more than an idea and hosting plan to set up a web
site. You also need a domain name. A domain name is your unique
address on the Internet. Cheapwebhostingreport.com, google.com,
microsoft.com, and yahoo.com are examples of domain names.
Why “Free” is sometimes bad
Many web hosting companies will offer to give you a domain name
when you sign up with them. This can be a great deal, provided
they register the domain in your name. Unfortunately,
some hosting companies register the domain in their name.
That means that they own your address and they don’t have to let
you move your domain name to another web hosting company. This
can be very bad. It would be like someone else owning the name
of your company. So before you take advantage of free domain
registration with the hosting company you choose, be sure that
they register the domain in your name. If they do not say they
do, it’s probably safest to assume that they do not.
Fortunately, registering a domain name is simple and
inexpensive. Unlike a few years ago when one company had a
virtual monopoly on commercial domain names, there are now a
large number of registrars to choose from and competition has
lowered prices and increased the ease of domain name
registration.
What to Look For
There are two important things to look for in a domain
registrar: reliability and location. No one knows exactly what
will happen if a domain registrar goes bankrupt. There are
supposed to be safeguards in place to protect domain registrants
from losing their domains, but you don’t want to be one of the
people testing these procedures, so a solvent, reliable domain
registrar is a must. Location is important because domain
registrars are subject to the laws of the country where they are
located and some have been known to refuse to grant (or worse
yet, grant and then take back) domain names that are
unacceptable under the laws of their home country. A registrar
in the US may be your best bet if you have possible “freedom of
speech” issues with the domain name (or the site contents in
some cases) you’d like to use.
What to Avoid
Most registrars now offer all sorts of additional features –
like web hosting. Most of the web hosting plans we’ve seen at
domain registrars are feature poor and over priced. If you are
tempted by one, think twice and check out other hosts before
buying web hosting from your domain registrar. Many will try to
make it sound like it is a lot of extra work to host elsewhere.
It isn’t. All you have to do is point your domain account at the
registrar to the nameservers your web hosting company gives you.
This involves typing two urls. It is not hard at all.
My clients and I have had good luck with the following three
domain registrars.
First Choice: GoDaddy
http://www.cheapwebhostingreport.com/zgodaddy.php
Our current first choice of an affordable, reliable, US-based
domain registrar is one of the most popular domain registars, GoDaddy. They can register .com, .net, .org,
..biz, .info, ,ws, .us and .name domains for $9.95 a year or less
(and there are additional discounts when you register for
multiple years). If you already have a domain name and are still
paying $35 dollars a year for it, you can reduce your domain
costs by transfering you domain to GoDaddy and paying just $7.95
(for most types of domains) to renew your domain for an
additional year.
Second Choice: Dotster.com
http://www.cheapwebhostingreport.com/zdotster.ph
Dotster.com is our second choice of an
affordable, reliable, US-based domain registrar. They can
register .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us and .name domains
for $14.95 a year (discounted when you register for multiple
years). If you already have a domain name and are still paying
$35 dollars a year for it, you can save money by transfering
your domain to Dotster and paying just $8.95 to renew your
domain for an additional year.
Third Choice: Yahoo
http://www.cheapwebhostingreport.com/zyahoodomains.php
Many of my small business clients like Yahoo Small Business. They only register
..com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us domains and they charge $9.95
a year, but many small business people seem more comfortable
with a major name brand — and Yahoo qualifies
Recently found myself in the position of wanting to register a
domain which was owned by someone else. The domain was set to
expire in a week, and I figured there was a decent chance that
the person who owned it wouldn’t be renewing it. Upon consulting
the WhoIs registry on the current owner, I discovered the guy
was a bit of a domain shark and didn’t seem to be around anymore.
So I placed a backorder through GoDaddy for $18.95 thinking that
was all I needed to do. During the week that followed, I learned
a lot about the domain expiration process. Two and a half months
and $369 later, I am the proud owner of a shiny new domain. A
really really good one.
This article will explain the domain expiration process and what
you need to do in order to use it to your advantage.
How a domain expires Contrary to popular belief, domains
do not expire when they say they do. If the owner of a domain
does not renew by the expiration date of the domain, the domain
goes into “expired” status. For 40 days, the domain is in a
grace period where all services are shut off, but the domain
owner may still renew the domain for a standard renewal fee. If
a domain enters this period, it is a good first indicator that
it may not be renewed, but since the owner can re-register
without penalty, it can also just be a sign of laziness or
procrastination.
After 40 days are up, the domain’s status changes to “redemption
period”. During this phase, all WhoIs information begins
disappearing, and more importantly, it now costs the owner an
additional fee to re-activate and re-register the domain. The
fee is currently around $100, depending on your registrar. When
a domain enters its redemption period, it’s a good bet the owner
has decided not to renew.
Finally, after the redemption period, the domain’s status will
change to “locked” as it enters the deletion phase. The deletion
phase is 5 days long, and on the last day between 11am and 2pm
Pacific time, the name will officially drop from the ICANN
database and will be available for registration by anybody.
The entire process ends exactly 75 days after the listed
expiration date. For an even more detailed explanation, read the
article Inside a Drop Catcher’s War Room. Landing your domain
So if domains are available to the general public 75 days after
they expire, how do you know your GoDaddy backorder isn’t one of
many other backorders from other people using other services?
The answer is, you don’t.
And thus begins the cloak-and-dagger game of “getting in on The
Drop”.
“The Drop” is the unpredictable three hour period of time in
which the domain is deleted from VeriSign’s database and
released back into the ecosystem. I briefly thought about trying
to beat GoDaddy to the punch by manually registering my domain
during the drop process, but I quickly found out that there are
no fewer than three major services which specialize in pounding
away on VeriSign’s servers during the drop period. With their
considerable resources and my measly Powerbook, there was no way
I could compete on their level.
So I decided to enlist the services of all three major domain
snatching firms in hopes that a) one would grab my domain for
me, and b) no one else would be competing against me. The three
services — Snapnames.com, Enom.com, and Pool.com —
all operate in a similar manner. They use a network of
registrars to hit the Verisign servers at frequent intervals
(but not too frequent to get banned) and snatch as many
requested names as possible. If you don’t get your name, you
don’t pay. But that’s where the three services begin to differ.
Snapnames.com
Snapnames.com (the exclusive partner of Network Solutions)
charges you $60 for your domain unless there are multiple
suitors, at which point there is an open bid auction between
suitors. Seems fair enough. Snapnames is a bit of a newcomer to
the game, but with their Network Solutions affiliation, they are
said to be improving their success rates. Enom.com Not wanting
to chance it with only one company, I also enlisted Enom to
snatch my domain for me. Enom had reportedly been improving
their “Club Drop” service for a year or two and it was now
considered one of the top three. Their fee was only $30 and they
are based in my ‘hood (Seattle), so I was hoping they
would be the company to successfully “work The Drop” for me.
Here’s where it starts to get sketchy though.
Enom claims that the higher your bid is (beyond the $30), the
more “resources” they will dedicate to grabbing the domain. What
the hell? How am I supposed to judge that? Does that mean you’re
using one server now and will use 30 servers if I bid $40? Or
does it mean that you’re using 30 now and will use 35 if I bid
$1000?
Not knowing exactly what to do, I attempted to bid a couple of
hundred dollars during the last day, but Enom required me to
send them a fax to become a “verified bidder”. Since I was at
home that day and only dinosaurs still have fax machines, I was
unable to increase my bid. Oh well, I thought, if someone else
on Enom bids higher, at least I’ll be able to participate in the
auction. Pool.com
Pool.com is the Scott Boras of domain name grabbing — the
brilliant, yet conniving agent that players (domains) love and
team owners (prospective domain buyers) hate. Pool plays off the
power of the unknown in such a fiendishly clever way that you
don’t know whether to hug them or kill them. Here’s how it works:
Pool is the #1 company around as far as number of servers and
success rates go. You place your original bid for $60 and if
Pool.com grabs your name for you, they send you an e-mail
telling you they’ve been successful and that you’ve now entered
“Phase 1″ of the two-phase auction system. This is the case
whether or not you are the only bidder! Pool.com doesn’t even
reveal how many bidders there are.
Then, in a Boras-like move of diabolical genius, Pool.com
informs you that you have three days to place a new sealed bid.
If the bid is either one of the top two bids or within 30% of
the top bid, you move on to a one-day open bid auction (the
“challenger” auction) for final control of the domain.
Grrrrreat.
So if I bid $100 and two people bid $140, I don’t even get to
move on to the final auction! It’s all designed to get me to up
my sealed bid… whether or not there are even any other bidders.
Note: One other thing I forgot to mention is that before the
name dropped, I grabbed all .net, .org, and .info variants (all
were available) in order to have more leverage over other
buyers. The chase is on
Right on time, 75 days after the domain expired, I got an e-mail
from Pool.com telling me they’d secured my domain for me. Great.
Of the four sources I used, Pool.com was the one I least wanted
to deal with. But true to their claims, they ended up being the
best agent of The Drop and had just gotten me one step closer to
my domain. They had A-Rod and I was the Texas Rangers.
Unlike the Texas Rangers, however, I realized I could be bidding
against myself and entered a sealed bid of $302. I chose that
number because it seemed sufficiently high but not so high that
I’d feel foolish if I was the only bidder. I added the extra two
dollars on the end just to edge out any other people potentially
deciding on $300 as their number.
The next three days were particularly stressful. I had no idea
where I stood, and throughout this entire process, I’d always
had the sneaking suspicion that the people at these companies
are on the lookout themselves for valuable domains. In other
words, if someone all of a sudden bids $1000 on a domain, will a
domain company decide to snatch it up themselves or “shill bid”
against you on it?
Finally the e-mail from Pool arrived and informed me that I had
moved onto the Challenger Auction. There was one other bidder
and they had upped their bid to $312 in order to beat me. Not
too bad, but I had no idea how high that person was willing to
go. I had to decide on a top bid (a la eBay’s proxy bidding) and
a strategy for when to place it.
True to form, Pool.com’s auction system squeezes even more money
out of you by making sure the auction doesn’t end if there’s a
bid in the last five minutes. In that case, the auction time
keeps extending by five minutes until there are no more bids.
I could try one of two things: Bid high and bid early in an
attempt to scare off the other guy, or lull the other guy to
sleep by doing nothing until the last 6 minutes. I chose the
second method since the ending time was 8am on a Saturday… a
time when many people are not in front of computers. I set four
alarms for 7:45am Saturday morning, woke up on time, and placed
my bid for $500 when the countdown clock hit 6 minutes.
The system immediately auto-upped the current bid to $369 and I
was the leader. Six nervous minutes, fifty browser refreshes,
and a thousand heartbeats later, my opponent was nowhere to be
found and the domain was mine… ready for immediate transfer to
Dreamhost, my hosting company of choice.
I’m still not quite sure whether the person on the other end was
real (although I assume they were), but the bottom line is that
by playing every possible angle, I now have an extremely
valuable domain in my possession for the reasonable sum of $369.
Not valuable because I want to sell it or anything; just
valuable because I want it.
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Everyone should have Amy Schrier’s problem.
For six months, she resisted selling the domain name Blue.com for $200,000. Using a formula she devised to fetch the highest market value for cheap domain names, Schrier eventually convinced a private party that Blue.com was worth $500,000. Since the name was sold in March, its site now includes links to sexual material and airfare ads.
“The market will really explode when people realize they are sitting on premium real estate,” says Schrier, 37, an entrepreneur in New York who bought Blue.com for $65,000 in 2002.
Dan Taylor, 54, an industrial designer in Toronto, stumbled onto his domain riches. In the 1990s, he bought Realtone.com with the intent of developing online content for skin care products. As Taylor’s luck would have it, that was before ringtones became available on cell phones. When Universal Entertainment in Germany came calling for the domain name last year, Taylor sold it for an undisclosed amount.
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Schrier and Taylor are among an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 individuals who make a living buying and selling cheap domain names, though about half prefer to remain anonymous to avoid competition, says Ron Jackson, editor and publisher of Domain Name Journal.
‘A long-term investment’ Most domainers buy and own names. They “park” on sites, where they develop content in the form of Web links and ads, to generate income and increase the value of their virtual real estate.
“It’s a long-term investment, like owning a home,” says Lawrence Fischer, vice president of business development at SmartName.com, a company that owns and manages thousands of cheap domain names, including Stockquotes.com. “But if a major brokerage firm came along with a big offer, I would be willing to listen.”
Plenty have been willing to pay. Sales of 5,851 cheap domain names generated $29 million in 2005, compared with the sale of 3,813 names for $15 million in 2004, market researcher Zetetic says.
Venture-capital firms, too, are betting on cheap domain names.
Like a lottery ticket
“It’s like buying a lottery ticket, but the odds are better,” says Ken Carey, 50, a longtime autoworker in Grand Rapids, Mich., and part-time inventor who owns 200 cheap domain name. “All you gotta do is hit the right niche, and you’re well on your way to being a millionaire.”
When a technology is about to take off, if you buy a domain name that pertains to it, the more generic the name, the better its value.
Sometimes, the payoff is huge.
Sometimes, it lands the owner in legal hot water.
A surge in online ads and Web viewing have made cheap domain names a serious business proposition. Online ad revenue is expected to reach $13.6 billion in the U.S. this year, up 14 percent from last year, according to Jupiter Media. Overall, 153 million people in the U.S. use the Web, up 2.5 percent from a year ago, Nielsen//NetRatings says.
“Those who understand domains and what they represent, can and have done very well,” says Schwartz, 52, who sold Men.com for $1.3 million in late 2003, a huge profit from the $15,000 he paid for it in 1997. He bought Property.com for $750,000 last year.
And Schrier, who sold Blue.com for more than twice what she was originally offered, may soon offer advice. She intends to market her formula for getting the most value out of cheap domain names.
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