Does anyone has any experiance in buying and selling domains? I am thinking of giving it a try? Is it a good business? and what % of paricipants make money and what kinda returns?
If you are referring to Internet domains such as x.com or y.net, an interesting but boring concept I should say. I hope you are not referring to trading of internet domains (buying and selling domain names). The Internet bubble is over and dont waste time trying to securitize domain names
Nana most of the good domains are all taken. It's so easy to change the name to make an new one for registering. apple.com, apples.com. Names that are easier to get are those that have spelling mistakes in them, like aople.com the o is next to the p. People that own these domains count on spelling errors to lead people to their products, I am not sure how much money is in this, (it all depends on what your selling, and how easily your name can be misspelled). Check out http://michaelmore.com/ or aople.com michaelmore is missing 1 o in moore
http://pikertrader.com is available. It would alleviate most of the excessive bandwidth usage on this site!
From your answer, i can see non of you had any previous experiance in domain business. Let me give you an example of good idea. Did you know there are hundreds of thousands cities around the world, almost 95% are taken or registered Buying "any city name.com" will have demand. It's all about idea. registering a domain cost $10 per year, and hosting it costs around $75/year (you don't have to host it). Good domains go on sell from $500 to $100,000 maximum. I think it's better to ask my here, largest Domain forum on internet http://www.dnforum.com/ Threads: 93,244 Posts: 566,585 Registered Today: 28 Exclusive Members: 281 Platinum Member: 1,699 Gold Members: 5,101 Bronze Members: 10,753 Members: 18,035
Nana, Thanks for the kind words, I think there are many ways to go about the domain name business. The names of city's is just one aspect, where there are many. Just like the real estate business there are many ways to make money on the product. Your view of the city names, maybe correct. I have found some examples in the domains http://www.cityoforlando.com/ http://www.cityoflosangeles.com/ There are other ways to make money, i.e. purchasing expired domain names, then redirecting them to your site. Many people may read an old post on Elite and click on the link to find that the site is no longer there but is now directed to a totally different site. I had this problem once on another site, the link was to a real estate broker that went out of business, the link was changed now a penis enlargement site. If you are going to dive deep in the domain name business you may want to look into purchasing a license to register. Your fee's for registering will drop to .25 instead of $10, and you can keep the name up to 10 years without registering again. To ICANN: * US$2,500 non-refundable application fee, to be submitted with application. * US$4,000 yearly accreditation fee. * Variable fee (quarterly) paid once you begin registering domain names. This fee represents a portion of ICANN's operating costs. * Transaction-based gTLD fee (quarterly). This fee is a flat fee (currently $0.25) charged for each new registration, renewal or transfer. This fee can be billed by the registrar separately on its invoice to the registrant. * Please refer to the ICANN Budget for additional details about invoicing, including options for relief and fee caps. You must have: * US$70,000 in working capital requirement. THIS DOES NOT NEED TO BE PAID TO ICANN; ICANN requires only that you demonstrate (by submitting an independently verified financial statement) that you have at least this much liquid capital (cash or credit) before your ICANN accreditation becomes effective. http://www.icann.org/registrars/accreditation-financials.htm
Hi Nana Trader, I have over 250 names and over 20 live sites and have been doing this since 99. Made more than twice (after expenses) what my day job pays from the live sites last year. I have yet to make good returns on my name invetsments yet, but i mainly have just been buying and not looking to sell. My last sale a few months ago was for $1000 and I gave $8 for it, but then I know of far better deals. http://dnjournal.com/ytd-sales-charts.htm This is year-to-date reported domain sales in the after market. They only list the top 90 and so far this year the biggest was diamond.com for 7.5 million http://dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2006/Q2-expanded.htm this is a link to an expanded version of the first half of 2006 and it covers all sales over $10,000 and it will give you an idea of what to expect. They also have links (they being DNJournal) to reported sales for 2005 and 2004. Most likely it's safe to say that most sales in the after market go un-re-ported. Nana Trader, you ask "Is it a good business? and what % of paricipants make money and what kinda returns?" The name business is a lot like the financial markets in that you have a huge portion of hopeful, eager-to-learn newbies that probably waste a lot of time and money. I could tell you about the lady who kept on trying to sell blue.com for half a million when nearly everyone said she was unrealistic. She sold for her asking price a few weeks ago. But most give up or buy poor names to begin with. So it can be good, but most people wash out. Bill Gates is quoted as having said, "Domains have and will continue to go up faster than any commodity ever known to man." I'm not sure if he actually made the statement and if he did it don't make it so. But I do think it's safe to say that they have enormous potential ... if you have a good strategy. Here are a few of the prominent business models for domainers. 1. Most of the major players only buy what's called type-in traffic names. This means they will buy popular searched keywords in the dot com version since that's what most people search for. Exp. - if you bought dogs.com then many people will and do, type dogs.com into their browser address window (instead of using a SE) and will go direct to your domain. Most of these domain owners simply park their domains at one of the many parking services that will show ppc search engine results for your subject and you will generate some revenue determined by how popular your keyword is and how expensive the subject is. You can see how an advertiser is willing to pay more for ads relating to forex or insurance than jokes. Most of these names sell for 3 to 10 times annual revenue. These buyers want traffic and rev. No traffic, no revenue, no interest. Best thing you can do is park and provide traffic and rev stats and price at 3 to 10 times annual revenue. This is the biggest and surest game out there and some players have tens of thousands of names and really rake in the green. But it's all pretty boring and since it's so measurable, it cost to get in. 2. The next plan is to buy either un-registered names or lower priced names in the after-market and try to resell for a big profit after holding them long term (maybe 1 to 10 years). Now some prefer to pay around $30,000 for a premium brandable name and then some prefer to pay $100 to $1000 in the after-market for previously registered names. There are several good places to sell your names, there's: Moniker Sedo and my personal favorite http://afternic.com Afternic even has a page showing all of their recent completed sales. This page is a few of my names for sale http://www.afternic.com/names.php?best=1&u=44301 Truth is, I'm tired of the name game and will soon be posting about 200 names at Afternic at cheap prices. I just have too many things going on. 3. The third and final opportunity i was going to mention was buying unregistered names of goods and services that are geo-targeted. Just go thru the yellow pages and combine goods and services with city names. I recently did this and bout the top 90 most popular searched names for Americas largest cities - the 90 unregistered ones that is. It works like this http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ this keyword tool will show you how often a search term was searched for last month at Yahoo. Enter any big city, Dallas, Detroit, Tampa and see what goods and services are searched for most often. Or try some service and see which cities search for it most: Mortgage Tree Service Veternarian Eye Glasses I'll copy the results for tree service below. Bear in mind that this tool does not always show the correct word order. Blue widgets may be the most searched for kind of widget and it may show "widgets blue." It also lumps singular and plural results together and it will lump together some similar catagories like auto insurance with car insurance if you really need more info on better tools, i can supply it. Keep in mind that MSN will usuall have a few less searches and Google a few more so your total estimated searches last month at the top 3 SEs will be approx 3times this number. One day phone books will be something we used back in the olden days. The comong migration to local search practices makes geo-targetd names a good investment. This plan shows you how to identify which industries are already well within it. Actually there is a 4th plan, i won't cover it here for room, but it's international domains. The folks in canada are likely to type in dogs.ca and russians dogs.ru I'm showing results for tree service in a moment but first here a good forum for names http://www.namepros.com/ it has it's share of mis-information but it's interesting none the less. If you would like to buy a huge portfolio, say 100 or 200 names, I think i can put one togeteher that would be priced attractivly (since I want out) one that you couldn't pass up. After you become familiar with the biz, pm me if you are interested. 22027 tree service 5908 tree service chicago 3880 tree service philadelphia 3434 tree service pittsburgh 3383 tree service nassau 3239 tree service detroit 3197 tree service washington dc 2927 tree service minneapolis 2778 tree service atlanta 2735 tree service st louis 2316 tree service dallas 2280 tree service los angeles 2152 tree service seattle 2084 tree service houston 1916 tree service boston 1907 tree service cincinnati 1789 tree service newark 1782 tree service baltimore 1543 tree service kansas city 1498 tree service tampa 1491 tree service new york 1431 tree service louisville 1419 tree service bergen 1412 tree service cleveland ohio 1350 tree service riverside 1314 tree service monmouth new jersey 1314 tree service oakland 1288 tree service phoenix 1280 tree removal service 1255 tree service orlando 1216 tree service middlesex 1193 tree service scranton 1112 tree service portland oregon 1094 tree service denver 1086 tree service birmingham 1060 tree service fort worth 1052 tree service columbus ohio 1048 tree service indianapolis 1009 tree service new orleans 973 tree service tulsa 920 tree service san diego 915 tree service omaha 907 tree service milwaukee 872 tree service syracuse 855 tree service greenville south carolina 853 tree service harrisburg pennsylvania 845 tree service miami 839 tree service albany new york 828 tree service sacramento 819 tree service rochester new york 813 tree service johnstown pennsylvania 812 tree service charlotte north carolina 812 tree service san francisco 809 tree service oklahoma city 807 tree service austin 753 tree service hartford 748 tree service raleigh 727 tree service salt lake city 726 tree service greensboro 707 tree service san jose california 677 tree service orange county 661 tree service fort lauderdale 642 tree service richmond 640 tree service buffalo 637 tree service tacoma 629 tree service allentown pennsylvania 627 tree service west palm beach 617 tree service dayton 614 tree service youngstown 595 tree service bakersfield california 589 tree service honolulu 588 tree service york pennsylvania 586 tree service fort wayne 585 tree service san antonio 579 tree service nashville 573 tree service las vegas 559 tree service grand rapid 556 tree service little rock arkansas 554 tree service des moines 554 tree service peoria 549 tree service fresno 534 tree service joplin missouri 516 tree service jacksonville florida 515 tree service wichita 512 tree service mcallen 508 tree service toledo ohio 504 tree service atlantic new jersey 498 tree service st cloud 490 tree service sarasota 467 tree service kalamazoo 466 tree service akron ohio 454 tree service lansing michigan 450 tree service albuquerque 447 tree service salem oregon 441 tree service reading pennsylvania 439 tree service gary indiana 437 tree service tucson 433 tree service lancaster pennsylvania 430 tree service ann arbor 429 tree service madison wisconsin
I made this thread 12 months ago, After doing little research i came to know domain selling isn't for me.