I come across good domain names that are available for sale all the time. Some are private inquiries, some are via email sent from my corporate website, and the majority are at auction. When evaluating domain names, I think it is of utmost importance to think about who will be buying the domain name and then determining if there is enough of a margin to sell the domain name profitably.

One mistake I make on occasion is buying a domain name that looks very good on the outside but has limited profit potential when reselling. There are a number of professions that don’t seem to value domain names as much as others. A domain name may be an awesome exact match domain name for a specific field, but if people in the field aren’t big domain name users or a web presence isn’t all that important, the domain name may have less commercial value.

In highly competitive fields, an

Last week, I was bidding on an auction at Godaddy and ended up losing. The name could be worth more than the winning bid, and I want to share why I stopped bidding without revealing the name, since that might not be nice for the winning bidder.

The reason I stopped bidding was there is an alternative way to spell the domain name. It may have been good for branding, but it would have failed the radio test and would have likely lost half its traffic to the alternative. This domain name had a number and a word in it, but there are alternative spellings. For instance, if you heard the word “first” in a domain name, some people might spell it first and others might spell it 1st.

For this particular domain name, I think both