One Exceptional Name or 10 Excellent Names?

Elliot Silver
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23

I’ve generally been an advocate of owning one name of significant value than ten domain names that cost the same as the single name. However, in thinking about my business model, I think I would rather own ten excellent domain names than one exceptional domain name that costs as much as the ten excellent names.

When selling exceptional (high value) domain names, there are often many interested parties. Companies usually want to own the exact match domain name for SEO purposes, vanity reasons, to make it easier for customers to find their website, and for defensive reasons in order to keep it away from a competitor. However, even though there have been hundreds of millions of dollars in domain name sales on the books, many companies are reluctant to spend six or seven figures on a domain name.

If you need a very high

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Everyone Has a Price

Elliot Silver
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11

No matter what the object or asset is, I think the old adage of “everyone has a price” is applicable to domain names. If you keep this in the back of your mind when you are trying to buy domain names, it will serve you well.

I think that everyone has a domain name they covet. For some, it is the exact match domain name for a topic they are passionate about, and for others, it is a domain name in a field they know they can make a lot of money with if they had the opportunity to develop the domain name. I would bet that most of us have at least tried to purchase our ideal domain name if it’s not actively used, and I would also bet that most of us have been turned down.

If there is a name that you really want, I don’t think you should take

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My Domain Acquisition Process

Elliot Silver
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19

I want to share some personal insight into my domain name acquisition process because I thought it would be interesting for you to see how I evaluate domain names and decide what to do with them. It might still be a bit opaque, but it is an off the cuff analysis.

For the most part, I buy domain names either in private or at NameJet. I don’t do much hand registering these days. In fact, I might hand register 50 names a year, and that is probably an aggressive number.

Typically, I will focus on specific verticals for my acquisitions. For instance, I was recently attempting to buy

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Quickest Domain Name Inquiry

Elliot Silver
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32

I wanted to share a fun anecdote, especially because it involves a domain name I hand registered.

As my domain registrar account managers can attest, I don’t hand register many domain names. Annually, I might hand register between 20-50 domain names. It’s such an irregular occurrence these days, I don’t really even track the number of domain names I hand register.

On July 9th, I hand registered 5 domain names in the same vertical (they are international geodomain keyword domain names). I own similar domain names, and I bought these to increase my holdings in that space. I don’t think they are exceptionally valuable, but for hand registrations, they were worth the gamble, especially since one of the 5 names has received a couple of offers in the past.

On

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Unscrupulous People Trying to Sell Names Owned By Others

Elliot Silver
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68

My business model involves the re-sale of domain names. Oftentimes, I will buy a domain name on a venue like NameJet, and after I won the auction, paid in full for the name, and have it in my possession, I may seek out an end user buyer via resale of the domain name.

This morning, I sent out some emails to end users about a domain name I recently won at auction. A few minutes after my first email went out, I received a reply asking me how much the domain name would cost. After sharing my price, the prospect emailed me back asking why my price was higher than what my “colleague offered a few days ago.”

Since I don’t have any co-workers or employees, and since this was an expired domain name rather than a private auction, I am pretty confident

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If You See a Great Deal, Buy It

Elliot Silver
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29

In 2007, I was looking through a list of names from Buy Domains, and if my memory serves me correctly, one name I liked was priced at around $4,000. I would have paid $4,000 for it because I thought it was a $10k name, but I didn’t want to pay the asking price and negotiated with my account rep hoping to buy it for $2,500.  In the meantime, it was sold to someone else.

I always thought it was silly to pay someone’s asking price. When it comes to domain names, most people price their domain names at a level they would like to get, but in reality, you can negotiate a better price. This is true for most larger companies and individual domain investors. I was so accustomed to negotiating better pricing, that when I

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