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Domain Due Diligence: Previous Marketing

Before buying a domain name, it’s a given that you need to do your due diligence for a variety of reasons. The primary issue I want to discuss today is previous marketing attempts for the domain name. In my opinion, there are two reasons you will want to investigate how the domain name was marketed in the past: legal reasons and financial reasons.

Let’s discuss the legal issue first. For the sake of this discussion, I will assume the domain name that is being purchased is a descriptive keyword domain name. With most of these names, even the most commonly used terms, there are trademarks associated with them (think Apple). Although it’s clear that you can

Deposit Necessary for Hilco Streambank Auction

I assume you already know about the  Hilco Streambank  domain name and IP auction that is happening in a little over a week. I wrote about the Bargain.com and ETM.com auctions in a blog post last month, and the company shared a press release yesterday announcing the addition of the auction for the Tweeter.com domain name, a remnant of the once popular music store called Tweeter.

If you aren’t familiar with the Hilco Streambank auction and you want to bid on one or more of the lots, now is a good time to familiarize yourself with the  HilcoIPauctions.com  auction platform and rules. Probably most importantly for you to know at this point is that a refundable cash deposit is required in order to bid on the auctions. You’ll want to make arrangements with the company to wire your deposit in advance to ensure your deposit is made on time.

The company is likely requiring a deposit for a few reasons. First, it will deter shill bidders from participating. Second, it will serve as a downpayment for the winning bidder. Finally, it will be a bit of insurance in case the winning bidder fails to pay.

I have not used the Hilco Streambank auction platform before, but I assume it works in a way that is similar to standard auction platforms. If you are planning to bid, it would make sense to ask any questions in advance. Perhaps you’d prefer to bid over the phone, and those details should be discussed well in advance.

I still think Bargain.com, ETM.com, and now Tweeter.com are by far the best domain name assets in the auction.

Being Spiteful Cost Me Money

I haven’t shared this story before, but I might as well share it with you. It’s a story about how my being spiteful cost me money. Probably a considerable amount of money. I am not going to share the domain name because I don’t think it’s polite to reveal private negotiations without the other party’s permission.

I saw a solid .com domain name on Sedo  in 2011, and I made a $500 offer for the domain name. The domain owner counter offered at around $1,500. I decided to try my luck again and I offered around $700. The owner countered at around $1,000.

Each counter offer brought us closer to an agreeable amount for us both, and figuring that we were getting close, I offered

Volume vs. Value

I feel pretty old saying this, but when I first started buying domain names in 2003-2005, it was purely a volume game for me. I hand registered large amounts of domain names with the hopes of quickly flipping them. Success, to me, at that point, was selling a group of 10+ names for $500, which would be somewhere around 5x profit.

Sometime between 2006 and 2007, the volume business turned into more of a value business. I was hand registering fewer domain names and focusing on higher value acquisitions. Instead of trying to sell many domain names, I would target my efforts on just a few high value domain names each month. There was greater risk with this strategy, but the payoff was far greater.

In today’s business, I think it’s more difficult to sell in volume, since most buyers aren’t all that interested in purchasing large groups of domain names. I haven’t really tried this approach in the last couple of years, so that is pure speculation on my part. I am interested in knowing if you have success selling names in volume.

The issue I see with focusing on value vs. volume is that in a time where cash is king, domain names aren’t as liquid as they once were. Yes, you can still sell many types of domain names quickly, but there isn’t as good of a market as there once was. For instance, if you need cash and want to sell a 2 letter .com domain name made up of any letters, you can almost certainly sell it for $100,000 today. A few years ago, you could have probably sold it for $150-200k. That’s a pretty significant spread, especially if the domain name cost 6 figures.

The purpose of this post is to generate some discussion on whether you are more focused on volume or value these days.

ESPN Acquires CollegeFootballPlayoff.com Domain Name

CollegeFootballPlayoff.com WhoisAccording to a report from the Associated Press on Yahoo, “The  Bowl Championship Series  will be replaced by the College Football Playoff.” Interestingly, it appears that ESPN is now the registrant of the matching CollegeFootballPlayoff.com domain name.

It appears that the plural  CollegeFootballPlayoffs.com is owned by an unrelated entity, and it currently shows a generic Go Daddy PPC landing page. Perhaps they will purchase this domain name as well, since there will likely be some confusion when people visit the url.

CollegeFootballPlayoff.com was originally registered

Being a Domain Investor Can Help You Acquire a Domain Name

I’ve found that many people don’t have an interest in selling their domain names to domain investors. Many seem to think they are either going to see their name re-sold for a huge profit or that they are getting a raw deal. I want to share some insight in when it might be advantageous to be a domain investor and how that can help you acquire a domain name.

More often than not, I buy domain names from people who have either never done anything with a particular domain name or have ceased operations on a domain name. These people tend to be happy to make money by selling names that aren’t making any money for them. Most don’t really care about the domain name after and are just happy to have made some cash for something that had basically been lying around.

On occasion, I will come across a domain name that is owned by