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

Easy Deal With Nokta Domains

NoktaI just acquired a domain name from Nokta Domains, and I wish every transaction was this easy. If you are looking to buy a domain name from Nokta, I want to let you know about my experience buying from them.

I originally saw the domain name last year, but we weren’t able to agree on a price. Yesterday afternoon, I was looking through some old emails, and I decided to inquire about the domain name again. The company had lowered the price on the name since the last time we spoke, and we were able to agree to a price.

This morning, I created an account on the Nokta website, added the domain name to my shopping cart, and purchased the name. Within thirty minutes of

Would Love to See This List Data

Every day, Domaining.com is filled with websites that share lists of names that are coming up for sale or auction. One thing that I think would be very interesting to look at would be a master list of those domain names that were mentioned 6-12 months ago and the current owner.

I think it would be interesting to see whether these investments would have been good (meaning an end user owns the name) or whether they are currently unregistered or owned by a domain investor. This wouldn’t be a definitive list since a domain investor-owned name wouldn’t necessarily equate to it being a less valuable domain name, but it would be interesting to see how many have ended up being bought by an end user.

Making this data even more valuable would be if someone used DomainTools Whois History Tool to track the end user-owned domain names and see if a domain investor owned them in between the time they were publicized in a blog and the present time. If that’s the case,

Problem With Getting a “Valuable” Brand Domain Name

FacebookHome.comDuring a meeting yesterday, Facebook announced a new product dubbed “Facebook Home.” According to a TechCrunch article about the product launch, Facebook Home “replaces your standard Android’s homescreen with an immersive Facebook experience featuring full-screen photos, status updates, and notifications.

Like many domain investors likely did at around the same time of the news, I did a Whois search to see if Facebook had bought the FacebookHome.com domain name, and it appears that the company has owned it for quite some time. As  Bill Hartzer points out in an article on his blog, the company did not secure several alternative extensions for this particular product.

I think it’s arguable about whether Facebook needs to buy