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Domain Buying Tip

Elliot Silver
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13

I want to share a relatively easy tip with you when it comes to buying domain name. This advice goes for both aftermarket acquisitions and hand registrations, and I think it can help you get an idea of the ease (or difficulty) you may have in selling a particular domain name.

Before buying a name, do a Whois search for similar domain names, and do a search of the same keywords in different extensions. If you see that others are unregistered or owned solely by domain investors, it might be challenging to sell it to an end user buyer for whatever reason. If other similar names are owned by end user companies, you will probably have a much easier time finding a buyer.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say you have the opportunity to purchase a large city Plumber.com domain name (let’s say LosAngelesPlumber.com) either at auction or hand registration. Do some research to see if plumbers own other large city Plumber.com domain names. In addition, see if any smaller town Plumber.com domain names are registered to local plumbers in that area. You should also check out other extensions, and do a Google search of the keyword to see what domain names local plumbers are using for their websites.

If you see the vast majority of similar domain names owned by other domain investors or unregistered, you may want to rethink buying the name. Yes, there could be some commercial value (obviously there is in my simple example), but if no plumber has bought one of the names from a domain investor, you should realize you will probably end up in the same situation.

Keep in mind this tip is one that I use when I am buying domain names to re-sell. If you plan to build out a domain name or monetize it due to known type-in traffic, this tip probably matters much less.

5 With… Phil McKegney, Co-Founder of DomainAgents

Elliot Silver
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13

DomainAgents is a negotiation platform that was built to help domain buyers and domain owners come to terms on their domain name transactions. Although DomainAgents is a relatively new company, the founders have considerable domain industry experience under their belts.

The way DomainAgents  works is fairly simple, but with a unique twist. A buyer will pay a $19.95 fee to submit an offer on a domain name (more or less a fee to qualify the offer just a bit). To entice the domain owner into considering the offer, DomainAgents will pay that person $10 to review the offer, or they can choose to have the $10 donated to charity.

Phil McKegney is the CEO & Co-Founder of DomainAgents Platform Inc., the company that operates DomainAgents. A serial entrepreneur who has developed and helped launch multiple internet based companies and projects on three continents over the past 11 years. He maintains an active investment in one of Europe’s largest ccTLD domain portfolios, and recently founded a company that graduated from a Techstars affiliate startup accelerator.

ES – How does the offer and sale process work? Walk us through a transaction.

Read More

Create Escrow.com Sale Buttons

Elliot Silver
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5

There are a number of people who use for sale landing pages on their domain names. Typically, these landing pages have some sort of large “for sale” notice along with information about how to complete the transaction. I just learned that you can create a button at Escrow.com that will automatically set up a transaction when it’s clicked.

I know there are plenty of people who use Paypal for this, but in my opinion, when dealing with buyers you don’t know, especially on higher value sales, it’s better to use an intermediary like Escrow.com. By having a button on your landing page, you can probably eliminate negotiations, don’t have to pay an aftermarket commission for a sale, and you can lock in deals with a counter party that is registered at Escrow.com.

To create buy it now buttons, you will need to register as a partner at ecart.escrow.com. This will create a partner ID for you and enable you to create what the company calls Express Cart Buttons. The buttons were designed for General Merchandise but work fine as long as you change the GM to DN, as you can see in the example below.

There is some pre qualifying required in order to use the buttons. Contact the Escrow.com sales department to get access to them.

Coming Soon: FreshDrop 3.0

Elliot Silver
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8

I use a number of tools to do due diligence on domain purchases, find good domain names, monitor domain names, and locate buyers for my domain names. By far, the best tool I use to find good expiring/deleting domain names is Fresh Drop.

I logged in to FreshDrop this morning to search for and analyze today’s inventory, when I saw a notice that got me amped: “Coming Soon: FreshDrop 3.0  2 Years in the making.” Although the site does just about everything I could ask for, it’s always exciting when new features are added.

Some of the features and upgrades I’d like to see include:

  • Speedier data analysis
  • Ability to add my own names to analyze
  • Field to see if it’s a NameJet private auction
  • Estibot valuation field
  • Field showing the number of current bidders

I am looking forward to learning about the new features, and I will be happy to share them once I hear about them. If you aren’t using FreshDrop yet, I strongly recommend checking it out. I’ve literally earned tens of thousands of dollars (if not more) from the sale of domain names I’ve found using the tool.

For those who don’t know about FreshDrop, I embedded the video above.

Poll: Favorite Type of Keyword Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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15

Over the years, I’ve learned there are many, many ways to make money from domain investments.

As you can probably tell simply by seeing the names I’ve sold and what I own, I personally prefer to purchase descriptive keyword domain names like DogWalker.com, Torah.com, and EventManagement.com among others. These are exact match terms for keyword searches like professions, business fields, objects…etc.

Each week in the aftermarket sales reports, I see dozens of other domain names sell for decent figures, and I can only assume most were hand registered by the seller at some point. There always seem to be sales of  brandable keyword domain names like ClearBell.com and made up terms like Vipee.com (both names sold last week via Afternic).

People can make a nice living selling brandable keyword domain names and made up terms, in addition to exact match keyword domain names. Of course, there are plenty of others, like ccTLD, gTLD, and IDN among others, but for the sake of this, let’s keep it .com.

I am curious what types of domain names you prefer for your investments. Please vote in the poll below, and feel free to discuss.

Thanks to WeBuyThe.com

Elliot Silver
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2

A couple weeks ago, I held an “auction” for the skyscraper banner on my blog, with the proceeds going to the Ronald McDonald House, a non-profit organization that helps children of all ages with cancer and their families.

The winning bidder was a company called WeBuyThe.com. If you aren’t familiar with the company, they acquire domain names. You can visit WeBuyThe.com  and submit domain names that you’d like to sell (along with other important information), and they will get back to you about whether or not they would be interested in buying them from you.

The skyscraper banner raised $500 for the Ronald McDonald House, and the donation will help eclipse the $5,000 mark for the year. I am still optimistic about raising $10,000 this year. Someone recently suggested I add a Paypal donation button to my blog so people can “thank” me for helping via my blog. It would mean much more to me if you can give to the Ronald McDonald House.

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