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Recent Acquisitions & Registrations

Elliot Silver
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81

I haven’t done this in a while, so I thought I would share a few domain names I recently acquired (that I still own) and several that I recently hand registered. I am always buying great domain names at solid prices because my business model requires me to keep buying and selling.

If you’d like, you are welcome to post your aftermarket purchases (auctions or private acquisitions) and hand registrations in the comment section below.

  • Haggadahs.com – Jewish prayerbook for Passover (acquisition)
  • ConferencePlanners.com (acquisition)
  • HealthLoan.com (acquisition)
  • ChestnutHillRealEstate.com  (acquisition)
  • PortugueseWaterDogBreeder.com (hand registered)
  • NorwichTerrierBreeder.com (hand registered)
  • IsraelHoneymoon.com (hand registered)
  • IsraelHoneymoons.com (hand registered)
  • DominicanRepublicHoneymoon.com (hand registered)
  • PreciousMetalsAssayer.com (hand registered)
  • TwoHandTouchFootball.com (hand registered)
  • CasinoFundraisers.com  (hand registered)

As always, if you have stellar domain names you are looking to sell for a good price, let me know. I need to buy some more great domain names.

It’s President’s Day here in the US, and I am going to be somewhere I won’t be able to get good reception, so comments may not be approved as quickly as usual.

Tip to Make a Fair Purchase Offer

Elliot Silver
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9

As a domain investor who flips domain names for a living, I think that making a reasonable offer for an acquisition target is one of the most challenging things I do. If my offer is too low, I likely won’t receive a reply from the owner. If the offer is too high, I won’t make a profit when I try to re-sell the domain name.

Making a fair and reasonable opening offer is the best way to close a deal. For me (and from my perspective), knowing what is a fair offer and what is a lowball offer is mostly gut feel, but it’s also knowing what the market is and has been for similar domain names.

One thing I recommend doing before making an offer on a domain name, especially if you are talking high 4, 5, or 6 figures, is doing some market research on that domain name and other, similar domain names. I recommend checking out NameBio.com or DNSalesPrice.com to see if they have sales in their database you can either use to determine a fair offer or even justify your offer when you receive a response. I recommend checking for the actual name, synonyms, and variations of the name – like -ing, -ed, -es…etc.

Both NameBio.com and DNSalesPrice.com have sales archives for domain names you might not have heard about selling. For instance, you might not see a full sales report on domain sales under $1,000, but they might have been archived on one of those websites. It’s also a great way to learn about other names that sold, and perhaps if you see a name that sold for a great price, you can target that name as an acquisition in the future.

I recommend doing your market research before making an offer because that will help guide you on making a fair offer. Should the domain owner tell you that your offer is way off, you can reply with a link to a sales report justifying your offer amount and telling the owner that you think it’s fair when compared to a recent sale.

TossPillows.com – A Buying Opportunity?

Elliot Silver
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33

I spent the morning at the New York International Gift Fair piers, and one of the things I noticed was that there were a lot of companies selling toss pillows. There were all sorts of fabrics, colors, sizes, and designs – literally thousands of toss pillows.

As I usually do when I come home from a show like this, I did some Whois searches to find domain names that might be of interest based on what I saw at the show (it’s one reason I bought NightLights.com a couple months ago). I saw that TossPillows.com is owned by domain investor Garry Chernoff, and the name is listed for sale at Sedo with a buy it now price of $2,500. I think this is a reasonable price, although I am not planning on buying it. The exact match search volume for “toss pillows” is 1,900.

From my perspective, this is a great domain name, although there are a couple of downsides. First, there are hundreds of manufacturers of pillows and thousands of designs. As a result, it might be tough to sell these pillows online since there’s such an assortment. Second, toss pillows are also called “throw pillows” so there might be a bit of confusion. That said, for $2,500, it might be a good investment.

Disclosure: Although Sedo is an advertiser, they did NOT ask me to post this (nor did Garry) and I did NOT use an affiliate or tracking link. I wanted to post this disclosure because I am sure someone will make an incorrect assumption about my intent with this post.

Registrars Increasing Prices More Than the Verisign Price Increase

Elliot Silver
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23

One of my biggest pet peeves is being nickeled and dimed. It’s usually not that I can’t afford to pay a tiny bit more for something, but it’s annoying to pay more than I should be paying.

Yesterday at midnight, Verisign increased .com and .net domain prices by 7%. The wholesale cost for .com domain names increased from $7.34 to $7.85. Obviously domain registrars are going to pass this price increase along to customers, but one would assume they’ve already got the profit margin they want, so the price we pay should correspondingly increase by 7%.

At least that is what I thought would happen.

It seems that some domain registrars are increasing prices by more than the 7% increase that was passed on to them. One registrar I use increased my prices by 12.5% and another by about 10%. I would imagine other companies are doing the same to their customers.

Perhaps this is standard across the board, but it’s annoying. My portfolio only has about 500 domain names at any given time, so an increase isn’t going to cause me any issues, but it’s an annoyance, and I am sure there are people who will be impacted by this.

It doesn’t sit right for me that domain registrars are using the Verisign price increase as a way to pad their margins. Have you noticed the same thing?

First Acquisition of 2012…

Elliot Silver
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25

The year is very young, but I made my first domain acquisition of the year. I purchased LittleBighorn.com on a NameJet auction yesterday afternoon. The domain name has a registration date of 1999.

Little Bighorn is a historical landmark in the United States, and the National Parks Service has a monument there (Montana). You can read more about the Battle of Little Bighorn on Wikipedia or you can visit the NPS website to learn more. IMO, LittleBighorn.com will make a great historical website, although it’s more likely that I will sell it rather than develop it.

Now that I’ve shared my first acquisition, how about sharing yours?

Final Acquisition of 2011…

Elliot Silver
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19

As the final hours of 2011 were ticking away, I was busy finalizing a deal I had been working on for around 6 months. I was able to acquire the domain name, Sayings.com, just as the year concluded. In fact, Escrow.com cleared my payment 15 minutes later than the company said it was closing (I appreciate that).

I really like Sayings.com. It has a pretty large exact match search volume (135,000) and the broad match is huge (over 9 million monthly searches). I think this would make a great venue for people to post famous and popular sayings, which can be enhanced by comments and historical information about the sayings.

I don’t plan on developing the domain name, but I do plan on seeking out a buyer sometime soon. That said, it’s one of those types of domain names that can be pretty easily built and visitors can help add the content.

What was your final purchase in 2011?

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