Aftermarket.com Changes Membership Tiers and Upgrades Listing Pages

Elliot Silver
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In performing my daily Whois lookups last week, I came across a couple domain names for sale at Aftermarket.com, and I realized I hadn’t heard much from the company since its last live auction at Domain Roundtable. I reached out to Carron Brown to see how things are going and she gave me a couple of updates I want to share with you.

The company has changed its membership tier features since its inception. They have three levels of membership: Basic, Verified and Premium. You can now make an offer on a domain name with the Basic membership  level, which wasn’t possible before. You do have to upgrade to a Verified account in order to close the transaction, but for the purpose of negotiations, it’s possible to do them at the Basic level.

In case you’re wondering, the cost of Verified and Premium memberships is just $1.00 and is likely just a way to ensure that you are legit and won’t flake out on an offer.

Carron also let me know that “the listing pages have also been revamped and now have a sleeker look and feel.” Listings now include social media buttons (Facebook, Twitter, Share This) on each page, allowing the seller or other person to let others know about a domain name for sale.

“Trend” Domain: AgricultureFund.com

Elliot Silver
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8

I know there are a number of domain investors who like to buy “trend” domain names, and while it may be a smart move, it’s not something I do very often. I read an article in the New York Observer today about how some hedge funds are coping with doomsday scenarios, in the event of high inflation and political uncertainty.

After reading about how several hedge funds and mutual funds have started “agriculture funds,” with investments in farm lands and related assets, it led me to do some domain research on that topic to see if there were any interesting domain names for sale.

I saw that the owner of AgricultureFunds.com is asking $14,500 for the domain name at Go Daddy. I also saw that Buy Domains owns the singular AgricultureFund.com domain name, and the asking price is much more reasonable, at under $1,500.  IMO, it’s a pretty good price for this domain name since it seems that many leading investment firms have started or are thinking about starting an agriculture fund.

If the name is of interest to you, I recommend emailing sonia @ buydomains.com to but it. You can also follow the link on the landing page and buy it that way.  I think it’s a good price, and if I was interested in longer term investments on trending domain names, it would be a name I’d buy.

BTW, there is no affiliate link here and nobody from Buy Domains / NameMedia asked me to post this. I am getting nothing from this post… just want to be clear.

Tip for Buying Valuable Domain Drops

Elliot Silver
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12

I usually spend a couple hours a morning using Freshdrop to see what domain names will be coming up for auction later this evening at NameJet, and what will be up for auction in a month or so (if the names aren’t renewed). There are certain traits I look for in the domain names I monitor to purchase, but I want to share a tip with you that might help you buy some good domain names that can quickly be flipped.

After you’ve set your personal filters based on your preferences, I recommend having a look to see who owns the same domain names in different extensions. You should also use the Whois history tool to see who previously owned the domain name that is dropping.

This information is invaluable to me, and it should be beneficial to you as well.  Let’s say you’re bidding on a legal domain name, and you see a large law firm owns the .net. Assuming the name is a descriptive name rather than a branded name (or name of a lawyer for instance), you may want to target that name to buy at auction, with the hopes of selling it to the owner of another extension.

It’s likely that the owner of the other extension would be interested in upgrading to the .com domain name if you are able to win it at auction. Of course the obvious caveat is that you need to wait until you win said domain name, especially if it’s a lawyer that might think you are attempting to sell an item that does not belong to you. You also need to make sure it is descriptive and not someone’s trademark or service mark.

There may be limitations on how quickly you can transfer or push a domain name depending on the registrar, but it’s a great way to find leads for domain names you might want to purchase.

Hipster Gets $1M in Funding: Should They Buy Hipster.com?

Elliot Silver
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10

UseHipster.com

I was reading Techcrunch last night, and I learned that the cool startup called Hipster received $1,000,000 in funding. There were several companies involved in this round of funding, including Google Ventures, Mitch Kapor, Dave McClure, Charles River Ventures, and others.

Since the company currently uses the domain name UseHipster.com but is known simply as Hipster, I think they should do what they can to buy Hipster.com, a domain name that seems under-utilized at the moment. One thing in Hipster’s favor is that the owner of Hipster.com also appears to own Hipster.net, so perhaps they’d be interested in a nice payday and could revert to Hipster.net.

As you can see from the Compete stats (posted below), it appears that a significant percentage of traffic that appears intended for Hipster ends up on Hipster.com in error. Of course, they aren’t likely to be confused, but why chance losing any traffic when they now have some funding to purchase the name.

January 2011: UseHipster.com – 43,097 Hipster.com – 9,643
February 2011: UseHipster.com – 12,193 Hipster.com – 4,481
March 2011: UseHipster.com – 12,595 Hipster.com – 5,378
April 2011: UseHipster.com – 1,375 Hipster.com – 2,559

My opinion is that Hipster should use some of its funding and purchase Hipster.com. What do you think?

Domain Negotiation Tip: Justifying Your Offer

Elliot Silver
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10

When you are in the midst of negotiating to purchase a domain name on Sedo, one of the prefabricated replies you can select is something like “justify your price.” It’s always made me laugh a bit to see that reply, but when you think about it, justifying your offer or price is a great way to get the price you need.

Oftentimes when I am negotiating with a buyer or seller, the price we both have in mind is different. For times when the price gap is significant, there’s usually little reason to engage in a discussion. Why waste time on a name I want for $2-4,000 and the seller wants $100,000. Either he’s crazy and/or doesn’t need the money, or I am not as enamored with the name as he. Whatever the case, it would likely be a fruitless discussion.

However, there are times when we are just a few thousand dollars away from a mutually agreeable price, and the actual negotiation is critical in getting the price I want/need for the domain name. Discussing why you value a domain name the way you do can lead to you getting your pricing, or at least seeing the flip side to why the name is worth more or less to the other party.

One thing I like to include in my negotiation strategy are favorable comps (using DNSalePrice.com, DN Journal, or NameBio.com). By favorable, I mean that the names have similar results in Google, similar search volume, and are in the same vertical (ie: two real estate domain names).  It helps if you have more than one comparable and they are recent comps.

Another thing I include is information about developing the website. When I am the buyer or the seller, I let the other party know my plans with the domain name and why I think it’s worth what it’s worth. I give them a bit of insight into my development plans and justify why I can’t offer more money or offer to sell it for less money.

I know that some sellers get annoyed when a buyer asks them to justify the price, but I think it’s a good way to discuss a domain name’s value and possibly come to terms.

What types of things do you discuss when you’re trying to buy or sell a domain name to bridge the gap?

WuFoo Bought for $35 Million: Should Now Buy WooFoo.com

Elliot Silver
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8

WuFooThis afternoon on TechCrunch, I read that popular online form website, WuFoo, was acquired for $35 million (cash and stock) by SurveyMonkey. I’ve used WuFoo before, and I like how easy it is to create and implement forms on websites.

One downside of the WuFoo branding is that it can easily be confused with WooFoo.com. According to Compete, WooFoo.com doesn’t get a lot of traffic, but it does get up to a few thousand visits a month, likely misdirected type in traffic. The owner isn’t monetizing this traffic, but does have a for sale notice on the landing page.

Now one might suggest that the owners of WuFoo file a UDRP for WooFoo.com and be done with it, but not so fast on that. WooFoo.com was registered in January of 2005 and WuFoo.com was registered a year later in January of 2006. This quite obviously means that the domain owner did not register the domain name to capitalize on the WuFoo brand since it was non existent, and bad faith registration would be difficult to prove.

I have no idea what the owners of WooFoo.com want for the domain name, but I think the companies should work out some sort of deal. Any buyer of WooFoo.com would very likely know that WuFoo exists, and it would be likely that WuFoo/SurveyMonkey would file a UDRP for the domain name if sold.  Additionaly, the current owner would be  hard pressed  to monetize this domain name without  infringing  on the rights of WuFoo.

Most importantly, WuFoo is losing some traffic to this typo. Of course, some people will then go to Google to find it, where WuFoo will have to compete with other companies either with sponsored ads or with SEO when the visitor searches for something like “online forms.” This is probably not a lot of money, but over time it may be, and it’s something that can be avoided with a relatively inexpensive acquisition.

If SurveyMonkey is willing to spend $35m on WuFoo, the company should reach out and try to buy WooFoo.com. The owner likely can’t sell it to anyone else, and there likely wouldn’t be a better buyer for it.

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