Yext Tags to Rebrand on an $1,800 Domain Name Purchased from BuyDomains

Elliot Silver
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YextI learned a couple of things when reading TechCrunch yesterday. First, there’s a company called Yext that helps small businesses add and enhance (tag) listings across a wide variety of popular websites like Yelp, Yahoo, CitySearch, YellowBook, and several others. It’s a pretty cool service that I didn’t know existed.

In the same article, I learned that the company is rebranding its Yext Tags product name tomorrow, and it will be called PowerListings.  The PowerListings.com domain name rang a bell, and I did a bit of research, where I confirmed that BuyDomains recently sold PowerListings.com for $1,800. It was included in the April 5th Afternic sales report.

This is one of those times where you wonder if having a listing price may have hurt the company. Had the domain name been unpriced, perhaps it could have resulted in a higher price, assuming Yext had settled on the branding. The other side of the argument is that the company may have had a list of domain names available at a certain price level, and this was the best of the bunch. Who knows.

Anyway, if you have a local website, you should certainly check out Yext Tags / PowerListings when you have a chance. It can be a powerful marketing tool.

Some Recent Acquisitions

Elliot Silver
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This seemed to be a pretty popular type of article last time I posted it, so here goes again. Below are some of my recent acquisitions (private purchases and auction wins) and hand registrations. Feel free to share yours as well if you’d like.

  • StuttgartHotels.com
  • BoracayHotels.com
  • BikeTours.com
  • IndiaOutsourcing.com
  • CollegeBaseballNews.com
  • HumorForum.com
  • Sweet16BirthdayParty.com
  • InternationalCustodyAttorneys.com
  • DinnerSuggestion.com
  • GoToMonaco.com
  • ElementarySchoolTutors.com
  • InpatientRehabs.com

I also bought a name I would normally be hesitant to purchase: PaulTsongasArena.com. The concert/sports arena in Lowell, Massachusetts was named after Senator Paul Tsongas. Last year, UMass Lowell purchased the arena and renamed it Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell. The previously used domain name, PaulTsongasArena.com, was not renewed and went to auction last week.

Prior to this auction, I contacted the director of the Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell as well as the University’s director of communications, advised them of the dropping domain name and strongly suggested they renew it. They weren’t  interested  and I let them know I was going to try and win it at auction. It cost me a few hundred dollars, but I am going to redirect it to my Tsongas Center page on Lowell.com. At least it wasn’t bought by someone else who would park it.

Get The Long Tail Names for Your Website

Elliot Silver
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I know there are a lot of domain investors who have developed one or more websites, and many have seen success in terms of traffic and advertisers for one or more website. I want to make a suggestion to those of you who may have local directory sites for national services or products, and I will use DogWalker.com as my example.

If possible, you should consider hand registering long tail domain names to help drive traffic to your site. You can either build mini sites (which I do not do) to drive traffic to the main site, or you can do a 301 redirect, which won’t give you much SEO value, but they could drive traffic to your site.

I own domain names like PhiladelphiaDogWalking.com, LasVegasDogWalker.com, CharlotteDogWalkers.com, and many other large city names that are related (all hand registered). These names are all forwarded to the main page on DogWalker.com for each city, allowing type in traffic to find the page they want.

Here’s my rationale. I pay under $10 for a hand registered domain name. I also pay Adwords somewhere between $.75 and $1.75 or so per click, depending on the keyword. Assuming I get 8-12 visits a year, the names pay for themselves. It’s great because when someone types in LasVegasDogWalker.com, it’s very targeted traffic.

In addition, these names also have intrinsic value to others as well, since they’re descriptive domain names. In other words, I could sell any of these names if that will be beneficial to my business. Perhaps I could sell a name like BrooklynDogWalking.com to a company in Brooklyn for $1,500 and an annual listing on DogWalker.com + a link back. I haven’t done this yet, but it’s a possibility.

To be totally truthful, I don’t have a way to track the traffic from these domain names since they are 301 redirects. However, when I had them on WhyPark, most did receive a few visits a month, so I can assume that traffic has continued.

I recommend you look into doing this. I know some of my competitors are doing the exact same thing, and I am sure yours are as well.

My Current Strategy With Hand Registrations

Elliot Silver
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I am feeling a bit more bearish about the short term domain aftermarket than I have in a while, so I’ve found myself hand registering domain names more frequently than in the past. Aside from privately acquiring domain names like BikeTours.com, TaxConsult.com, MonthlyPaymentCalculator.com, and HumorForum.com in the last month, my  acquisitions  and inquiries have been fewer than in prior months.

Instead of spending significant amounts of money on domain names with plans of quickly flipping them, I’ve been focusing on hand registering domain names I think are pretty decent, and I’ve changed up my strategy on what I do with hand registered domain names once I buy them.

I am not aggressively looking to re-sell these domain names, but I am doing something passively that I haven’t done before: I am immediately listing them for sale at Sedo. I am not simply parking them with a message that says the name may be for sale. I am actively putting them on the market right from the get go.

I will likely begin listing these names on Afternic as well, since they have a pretty broad footprint with BuyDomains. The downside from my perspective is that the BuyDomains brokers generally prefer names that are priced, and I don’t want to go through the trouble of doing that yet.

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Please help me raise funds for the  Ronald McDonald House

Simple Search to Save Time on Acquisitions

Elliot Silver
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I want to share an easy Google search I do that saves me time when I am looking to acquire domain names. I visit Google, type in the domain name in quotes and also type in the word domain name, also in quotes.

This simple but effective search allows me to find any article mentioning the domain name along with the term “domain name.” If the name has ever been put up for sale or previously sold, the search query will likely find the article in which the sale was mentioned.

I find this search helpful because it allows me to quickly see sales, sale listings, auctions, postings, or other articles where the domain name was mentioned, without having to look at a variety of websites.

For instance, I was going to inquire about a domain name this morning that I think is probably worth about $15,000. The owner has it listed on his site for “offers of $100k and higher,” and he considers it his premier domain name.  Now, if I think the name is worth $15,000, I am obviously not going to want to pay full market value for it, and I certainly won’t pay close to 6 figures.

Similarly, in the past, I’ve been after domain names that have recently sold at auction, and that’s a great piece of information to have when negotiating. If you know the owner’s purchase price, it’s an added bit of insight that can be helpful to you.

By finding out this information before I inquire, I am saving myself some time and potentially avoiding a contentious negotiation. A 2 minute search can save you lots of time and energy.

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Please help me raise funds for the  Ronald McDonald House

The Worst Domain Name Is…

Elliot Silver
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There were quite a few bad domain names submitted in the Crappiest Domain Name contest I held on my blog. I selected the 5 worst names (in my opinion), and you guys voted for the loser… ahem… the winner.

Well over 200 votes were submitted, and the winning domain name was selected by a narrow 3 votes. The domain name that received the most votes for crappiest domain name was Free-Dialup-ISP-Internet-Access-Provider.com.

I don’t disagree with the results. Not only does the domain name have 5 hyphens (I don’t even like domain names with a single hyphen), but there don’t appear to be any monthly searches for the term according to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Put simply, someone could build the #1 ranking domain name for this term and not receive a single visit (family and friends aside).

It can be tough to get started in the domain business, and everyone probably owns domain names they aren’t proud to own. Domain investors should use these bad buys as a learning experience.

As for what my plan is for this domain name.  I plan to let this name expire as soon as possible, with the hopes that somebody else doesn’t make this same mistake!

Here are the results of the votiing:

#2: TripDGogglesGlasses.com
#3: Balck-Porn.com
#4: Talebanistan.com
#5: LennyDudes.com

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Please help me raise funds for the  Ronald McDonald House

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