Saturday Afternoon (Hangover) Updates

Elliot Silver
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18

Good afternoon and happy Saturday! Here are some updates for this fine weekend.

  • I don’t own any .tv domain names, but if you do buy this type of domain name, you might want to check out Latonas.com. There is an auction of top .tv domain names right now, including England.tv, Breasts.tv, Government.tv, and more.
  • Ever notice when you go out and tell people what you do, there will be someone who mentions how they had the chance to buy great generic domain names back in the day but for some reason didn’t?
  • I was at a party last night and met an original domain investor. He was the original registrant of Today.com, Shop.com, Office.com,   Information.com, and a bunch of other names that he sold several years ago. I was a bit leery of his story as a few other people have mentioned similar things to me in the past that turned out to be false, but when he mentioned that he still owns VO.com, Insurance.net, Hospital.net and Broker.net, the info matched up. He doesn’t consider himself a domain investor.
  • You know it’s a late night when you get home well past midnight and you start receiving your typical morning email notices like drop lists, domain transfer status updates, and Asia-based emails before you go to bed.
  • Some of my new domain acquisitions this month include GolfPros.com, HorseSupply.com, HorseStable.com, and NewYorkCityDogRuns.com (hand registered and developed).
  • As I previously mentioned, I have been working with WhyPark to help increase the revenue on TropicalBirds.com. My biggest regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. The site went from making around $1-2/day with Adsense to a projection of over $160 in May (over $5/day). It’s only been up for a 2.5 months or so, but as the site continues to optimize, revenue has been increasing.

ClosingAuctions.com – New Service to Follow Domain Auctions

Elliot Silver
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5

Francois Carrillo, founder of Domaining.com, recently launched ClosingAuctions.com, a website that allows visitors to track domain auctions from several top aftermarket websites, as the auctions are set to close. Visitors to Domaining.com and to the ClosingAuctions.com website can currently follow along with auctions from Sedo, GoDaddy, BargainDomains.com, Afternic, Auctionpus.com, and Latonas.com.

Once Francois is able to integrate Namejet and Snapnames auctions into his platform, I think the service will be even more beneficial to domain investors. According to Francois, he is in the process of working with both companies to onboard them, although it seems like Snapnames will happen more quickly. With thousands of daily pageviews to Domaining.com, it’s a good opportunity for these companies to get added exposure to their closing auctions.

Aside from its top placement on Domaining.com where domain investors can have a glance at upcoming ending auctions, another advantage of ClosingAuctions.com is that it offers information about the keyword(s) and search terms at a glance, including CPC, Estibot valuation, monthly searches, and # of Google results.

One of the most impressive things to me is that Francois has been able to create a large network of inter-related websites in the domain investment space. In addition to the aforementioned websites, Francois’ company also owns Valuate.com, Catchy.com, a popular Domaining.com newsletter.com, and a host of other projects that are in their infancy. When you think about it, I think it’s pretty neat to see what Francois has done in just a couple of years.

TheDomains.com & ElliotsBlog.com Separated by 7 Websites in Alexa

Elliot Silver
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8

I generally don’t pay much attention to Alexa rankings. I write articles of interest based on what I am doing and what I see in the domain industry, and I figure people will visit if they want. I know Alexa tends to be skewed towards Internet and tech focused websites, so as much as some people use it as a means of gauging traffic, I don’t pay much attention to it.

Yesterday evening I checked out the Alexa ranking for my website and was pretty surprised to see it below 25,000. I’ve seen an uptick in traffic, but the last time I checked it was in the 30s. I wanted to check a few other domain blogs that I read to see if they’re also seeing a “better” Alexa ranking, and I was very surprised when I checked the Alexa ranking of Mike Berkens’ Blog.

Out of millions of websites tracked by Alexa, Mike’s blog (23,128) and my blog (23,121) were separated by a grand total of 7 websites. I cross checked the Compete score, and we are separated by around 200 websites. This seems pretty minuscule in the whole scheme of things, and it’s always fun to be in the good company of Mike (and Judi).

Register.com Selects IDN Newsletter as the Exclusive Broker for its IDN Portfolio

Elliot Silver
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5

I just received an email from my friend Aaron Krawitz announcing a newly established relationship between domain registrar Register.com and the IDN domain experts at IDNNewsletter.com. Register.com selected IDN Newsletter to broker its in-house portfolio of IDN domain names. I think this represents a new revenue opportunity for Register.com and it says a lot about the knowledge of the IDN Newsletter team of Aaron and Gary Males.

It’s nice to hear about mutually beneficial partnerships like this, and I wish both companies all the best.   Today’s news release follows:

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As you might expect, Register.com has a vault full of premium names in its in-house portfolio.   The company is one of the oldest and most storied registrars with over 13 years in the domain and web services industry.   Register.com’s vault includes troves of premium IDNs that the registrar maintained until the IDN market began to mature.

Now, Register.com has decided to open the vault and sell a select portion of its IDNs to the general public.   As such, it chose IDNNewsletter.com as the exclusive domain brokerage platform for this sale.   IDNNewsletter is run by Gary Males and Aaron Krawitz, the duo who also founded IDNTools, IDNBlog and IDNDemystified.

Krawitz said “it is an honor to have been given access to Register.com’s IDN vault, and we doubled our efforts, hiring multiple sets of native speakers and consulting with our colleagues as we vetted and priced these names.”   Males added that “IDNNewsletter is serious about catering to our many newsletter subscribers and there are some tremendous bargains that you will be seeing in the coming weeks.”

Among the blockbuster names that will be up for sale are ラブ.com (“Love” in Japanese) and ×›×™×£.com (“Fun” in Hebrew”)

The highly anticipated IDNNewsletter / Register.com launch is planned for the first week of May and will be exclusively going out to IDNNewsletter subscribers.

Latonas Set to Challenge Bido with Daily Domain Auctions

Elliot Silver
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11

Latonas.comI just received Rick Latona’s Daily Newsletter email, which informed subscribers of a change to its format. Instead of listing domain names for sale at fixed buy it now prices, each listed domain name will be for sale in a 24 hour auction on Latonas.com. This is big news, which is sure to drive up interest and participation in upcoming newsletters.

To be eligible to bid, domain buyers must register for an account on Latonas.com. Bid increments will depend on the current price of the auction, but auctions are slated for 24 hours each. Full details can be found on Latonas.com.

Since Sahar launched Bido, he has been discussing the importance of liquidity in the domain space. Similar to Bido, Latonas.com promises to bring liquidity to the marketplace, as buyers will set the price/value of domain names in auction rather than the sellers. It’s a gamble, but as Latona revealed in his newsletter, at least “15,000 domain, internet marketing professionals, and businesspeople” are subscribers.

The quality of domain names is what will set these two competitors apart. With Rick Latona’s ability to offer great in-house domain names as well as pawn-default domain names, he immediately brings a strong product to the market. Likewise, with good names bringing good buyers, it’s likely that others will be willing to take a chance and list their domain names for sale on Latonas.com.

In fact, I am going to be placing several bids today and will probably send a few of my domain names to sell in the coming days.

Some Sales May Not Seem to Make Sense to Me, But They Make Sense to The Buyer

Elliot Silver
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12

I frequently see domain sales reports that don’t make a whole lot of sense to me at face value. The sales prices may seem off the charts compared to names I believe are similar. Does this mean that a sales venue or seller has fraudulently reported it or that there was something else nefarious that caused a sale to happen? In most cases, that is unlikely (especially because Ron does his best to verify sales). It’s more likely that the people analyzing the sales – like myself – just don’t have enough information about the sale in order to form an educated opinion on it.

As I have mentioned in the past, you sometimes need to overpay to get the domain name(s) you want or need for a project. Sellers frequently need to be convinced to sell their domain names, and it can take a significant offer to make it happen. With a proven business model or a strong business plan, these domain acquisitions may make sense to the buyer, although they leave others shaking their heads.

Likewise, a domain name may have certain attributes (like type-in traffic) that results in significant revenue opportunities. When this is the case, a buyer may have a plan to monetize the traffic much better than the seller, and he can therefore pay more for the domain name than others would value it at. A sales price may seem high, but in reality, the price is favorable to the buyer.

Aside from questioning the validity of specific sales, another thing that some people do is transpose their perceived rationale for a domain sale onto the value of their own domain names.   “XYZ.com sold for $100,000, so my domain name, e-XYZ.net must be worth $10,000,” some people exclaim. This is usually not the case since domain names are unique.

While abnormal domain sales take place all the time, uninformed domain investors shouldn’t question the validity of the sales without any type of evidence (other than their own perception), especially in a public forum. Further, domain investors shouldn’t presume their domain names are worth the same amount since all domain names are unique assets.

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