Second Hong Kong Geodomain For Sale

Elliot Silver
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8

Kwun Tong Hong Kong

Last week, I completed the sale of WanChai.com, a Hong Kong geodomain name, and I am now looking to sell KwunTong.com. Kwun Tong is a highly populated urban area in Hong Kong, which has seen remarkable growth over the last several years. Although the population of the Kwun Tong district is much higher than that of Wan Chai, my asking price for KwunTong.com is $15,000 USD, and the domain name is registered at Moniker. Email me if you are interested in buying the name, or post something in the comment section.

Kwun Tong is more of a residential area of Hong Kong, and there are all types of homes, apartments, and condominiums in the area. In addition, there are many services and industrial facilities in Kwun Tong. Kwun Tong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with a population of 564,700 people.

One of the most well known areas of Kwun Tong is Yue Man Square, which is home to a variety of shops and stores. According to the KwunTong.org website, Yue Man Square in Kwun Tong is home to “shops selling jewellery, trendy clothing, CDs, mobile phones, electrical appliances , etc.”

Here are a few links to websites with information about Kwun Tong, Hong Kong:

Many of the common domain extensions with KwunTong are taken, and related IDN names are taken as well. I think owning the .com makes sense in this case since many foreigners who do business in the area will look for hotels, restaurants, and things to do, and the .com makes sense, especially for English speakers.

Photo Sources:

#1 Wikipedia

#2 http://www.flickr.com/photos/chan_miri/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Make $50,000 With One End User Sale Per Week on Newly Registered Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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55

Don’t worry… despite the title of this post, I am not going to try and sell you some magical e-book on how you can make $50,000 a year in extra income. I am going to tell you about something I am trying on my own, and I will update the post in a few weeks to let you know how it is going.

I blogged about an end user sale that I made a couple of weeks ago. The domain name wasn’t newly registered, but I did pick it up on the drop for a few hundred dollars and sold it for much more. In the comment section, I also wrote about another end user sale that I made last week with a newly registered domain name following the same strategy as the sale outlined in the post.

On Friday April 2, I hand registered ExecutiveHeadshots.com, and on the following Monday, I sent off about 20+/- emails to companies listed in Google for that keyword. I received 4 replies with interest seeking the pricing, and I came to a sales agreement with a buyer after negotiating for a couple of days.

The name is currently in escrow with Escrow.com, and unfortunately the buyer chose to mail a check to Escrow.com rather than pay via Paypal, so the sale won’t close for a week or two while the check clears. However, I turned an $8.00 registration into a very strong sale (although I won’t reveal the price as mentioned before).

With two successful end user sales in a month, I started thinking about ways to blow this out and make some real money. If I am able to register one GOOD domain name that a company would want either to re-brand or to help with SEO each week for a year, and I sold it within a week for $1,000 +/-, I could make $50,000 in extra income a year.

It’s probably not going to be as easy as it sounds, but I am going to give it a try. I registered a domain name on Friday and started pitching it to end users today, with one reply already. Once I have some results, I will post them, but I wanted to let you know what I plan to do ahead of time.

One piece of advice I can offer now is that actual product (not brands) or service domain names will be much better than descriptive domain names in most cases. For example, AwesomeHeadshots.com would not be a good alternative to ExecutiveHeadshots.com, as many photographers use “Executive Headshots” in their meta description and page titles since they cater to people looking for executive headshots, despite the fact that they may want awesome headshots 🙂

Hong Kong Geodomain Name For Sale

Elliot Silver
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8

Wan Chai is a highly populated and popular area in Hong Kong, and I am looking to sell the domain name WanChai.com, which has a registration date of May 1998. My asking price in WanChai.com is $15,000, and the domain name is registered at Moniker. Email me if you are interested in buying the name, or post something in the comment section.

Not only is Wan Chai one of the busiest commercial areas in Hong Kong, with many companies operating there, but it is also home to many hotels, restaurants, and bars. The Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre makes its home in Wan Chai, and there are a number of skyscrapers and office towers in Wan Chai. In addition, the district had a population of 167,146 in 2001.

According to Hotels.com, there are 30 hotels within a one mile radius of Wan Chai, including five 5-star hotels and eleven 4-star hotels. (The default Hotels.com link shows 121 hotels within 25 miles, but you can see the 30 hotels if you toggle to a 1 mile radius).   There are a number of tourist attractions, landmarks, and cultural activities in Wan Chai, Hong Kong. In addition, there is also great shopping in Wan Chai as well as dining.

Here are a few links to websites with information about Wan Chai, Hong Kong:

Most of the common domain extensions with WanChai are taken, and related IDN names are taken as well. I think owning the .com makes sense in this case since many foreigners who do business in the area will look for hotels, restaurants, and things to do, and the .com makes sense, especially for English speakers.

Quick Tip to Buying Good, Saleable Domain Names in the Aftermarket

Elliot Silver
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8

One thing I look for when buying a domain name is to see how many companies use that exact term as a part of their domain name. If companies are using more specific domain names for their websites, the generic term will usually be highly valuable to at least one company that wants to be THE exact match .com. With this exact match name, you can usually command top dollar.

For example, there are a lot of law firms that use the term “DefenseLawyer.com” in their domain name. You have everything from descriptive names like CriminalDefenseLawyer.com to geographical like NewYorkDefenseLawyer.com and everything else in between. Owning the primary generic term would presumably be of interest to many of those companies. This is generally the case with most exact match .com domain names.

By doing a Google search for the exact match .com name, you will see all of those developed websites that use that term in their domain name. There is your first round list of end user prospects when you look to sell the domain name. You can also search for that exact term without the domain name, such as “defense lawyer” in my example, and then you can see what I did to sell one of my domain names to an end user company.

Obviously the term needs to be generic, so something like VolvoDealer.com wouldn’t pass that test, even though there are a number of dealerships that use the term “VolvoDealer.com” in their domain names.

Successful End User Sale From Start to Finish

Elliot Silver
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112

I want to share information about a successful end user sale I made with a domain name I recently acquired on Snapnames. Out of respect for the buyer, I am keeping the name and price private, but that’s not really important for the sake of this article.

I was looking through Snapnames a couple of weeks ago, and I saw a niche category defining domain name with one bidder. The name is one aspect of a large industry, but there are companies that specialize in this area. The GAKT numbers are decent, and there are a lot of companies that use this term in their domain names (CityXxxxxxXxxxxx.com for example).

As the auction progressed into its final minutes, it shot up from under $100 to several hundred dollars, but I was the winning bidder. I know the domain investment company I was bidding against, so I knew that I wasn’t battling an end user who would have more knowledge about the actual industry value than I could have.

As usual, I offered the domain name for sale to some of my clients, but there wasn’t interest. I was concerned that I possibly over paid for the 10 year old domain name, but I thought a company that specializes in this would be willing to pay above what a domain investor could justify. I did some Google research using the term (in quotes to ensure this exact term was being used), and I sent prospects the following email:

Good afternoon,

I noticed that your company is listed (used the word “advertising” to companies that are paying for Adwords) on Google for the key phrase “xxxxxxx xxxxx,” and my company is selling the exact match domain name “XxxxxxxXxxxx.com. The domain name was created back in January of 2000, and developing it could provide a SEO boost.

If you are interested in acquiring XxxxxxxXxxxx.com, please let me know. I am offering it to several xyz companies in the next few days.”

Regards,
Elliot

– –
Elliot J. Silver
Top Notch Domains, LLC

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I sent a total of 24 emails to prospective buyers using the contact forms or email addresses available on their websites. In total, I received 7 replies, all of which were from people that were interested. A few people said they’d love to buy the name but times were tough. A couple suggested I hold the name for another year or so to increase the value because that particular business is just now seeing a recovery.

I received two offers – one for under $1,000 and the other in the thousands of dollars range from a NYSE publicly traded company that happens to be the leader in the industry. Although I attempted to negotiate, they stuck to their initial best offer, and I agreed to sell them the domain name. We used Escrow.com for the transaction, and the transfer/sale was finalized this week.

I believe I sold the name for much more that it would have sold to another domain investor. I know there are people doing this type of thing every day, and I want to share my approach from start to finish.

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Please help me raise funds for the Ronald McDonald House

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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