I want to follow-up to a post I wrote a few weeks ago called “Make 1,000% Profit.” In the article, I discussed how people can analyze what names are selling at auction at Snapnames, buy names for registration fee at Moniker, and then sell them on Snapnames. The jist was that you can register a domain name for around $8.00 and sell it for $80 (give or take depending on your starting price), for a 1,000% profit.
Since I posted that article, I went out and attempted to do what I had been doing, with then intention of writing up my results here. I had done what I mentioned a few times, and I wanted to prove that it is still possible, even after I publicly wrote up what I was doing.
In any event, the results aren’t as good as the title of my article, but as you will see, I am clearly still more than happy.
Names Registered: 204
Total Spent: $1,550.40
Names Sold: 91
Net Revenue (minus sales commission): $5,849
Total Profit: $4,298.60
All in all, I earned about 3x my investment in profit, and I have over 110 domain names left to sell. One thing that surprised me is that some of the names I bought actually get traffic and some are earning PPC revenue. I suppose with domain tasting being eliminated there are more opportunities to buy names that get random bits of small traffic, but I was surprised. We aren’t talking about a lot of money, but a little bit is more than nothing and shows that there is a value to these names and the buyer presumably knows this.
All in all, I think the test was successful, and I am very happy to have made over $4,000 in profit on this. I still have several months to go to sell the rest of the domain names, but any additional sales is just gravy.
As I said in my initial post as a caveat, it’s important to be able to distinguish a similar domain name to what is selling, and you need to be able to determine someone’s (or many peoples’) buying habits to be successful at this. If you are going to try and do this, I recommend starting small and scaling.
I am sure some people will criticize me because it’s not 1,000% profit as billed. However, I am not selling anything and not making any money from anything you sell, so there’s really no reason for criticism. The first time I did this, the profit margin was greater because some of the auctions had mutliple bidders, driving the price (and profit) higher.
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Just as a “head’s up” I am leaving for a long weekend in Atlanta later on today, so comment approvals may be a bit slower than normal.
I had a chance to speak with David and Michael Castello last week about our industry, and we spoke at length about current trends, projections and their three year development plan for 
I have sold several Country/Region Vacations.com domain names in the past year and a half, and I am listing AthensVacations.com for $5,500. Athens is one of the most popular tourist locations in the world, and I think this can be built into a great travel portal. If it doesn’t sell this week, I plan to develop it similarly to TobagoVacations.com, which is now earning around $1.50/day with Adsense after just launching a couple of weeks ago. I think AthensVacations.com is a far superior domain name, and it would be great for a smallish website with a WC Travel or IAN hotel affiliate engine on it.