Voting for the best list in the hand registration contest was held last week, and over 260 votes were cast. Thank you all for voting for the winner, and a special thank you to the 6 other participants for being willing to publicize their lists and subject themselves to scrutiny (and positive feedback).
The voting was pretty close for the top 2 lists. In fact, the winning list only won by a margin of 7 votes. The winning list was list #3 with a total of 76 votes. Surprisingly, the owner of list #3 was me. To be fair to the other participants, I am not going to identify who owns each list, but they are welcome to comment here.
I don’t do much in the way of hand registrations. It takes a fair amount of effort to find good domain names that will have secondary market value. I focused on finding a few keyword names I thought could sell for low $x,xxx to the right buyer, and I think there are a couple on there with that potential. In fact, a few years ago, I separately sold 2 -Doctor.com names for around $5,000/each. I don’t think these names are in that range, but I could see a $1k-2k sale.
Aside from my own list of names (I am partial to mine of course), I thought lists #2 and #7 had the most end user value. I wasn’t surprised to see that Frank Schilling thought that list #2 was the most valuable, and I would not be surprised to hear about a nice sale from that list or list #7.
Again, thank you all for participating in this fun contest! It’s neat that my list was chosen as the winning list, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the sale prices for these domain names.
Fun contest, hope you repeat it. Congratulations
to the winner!
I picked # 3 and guessed that they were your names. Congratulations on winning the poll. It will be interesting to see what they sell for.
Congrats Elliot! and thank you for putting together the contest.
It would be interesting to know if and when some of these hand registered names sell and how much they sell for.
Ummmm, Ummm, ummmm I own ummm Portfolio ummm, ummmm, 4……I am the only one to get enough votes to show on one hand! I am not bragging, just stating the facts……. It is safe to say that my triple “double down” strategy was a horrific and fatal mistake in this contest. I generally don’t vote for myself but I felt I could use it after the comments started rolling in.(Thank you for the other two votes)….I will chalk this up as a learning experience and improve. Congrats to the winner and all the other contestants……….. Meanwhile, if there is a Lawyer interested in “Crowdsourcing”, please contact me for some great domain deals….lol……..Thanks Elliot for the fun!….
I picked #3 too. Now that you have won, can you share with us the process of how you picked the names for hand registration?
Leandomainsearch.com
Use it.
I have tried leandomainsearch.com many times and I have found it to be a big waste of time. I find a name I like and try to register it but it comes back as unavailable. Sucks!!! It has happened so many times I can’t even count.
I used NameTumbler.com for the geodomains and just some Adwords Keyword Planner for a few of the others.
Peanutrition.com is a mashup of Peanut and Nutrition rather than PeaNutrition.
You should also try NameStall as unlike NameTumbler you don’t have to copy & paste your domain list to a bulk domain name checker. NameStall does all the domain name availability checking for you and shows you what’s available or not. (I’ve a short NameStall tutorial on my site which shows how powerful it can be.)
I have to ask. That was the real Frank Schilling?
I assume so.
I loved it! it was fun.
If you are not giving out names on who had what,maybe you can tell us was 2nd and 3rd list ?
Let’s do it again in the near future
I knew list #3 was yours when I saw those doctor names. There are definitely a few thousand dollar names on these lists and also many not even worth reg fee in my opinion. Fun competition that I will definitely participate in next time if we can figure out a way not to put them under privacy but still compete. I do think that this was a friendly competition and if you’re in a competition the names of those involved should be revealed with their corresponding list. Every reader wants to know this information.
Here is my order from first to last place.
1. list 3
2. list 2
3. list 7
4. list 5
5. list 6
6. list 1
7. list 4
#7 was my first choice.
@ Elliot said
in answer to Michael’s question
You didn’t reveal who the second two were; you didn’t even state which lists were #2 and #3! That screenshot is a thumbnail that is not legible.
Would you post a better screenshot? Thanx.
It was work to read through the lists, and vote. I’d like to know the results, except that #3 won, which was your list.
From your article, above, you said the top two differed by seven votes, but you didn’t state which list came in #2!
If you list them from top to bottom, that would suffice.
It’s not like you.
You revealed yourself as the winner, but didn’t give due credit to the other lists or respect your voters and your readers, by posting a list of results in order.
If you think that thumbnail is legible, you’ve been imbibing in too much wine.
I did share the result, but unfortunately, you had trouble reading them.
Here is a larger image: https://www.domaininvesting.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Screen-Shot-2014-01-14-at-7.42.38-AM.png
I didn’t notice this before either. I got the order of the whole list correct except I inverted fifth and sixth place. Now all we need is for you to tell us what person corresponds with which list. Not sure what is so secretive about that info but looking forward to you posting it soon Elliot.
There isn’t anything secretive, but I never asked participants if I could share their list publicly, and it wouldn’t be right (in my opinion) to share that info. They are certainly welcome to share their lists if they’d like.
“I am going to reveal the top 3. I’ll post a screenshot of the PollDaddy results as well. I will let the other participants decide whether or not to share their names.”
your words not mine.
Okay, thanx. 🙂
Here’s my hand-reg list for the next round.
bar.com, pub.com, cafes.com, place.com, corp.com, shelter.com, grill.com
whatcha think? 😉
I’ll trade ya 🙂
#7 had the most end user value was probably the reason I voted for it too. Overall well done to all who participated, a lot of theses names a quite good. In spite of the belief that some domainers have there does seem to be quality names left to hand reg in this day and age after all! 🙂
I voted for list #3, mostly for those healt related domains!
My list was #7. Thanks to those who voted for me.
I wrote an article with my chronicle in the contest.
My adventures in “Domain Name Hand Registration” circa 2014:
http://onlinedomain.com/2014/01/14/news/my-adventures-in-domain-name-hand-registration-circa-2014/
Lately I hand registered, Transplant3D.com, and researched the latest news coming out of bio tech and regenerative medicine, so your list caught my eye right away! I voted for it, needless to say.
Louise I read similar articles myself but also have some bad experiences with the matter…
What do you mean? You said, you already had inquiries into the winning domains.
Konstantinos Zournas
I was late to the party, but I would have gone with yours. Would love to know your methods as well, if you’re into sharing.
Thanks Lorsyr.
Check the link above for a lot of sharing…
i saw lot of people talk about domain naming tools. but personally i love NameStall. that is the best domain tool i have ever seen. that site has lot of naming tools but i love their domain brainstorming tool. just give it a try http://www.namestall.com/domain-name-brainstorm i am sure you will love it.
With NameStall, though, there does’t seem to be a way to ensure the keyword comes first. NameTumbler is similar, but it has options with KW placement.
http://www.nametumbler.com/index.cfm?combo=dream&typeid=12&type=pre&hyphen=no&extension=com
OOps, I just checked my own link to NameStall and yes it does. The link that came up in Shyan’s post didn’t show those options. Weird.