Home Blog Page 1246

End of Year Recommendations

Elliot Silver
-
4

It’s getting close to the end of the year, and although things appear to be quiet, I think there are a lot of people focused on internal things right now, like closing out their books.

With the year coming to an end, here are a few things you might want to do with regards to your domain business. As always, consult with an accountant and/or attorney for tax and legal matters, since I have no experience in either category.

  • Go through financial records now rather than April to make sure you’ve accounted for everything
  • Take a look at your domain holdings and ensure auto-renew is enabled on the names you want to keep, and disable it on the names you want to drop
  • Be sure all of your parked domain names are resolving and showing relevant ads.
  • Compare revenue, CTR, and RPC across parked domain names and websites with Adsense.
  • Optimize your domain names and websites that need it
  • Ensure that all of your websites are resolving and don’t have error messages on them
  • Upgrade your WordPress websites if needed
  • Back up your websites
  • Back you up your data and financial records
  • Determine if you need new business supplies, computers, or office equipment, and order them before the year ends to expense them in 2010.
  • Book 2011 travel and hotels in advance to expense what you can.
  • Seek out the people who made offers to you this past year to see if you can close any last minute deals. Some people need to deplete budgets and buying domain names could be beneficial.
  • Reach out to domain owners who may not have been willing to sell domain names in the past. Maybe something has changed.
  • Renew domain names you plan to keep for as many years as is feasible.
  • Make sure your credit cards on file are still valid and didn’t expire yet.
  • Pay your trusted designer/programmer in advance for upcoming projects.
  • Reach out to advertisers and get commitments for the next year.
  • Thank the people who have advertised this year whether they plan to continue or not.

Was Income.com Sold by Sedo Today?

Elliot Silver
-
7

SedoA few weeks ago, I learned that Income.com, a domain name owned by Internet entrepreneur and marketing guru John Reese, had been put up for sale and was being marketed by Sedo domain broker, Dave Evanson. According to a post on the Wicked Fire forum, Reese sent an email stating that Sedo “listed it at  $1MM but think they can sell it for more.”

I have been monitoring the Whois for this domain name, and I just noticed a change in the registration this evening. Sedo is now shown as the domain registrant, which generally happens only after a sale has been consummated.

I can’t confirm that the domain name has in fact been sold, but it does appear that way to me. I have reached out to Evanson for more information, and I will post an update as soon as I hear back.

If Evanson did help sell the domain name, this would be his second huge sale in Q4, as he was the broker on the $750,000 Ringtones.com sale earlier this month.

Income.com Whois 12/20:

Income.com Whois 12/21:

Favorite Domain Story of 2010: Turning $10 into $1,200 into $151,000

Elliot Silver
-
8

It’s just about every domain investor’s dream to turn a relatively inexpensive purchase into a hugely massive profit, but the chances of that happening are very slim. This story played out earlier in the year, and it’s my pick for the story of the year in the domain business.

Earlier this year, ChatRoulette.com was one of the most popular new websites online. People could visit the site and video chat with others throughout the world. Millions of people visited the site, and the only thing that really slowed the growth was that many users apparently thought it was appropriate to turn their video feed into a softcore porno.

In December of 2009, a domain investor hand registered the domain name CamRoulette.com. Shortly thereafter, he sold the domain name in private to Adam Strong for a reported $1,200, reaping a huge profit margin on this hand registration.

The madness didn’t start there.

In March of 2010, Adam Strong listed the domain name at DomainConsultant.com’s Domain Madness auction, where it sold for an even more massive $151,000.

To make this an even more amazing story of riches, traffic to ChatRoulette has waned since hitting its peak earlier this year, and it’s likely that if the domain name had not been sold at the time it was sold, it would not have the same value today. It’s the stuff domain investors’ dreams are made of.

Every domain investor dreams of turning a hand registered domain name investment into a huge payoff. In 2010, this happened right in front of our eyes.

This is my favorite domain name story of 2010.

Afternic’s 5% Cash Back Offer Explained

Elliot Silver
-
0

As you’ve already seen, Afternic is now an advertiser on my blog, and someone asked me about the 5% cash back offer currently being promoted by the company.

Since I didn’t have an answer, I referred the question to Afternic, and here’s how the cash back program works when you sell a domain name using Afternic:

1)           List and park your domains with Afternic and use Afternic’s “for sale” link on your parked page

2)           Domains must be listed and parked for at least 14 days before being sold in order to qualify

3)           The domain must be sold through Afternic.

Once it is sold through Afternic, if the above criteria is met, you will receive 5% cashback on the sales fee. You can visit Afternic for more details about the program and to sign up.

Big Coup for .ME Registry with AOL’s About.ME Acquisition

Elliot Silver
-
18

Back in October, I wrote about a new website that offered splash landing pages for personal profiles. About.me offers neat customization options for people to create cool looking landing pages.

About.me was in beta until about a week ago when they went live across the board, and according to reports, there were about 400,000 people who signed up for the beta round. Credit blogs like TechCrunch and sites like Twitter for helping to rapidly spread the word about the startup.

According to a new blog post and video interview on TechCrunch this afternoon, About.me just announced that it was acquired by AOL. That sure was fast. The company apparently signed a letter of intent back in November, but the deal was just announced today. Terms of the deal were not released, but TC guessed that “it’s in the tens of millions of dollars.”

Wow.

This is pretty big news for the .ME domain registry because it puts a .ME domain name in the spotlight. I don’t think I own a .ME domain name, but I would think domain names terms like Love.ME, Find.ME, or Meet.ME would be in higher demand now.  Love.ME and Find.ME are domain names owned by the registry, so perhaps news like this will encourage them to auction some of the premium reserved names more quickly.

I certainly don’t think this announcement means all .ME domain names are worth more, but it does put .ME more on the map. I know of a few other pretty big deals but don’t think they’re public. If a name makes sense as a .ME, then perhaps this sale will increase interest.

How I Find Out Who Is Emailing Me to Buy a Domain Name

Elliot Silver
-
29

Knowing who you are negotiating with is very important when it comes to domain name sales. Although someone would probably be happy to sell a domain name for the price he or she asks, I am sure you would likely be disappointed to learn that a huge company bought it without revealing themselves, even the price you received was the highest they were willing to pay.

In light of yesterday’s article about Facebook buying a domain name apparently in a covert manner, I want to give you a few strategies I use to try and find out who is inquiring about my domain names, assuming it’s not a poor college student working on a thesis or a work at home mom wanting to start a website with no budget.

First thing I do is some research on the name of the person who sent the email. Oftentimes, the buyer uses a fake name, so the signed name doesn’t always help. You can use sites like LinkedIn and Facebook to do your due diligence and see where the person works if they use their real information. You should also review the Whois information for the domain name from which the email is sent if it’s not a public service like GMail, AOL, or Hotmail.

The next thing you can search is the IP address from which the email came. This generally isn’t very helpful because there is limited information available, but you can compare it to other IP ranges on past emails for the same domain name. If you have received emails from different people at the same IP, you can at least know they are connected.

If this fails, you can search other domain registrations, the US Patent and Trademark Office, and general Google searches for the term used in the domain name. This may reveal who would be interested in buying the name so you can narrow it down.

One very good way to find out who is inquiring is to ask for a phone number. Whether you are comfortable negotiating on the phone or not is up to you, but you can research the phone number ownership on a site like WhitePages.com. Additionally, if it’s a small or medium sized business and the owner gives you his or her number, you might get a match when searching Google, and the business filings with phone number is listed.

Finally, the most important thing is to price domain names at what you want to sell them for and don’t go below a number you are comfortable with unless necessary. You should also not back out of a deal you make if you find out the buyer is a big company. Not only does that create a legal liability, but it also is unethical.

1...1,2451,2461,247...1,569Page 1,246 of 1,569