I just updated my picks for “Top Drops” on Snapnames. One name that might be of particular interest to domain owners in the name DomainInvesting.com. Although DomainInvesting.com does not appear to be a standard dropping domain name, it is certainly one that could be used by a domain investor in a variety of ways. It’s in auction through February 3, and the current auction price is just $240.
***UPDATE***
Bidding is now up to $675.
For those of you who are involved in the domain industry as an investor, developer, or other service provider, I again strongly urge you to attend a domain conference. The one complaint I heard and have to a agree with is that there are so many good shows now, it’s difficult and expensive to attend them all. Well, with shows being held across the United States and the world, I suggest you pick at least one close to you and do your best to attend.
Here is a list of some upcoming shows:
Domainer Mardi Gras – February 19-21 in New Orleans, LA
GeoDomain Expo – April 24-25 in San Diego, CA
Traffic – Silicon Valley – April 27-30 in Silicon Valley, CA
Traffic – Amsterdam – June 1-4 in Amsterdam
Domain Roundtable – June 14-17 in Washington, DC
Traffic – New York – October 26-29 in New York, NY
I am still undecided about which shows will attend. As I did last summer, I have several weddings to attend this spring and summer as well in Michigan, Massachusetts, New York and California. I am fairly certain I will attend Traffic NY because it’s practically in my backyard (if Brooklyn was my backyard). I also really want to attend my first Domain Roundtable, especially because it’s on the east coast. Of course I want to visit Amsterdam and I should really attend the GeoDomain Expo. Clearly I am still up in the air and need to figure some of this out!
Here are a couple of money savings tips if you want to attend the show and save some cash:
1) If you book a flight with JetBlue (not sure about other airlines), keep checking on the price of your flight after booking. In the past, 90% of airfare prices increased. These days, they are decreasing as it gets closer to the day of departure. JetBlue will give you credit for the difference between your booking price and the lower price if it goes down. Just keep monitoring the price and call if you see it go lower.
2) Check with your service providers to see if they offer customer discounts. Chances are good that you would have received an offer if they do have discounts, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. I don’t make enough PPC money or have enough domain names in my portfolio to qualify for any company discounts, but perhaps your service providers can hook you up.
3) Share a room with someone you know in the industry. Ask friends on the domain forums and maybe you’ll find someone who will be willing to share a room. Most of the time is spent socializing and you won’t be in your room much anyway. I wouldn’t directly ask someone to share a room though because it could put them in an awkward position if they don’t feel comfortable with it.
4) Stay in a hotel close to the conference but not at the conference. Again, you are going to spend little time in the hotel anyway.
5) Share rides to/from the airport and don’t rent a car. Frequently the valet parking or parking garage at a conference hotel is sky high.
Although they don’t consider themselves domainers, Marchex owns thousands of domain names, and the company is one of the few publicly traded domain-related companies. This morning, Marchex announced that the company is laying off 15 employees, about 4% of its workforce.
They also announced a couple of senior management changes, naming Peter Christothoulou Chief Operating Officer and Matthew Berk Executive Vice President of Product Engineering. In November, Mike Berkens blogged about Marchex and how it’s market cap was just slightly more than the total amount they paid for Yun Yee’s portfolio. While the stock price has increased since Mike’s post, the economy is still taking a toll on the company.
I returned to New York last night after spending a week in California visiting Burbank and attending DomainFest Global. It always seems that each domain conference is better than the previous conference I attended. This can certainly be said about DFG. Aside from the panels (which were good), the networking opportunities were phenomenal – both during conference time set up for networking and during the parties in the evening. Believe it or not, I even had several great discussions at the Playboy Mansion (all involving domains and development… get your mind out of the gutter, friends!)
I don’t typically attend all of the panels, but the few I attended had good information and dialogue. Typically at domain conferences, I maximize my time meeting colleagues, introducing friends, and learning about what others are doing to increase the value of their domain names and generate revenue from them. The atmosphere and layout at DFG was great for individual meetings and discussions involving several people. There were a few times in the exhibition area where people from different backgrounds had great conversations just by happenstance because we were sitting on adjacent couches.
Some people who didn’t attend are going to look at the results of the domain auction and possibly consider it a low point for domain owners. I disagree with this view for a couple of reasons. Even in tough times, close to a million dollars in domain names were purchased. Sellers don’t have the need to drop their prices and give away their names. This shows some strength, as weakness would be indicated by great domain names being listed at very low reserves, as domain owners need to sell ASAP. This just isn’t the case, and owners of good domain names aren’t looking to sell them in a down market.
This was the best domain conference I have attended so far, and it is a tribute to the hard work of everyone at Oversee.net who oversaw a great show. Even in difficult times, amid lowering revenues and layoffs, the team at Oversee pulled through and gave us a great conference.
According to a news release this morning, Travelzoo purchased Fly.com in an all cash, $1,760,000 deal brokered by Sedo. Travelzoo plans to launch a site on Fly.com in February.
I am still away for DomainFest, and two of my friends have written guest posts related to topics in which they are experts. On Monday, Jeff Behrendt of INForum.in, wrote about investing in Indian domains. Yesterday, Richard Douglas discussed social media for domainers. Today, Richard discusses investing in dropping domain names. Richard has a diverse background is systems administration, web development and security. You can read more about domain development on his blog or follow him on twitter.
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If you scan the drop lists, you’ve probably noticed a lot of good quality drops lately. And I think this trend will continue throughout 2009.
When I look at drops, I’m looking for domains that could be developed into full sites.
In addition to checking keywords, search frequency and advertiser interest, here’s a few tips of how to spot good drops for development.
Domain drop tips
1. Domain age – look for domains that are 8+ years old. The SE’s like old domains, it’s a trust issue. I’ve had great results taking an eight or 10 year old domain that ranks for very little, building out a site of unique content and ranking in the top 10 for one or two word phrases and #1 for long tail phrases. I use a script using the whois command from my linux CLI to check domain age. There are lots of tools out there to do this, of course.
2. Check for back links – in a perfect world, a domain with back links, especially .edu or .gov back links, would jump to the top of my list as a good drop for development. The SE’s give a lot of trust to domains that have .edu and .gov back links because these type of back links are less spammy and harder to acquire. I use yahoo search using the following command formats to check for .edu and .gov back links: “linkdomain:domain.com .edu” and “linkdomain:domain.com .gov”. I use this command to check all back links to the domain, except internal links from the domain itself: “linkdomain:domain.com -site:domain.com”.
3. Verify the back links – if you find that the drop has back links, you need to verify them too. You never know if people played games to get back links, and the SE’s have devalued or ignored the back links. Once you use yahoo search to find those back links, copy the back link URL and search for it in google to see if google lists it. If the page is listed, that means google is giving some weight to the back link. Normally, I just check the .edu and .gov back links in google because they are the most valuable.
Put it to the test
Elliot has added a top drops page to his blog. I recommend that you check it out regularly.
As an example, I have selected a domain from Elliot’s top drops page to illustrate the tips. The domain is: discoverhawaii.com
1. This domain was registered in 2000. Great, keep it on our list.
2. The domain has 83 external back links according to yahoo search. Woohoo!
3. The domain even has four .edu back links, and three of the four are listed in google!
In this example, discoveryhawaii.com is a domain worth chasing on a drop for development.
What do you look for in a good drop?
