What Are You Buying These Days?

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I have been buying much less and focusing on developing my websites lately. Instead of spending money externally, I am investing internally, continuing my effort to build a steady alternative revenue stream.

I am still buying great domain names at great prices in order to resell, but my investments are more cautious because I want to make sure I have enough liquid on hand to pay the bills for the next xx months – how ever long xx ends up being. As highly as I value domain names, I would rather have $20,000 sitting in the bank than a domain name I know is worth $20,000 because even those $20,000 names can’t produce $20,000 when you need to liquidate.

I am still primarily buying one and two word category defining .com domain names, because I think there will always be a market for them. Some of my friends aren’t buying anything right now as they wait out the storm, but I have other friends who are buying a variety of different type of domain names – alternative extensions, numerics, ccTLD…etc.

So… my question to you… what types of domain names are you buying these days and what’s your rationale?

Please post the types of names you are buying rather than examples, as most examples will end up in the spam folder.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

25 COMMENTS

  1. Elliot,

    Right now my purchases are focused on 2 and 3 word product based .COMs and 1 word .NETs or .ORGs that are product or service focused. Outside of that GEO names in .COM,.NET,.ORG,.ME.

    As far as why, I think now is the time to focus on domains with keywords that hold high search volume for product specific terms. Its not the time to speculate on some brandable name. Developing a category defining product name is key.

    As far as GEOs, without a doubt now is the time to develop key GEO properties based on the continued failing of legacy newspapers.

    Bruce

  2. I’m still buying strong product-brandables and travel/tourism GEOs. Search volume trumps, exact keywords, etc… Sticking to dot COM and only 2 words – 1 if I can find it =)

  3. I’m looking for value in the home improvement, wedding/event, geo, firtness, and elective surgery spaces. Examples include bathcontractors -dot-com which I was able to purchase for less than three hundred dollars

  4. Nothing new, since I been buying spanish names for 10 years and will continue to do so since that is the fastest growing market along with the Chinese market

    Also, been buying a lot of top .tv Geo’s this year such as
    Spain.tv, Europe.tv, Moscow.tv, Georgia.tv, Illinois.tv, Bahamas.tv and others.

    Been buying .tv since 2000 and if I sold some of my .tv my ROI would be outstanding. For example, my Religion.tv, Actor.tv, and Espanol.tv all have received offers for over $20,000 so far. Many in the domain industry don’t realize what is going on behind the scenes worldwide in .tv. Musica.tv and Juegos.tv both sold between $100,000 and $150,000 recently. They are NDA but I am involved on the spanish .tv forum demene.

    Therefore, to sum things up my plan is the following:

    1) Buy Spanish .com’s and spanish .tv’s
    2) Buy top .tv Geo’s Worldwide, city, state, country, such

  5. As with Bruce Marler I am focusing on 2-3 word .com’s and .net domain names. Some of my latest include PCSpywareBlockers.com, the keyword spyware blockers has a search volume of 5,000,000, DishSatelliteService(s).com, CollectableActionFigures.com and EntrywayOrganizers.com. Compared to some of my earlier purchases, my choices in domains have come a long way.

    Now I am trying to concentrate more on developing and less on purchasing.

  6. Any domains having to do with dental floss, drink straws, car scents, pleather, and Britney Spears.

    I’m still trying to figure out why I can’t get any big click prices. :rolleyes:

    Seriously though, product domains at cheap prices, luxury domains since they are out of favor, energy domains, and auto, finance, and anything else that looks underpriced.

  7. Pretty much sticking with .us, but noticing domainers are selling for much less than they were last year,

    In the last 3 weeks i had 2 great (very strong) 3 lll (word) .us names come back to me at $4000 below last years price, and $2500 below last years price, those prices are what i negotiated down to but never went through at this time, as those prices were for end users (IMHO!), not myself.

    Bought 1 so far and may have the other in escrow this week.

    Buying some nice 2 word expired/dropped .us names also, have picked up some high paying keywords for reg fee, insurance/finance mainly.

    But moving from letting them sit there and do nothing to parking them, very surprising results for .us names, top 50 get close to 3000 uniques per week, 1 big traffic name.

    So starting to pick those of and create simple but effective websites for them.

    And sticking to my plan from the beggining, buy low keep for a year or 4 then sell high 🙂

  8. When you say buying, do you mean buying in the secondary market? That’s what I think you mean by using that word.

    A hand reg is not “buying” a domain. That’s hand registering a domain.

    I am buying Cuba domains in the secondary market and hand regging Cuba related domains.

    I have been hand regging government related domains. I see government (unfortunately) as the new source of power and money where Wall Street used to be the place for power and money. Now Wall Street is on defense.

  9. At TRAFFIC, Rick Schwartz and I had an interesting conversation about leaving money in the bank during times like these.

    A $20,000 domain name that is properly monitized will accrue in value 100X faster than simply leaving money in the bank (that is earning 1% interest). Furthermore, hyperinflation may be just around the corner. In those situations, assets such as domain names will skyrocket in value like a cork riding the crest of inflation like a swelling tsunami while that 20K you have in the bank will dwindle.

    A $100 bill minted in 1932 will still buy only $100 worth of food today at a supermarket, but a $100 piece of real estate bought in 1932 could be worth $1,000,000 today.

    The same goes for domain names.

  10. I’m buying dot tel domain names as investment, you could get at landrush some nice one for $9.00 take some patience and after a year premium dot tel domain names will rise in value. Focussing on .com is over now, you can’t hand reg a premium dot com, must pay high amount of dollar rather to buy or pay after an auction end. As you say, I agree with you, $20 000 dot com is not a smart investment, there are other way to save your money and get cash when ever you want without loosing money. Before when it was the dot com bubble, most of six figures sales where coming from end users, now it’s mostly hype, speculation and flip between domainers.

  11. I’m still watching the drops every day but I’m not buying very much just now, only when I see a very strong keyword GEO .com that screams….PLEASE DEVELOP ME !!

    GEO .com domains with affiliate or advertising potential.

    Its time for me to move out of buying phase into developing phase….but I can’t stop looking 🙂

    Happy Hunting Everyone !

  12. I stopped buying domains about 18 months ago. Personally I wouldn’t buy anything in the current market unless it was genuinely cheap (ie could be immediately flipped for a profit). I won’t wade back in until it things start to improve, in particular PPC revenue which I think is the main driver of the market.

  13. I am like some of the others. It is hard not to look for names. The only names I’ve ever purchased were by registering them. Names have been in a variety of subjects/niches. Most names I reg are 3 words. Some of the names I’ve registered in April include:
    -UsedLaptopSale.com
    -SinglesTravelDeals.com
    -CareerGoalPlanning.com
    -HomeCareerTraining.com
    -AdjustableLaptopDesk.com
    -HelpDeskITsoftware.com

  14. I continue to hand-reg creative, non-hyphenated, geo .com domains with decent search numbers.

    Of course I have a few that are under the radar but should develop nicely, particularly some geographic names.

    Over the past few years I’ve also moved from a local to different states.

    Perchboy

  15. I am diversifying my names with .com .net .org .co.in .in .co.uk .com.au & .tel names.

    These are the areas that I feel comfortable working in.

    I love the .IN extention and I have been selling some of my hand reg 2 and 3 word .IN domain names in the low $X,XXX price range. These are not even what I consider to be my premium one and two word generic product / service domains and all hand registered within the past 18 months.

    Also had a lot of interest in some of my .CO.UK names of a similar type to my .IN names selling for similar prices.

    Although many “purist” domainers will not purchase hyphenated domain names in any extention, I think that they are leaving money and valuable domains on the table. My background is online marketing & SEO before focusing on domains and a strong two word hyphenated generic domain name can rank just as well as its NON hyphenated name equivilant.

    YES I KNOW, NO TYPE IN TRAFFIC!!

    But that is in most cases only responsable for between 10 and 30 % of the websites traffic and the rest is from Search etc. and for what you may have to pay for the name may be out of reach for a small operated with limited funds.

    Call me crazy, but if I were a small business that wanted to start up a website on lets say… Mountain Bikes and mountainbikes.com was taken (or any other extention for that matter) and they could hand register mountain-bikes.com, they would be silly not to.

    Unless of course they can pick up mountainbikes.com for a steal (not likely though).

    So in my world it depends on your business model and plan of attack but I like to have a mix and not discount other ccTLD’s (where there is massive growth) or quality, generic, hyphenated domains.

    Regards

    Ed
    OzDomainer.com

  16. I’ve gotten some nice .info’s, a few product related .com’s, and some geo related ccTLDs. I will hand reg hyphen .coms if I know I can develop them. Throw in a hand regged .TV or a dropped one word .mobi, .cc or .ws or three and it makes a nice collection.
    I also like targeting adult names with traffic that drop as they are easy to monetize and there’s little competition for them at auction.
    Shoot. I shouldn’t have said that… now everyone will be buying them 🙂

  17. going gerneric names in .tv and been getting some spanish .tv names at reg fee. The spanish market is exploding and in .tv as jim said.

    really not doing much and downsized my portfolio-would rather own 10 amazing domains then 800 names and carrying those fixed costs. When the economy turns around, will step in and buy more names.

    want to find some long tail .com names with a smaller word count tracker.

    Enjoy the wedding Elliot

    cheers,

    j

  18. Last domains i registered were 2-keyword domains that can be turned into or used by a (small) business. Important is that those keywords are actually sought after locally and can be a yellow pages category and/or refer to a local business.

    Key is that I have to be able to create a (mini) site for it and that I have to be able to compete SEO wise on a local level.

  19. I try to buy domains that are easy to liquidate. That is, revenue domains or generic domains for sale at low prices.

    But I’m really not buying a lot of domains these days… I’m putting my money in the stock market. Already seeing nice returns and I’m going to hold the stocks for a couple of years. Lots of opportunities now that most stocks are way down.

  20. recently bought a few “domain oriented” domains, a couple product related names and looking at a real estate domain for a joint venture project. Always buying drops when I have time to hunt.

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