A blog reader emailed me this week and asked if I would publish an article to ask other readers what they are currently buying. It’s been a little over a year since the last time I asked this question, so I thought now was a pretty good time to ask.
Last time I shared what I am looking to buy, and it still holds true today:
For me, I am still privately buying one word English .com domain names whenever I can find a decent deal. I am only buying .com domain names, and I am only buying real words that could be used by many different type of companies (ie they have generic meaning). I am also paying reasonable prices as an investor, so it is pointless to send overpriced names. In general, the domain names I am buying were created before 2000 and have quite a few extensions registered because there is great demand for the keyword. The parameters are more for filtering than anything else.
To be more precise, here is exactly what I would like to buy right now:
- Dictionary word .com
- Created before 2000
- At least 20 other extensions in that word registered
- Positive (or possibly neutral) meaning
- Budget up to $50k per name (more if it is exceptional), but has to be a good investment price.
I spend quite a bit of time doing acquisition outreach. In fact, I probably spend more time these days trying to buy domain names than to sell them. If you have a great domain name that matches, please send to me to review. There’s no reason to send names that do not match because it will waste your time and mine.
Please feel free to share the types of domain names you are buying in the comment section.
I know one size does not fit all but what you are buying should be at least part of the aim of every domain investor. What 99% of your readers were hoping to hear is something along the lines of you are buying names for under $100 that you think are worth 5 to 6 figures to an end user.
For me, I don’t look for a kind of domain but how undervalued it is. It could be a hand reg, a one-word dotcom, two words, three or four words as long as it is steeply priced less than what I think it is worth. But since I have so many 2,3,4 word dotcoms already, I mainly go for undervalued one worders like yourself for the last few years.
A company listed on the London Stock Exchange once tried to buy one of my longest domains, a four worder. They just approached me out of the blue when I was only using it for a simple single page and was not even trying to sell it as far as I know, i.e. I doubt I even had it listed anywhere and was just using it. At that time I was not yet savvy to the idea of doing something like taking stock instead of cash. We didn’t reach a deal but if it happened again now I would gladly discuss selling a domain for stock. In fact I suspect the seller of tesla.com probably left a fortune on the table in that regard.
“A company listed on the London Stock Exchange once tried to buy one of my longest domains, a four worder. They just approached me out of the blue (…)”
John, was the domain thingsthatdidnthappen.com ?
Well Dick, between 5:04 pm below and this, you’ve definitely both graduated to troll status and post-graduate troll.
Ridiculous John, no company is going to give you equity for 4 words .com’s.
So it’s okay to pay cash but not to consider giving stock in lieu of cash, is that it? LOL
No company is going to use equity for 4 word .com’s. These are names of very little value.
I have a four word for sell. chinaisthefuture.com I am waiting for a xxxx sale or more
Oh and by the way, Tony, I’ve always liked you, but if you are the kind of dentist who uses and supports mercury amalgam fillings then you and the ADA are all guilty of crimes against humanity. 😉 In your case if you are merely a victim of the industry brainwashing yourself then that at least mitigates, though once shown the light it’s important to change course. So please repent if you do support and use that and I’ll like you even more. 🙂
I am buying one word .co.za domain names for under $500 USD. Mostly e-commerce keywords.
South Africa is on a verge of Internet explosion with fibre lines being installed which will mean more people will be getting online. In South Africa you are proudly South African and .co.za means local and a brand you can trust.
I literally just read your blog post over at NP. Interesting, I also like deriving wisdom from “art” that way. The “senior broker” move has to be true, however, because God is watching. An easy adjustment to make, however.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+15%3A3&version=NASB
Tell me more about that.
Well, you asked. God does not need “megabytes” to remember things. He actively sustains the existence of everything in every place to begin with. It’s not hard to modify such a technique to avoid lying.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+12%3A36&version=NASB
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+22%3A15&version=NASB
The “Harvard book” on negotiation, you’ll want to read this if you haven’t yet. Was recommended by my college roommate right before he went to Harvard Law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes
Great book.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I would recommend The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone.
“South Africa is on a verge of Internet explosion”
You make it sound as if we’ve been running around with our heads up our asses until fiber came along.
Many of our eCommerce facilities have been on par with the remainder of the world, our online banking systems are by far superior to those offered in the states – its been like this for years.
South Africa is on the verge of an economic meltdown driven by rampant corruption, 20 odd years of looting & BEE / Affirmative action. Far from an explosion…
If you were planning to make big money on selling those co.za domains to locals, now is not the time. Any serious investor is looking to invest their money where the risks are not as high.
Telecommunications companies in South Africa are a joke.
Have you seen Hello Peter reviews of Telkom? Telling by the way is one of the largest telecoms in South Africa.
Here is a link: https://www.hellopeter.com/telkom
Not to mention the high mobile data costs people spend with MTN, Vodacom and CellC, compare that to the rest of the world.
It’s fibre, not fiber. (Insert fiber joke here).
The South African government and what they do in parliament does not effect my personal economy, so that does not bother me. I earn $. It’s actually convenient, thanks to the 15 to 1 currency conversion rate.
You forgot to mention job unemployment at an all time high, even though we have Internet. Does not make sense.
Anyways.
You don’t know me, what I can tell you is that I have actually brokered many .co.za domain sales over the years, I started brokering in 2012 so I know a lot about the domain market here.
Buying domain names for a couple hundred dollars is not high risk, BUT THEN AGAIN is you say might say high risk, high reward, right?
Thank you Elliot!
I’m currently looking to buy:
One word .us domains
CBD Domains
Drone Domains
.US ay? A man after my own heart. Check this out:
https://domainnamewire.com/2019/07/18/marketing-a-teenage-tld/#comment-2255828
Thank you for sharing. Interesting read!
Do you include my comment with that, Scott, or just the post? 🙂
Scott:
We all agree that Facebook can afford Face .com, but they seem to have done very well with Facebook instead.
That inexplicable phenomenon is the problem intractable, dogmatic domainers have; they must answer such questions in order to clearly make their case.
Face .com is shorter than Facebook .com, but the former forwards to a Twitter account, whereas the latter is making billions.
Agreed and I noticed that those dogmatic domainers stayed clear of replying to your comment.
Build a great product or service and they will come. Innovate and invest in your technology and they will come. There is an opportunity cost of a business directing it’s resources into buying an expensive domain name and it may not be the best use of resources – especially when the business is starting out.
simple rule, if it’s short and .com I’ll take a look!
Anything else won’t pass my personal spam filter.
If that’s how you feel I’d gladly take NewYorkRealEstate.com and many others like it and let you take melons.com or spot.com any day of the week, be my guest. And watermelon is one of my all-time favorite fruits.
I think Spot.com is worth a very large multiple of NewYorkRealEstate.com these days and it’s not even close.
Well I certainly disagree with that, Elliot. However, the truth is that I was going to say “staples.com,” but there was the risk of mindless people knee jerk commenting how that one is great without thinking it through.
I love to see you give any credible suggestions as to why Spot.com would be superior in value to NewYorkRealEstate.com – aside from, that is, your well known bias about short vs. long.
PS, and while you clearly find a comparison like “spot.com” debatable, at least it would seem you do not for melons.com. One out of two ain’t bad with someone as generally biased about this aspect of domaining as you.
Elliot,
I agree with you that Spot.com is worth many many multiples of NewYorkRealEstate.com, “these days”; it’s not even close.
Plus, Melons.com is not Melon.com; the former is worth much more than the latter; Watermelon is not Melon, or melons either; so by the rule of thumb, the singular could pass for both a brand, as well as the fruit itself, just as Apple.com is on it’s own, worth much more than Apples.com
My comment here is not for the professionals, such as Elliot, John, etc but for anyone that it might help.
Finally, just like in everything, there are no absolutes; there’s what should be termed “the vicissitudes of domaining”, that’s operational, just as with life.
Anything is still possible.
Correction, Melon is worth much more than Melons, nowadays.
Exactly right Elliot. Spot.com is far more valuable and would get 10x+ the number of inquiries.
There goes whatever was left of your credibility John… Mentioning a dog like newyorkrealestate.com and a total blockbuster like spot.com in the same sentence.. on a Saturday… in 2019…(!) I just realized how far behind the curve you really are.
Your comment is very stupid, and clearly disingenuous, so I won’t waste time on it beyond this.
John:
There’s no need for the personal attack, because you were actually winning the debate, generally, and lost just one round, on the specific “spot” example, we understood what you meant.
On this blog, when it was named Elliot’s Blog, I had a long protracted debate, polite debates, with Elliot when he actually held your view, and I held his current view: which in his case was that EMD, exact match domains, were the best, and that’s probably because of Google search algorithms then; and I used to come to talk about “brandable” …
We must also note that Elliot has been a successful domainers, and blogger, who has bought and sold world class domains, including Burbank.com!
Reality check: the personal attack was by Richard, and I rightly pointed out that it was not only stupid, but worse than stupid – disingenuous, as in dishonest. In case you’ve been on hiatus, nobody needs to explain to anybody that 1. NewYorkRealEstate.com is not even within a million miles of being a “dog” and 2. spot.com, while certainly not a bad domain and even pretty good, is nonetheless certainly not a “total blockbuster.” But even if you insist on “total blockbuster” for it, “Richard’s” comment was still a personal attack that fails on NewYorkRealEstate.com being within a million miles of being a “dog” among its more personal attack elements…
I’m a value investor and would pay $75k for Spot.com today. I could probably be persuaded to pay more if I was buying it privately.
I’ve owned and sold a bunch of RE names. The value of those have fallen off a cliff in the last several years while one word names have gone way, way up in value. I wish they hadn’t because I still have a few.
It’s a good domain, but it’s still a lottery ticket domain. There is no compelling obvious use, need or demand. One can argue “it could be great for this or for that,” but with no wealth of likely customers in sight.
Real Estate in New York is as hot as ever. So much so, they have to do crazy architectural things to go high and slim with giant air holes to accommodate demand from billionaires and mega-millionaires. I wouldn’t even want to live in these weird new types of buildings, but the mega rich are perfectly happy to. And that’s just in NYC. You also have Westchester County, Long Island, the Hamptons, etc.
And with all that – NewYorkRealEstate.com is going to get the kind of search I’ve been talking about for years. People are going to be searching the both the SLD, the domain, and the whole domain with spaces added in numerous ways. Jackpot. They will not be searching just for “spot” or “spot.com.”
i am buying well priced dotcom yeti domains. i feel certain that within the next two years the abominable snowman will be captured and the value of these domains will skyrocket.
Please ip ban John. He’s an attention whore and adds literally no value. Thank you
You have a point there, troll. We do need more censorship in this country. There’s just not enough.
What I’ve noticed is that ‘proper’, uppity sites do poorly. Platforms that judge little, such as Twitter, Facebook etc etc, perform better than small cabalistic venues.
Open it up for discourse. Only you, and a couple of others are insufficient to run a forum.
He is wrong on everything he says, but no need for ban. If anything his comments are an excercise in what not to do and ideas that may have worked 15 years ago, so there is value from that angle.
Elliot—are you making more money now doing domaining than when your were working in NY as a worker bee?
I buy dictionary word and popular phrase domains. And only com extension.
Little or no luck with new extensions.
Joseph.
DNHat developer and project co-coordinator – https://dnhat.com/
Mostly made-up 4-letter .coms. I would love to be able to buy more one-word dictionary .coms, but it is getting harder and harder to get a good deal.
I’m buying aged two word exact match domains with at least 15 TLDs taken, alliterations with at least 10 TLDs taken, Crypto domains registered 2015 and earlier with at least 10 TLDs taken, pronounceable 4L.coms and 4L.coms ending in CB.
I hand reg domains real cheap and sell for $79..
Repeat
Repeat repeat repeat 1000000 times.
Easy peasy money making hobby.
I’m buying two word, second word “Sex” domains. Why? Because “sex sells”, thus Sex.com sold for 13M this decade. Recently I bought, SpectacularSex.com, BriefSex.com, RemarkableSex.com and SquadSex.com. I spent a whopping $34 for all four of these domains, and regardless of what any fool says…Sex really does sell:)
It is not particular common for names with sex in them to sell unless obvious keyword porn names, I think you are on the wrong track with that. That is especially the case in recent years with adult domains falling in value.
Snoopy…you’re so full of crap I know any response from you is only an endorsement of my ingenuity and creativity. Choosing a handle like “Snoopy” speaks volumes about your creativity. btw, SnoopySex.com is available:) And just as an education for your benefit, according to Nambbio there are over 1,500 domains that have sold that have “sex’ in the name compared to just 800 domains that have sold with “porn” in the name.
Finally, as a domain critic, you have a lot to learn☺
Are you trying to win today’s argument or actually make money from domains?
Higher stats than porn doesn’t mean it works, neither term would word in your combination. Look at namebio at the type of names actually selling with “sex” in them, it is porn names (mostly with popular keywords) and for low amounts.
Cryptocurrency Domain Names.
Why the petty arguing among the domainers?
So childish.
If you are right, back your argument(s) up with numbers.
SHOW US THE MONEY$$$$$$$$
i have unsmartness.com for sell in xxxx price
Dear domain investors, there are several great crypto domains for sale:
– CryptoRemarks.com (includes social media accounts and logo)
– SednaFund.com (stylish name for a venture fund)
– CryVex.com (perfect for a crypto exchange)
General reasons to buy for all:
1. Highly valuable keywords
2. Nice, short and memorable names
3. The most valuable .com extension
4. Lifetime WhoisGuard protection
For more information, please visit the corresponding domain.
Feel free to make an offer.
I think that Chinese netizen’s offers long term brand opportunities as east & west superstrate linguistics merge Baoxian247.com – Baoxian24x7.com {insurance by the hour – day – year}
WeChat FB & digital generations are the arbiters as Baidu MO ultimately follow the Google Adwords cash cow
1) Short brandables.
2) 1 to 2 word brandable and keyword domains.
3) Aged domains.
4) Traffic domains.