So, here are the domains that I bid on and lost:
You can see with Sprezi.com that I bid less than $50 as I was quite unsure about it, but thought at $50 it was a good punt. croots.com was not part of this case study, but a domain that I wanted for my main portfolio. I think it’s a great domain name and that someone got a good deal. It just wasn’t my focus to bid high enough to win it and I didn’t do any proper research before bidding. My highest bid was $750.
My favorite domains out of the ones I bid for were:
obesitymatters.com, cutetopshop.com, bassfishingworld.com (in that order)
In retrospect, I was pleased that I didn’t win kahunaproperties.com, startupgovernment and especially iheartyourcoffee.com . I think that I misread the last one as iheartcoffee.com which I why I bid on it.
The Good News!
So, the good news is, that I didn’t actually win 1 auction which was for….
(Drumroll)
otcinvestmentsxxx.com (remove the xxx).
I won the auction for $20. Taking into account the registration fee, it cost me $39.17 in all.
Why do I like the domain?
OTC is a well-known shortened form of Over The Counter which is a term used with investments. It is both a good keyword domain and also a good branding name with around 5-10 companies in the US called OTC Investments.
With the way that expired domain works, it will take a few days to clear and push to my Godaddy account at which point I will put it on Afternic and a couple of other marketplaces and hope for the best.
One thing that has become very clear to me already, is that it is much more difficult to buy a sub $100 domain name than I had thought. I have bid on 15-20 domains at $100 and only won 1 auction. There are several obvious reasons for this.
Many people see that there is more than 1 bid on a domain name and that therefore becomes more attractive to bid on. Especially, if the original bidder auto bid against me.
There are probably more people who are prepared to bid on a $100 domain than a $3k domain.
I assume that there are certain bots out there who are programmed to immediately bid on signals that I am setting off when bidding on a sub-100 domain name.
So, I now have $9,960.83 left to buy domains. And I also have 1 domain with zero domains sold.