Category: domain names

I am well past due to update my case study, but this has caught my interest over the last few days.

The domain name sale for fiscal.com is on Godaddy Domain Auctions. It currently has 128 bids and the price stands at $30,500. There are still over 5 days to go until the auction finishes.

This is one of those auctions where I fail to understand the value and why 8 different bidders have so far bid over $20k for this domain name.

The Positives:

• It is memorable
• There is a clear spelling that can’t be confused
• It is financial
• It is a one-word dictionary word and short

The Negatives:

• There is very little traffic
• The domain name has very little authority
• There are very few links of SEO value
• Not at all valuable
• It seems that it was previously used as a Spanish site

As with many auctions, there may be something that I am totally missing. However, it seems that fiscal is mainly an english word and even in other languages, its translation is also fiscal.

So, what does fiscal mean?

According to Google, it means:

“relating to government revenue, especially taxes.”

The top 3 searches on Google according to ahrefs are:

Fiscal

Fiscal Policy

Fiscal Year

With 40k, 39k, and 32k searches respectively.

It’s not a small number of searches, but nowhere near:

finance – 7.5m

business – 375k after 3 other phrases containing the word

policy – 51k after 5 other phrases containing the word

I also realize that the present bid of $30k is nowhere near the amount which finance.com or business.com would reach.

When I think of the value of a domain, I try and take into account what the business use may be and who may buy it as an end-user. I am generally not buying as an end-user, so also know that when I buy a domain I need to estimate what multiple I would need to sell it at to reach the right profit balance.

I can’t see how any business would be able to use fiscal.com effectively. The closest link could be an accountancy or law company that is closely related to government work. But even that, is a bit of a stretch as the keyword is very closely related to government. Perhaps a think-tank or lobbyists? But in both cases, would it really be realistic to spend $30k on a keyword domain that would not add that much.

I’m very interested to see where the auction goes, but if it is being bought by a domain reseller then I have a feeling that they may be buying a domain name for their portfolio that can never be sold at a decent price.

Updated 12th August:

I do love 3 letter domain names. Who doesn’t?!

But it is incredibly difficult to value them when on auction more than seeing what others are prepared to pay.

The latest 3 letter domain name to appear on Godaddy Auctions Expired list is jfx.com. J and X are fairly weak letters when it comes to valuing short domains, but there are some pretty interesting features of this domain which is what led me to write about it at all.

From an SEO point of view, it is not ranking for any keywords apart from the domain name itself. It does have some incoming links, but most of them are either weak and low quality or fairly old.

It doesn’t really look like any attention was given since about 2012 when it was announced that jfx.com was being launched as a forex market.

The main company that launched it is Jiffix Leveraged Trading which is/was registered in Cyprus and has 1 employee on LinkedIn. However, their domain name jiffix.com has now expired and has been put up for resell for $3k by BrandBucket.

So, where is the value in the domain name?

Firstly, it is short being just 3 letters.

Secondly, JFX can stand for a number of things including:

• JavaFX, a software platform
• Jones Falls Expressway, a freeway in Baltimore, Maryland
• Walker County Airport, in Alabama, United States

Thank you Wikipedia!

Interestingly, there are 2 live trademark registrations on JFX. Both from Chinese companies on a product. They are both registered in the past couple of years, so could be a potential problem. My non-legal opinion is that there are too many possible meanings of jfx to claim the domain but could be interesting if ends up in court.

The value also lies in the fact that fx can be effects as in Visual FX or can refer to Forex.

At the moment, it is on sale for around $11,850 with 9 days left. It’s hard to make a prediction without knowing whether end-users are watching it, but I would be surprised if it were to go for less than $20 or more than $30k. However, with the way that domain names are being bought at the moment it could be many multiples of that!

Will update here once the auction is finished.

EDIT: The domain name sold for $43.5k and is currently unused or parked.

Calculating the value or ‘correct price’ of a domain name is definitely NOT an exact science. Ask 10 different experts to appraise a domain and you will likely get very different answers and a large range.

There are, however, several different factors that can help you appraise the value of a domain and decide how much you want to spend on buying it. Or conversely, how much you want to raise from selling it.

The State of the Current Domain Market

Domain names will go up and down in price depending on how active and hungry the market is. In a downturn, companies may have less available cash to buy a domain name.

During Covid, even though there was a downturn in the economy as a whole, many domain names increased greatly in value due to the influx of new companies being set up and wanting to find the correct domain name.

Individual Demand and Timing (aka. luck)

I often see that domains are bought and sold based on what a particular company is looking for at that particular time. For example, a year ago I was looking for a domain name for a singing competition. In the end, I was able to register a domain at my registrar (distansing.com – since let go), however, I did enquire about eligible domains and would have bought one had there been the perfect domain.

Similarly, I sold a domain this year which was LLNN.com eg. pg21.com. It was a new company, and it was pure luck that a company happened to want to call themselves that and therefore wanted the exact domain name.

The same is true with certain topics. This year crypto, covid, and NFT domain names are popular and have gone up in value because they are seen as emerging markets. 5 years ago, they probably would have sold for much less.

SEO Domains

Many domain names are sold simply based on the SEO value. This could be an exact domain match (eg. nurseuniforms.com) or because of the incoming links and history of that domain. Expired domains which keep their age are more valuable to SEOers than registering a new domain as they have passed the stage of having to earn credibility with Google.

Number of Words

I very rarely would buy a keyword domain of more than 2 words unless there was some obvious branding attached. eg. Just Do It (note trademark issues). I actually am surprised when I see domain names sold for 4 figures which are just keyword domains of 3 words plus where the third word doesn’t help it.

For example, some domains that sold yesterday were:

• LAMusicBlog.com – $1,505
• MyRightWay.com – $2,788
• SleepDisorderChannel.com – $2,000

Source: namebio.com

I have not researched any of these three domains, so there could be SEO or Brand, or other value that I am not aware of. However, they are examples of domain names that at first glance seem to be sold for more than I would consider buying them for.

lamusicblog.com limits itself with the word blog. lamusic.com would be a far better domain name although is already used by an active company. I can’t see how this domain name can be used for anything other than a blog about LA music. Which doesn’t seem to be very monetizable or brandable as a blog generally refers to reporting on something. As an investor, I wouldn’t buy it at all as I don’t think that I would ever be able to resell it.

myrightway.com is a phrase. I haven’t done the research and could have some value as it is already being used. Alternatively, it could be used in the future by the person who bought it. Or, they are hoping that someone else will want to use that slogan in the future. Here, it is the word ‘my’ that bothers me. Is ‘my’ more valuable than the, them, your, a, etc.?

sleepdisorderchannel.com is probably the domain that bothers me the most. Perhaps bother is the wrong word! Let’s say intrigues me as to ‘why?’. sleepdisorder.com could be a good domain. Not a GREAT domain as the word disorder is a bit high level and negative. The word channel is a bit weird though. Is this a TV channel – that is what would immediately come to mind.  Or a channel, as in a way to treat your sleep disorder? I am assuming that this was bought by, or potentially for an e-commerce store selling products to help you sleep.

Is the word ‘channel’ going to a good match for a store or will it just confuse potential end customers? Purely from a marketing point of view, I would also focus on the cure rather than the problem in my domain name.

This post is getting a bit long, so will continue in another post!

A quick definition here…

By a trademarked domain, what I mean is a domain name that is clearly the name of another company. For example, if I registered facebooknews.com, then it is clear that I am taking advantage of Facebook‘s brand and actually misleading visitors into thinking that I am in some way associated with Facebook.

The general advice given is not to do it. Putting moral issues aside, you can get sued by the domain name holder. They can also bring a UDRP (The Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) which means that they appeal to ICANN to take ownership of the domain name.

So, if you register another company’s name or similar to another company name then there is a real risk that you will end up losing money on your domain name investment.

However, the company bringing the complaint needs to prove that they own the rights to that domain and that you registered it in bad faith – ie. to make money by selling it back to the company.

Needless to say, I have simplified the whole process and law and this should NOT be taken as legal advice…

Often, it isn’t so obvious. For example, I may have registered a domain name in 2010 in order to use it for my website. At the time, there was no company with that name. Then a company comes along and names itself that name in 2015. They can fight for that name. However, there is a strong likelihood that they would not win even if they have the trademark as you are already doing business or have a genuine intention to do business under that name.

If a company files a UDRP under false pretenses, then that is called reverse domain hijacking.

As always, with the law, there are many grey lines.

I have personally sold a number of domains which are the name of a company that ceased doing business. If they are no longer doing business, then does the law still apply that they have rights (or the liquidator has rights) to that domain name? How about if they have spent time and money building up that brand which you are then going to use for your own company?

The domain I recently sold was similar in concept to greatshoes.com (different words and products). The company name was Great Shoes (conceptually) and had been liquidated a couple of years earlier and its stores were shut. It is likely that the domain expired due to the fact that no one was now working at that company and any company that had acquired items in liquidation may not have even been aware of the domain name expiration.

A few months after I purchased it, I had a BIN on afternic for $x,000. I don’t know who the buyer was. It could have been the current owner of the brand. Or someone totally different who wanted to use the credibility of the brand in order to apply to their own shoe business.

I am assuming that if the new owner is from the original company, then they either didn’t know about UDRP or they realized that it was probably cheaper just to purchase the domain name at the BIN price rather than get into a potential legal battle (even though they would probably ‘win’).

Neither the .com (which I sold) or the .co.uk (it was a UK business) are currently active. Will report back if anything changes….

Lastly, how do you value a Trademarked domain name?

The positives is that it has brand value and probably existing SEO value. The downside is it can be seized from you.

Unless you are pretty certain that it won’t be seized from you, I would be very cautious building out a website that you could potentially lose.

If you are buying it as an investment hoping that someone else may purchase it from you, then there is a reasonable chance that you will sell it or hold it long enough that your fear of seizure will be reduced. So, it depends on how much money you are prepared to risk. I also think it depends on how much a company would willingly pay rather than having to go through a potential legal hassle.

My personal limit would be about $1,500-$2,000, depending on the multiple you are going to sell it for and the percentage chance that it will be seized.

The domain name candyfloss.com has come up for auction on Godaddy Expired Domain Names.

There are about 30 hours left and the current bid is $7k. As much of the action on auction sales happens towards the end, I would expect it to reach $10k+ . Will update here with the final price!

Until the domain name expired, it appears that a Shopify shop was hosted there. What’s slightly weird, is that to have an active Shopify Store, you would need to pay monthly. So, it is unlikely that someone would be paying for their hosting but yet forget to renew their domain name for about $10-$15.

My guess would be that the store was not very active, and someone forgot to cancel the charge and just didn’t bother to renew the domain name as they were no longer actively using it. The alternative to that is that the owner passed away and the remaining family didn’t know how to deal with it.

Whilst this doesn’t help with estimating its value, it does tell us that there are no major content assets that were on the site that could be continued. Or that there could be some inherited branding.

Its SEO value is very low with virtually no incoming links that are useful. Nor does it seem to have ranked over the last few years for any terms apart from candyfloss.

So, where is the value in this domain name and why is someone prepared $7k+ on buying it?

(and bear in mind that I may be totally missing something here in that there is an alternative meaning to the word).

Candy Floss (or cotton candy) is a food made out of sugar. It is common throughout the world and available from fairs. As it is an exact match domain, this has value. There is a record of candyfloss.org selling for $200 in 2015.

Candy Floss is also pink which could be good branding for a clothing (or similar) store looking to set up a new shop.

It could also be a good name for a start-up as it is highly memorable. However, the first word that comes to mind when I think of Candy Floss is “sweet”. Therefore, it would have to be good branding for a start-up that has a connection in some way that makes sense.

So, the main positives are that it is highly memorable and has ‘sweet’ branding.

A negative though, is that candy floss is also called cotton candy. So, it would only be useful in parts of the world that called the food candy floss else there would be confusion.

Another negative is that candy floss is not a profitable niche. You don’t sell candy floss online. People aren’t looking for information about it. Perhaps a candy floss machine company could find it useful but am not sure that it would be worth $7k+ for a domain name which can probably be improved upon for less money.

Perhaps a catering company or a restaurant could be good for it.

In summary, I do think that it is a cool domain. However, I find it difficult to see how it could be worth $7k to someone unless they already have a brand with that name – which probably isn’t trademarkable. I suspect that it will send to an end-user rather than a domain investor due to the high price already compared to the value.

I would probably pay around $2k-$2.5k for it for the novelty and brandable value but would look to resell rather than use.

UPDATE: candyfloss.com sold for $7,200 with 2 extra bids since I originally wrote this. I would usually expect to see more bidding in the last few hours of an auction. But perhaps, I was correct that the value was already seen as too high. Congratulations to the winner!