Category: domain names

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domain names

Day 25 – Update on domain names after a break from blogging

I feel that a case-study needs to have enough interest to keep you reading, but on the other hand posting almost the same every single day is not only boring but probably not so useful either.

I have unfortunately not been able to keep up with bidding every single day, but have definitely still been bidding and mostly losing. Here are all of the auctions that I have lost recently:

I think that some of them are really great domain names. If I had to pick my top 5:

  1. MaybeMe.com
  2. CloudHD.com
  3. Option5.com
  4. Weebler.com
  5. RanchKings.com

Have to admit, I was upset not to win MaybeMe.com and did continue bidding way past the $1k mark to buy it for my main portfolio. Had I been in an acquiring and compulsive, instantaneous mood I probably would have carried on bidding to win it. Incredibly brandable. Easy to pronounce and spell. And similar enough, yet also different enough not to be sued to Maybelline which gives it a nice beauty feel to it.

I think that CloudHD.com went for a bargain amount and wouldn’t be surprised if this sells on pretty quickly. I probably should have carried on bidding. HD could be HardDrive or HighDefinition. Both which go really well with Cloud.

So, which domain names did I buy?

summerbreakoutxxx.com $48
zallowxxx.com $277
21mgxxx.com $30

In retrospect, not sure if summer…. was a great buy. But could be good for a movie release.

I really like zallowxxx as it is very brandable and solid and memorable. I was a bit unsure of how this auction was going to go and whether it would go into my case-study or main portfolio, but ended up cheap enough to make sure that the price worked out so that the average would be less than $100 per domain.

21mgxxx was a bit of a punt. But I have actually sold quite a few of these kind of names, so if the right person comes along then could make a pretty good profit.

I am pretty much listing all of these domain names now for $1k. However zaxxx, I’ll put on for $1,500 and see what happens.

So, if you are following along, this is where I now stand:

9 domain names bought for $628

9 domains registered for a total of 9*$19.17= $172.53

Total Spent: $800.53

Total Earnt: $0

Total left from budget: $9,199.47

 

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domain names

fiscal.com – Worth over $30k?

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.

 

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case study domain names

Day 4 – Sadly Impressed At My Loss

In short, I haven’t won any more auctions even though I have bid on a load:

I’m actually impressed with how many auctions I am able to bid on and not win.

I was surprised that virtualtutorials.com and miniwebs.com sold for so much. I’m really not sure who would be buying miniwebs.com as an end-user to make the $1,500 sale price justifiable. Perhaps I am missing something, but neither even has SEO history.

What is surprising me, is just how many domain names I am bidding on without winning. Many of them finish at $106, meaning that there was only 1 other person who bid above me – I think that is significant, although not really sure why.

There were also 2 domains that I only bid $51 for.

One thing, that this exercise is teaching me is about discipline. We all get caught up in auctions and perhaps pay more than we should. However, by being strict about my upper price, it means that I am not getting caught in the emotional aspect of it. At this low price, the majority of the domain names are not greatly valuable and if I lose, it really doesn’t matter so much.

From this selection, my favorite domain name was kingofcrabs.com, which under normal circumstances I probably would have spent much more than it sold for.

Since my last post, it has been the weekend. This means that there are far fewer domain names being sold. It probably also means that there are fewer people bidding or watching the auction. In my case, I don’t work on Friday or Saturday night (I am on Europe Time), which means that I place my bids up to 30 hours ahead of time. I think this could affect the number of auctions that I don’t win and also the number of auctions that I don’t bid on. The reason for this is that an auction would not appear on my search if there was not already a bid more than 24 hours before. I don’t have a great solution for this, but am just accepting as something that happens.

One thing that I could do that would probably improve my chances of winning more auctions, is to go through the list of auctions that haven’t had any bids on. I am currently loathed to do that, as even looking through the number of domains that I have to just to get those that do have a bid is large enough…and to be honest mostly boring.

So, still, just 1 domain bought and zero sold.

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case study domain names

Day 2: A Result! Domain Name Bought

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.

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case study domain names

$10K Domain Buying Case Study – Follow Along

I have been buying and selling domain names for quite a while. The vast majority of my sales are $3k-$20. I like the price range, as each time I make a sale I receive 2-3 times the amount that I paid when taking into account my fees.

So, if I purchase a domain name for $1,500 and sell it for $5,000 then I receive:

+$5000 (Sales Price)

-$1000 (Commision with Afternic, Dan etc.)

– $60 (Approximate Paypal Fees)

– $20 (Approximate registration fees)

= $3,920

which in my opinion is a nice bit of cash that I can then use to buy further domain names and build up my portfolio.

My portfolio consists of approximately 100 domain names and the rule of thumb industry standard is 1%-5% sales a year. So, if I made 5 domain sales a year, then my profit would be approximately $20k ($3,920*5). However, I also need to pay the renewal fee per year on domain registration. On 100 domains, that would be $1k if renewal is $10 each. So, the profit would be approximately $19k a year.

Obviously, the above figures are approximate but are based on my experience.

For example, you can omit the 20% commission fee if you sell directly. However, in my experience, most of my sales come from Afternic and are usually at full price.

Using the above approximate figures, that is a $20k return on $150k of spend or an annual return of 13.5%.

Problems with the $3k-$20k market:

  1. The biggest problem is the infrequency of sales. They are fairly random. I could go a few months without any sales and then a few sales in a week. I haven’t even noticed any particular seasonal trends.
  2. There is a large outlay. Most people don’t have $150k lying around that they can tie up in an investment that isn’t so liquid (in general).
  3. Mistakes are expensive. If you buy a domain name that never sells, then you have lost potentially 1000s of dollars. I recently bought a domain name on a whim which I regret as it was an impulse buy rather than a thought-out buy.

These may not be problems with a more active trader, however, most of my selling is fairly passive. I put it on the marketplaces and then it sells (or not).

Domains That I Buy

Generally, I buy expired domain names from Godaddy. I realize there are other places to buy. I also realize that I could potentially make more money using other places. However, this suits me and my style of business especially as I put very little time into this.

Domain names that I buy are generally branding names. I consider whether a new (or old) company would be interested in buying this domain as their main website. Also, if a company would be prepared to spend the amount of money that I need to sell it for in order to make a profit.

My three most recent sales were similar to:

hatshop.com

ph33.com

powertothenation.com

NOTE: These are NOT the domains that I sold. They are just similar in concept so that I can describe why I bought them.

hatshop.com is a great name for an eCommerce shop that…well sells hats. If you are setting up a new hat shop then you may be prepared to spend several thousand dollars on that name.

ph33.com is a bit of a funny one as it seems quite generic. However, if a company calls themselves ph33, then it would be a perfect domain name and they actually have little choice but to buy it from you. You need to be lucky with this one. Obviously don’t buy a domain that already has a trademark etc.

powertothenation.com is a very different kind of domain name and not one that I usually buy. However, it is very brandable for an organization or someone that wants to use that slogan or a new company.

Another kind of domain name that I also sometimes buy is a keyword domain name. An example here could be farmersinalaska.com . However, I generally wouldn’t buy this to resell but to use myself to build a content site around. It’s not very brandable and I don’t think that a farmers union would pay a premium to buy this domain name. However, if I wanted to do a content site about farming in Alaska then it would be the perfect domain. I very rarely am able to sell a keyword domain name to an SEOer. I assume because if they don’t get the exact domain name, then they buy something similar. eg. afarmerinalaska.com that is available to register from new.

Plan for the $10k Domain Buying Case Study

Taking the above into account, I want to try an experiment to see if a different tactic will work better. That is to take $10k and use it to buy approximately 100 domain names at $100 each. I am keeping the number of domain names approximate as there will be some cases where I consider a domain name so good that I need to bid higher. However, that will be on a rare occasion and only up to $250.

I will then list each domain name for $500 and hope that sales will be more frequent.

Doing the maths if I buy at $100 and sell at $500:

-$100 (for domain)

– $3 (Paypal fees)

– $20 (registration fee)

+ $500 (sale)

-$100 (commission)

This basically means, that using this figure I will get back $277 for each $100 that I spend.

If my sales rate increases to 10%, then I will make $1770 on an investment of $10k or 17.7%.

The other thing to realize is that with each sale, I will be able to buy 2-3 more domains which should increase my sales rate.

How I Find Domain Names:

I’m going to keep it simple. Each day, I will go to Godaddy Expired domains and do a search for domains where the auction is ending in less than 24 hours. Also, that there is at least 1 bid, and that the current price is under $100. I will then put a bid for $101. This is so I will beat people whose standard bid is $100. There are ways that this could be improved in terms of tactics and strategies, but it also keeps it very systemized and automated.

In the case study, I will show you which domains I bid for and which I win and lose, and also a running total of $10k. When I win an auction, I will replace a letter of the domain with an xx so that it won’t appear on a search of a potential buyer. As this blog has started off with next to zero readers, I don’t feel that it gives me an unfair advantage to reveal the names I have for sale as this is tactical that anyone else could use without any name recognition.

After doing that search, I then search by time left so that I have the soonest ending at the top and ‘watch’ any auctions that I find interesting. I then go straight away and bid $101 on each domain.

These are my results from yesterday:

I lost the following auctions:

I didn’t actually win any auctions!

My favorite were:

mraustralia.com

comicbookmuseum.com

hookupnation.com

etheriumsilver.com

I think the best of those is etheriumsilver.com

So, at the end of day 1, I still have $10k and 0 domains!

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domain names

3 Letter Domain Names – JFX.com

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:

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.

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domain names

Calculating Domain Name Evaluation and Appraisal

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!

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domain names

Registering Trademarked Domain Names

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.

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domain names

Domain Name Appraisal: candyfloss.com

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!