So I sold a domain a few weeks ago for $40 on a popular online domain marketplace. Anyway, I contacted the winning bidder several times in an attempt to get him to send the PayPal money for the domain. Sure enough, after about a week I get the money. All good so far. Anyway, I then emailed this person again and asked for his account number and transfer authorization code so I could push the domain to him. Free push, no strings attached, just part of the sale. No answer. I’ve now tried about 10 times through PM and email combined and have not heard back. I even looked up some of his domains through WHOIS and emailed him at those addresses. No answer. So to make a long story short, I have his $40 and I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs while I wait for him to get back to me. I guess this is better than waiting for payment, or even worse, paying and never getting the domain I bought, but knowing how annoying that is, I’m confused as to why he hasn’t contacted me asking for the domain. I know I would be all over it, but, I guess it is only $40. Either way I’m planning to push it to him once he contacts me with the info. I just found this situation kind of funny because he paid for it already.
Archive for the ‘Domain Names’ Category
If you are looking to buy a domain online, you should know a few things that you don’t necessarily want to hear. It’s hard to prove what I am about to say, but, even so the evidence is out there. Time and time again people who are searching for available domain names come across a name they like. Many people buy these as soon as they see them. Other times, however, they wait a day or two while they decide what name to buy. Often times this can be their biggest mistake. Here’s why:
It’s not clear or official which domain registrars are monitoring domain availability searches, but, I hear all the time about people who find an obscure domain that they like only to go back a few days later and find out that the domain is now owned by somebody. Coincidence? Absolutely not. I’ve had this happen to me too. I searched for a domain and found that it was available. I liked the domain and was planning on buying it a few days later. Well, when I went back to make the purchase I was shocked to find that the domain had been registered a day or two earlier, just after I had checked its’ availability. Annoying? Yes.
I’ve been a member at Pool.com for years. For those unfamiliar with Pool.com, it’s a service that attempts to buy domain names the very second they are deleted (when their previous owner forgets or decides not to renew). The domains then go to auction and everybody who paid $60 in advance for the particular domain name gets to then attempt to outbid eachother. I’ve been on the bidding end before, but, just about a week or so ago I decided to put one of my domain names up for sale in their aftermarket auction system. Unlike the auctions for expired domain names, their aftermarket auction system is open to any bidder.
The way they have their system set up is pretty well thought out. To avoid fraud, they require all domains that are being auctioned to be transfered into their possession prior to the start of the auction. This way sellers can’t back out if they don’t get a high enough sale price. Instead, it’s simply up to the sellers to enter a good starting price.
I am a big believer in using catchy and reputable sounding names for websites. For example. I own MoneyForum.com. I get comments all the time about that domain name. Before I bought it I was brainstorming other ideas for domain names that might have been a lot cheaper. Then it dawned on me that I was planning to start a forum about money; a money forum. Sure I might have to fork over some cash, but, even so it made a lot of sense to me. The domain name was arguably one of the best options for what I wanted to do, so why mess with perfection? So in the end I went ahead and made the purchase. I’ve paid aftermarket prices on many of my domain names not because I like wasting money, but, because I feel that there is no better way to start your website off right than by giving your visitors a good first impressions. This is why I am a firm believer in buying .com domains only. Anything less than the .com is going to be mistaken for .com, and send traffic to the .com anyway. Why not be the person collecting that extra typo traffic? Pay the extra money upfront. It will pay off later.
In the domain name world there are a lot of investors and speculators. I was recently approached by somebody looking to invest a good deal of cash into purchasing several of my domain names. I could have walked away with high four figures but there was one thing that made me say no. This person was a middle man. He was looking to flip the domains in a year or so for a good profit, a profit that I also would not mind waiting for.
It’s all in how you play your game. If you are in it for the short game then a profit of a few thousand dollars might be what you are after. If you are patient and can hold out for the long run then chances are you will reap the rewards of your waiting. Why sell to an investor when you know good and well that he or she will be waiting a few years, or even less in many cases to find an end user to sell it to?
Lately I’ve been thinking about selling a few of my domain names. There are a lot of ways to get a good “ballpark” value for your domains but there are also a lot of ways that you can waste your money doing so. For example, there are several appraisal companies who will “professionally” appraise your domain assets and give you a price that you can expect to sell the domain for, or at least an estimate. I have used a few of these and there is only one that I think does the best job and that is Moniker.com. I use Moniker for all of my domain services such as registration, appraisals, selling, etc. They aren’t as well known as GoDaddy but when it comes to customer service, security, and professionalism they are second to none. I have had several domains appraised through them and have found their prices to be dead on so far. In the end though, are appraisals necessarily worth it? There are a few ways to answer that question.
As you may know, I own several highly valuable domain names. I’ve been investing in domain names for a while now and have built a quality portfolio by now. I generally receive offers a few times a month from parties interested in purchasing one of my domains. Being an avid “domainer” myself I know exactly how the domain acquisition process normally works. I’ve purchased several highly valuable domain names directly from their owners simply by contacting them and asking for their asking price. Often times this works, but, occasionally the would be seller wants to play hardball. Today I had an interesting situation…
Starting a new website for profit can be a daunting task. How can you make money and how long should it take to get traffic? There are several ways to make money with a new website. One popular option is to charge people to join your site. I do not recommend this version personally and here’s why. When it comes to charging people money for online services, you’ll rarely find people willing to pay immediately. Everybody wants to try it first. But where do you draw the line between using ads and charging members? Personally I’ve found that charging members is almost never something that will go over well. I’m referring mostly to forums in this case, but I have seen other sites have similar problems when it comes to charging members.
When I’ve offered extra features to subscribers, this has generally not been a bad thing. But I’ve created websites for people who wanted to charge for EVERYTHING and this is NOT something that I recommend. People generally don’t mind paying extra for extra features and benefits once they are used to your website and community, but, you will be hard pressed to find somebody to pay without ever even being a normal or non-paid member of your service or website.
What do Google, YouTube, MySpace, Digg, Flikr, and del.icio.us all have in common?
There are a few things. First and foremost though, they are each 100% branded names. None of them are names that you would naturally type into your web browser if you didn’t already know what each site was. Obviously these companies have all become phenomenally successful. Google was recently valued at $100+ billion dollars. YouTube was recently purchased by Google for $1.6 billion dollars. MySpace was sold to Fox News Corp for $800 million dollars. Yahoo acquired flikr and del.icio.us for around $30 million a piece. The only question remaining is when will the owners of Digg.com decide it’s time to sell, and to whom for how much?
The numbers seem to speak for themselves. In the online world branded names are king. Who wants to go to (for example) “SocialNetworking.com” when “MySpace.com” sounds so much cooler? Why would you go to search.com when you could just “Google” what you want to find? “Do you YouTube?” Do you want to “Digg” it? Do you find certain websites and news stories “Delicious?”
I’m sure if you’ve been around internet in the last 15 years you are probably aware of these things called “domain names”. They are the heart and soul of the internet as we know it today. Back in the early 1990’s there were several people who were considered eccentric at the time who began “mining” domain names. They were free when the internet first started, but soon were changed to $100 per year. This knocked a few people out of the gold rush, but, many people continued searching for available domain names hoping that someday they would be worth a lot of money.
They were right. With some domain names selling for millions of dollars, and a countless amount selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars, the internet had created many millionaires in just a 5-10 year time.
Now you are probably thinking that all of the big money has been made already. Right? Wrong! I got into the game in 1999 and began purchasing a few domains. Soon after this I realized that my current names had increased dramatically in value. This prompted me to purchase several more.
