When you want to sell domains or get a second opinion, there’s never enough places to post at. That said, I want to promote my friend and owner of DomainingSource.com, Mike.
He’s done a great job of creating a quality forum in a short span of time, but forum communities can always fit more in. Good atmosphere and friendly people over there so stop on by and register.
Unfortunately the gals here didn’t study up too much on this story, but at least the domain industry got some attention from the mainstream public.
This is fantastic news for .WS believers like myself. While Moto is a great name, many prime key words have gone less, but you can expect the bargain days to dry up in the near future.
Great news and it deserves a feel good moment from way back.
From a fresh outsiders point of view domains seem innocent enough. You pay $8 and you get a name you can use for a website. But if you get into the world of domains, it’s not as easy to turn a profit despite what you might believe from million dollar sales in the news like Pizza.com.
Here is my advice to a person asking whether or not he should make the plunge into becoming a domainer:
My short answer is no, you should not get into domaining. I think you already answered your question.
-
A lot of people say oh I wish I was domaining in 1995 and lament on how they missed out but how many people would have even had the domain in 2008? It takes a lot of determination and patience to register a domain 10 years ago when the Internet was just something “computer geeks” were doing and then keep paying the renewal fees for 10 years and not sell it when offers of $50,000 and $100,000 were coming in.
-
I think that is very true. I can’t say that I wouldn’t have sold it myself. Look at Beer.com. Some college kid sold that for $80,000 in 1999*. Who wouldn’t have been tempted to sell something you bought for $20-$30 bucks a few years earlier and sell it for $80k?
Anyways, the point is with domaining you need to be acting instead of reacting. If you react, you better be able to react fast.
You’ll hear and read a lot of domain glory stories, but usually no one tells you the ugly side of domaining. If you want to see the ugly side go look at an expired domains site. Look at the millions of dollars people have thrown out the window over the years. And I’m not saying it’s all a bad thing - it’s better to let a domain expire than to keep renewing something that will never be worth $1, but still there are a lot of people that flat out suck at domaining.
To me you sound like someone who should hand register a maximum of 3 domains a month. 1 name that you personally like as well as think it’s inherently a good name and want to develop and the other 2 for pure speculation/domaining purposes. This way you can be in the world of domaining, but limit your risk to about $200/year which is pretty fair if you consider how much money people spend on dvds, news stand magazines, movies, and other more trivial stuff.
Just like most things in life, there are a few people who are successful and a lot that aren’t. A lot of the rhetoric you read on this board may be from those who are successful as it’s evident many NamePros members are profitable domainers, but just remember for every one of them there’s 30 that aren’t/will not be profitable (as of now I’m in that group - hopefully not in a few years).
Your post resounded of honesty so I thought I’d give you my truth. There’s nothing wrong with being risk adverse. You won’t become a millionaire that way, but you probably won’t go broke either. Now that you have read the preceeding sentence think about the percentage of people are millionaires.
Last thing. When I was reading your post I thought of a great quote from one Stewart Gilligan Griffin:
I’ve only read about this, but rumor has it Godaddy no longer prevents domains from being transferred to another registrar for 60 days after pushing the domain to another account/changing WHOIS info. If this is true, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t this is definitely good news.
Let’s see if Godaddy makes the official.
Yes, it’s $50,000 but runs is a great name that I think would go much higher on Sedo if sent to auction. You can see this premium domain listing price at Godaddy.com by searching runs.
Also, Drunker.com is on sale on Ebay. There is a reserve or else the current bid of $15 would be a nice take home.
Ebay is also featuring another nice domain in Drafted.com with a buy now price of $79,000.
This blog marks the official launch of two new domain name info directories. I decided to create these sites to have a one stop site where I could browse all of the domain name sites and blogs at once. Before I begin adding other sites, I encourage my readers to send in their domain name blogs or sites so that I can add them to the mix first.
Here are the links:
Thanks!
Here is the link with all the information for .ME registration:
http://www.domaininformer.com/news/press/080410RegistrarsPrepareforAllNewDomainExtensionME.html
Wake me up when they launch .web.
An all too common problem I see - even moreso now - is domainers both new and experienced buying into trademarked domains. With the new domainers, you have not only TM infringements but the names in and of themselves would be worthless anyways. Experienced domainers are weary of the names, but know a good typo or add-on when they see it and sometimes can’t resist. One of the common justifications is there’s a lot of other sites with them and they don’t get in trouble.
Well, maybe not, but you still risk losing that domain or much worse when you register a trademarked domain name. Let me clarify this for those who don’t want to see the light.
googleforum.com is a TM.
gooogle.com is a TM.
googlez.com is a TM.
Basically, anything you register with the premise of using someone else’s name or brand to make money is a TM. And that makes common sense. You wouldn’t want someone to take your name that you had invested millions into marketing and be able to make money off your resources and hardwork for nothing.
What is ok:
youforum.com
moneytube.com
You can use a popular generic keyword as part of your website’s name. After Youtube.com was launched for example, domainers jumped on the (you + keyword) or (keyword + tube) bandwagon. This is ok. The word’s you and tube seperated from one another and combined with another word takes advantage of the fad popularity, but does not specifically take from the youtube brand.
A good place to start when determining if you have a name may be a trademark is the online trademark search. Here is the link:
Click the trademarks tab. Then select Search TM database.
In general, register in good faith domainers. This is the most key component to keeping you free of lawsuits and attorney letters. Most TMs are coming from boldface bad faith registers to capitalize off someone else’s brand. There really aren’t too many whoops I accidentally registered a name that might be a TM infringement.
Now, there can be a gray area with domains and TMs where it is not clear whether the domain is a TM or not. Seek out a patent attorney on these issues if you truly want to start a working business with that site. If not, err on the side of caution.
Here is a related article on cybersquatting hitting a record high:
This is one of those extremely low risk - possible reward scenarios.
Have you ever thought about subdomains on popular sites such as Myspace, Youtube, Squidoo, etc?
I haven’t tested it, but I’ll wager the major keywords on here fetch some type-in traffic from the sites users. Furthermore, there’s even a little value in these names. Maybe a lot.
Think about it. Imagine if you owned Youtube.com/money. I bet that’s pretty valuable. Furthermore, endusers such as TNT tv shows and celebrities have made a home page off of Myspace.
The great part is they’re free to register and there is upside to nabbing a top domain. It may be worth your while to search out a few. I’ve only grabbed names that I actually use to produce items like videos (youtube.com/domainvlog) or my own personal website pages, but if you have a website you may want to grab the pop culture equivalent of it.
These names could turn out to be gems for marketing purposes and establishing a repoire using a reputable sites address. Another positive is at the very least, you garner another link to your home address.
