Domain Owl

The opportunity to create a new domain name or buy a name at auction pops up thousands of times a day. Checking to see if a new name is registered with ICANN registrars or looking up the current owner is half the fun. The ideas of how to make a website and what the name should are practically forming a new age hybrid of literature and linguistics.

But many domainers will agree a lot of this time and energy could be spent on domains already in the stable.  Many bidders have undeveloped names already. Sometimes in the rush to obtain a new domain name, acquisition  comes at the expense of existing projects. A critical list of references to check the name against could save a domainer time, trouble, and money.

The chance to buy or bid on a name or even see what’s up for sale can be a once in a  lifetime opportunity. But scanning auctions takes time. Making offers for strategic domains is even more time consuming. We’ve talked a lot about domains and websites, but here is a short reminder list every domainer should tick through before bidding or buying even one more domain name. The savings in the end run could be huge.

The next domain purchased for any domainer’s portfolio should bring value to the name game. The resale value projection should take into account promotion costs, marketing effort, and hosting fees for any site that might be launched for that url. The expectation of affiliate revenues should be supported by some kind of data metrics for traffic visitation or projection of same via a statistical report.

The reports should come from more than one source and show a detailed analysis of traffic referrals and revenue payments from known and trusted sources. It should also be established that no violations have been received or any misuse of any affiliate  codes or revenue programs have been undertaken that would cloud the owner of the name in shame.

Many domainers look back to big ticket name expenditures and try to figure  out what they were thinking. Many frantic name buyers cite frenzied bids on the buzz of recent propaganda to support a certain type of name, the rush of last minute bids by other bidders for names at auction, and the euphoric rush of adrenaline that comes with buying a name that could be the ramp to fame and fortune online.

A domain name should have a history of bringing in revenue if the dollar amount exceeds three to four figures and beyond. The longevity of its ownership should not exceed its marketability, such as for a trend or product that will not long be popular or for sale. Names that promote illegal wares or activities frowned upon by banking institutions or hosting providers will likely not be resold at a premium.

A domain name that is a typo of a famous trademark or a proper domain name with heavy traffic will only enjoy robust accidental traffic dependent on the popularity and SEO results and customer use of the proper name. The nature of its name should create a wary buyer. Even trusted auction sites can get stuck with bad names. Bad names have lawsuits and C & D letters attached to them that unwary bidders may not find about until after they’ve bought the name.

As always, the last type of name information and background search and check for any domain name under serious consideration is the copyright search. Ideas already trademarked by others and the monetary derivation of profit for those ideas is guarded by legal means. A legal opinion should be sought by domainers interested in keeping their legal calendar clear.

Is someone else launching or using this name or something very much like it on another TLD or sub-TLD? For typos, have other lawsuits been filed? Will your launch efforts for the name be robbed of a typo itself? Who owns or hold the names similar to this one and why or why not have they developed them? How long has their site been up and will your site be confused with theirs?

Consideration of the domain name and development potential beyond the auction win and name purchase will transform a passive portfolio into an actively reviewed body of names. Consideration of other names to flip for value to fund new name purchases, and the offer of trades can be accomplished with good communication and successful negotiation with other domainers.

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Domainers that skip the auction threads of the popular domain forums do so at their own risk. The beauty of the one dollar domain is that once the normal tricks of developing a website and enhancing content for SEO optimization are ingrained, value builds with the additional of each domain.

Because for the experienced domainer webmaster, one additional site is simply a matter of acquiring another single domain and putting it up at their hosting account. Dollar domains can maintain growth in value that results in a portfolio sale or a one time profit opportunity when the topical keyword or term heads into the news or fetches interest from portfolio or domainer buyers.

The one time cost of the domain at one dollar should neither be the value the domainer uses to assess how much effort to put into the development of the website or the aggregate of any future price they may fetch for that name in auction.In fact, domainers should consider a handpicked dollar domain as a bargain with additional promotion costs stitched into the profit model. The dollar domain is probably worth at least a minimum subfee over reg fee, for the simple reason that it has been used before and has some traction somewhere, even if it was only parked by the previous owner.

With competitive pricing of a flexible hosting plan, domainers actually leverage more value out of the hosting plan with every domain hosted. Mocking up websites and applying domain names to paid parking, even utilizing the domain names acquired for link presences to support another site name can pay off in the long run. If a webmaster uses a minisite template to provide a web site content layer for his set of dollar domains, then uses their traffic building to supply value to those domain names, then ultimately the domainer has constructed a subset of his own traffic domains.

These traffic domains can become long term instruments of domain promotion because instead of having to rent or buy traffic domains, simply switching the forwarding of the hosting servers can build exponential traffic stats for target domain name sites overnight. For resale of a domain name or a targeted promotion, these types of domains are invaluable to have inside the hosting or registrar account. Thus the dollar domains themselves become instilled with value over time, and it can safely be said that they will resell for more than a dollar.

Dollar domains can also be used as sponsor or product promotion destinations. instead of furnishing every Google Adsense box with Google ads, try editing the text and links to go to products and links that build revenue for you. If the destination web pages have links and affiliates as well, other types of product promotions and sponsor offers can be placed there that are not relevant to original domain name, keywords, and theme. Building traffic domains as well as developing main website domains allows the domainer to reach a wider sphere of contacts. These contacts become vendors and buyers over time.

At some point a portfolio management strategy for all the domain names the domainer will buy will be necessary to organize the names into a strategic order.

The renewal date of each name should be noted as soon as the name comes under review for bidding. Of course, if the seller of the dollar domain is merely shedding portfolio “fat” and trying to rid himself of domains before their expiration, that should take the domain out of the “dollar’ estimation range in terms of cost. But one dollar is never too much to risk when there is the time frame of year before renewal to produce traffic, and gain domain value and leverage it for sale.

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For every blog entry you can write urging newbs and experiences seasoned domainers to scan for every opportunity, the real news never fails to astonish. Even one domain nugget of gold mined from the mountains of domains pitched through the auctions can still make domainers goggle.

Domainers this week were goggling at a reg fee domain purchase of a top tld. To pay D.Tv and P.Tv for only $22 at reg fee is almost unheard of for a virgin domain land grab. Even more puzzling is the practice of registrars withholding premium short and one or two letter domains. These would repay the  registration expenses and  raise the most money, repaying the funding of any new venture. So holding back domains of premium value makes no sense.

So the big mystery of the day is how did these 2 letter .TV domains wind up getting registered for less than $22 each? Domainers are wary of this news because in the list of premium .TV domains released by Enom last night these were not available. Dot TV names are growing because everybody all over the planet has a TV or watches one.

The income model for domains of this caliber and brevity usually happen by auction sales to the highest bidder. Yet the buyers were originating from China, a nation whose government is making news for limiting and restricting its citizens from owning domains and starting online businesses. This domain could easily resell for multiple of $100,000. Some might say it should have the first time out.  So how did this happen?

Domainers are watching both the China market for domains and every new piece of global top level domain real estate possible. The Single Character Domain market is considered one of the most premium and hard to get domain name items in the world. The price should range in the five to six figures easily, especially for a tld like “TV”.

Bur fairness and market pricing is hard to control when the real estate originates in a place like China (or Russia). Liberation of such restricted domains for such a low price in such a limited quantity either signals corruption in the portal security handling, or a vulnerability in the purchasing mechanism.

It also may be the case that Chinese law and Internet enforcement may have “approved” the purchase of these domains.  If the process in China to approve Internet ventures spurs the domain purchase, then domains purchased under this program may officially list at low prices. But there may be hidden red tape costs.

Domainers are keeping a close watch. The first China domains land grab is being controlled by government forces in China, and any opportunity to leverage a vulnerability will be exploited by domain name owners and buyers worldwide.

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Many new domainers coming into the market scoff at the mile high tombstones of the big domain sales. But one reason domainers watch the auctions is to see what kinds of money are flowing to what types of domain projects. The corporate money is what every domainer dreams of. And it still flows to certain names optimized for key domain name markets.

The announcement of the auction at Sedo of a name sale for six figures doesn’t happen every day. But Metal.com sold for $165,000. That’s big money for the long domain investor. Sedo continues to vend big money name sales worldwide. And trading up continues to be the smart advice to long term industry domain name professionals. Because the right name will find its corporate home.

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