Domain Owl

The Domain name offer can come in from the cold with the new era of blog databases and instant websites. A template or open source application used for an existing domain’s website means that any buyer can take advantage of premium content original to that domain name as part of the purchase price. This can be termed a “domain sweetener”.

Adding sweetener to your domain can be as simple as allowing the buyer to utilize the current hosting where the domain is lodged. Server information is generally given with the WHOIS record.  The WHOIS record must always be accurate for this reason. Unless a Privacy option is purchased at the time of the domain name creation, the registrant’s name phone number address and fax number is visible to the public. And even Privacy entailed records have bid or offer links at the lookup point.

What functions as a sweetener? Bundled domains with other sub-TLD’s, Emails with the domain or a free renewal might be other domain sweeteners. The ability to transform a nibble of interest into a successfully executed domain sale may take some sweetening on the seller’s part. The trick is knowing when to add the sweetener. Only the seller knows how motivated they really are to get some cash out of the deal.

Domains will attract lookups and type in interest form time to time. the record of these lookups can be tracked by referrer traffic form the WHOIS. This can be viewed from the statistics utility in the web hosting menu. The concept of the WHOIS lookup concedes that a likely buyer is checking out who owns the domain name, how long they have owned it, where it is hosted, and what the owner is doing with the domain.

A domain buyer will check out whether or not the current owner has a lot of time or investment put into the name. The theory is that a domainer will sell a name more cheaply if they haven’t developed it themselves.  Or the prospective buyer may want to see if the domain name is parked and thus assess its potential value as a parked revenue generator. The offer for the domain name may include the content seen online.

Existing content in the form of databases or text files can also function as a domain sweetener. If the domainer has invested in domain development at all, these files can be furnished with the domain name sale as a sweetener. The incentive should be communicated that valuable planning and effort are attached with the domain purchase price. The sweetener should be signalled when the buyer has had enough time to consider an offer.

For this reason, domain name offers to buy should have a deadline and a “window of opportunity” attached. This way the prospective buyer has to evaluate how motivated they are. The domain name price will not be a given with a horizon of forever, but an opportunity to buy the domain name at the stated price within a secured period of time. The communication regarding the sweetener should come from a motivated seller near the end of the offer period.

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For domainers looking to pick up a few great domain deals here is a typical analysis of the Pool hotlist and the drop evaluation technique. The Pool list is published via email from Pool.com daily in anticipation of recipient interest in bidding on names at the Pool.com domain name auctions held daily online. These names drop or are put up for sale by domainer sellers daily.

Deletion lists can be addicting because they show what other domainers have been up to. Drop lists show what domain names other domainers have decided are either not worth their while to renew, or what domains they have not gotten around to renewing. As many a domain name fish story will start, the “renewal email got lost in the shuffle’ incidence can happen very easily indeed.

Unless a domainer already has a site invested for a given trademark, trademark names are best avoided. One reason they are in the drop to begin with is that the owner has either gotten a “Cease and Desist” letter from the copyright owner or fears one will arrive with any further development of the name. Trademark names are a risk. The domain Amazondiscounts.net is an example of a possible trademark name.

Short names are always good to review because they may come very close to names you already own or may be acronyms for longer names you already own. This begets “type-in” traffic domainers want. A name in tomorrow’s Pool list, like r0b.net, could be good for domain name owners and administrators named Rob or those with burglary aspirations, or those with acronyms totaling R-O-B.

A name for sale like cashmonk.com might be a very good site name for an affiliate or cash raising site or a website with strategems for building multi level marketing or popup revenues online. Keywords like “cash” and “money” can be competitive bidding arenas, so domainers should have their checkbooks ready for active bidding. Money words are genuine traffic attractors because so many people are looking for information about money markets, investing, budgets and so forth online all the time.

Hyphenates are an acquired taste. Some domainers stem from the “old school” of domaining where almost any hyphenate was a detractor for original name value. Symbols were estimated as harder for web users to remember, type in, or use. Hyphenates always stand the risk of building type-in traffic for the name owner of the same domain name without the hyphen.

A name like debt-elimination.com has “money” name appeal but a hyphenate detractor element to it. A domain name for sale at Pool.com like rugged-notebooks has a tech designation but a hyphenate detractor dynamic as well. Likely buyers for this name should be those with other names with “notebook” in them for traffic continuation or site keyword mirroring and linking.

A deleting name like foreclosedlists.com reflects conflicting factors within a qualified domain name up for auction. This is a real estate name, and a partial money name, but also a list name, and can be considered too long by some purist domain name investors. But the likelihood of searches for this type of site might be estimated to be high enough to realize value and profit for affiliate and traffic visits.

Prohomes.com follows much of the same logic, except it can be argued to more valuable because it is much shorter to type in than foreclosedlists.com. The homes market for domain names may also be seen as a longer term viable keyword investment than the “foreclosure” arena of recent financially related real estate activity. Prohomes.com could be an excellent long term domain “flipping” investment waiting for the right corporate buyer.

Foodcult.com and fakeplants.com make amusing ideas for websites if the bidding price can be kept within the probable window of return on domain investment. The domainer should have an idea what assembling a directory and a number of articles should cost and a link building strategy for the site.

Further on down the list, On99.com might make a good site if the number 99 has some relevance to another data item or price level, such as 99 cents or 99 dollars. Numerical domains can be tricky, but a good example of a site is gymnastics2010.com, which has up to the minute gymnastics articles for this current year. Date domains can be worthwhile to acquire and develop in their current “date year”.

Download the full Pool.com list is available at the pool website, and searching out special domain names or names not featured on the list is a domainer’s stock in trade. Expect higher bidding for short names, and money names, and manage bids so cascading auctions don’t rob the domainer of time to rebid. Finally, resist the urge to get in a bidding war or rally to a name that builds interest simply as an auction win to acquire.

Safe and happy drop listing, everyone!

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