Why .info Domains Are a Good Investment

When I first saw the .info domain names being offered, I thought "no way, too many characters. Too UNinternet sounding. Not cool enough. Who needs another TLD anyway?" Boy was I wrong.

In the last year Newyork.info went for $22,000 on Sedo.com Casino.info, over $20,000. At one point it was silly how easy these names were to acquire too! Not much competition, seen as 2nd class citizens in the online world. But the phenomenom of the .info TLD is distinct: they are most valuable in subjects where the .info ending is an EXTENSION of the name. To the user, the difference between Newyork.com and Newyork.info, is that the 1st looks like it would be a portal trying to sell you stuff & give you streaming video; the 2nd looks like legitimate INFO.

.info is also multilingual. Information, información, informazione, etc. Even better.

I've snapped up a few, Elanguages.info probably being the best. They don't offer these in IDNs yet, or I'd have more! I've found that the pickings are already a bit slim in the areas I'm interested in. But I plan to keep scouting, and so should you. Just keep in mind that the .info part needs to read like an extension of the name, or the name isn't nearly as valuable.

Domain Buying Analysis: 1dex.com

1dex.com is a domain I found on a deleted domain list. Scanning these lists is a veeeery tedius and eyeball straining activity, but one that can oncover some potentially valuable domains.

While I'm not all that familiar with the websites & businesses that use the term "dex" - at first glance I thought the URL was just kind of catchy. Upon Googling the word, I soon discovered that the term "dex" is extremely widespread, and indeed could be a valuable find, so I registered it immediately.

The numeral "1" is a strike against it, but that doesn't mean a company wouldn't be willing to part with some cashola in order to acquire this domain. Why is that? Because the term "dex" has nearly 2.7 million entries in Google, it is used as a synonym for "index" - and the name of all sorts of things from Qwest & Verizon directories, to yellow pages, to data exchange companies, and much more.

Whenever you have this many big companies using the term, you know the URL has some value. Just how much value? Well that remains to be seen. This is probably one I'll have to sit on a while. As internet use & world population grows, there will be less and less places for big companies to go if they want a .com name. And 1dex.com has the following things going for it:

1- "dex" is an extremely popular word used by some BIG companies
2- 1dex is short and easy to remember
3- the number "1" indicates the top of the line, best in the pecking order, numero uno, best resource, etc.
4- the domain is a .com

But it's also one of those words where you could only get top value from a company actually planning to USE it. And I don't mean using it for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) type activity, but rather to actually base their company division, name, web operation, directory, etc - on the term "1dex". When and if that day comes, this URL could command some nice bucks. ¡Ojalá! (I hope in Spanish)

Lessons from the Million Dollar Sale of Men.com

Late last year, one exceptionally lucky guy in Florida managed to sell his domain name for $1.3 million (he bought men.com in 1997 for $15,000). Now folks are thinking the dot-com gold rush is back on, and they're ready to pounce on stupid domains like mydomainisdumb.com or ibetI'llsellthisformillions.com. I say hold off on the domain squatting. You are not going to get rich.

from Domain hipe because of 1.3 Million dollar sale

The author goes on to say that the reason a Florida Man got lucky in late 2003 with this awesome sale, is that the domain has very broad appeal, and is short & easy to remember. During my research of the past week I've discovered that shorter can often be better, because there are a lot less 3 and 4 letter domains available. Whenever supply is short, prices tend to rise!

But when he states that people shouldn't waste their time thinking up longer domain names, or including dashes, or even trying to get rich with domain names, I think he's wrong.

While I'm not a fan of dashes, Satellite-phone.com just sold for $2188 on Afternic. I bet the guy or gal who owned it paid $9.20 for that URL on Godaddy...And what about that guy who had Ilovetheiraqinformationminister.com? While I have no clue whether he made money on his website, he was featured on all sorts of TV shows for a time there - which couldn't exactly have hurt whatever business the guy is in.

I don't think you can get rich overnight. But there is definitely money to be made in this market, as demonstrated on Sedo.com each day. Maybe you can't sell 1 URL for a million buckaroos, but if you do your research and stay on it like a dog on a bone...you just might be able to develop a long term portfolio of a hundred good domain names that will end up bringing you between $500 and $2000 per name. And those numbers would average out to $125,000. Those are really rough figures and don't include your registration fees, but I think you can get the idea.

Certainly you're going to buy some stinkers which you end up sitting on forever, or even ditch. But you may even find a gem that commands some nice money - maybe not $1.3 million, but maybe $20 or 30K. And with opportunities opening up in the ccTLD market (I'm personally a bit excited about the possibilities in China w/ their .cn extension), as well as the never ending process of new lingo, current events, etc. - there are always going to be openings in the domain name market for a careful watcher who's not afraid to take an educated gamble.

And the lesson I got from the sale of Men.com is that while the market is way more cautious than it used to be, the waiting game can payout. Imagine - this Florida guy waited 6 years to sell that name! I bet he got tempted to sell it a heck of a lot cheaper at least once, and lucky for him he knew that his name would command a higher value once the market matured. Along these lines I'm hoping my IDN Iré.com ("I will go" in Spanish) has a bright & lucrative future!

Why You Should Register YourName.com

I recently had a discussion with a guy who's a bit of a mover and shaker, freelances for places like ABC News, among others - and believe it or not, he hadn't thought about registering his own name as a URL. I offered the idea that perhaps somebody ELSE would get the bright idea to register it, and put up a "this guy sucks" website, or worse.

I know they've passed some cyber squatting regulations, but I don't imagine it's quick & easy to get somebody evicted from YourName.com even if they don't have your name.

And even for us lesser known folks, it's still a great idea to register your own name, before the other legitimate people w/ the same name as you do. Who knows what you might like to put there - perhaps just a business card. Perhaps a family photo album. Perhaps nothing - but this way, noone else will either. The .com 10 year registration fee (around $90) is certainly worth the price when it comes to securing your own name every 10 years.

IDN Domains - Are Multilingual Domain Names Worth it?

A few years back the answer was clearly NO. Some webmasters today still agree that they are a waste of time. But times may be changing.

Multilingual domains, or "Internationalized Domain Names" - are ones that use accent marks & other multilingual characters like ñ, í, é, etc. These domains are unreadable by the majority of browsers being used today, although you can enable these characters by downloading a plug in from Verisign, called the iNav Plug.

Verisign appears to be getting aggressive about pushing the IDNs into the mainstream, most likely because it will represent a large source of revenue once it catches on, and these domains "in your language" become widely used.

Germany is way ahead of the pack on this one - I'm not sure if German users already have a multilingual URL reading browser, or if they are downloading plugins, but domains with funky characters in them are selling right and left in this market. And while most registrars only support Spanish or French characters in the .com, .net, and way underused .bz endings...Several big registars are now offering German language IDN names in a wider variety of endings, such as the .info one.

This is a good sign! But if you buy a Spanish language URL, like Quépasa.com, which I just bought - your URL doesn't have a heck of a lot of value this very minute. My hope is that this waiting game could prove to be very profitable, as Spanish language internet users are growing around 25% faster than English ones.

My guess is that the company that could push IDNs into the mainstream faster than anyone is Microsoft. If a future version of IE (Internet Explorer, the web browser) had an iNav like plugin already in place - and hence the ability to read multilingual characters in the URL with no additional effort on the part of the user - the values of well positioned multilingual domain names would skyrocket. Perhaps a deal between Verisign & Microsoft is on the horizon...

Domain Buying Analysis: Books.io

Let's look at 1 of the domains on my list: Books.io

Depending on how the market responds to ccTLDs in the future, Books.io could be one of the most valuable domains in my portfolio. Or not... it depends a lot on whether some other .io domains get picked up by mainstream people who

1) can't get the keyword anywhere more mainstream
2) take a liking to how "io" looks & sounds

In 2000, the domain Beauty.cc supposedly went for $1,000,000 - heralding a new age in ccTLDs and their value. Well, not all was as it seemed, and afterwards many things came out about how this may have been a deal between 2 friendlies with a stake in making .cc a mainstream domain. I didn't research it too heavily, but I know that after doing business online for 4 years, I've never come into contact with a .cc site that I surfed regularly or did business with. So much for the day of a $$$ million dollar ccTLD (country "top level domain").

Plus 2000 was before the whole dot.bomb implosion, back when Business.com went for $7,000,000 and the market & prices were super inflated.

But back to Books.io. Here are the reasons why I think this is a valuable domain, even in a bizarro ".io" extension:

1- books are one of the hottest selling things online
2- in some cases they sell BETTER online, as user reviews are unavailable to "real world" shoppers
3- the word "books" is not available in any other ccTLD that isn't super obscure & require an in country presence
4- books.com is owned by Barnes & Noble.

As for the .io ending...if some company wanted to get creative and call themselves something like Books Immediately Online - Books.io - that would give them a lot of incentive to acquire this URL. Ah and one little tidbit: the ".tv" people aka Verisign, are offering Books.tv for a mere $25,000 a year! What a deal!

Bottom line: I wouldn't sell this domain for less than $1000 right now, and if the market moves in a positive direction, I might see a day where I can command up to maybe $10,000 for it. I'm a bit wary of setting my expectations that high though, as MORE ccTLDs, and even regular TLDs can come out at any time, making the ".io" extension nearly worthless. I think it would be great fun to be on the marketing team of one of these extensions...seems like thinking up slogans like "immediately online" for .io could really make a difference. The .bz people have pushed for years to establish their ending as the standard for global business, but then the .biz TLD came out - cutting their legs off, essentially. As the proud owner of Spanish.bz this was not good news...

How to Determine Which Domains to Buy

As I've mentioned before, it's a lot more complex than just looking at the word and thinking "hey that's a good word" - like email.com or movies.com. There are quite a few criteria I've been using to assess whether or not to buy a name - here are just a few:

• 1- What is the ending? .com still rules


• 2- What purpose could a website have - who would buy this URL?


• 3- How catchy does it sound SPOKEN as opposed to WRITTEN?


• 4- Is it spelled the way it sounds?


• 5- What kind of traffic do websites revolving around the keywords or theme get?


• 6- What have other people paid for similar domain names?


• 7- If I can't sell it, would I want to develop it?


• 8- Are other endings (TLDs) being used with the same keyword? (.net, .org, .bz, .info, etc)


• 9- If so, what quality of sites are using them?


• 10- Is there a track record of bidding and/or sales on Sedo.com for this keyword or something similar?
  

Later I'll discuss the online tools I've been using to assess the above questions.

Should I Sell My Domains on Ebay?

As a veteran Ebay seller, my first instinct was that there must be a thriving domain sales market on Ebay. This is far from the case. In reality, many of the domains listed in one of 2 sections dealing with domains are way overpriced:

All Categories > Computers & Networking > Other Hardware & Services > Domain Names

All Categories > Business & Industrial > Websites & Businesses for Sale >

In that spirit I listed my thepokerwinner.com at the pretty outrageous price of $2,000. Despite paying $19.99 for a "featured" listing, I barely got any hits - big surprise, lol! I reconfigured the listing to allow bidding to begin at $10, and lowered the "buy it now" to $500 bucks, and the traffic on the auction has quadrupled. I still doubt I'll sell this domain on Ebay.

I knew beforehand that listing on Ebay was not likely to produce a domain sale. Why? Because I researched "completed listings" and saw that domain name sales were far and few between, despite the relatively large number of listings (1384 auctions in the domain name category as of today). But I thought what the heck, let's see whether an Ebay auction can generate anything - and the answer for now is no.

As for buying on Ebay - there are definitely some deals to be had if you look carefully, particularly people trying to dump like 50 "4 letter" .com URLs for a bargain basement price. These are people about to lose their dinero anyway, as paying the re-registrations on 50 domains would run you over $450 even on Godaddy where they are cheap.

If you know what you are looking for, you might find a golden nuggest among these listings. And if likewise you have some URLs you are about to let expire, why not throw them up on Ebay and see if you can salvage a couple hundred bucks.

Ouch! The Sting of Rejection Already!

Here is the reply I got today from a submission to Great Domains, Verisign's auction site w/ the wildly inflated prices, particulary for their .tv domains, which of course they OWN the rights to...

Thank you for your request to list a domain name on the GreatDomains Web site. We have carefully reviewed your listing request, and while we agree there is value in your domain name, we have elected not to list it on our site. We are only listing specific types of domains at this time and we regret that we are unable to list yours.

This was a response to my submission for "paraiso.tv" - which means paradise in Spanish. If you look through the .tv listings on Great Domains, you'll see those sky high prices I've touched upon, I mean give me a break! I guess they haven't read the stats on the Spanish explosion, how it's outpacing English growth online by nearly 25%, etc. But I guess since I own paraiso.tv, I'm glad to have Great Domains out there inflating prices for me :)

To Buy or Not to Buy...Adult Domains

An ethical question perhaps, do you want to help propogate the porn industry, and even profit from it? Well,...I guess each domain addict has to answer that for his or herself. But if you are truly fascinated by the world of domain buying & selling, you would be missing out on a large part of the market by completely ignoring such urls. I'm not saying one needs to buy up graphic descriptions of bizarre acts dot com....but rolling the dice on a few well thought out adult words might not be a bad idea. I've got a few in my collection, and sad to say, they've drawn as much or more traffic than my clean ones. It remains to be seen whether you can make a killing on these or not.

The Dizzying Array of Country Specific TLDs (ccTLDS)

Here is a partial list I found online, w/ some registation prices. What this list doesn't address is how some of these require a country residence or presence. I made the mistake of buying a .dk domain, because the registrar said they didn't require residence. Should have read the fine print though! All hosting for .dk domains has to go through their "DK Hostmaster" - and most popular American web hosts are not on the list. Seems like .dk is pretty Danish specific, and luckily I got a refund on this URL. I'll analyze which domains are good generic ones & why later.

.ac Ascension $200/1 year
.as American Samoa $225/2 years
.be Belgium $50/1 year
.bz Belize $35/1 year
.ca Canada $50/1 year
.cc Cocos (Keeling) Islands $90/2 years
.de Germany $50/1 year
.dk Denmark $75/1 year
.fm Federated States of Micronesia $200/2 years
.gs South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands $75/1 year
.il Israel $225/2 years
.io Indian Ocean $100/1 year
.jp Japan $100/1 year
.kz Kazakstan $360/2 years
.lt Lithuania $200/1 year
.ms Montserrat $75/1 year
.nz New Zealand $75/1 year
.ph Philippines $135/2 years
.ro Romania $125/1 year
.sh St Helena $200/1 year
.st São Tomé and Principe $75/1 year
.tc Turks & Caicos Islands $75/1 year
.to Tonga $225/2 years
.tv Tuvalu $50/1 year
.uk United Kingdom $90/2 years
.us United States $70/2 years
.vg British Virgin Islands $75/1 year
.vu Republic of Vanuatu n/a
.ws Samoa $70/2 years
.za South Africa $75/1 year

Why Buy Domains to Begin With?

Well I decided that since this is one of the few "speculative" type investing that I have any experience with (i.e. buying a URL, then building a website, then optimizing the site for Google night and day, and watching it grow into an actual business), that it would be a fun way to try a little bit of investing with poco dinero.

I've bought around a hundred, and researched nearly every one before buying. Believe it or not, it's not always obvious which URL's have potential value and which don't! Also with the massive onslaught of ccTLDs...(don't worry I'll be doing a glossary soon) - otherwise known as "country specific" endings, like .yu, .es, .de, .co.uk, .nz, etc. - it can be bewildering to figure out what to buy.

But it's a lot of fun! And I think one day I'm going to actually make a profit from it :) So this blog is a place where I can track my progress, as well as gather research, ideas, and links. And just for the record I haven't made a domain sale yet (5 days in...) - so the journey is just beginning!

Adventures with Sedo

I've spent the last few days completely immersed in the addiction of buying domains & posting them on Sedo.com. While initially a few others like Afternic & Pool.com caught my eye, there's just no comparison. Afternic's inflated prices & supposed "appraisals" are ridiculous, and Pool.com wants 60 buckolas just to register. While I don't rule out listing some things on both of these sites in the future, for now Sedo is the place to begin my venture into the domain speculation business.

First of all the traffic stats of both your parked pages & your Sedo listing views are totally invaluable as far as research goes. Who would even think that some dufases just type random words into their browser instead of a search engine! But this can give you a good idea of whether the term is something already commanding some traffic or not, and whether that extension only seems interesting to domain hoarders, or if it has real present value in the marketplace.

Domain hoarders is my new term for these assholes who seem to have bought up thousands upon thousands of domains just to prevent ordinary folks like you and me from ever having a SHOT at making a big score in the domain name market. Ha! Maybe that's a bit harsh, but heck I'm jealous that they got there before I did. Then you even have nic agencies themselves hoarding their OWN domains, I mean what is up w/ the .tv people? Verisign supposedly paid the Island of Tavula or whatever like 50 million bucks for all these names, or the right to be the broker of them - sounds like getting a license to print money if you ask me. Then they've snatched all the good ones already for themselves, using their ridiculous "Great Domains" website to hock them. Give me a break - totally generic domains like "beach.tv" and "caring.tv" are NOT worth $35K to $75K. They must be living in some kind of parallel universe where the whole dot.bomb thing never happened.