Treasure Hunting: Deleted Domains

Treasure...just the word conjures up ideas of opening a chest buried under the sea for 200 years and having gold medallions and sparkling precious stones fall out. But while the analogy may be accurate in that hidden "treasure" domains may be just as hard to find as real life treasures, in reality these kinds of finds are more akin to the kind of treasures that archaeologists find.

Maybe first you find an interesting clay pot that could be valuable in the future, and later you discover an ancient piece of jewelry that could bring a small profit if you can find a buyer. But you keep searching for gold, even hoping to find King Tut. And you'll probably keep finding clay pots.

The dig itself is also very time consuming and requires tools, patience, and research. There are many websites with searches & lists of deleted domains - here are just a few:

Deleteddomains.com
Stuckdomains.com
Domainbots.com

Most of these websites require you to pay a subscription fee in order to access the full array of deleted domains and tools that they offer. Items such as an updated list of recently deleted "dictionary" words, searches of deleted domains by length as well as keyword, downloadable lists of 3 letter domains, etc.

But even access to all of this information won't tell you the potential value of different domain names, especially ones that aren't obvious at first glance. It is up to you to have an idea either of what kind of words you are going to search for (computer, adult, travel, etc) - or wait and see what catches your eye, and then do some research to see if the word or acronym might be worth acquiring. Especially important can be a knowledge of foreign languages - what sounds like jibberish in English could be a great phrase in another language. Recently I saw that Geld.com sold for around $20,000 - and I thought "what the heck - must be the name of some big company." In fact the word means MONEY in German. Ha - no wonder it sold for 20Gs.

You can find acronyms for businesses & global entities, ones that could command nice money, particularly in a .com ending. But unless you are already familiar with these terms, you'll have to look up potential buys 1 by 1. I usually Google terms that look catchy. For example, I saw B40.org on the deleted list - and thought "huh B40 sounds like something." Sure enough, it's everything from a motor to a typewriter ribbon to a communications receiver. And better yet, there are quite a few people paying for Google Adwords using this term. So I snapped it up. And I've noticed that this domain gets type-in traffic (people tying "B40.org" directly into their browser's internet address bar) every day. I don't know if I'll get a lot of money for this domain, but it definitely has some value. I passed on i-wagers.com, because I'm not all that fond of dashes. Might have been a mistake, as somebody else has already registered it.

You can also do a daily search for words in your given field. Some of mine are Spanish, language, & travel - so I'm always on the lookout for any expirations of good URLS that contain these themes. I try to be semi picky, because just like an archaelogist sifting through a ton of earth, I don't want to get stuck with just a bunch of rocks. But despite the long and arduous work required to sift through deleted domains, I'm sure that among my rocks will be at least a few sparklers.

When You Should Fork to Buy Your Company's Domain

Since the .com version of most names have long been gone, new companies face a dilemma when trying to go online. Do we add a "the" to our name? Do we go w/ the .net., org. etc? Do we add an "inc" to the end? Or should we make an effort to acquire our exact name, whatever the cost?

As anybody doing business online can tell you, your URL does matter. A lot in fact. And whether or not you can go w/ a similar name in a .com or an alternative TLD (ending) depends on what the purpose and scope of the website is. Specifically:

1- Does this website represent a brand name that is a big part of your marketing?
2- Do you want the website to attract traffic to your business, or serve as a place for existing customers and "real world" referrals?
3- Is this website going to be a big part of your business, or more of an advertising brochure?
4- Do you plan to do sales online?

Let's look at an example from a company that I do business with. They are an educational publisher, with a quite nifty product called "Think Spanish," an audio magazine teaching Spanish. Each monthly issue has a nice array of articles about culture, grammar, travel, and vocabulary, presented in a user friendly format with an audio CD with a spoken word version of the magazine in Spanish.

Yet they faced the problem when going online that the domain Thinkspanish.com was already taken, by a nice fellow who had no interest in selling out cheaply. So they took the name Readspanish.com instead, and have done reasonably well with SEO and cross linking, so that their site has acheived a respectable 590,516 ranking in Alexa, and a PR 5 in Google. Not great but not bad for a niche publication.

Meanwhile the guy over at Thinkspanish.com has put up no more than an affiliate site full of links to Amazon DVDs. While his website is easy to navigate and surely helpful for a Spanish student, it is small, has terrible traffic (no data in Alexa - that means you get so little traffic they don't bother to rank you), and only ranks a PR 4 in Google. The bottom line is that the Think Spanish magazine people could do way better with this domain that he does.

And having the URL "Read Spanish" when your product is called "Think Spanish" - is a BIG problem. Imagine the type-in traffic they are losing to the DVD guy! Caramba. While in such a niche industry it may not be the end of the world, their case demonstrates a scenario that crops up all the time. While they might not be able to acquire the actual Thinkspanish.com, I suggested to them that at the very least they acquire the available versions .org, .us, .info, & .biz - and redirect them to the existing Readspanish.com website.

The problem with not acquiring the domain Thinkspanish.com - whatever the cost - is that their company has very little viability as an internet business without this name. While they can use the traffic directed to the current site to acquire new customers, they are not truly building an online presence w/ branding behind it. This is not a good long term strategy. "Real world" businesses would be well advised to keep in mind that their online business can develop both a life and value of its own, and if you don't strategize to build the worth of your website as well as your offline business, you are thinking too small.

Being the e-entrepeneur that I am, who believes in the exponential possibilities of e-business...if I were them I would either fork to buy Thinkspanish.com, or change the name of the magazine to Read Spanish. Since the guy who owns the current URL is clearly making little to no money off of it, a buyout could seem attractive. I would at least try negotiating with him. He is suffering from the exact same problem they are, in that his URL has nothing to do with DVDs - so perhaps they could acquire an alternative URL and use it as a bargaining chip.

Bottom line is that despite the successes you can have with alternative ending websites, owning the .com version of your product name can be an important part of building value in an online business, and one that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand just because you'd rather pay $9.20 for your domain at Godaddy.