I just bought this name. I know it’s no big generic name, but it cracks me up. I like and I’m not selling it until I get a few thousand for it at least, maybe more. I’ve got some ideas for it, but what kind of site do you guys think it would be a good name for? YouTube (rhymes!) for boobs? A site about idiots? What do you think?
And, hey, I thought I told you in my last post to buy my son’s CD! 
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Do you have to pay a big bucks for names to make big profits on them? No. Are the only good names already taken and do you have to bid them up at dropcatchers to get them? No. Decent names abound at low prices and can even still be hand registered.
To illustrate, in the last week, I sold seven names. All were purchased in the last year. Three were hand registered and four were picked up at tdnam for $5 to $15 dollars, plus registration fee. What did I gross on those names? $5,240.
That’s $92 turned into $5,240, less Sedo or escrow.com fees.
And, I didn’t have much risk with these names as they were so inexpensive. Don’t get me wrong, I do buy more expensive names as well, having paid up to a several thousand dollars for a name. And I’d certainly be willing to pay $50,000 - $100,000 or more for a truly great name. But, when names get into that price range, they are invariably on a major dropcatcher’s site and there are tool many fools there spending their money like it’s 1999 in the tech bubble stock market again. No way I’m going to hang on to millions of dollars of names in a market that could bust (or change) when you least expect it. And we could likely be going into a housing led recession by next year and that will effect all investment markets…but I digress. Am I missing out on making the million dollar hit? Of course. But I do that in other business ventures, not this little hobby.
There are many thousands of dollars to be made by thinking differently, not chasing keywords everyone is chasing, being well-read and opportunistic, being a good negotiator, and most of all using your intuition — if you have it.
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Is Afternic being honest concerning it’s anti-gay stance?
I could kick myself for asking that question. I hate people calling each other intolerant. Sounds like I’m some lib professor in a U.S. university talking about the latest multiculturalist speech codes we’re forcing on our indoctrinated kids. I hate all that diversity-crap talk. I’m actually mostly a conservative. But I’m also a social libertarian. I really don’t care what people do in their own lives. So it pisses me off that Afternic is not allowing gay domain names to be listed under the guise of the names being sexual or obscene.
To be more precise, it’s not that they are not allowing gay names, but that are being DISHONEST about their policy. Here’s what they said when they disallowed Robogay.com to be listed (I have had a few other “gay” names rejected):
Thank you for submitting your name(s) to Afternic for listing. We have made a commitment to our visitors to not show names which promote hate, sex, obscenity or self-destructive behavior, such as substance abuse, violence or gambling. In addition, we cannot list names which violate trademarks, servicemarks, copyrights or other materials protected under US or international law.
Does saying the word “gay” promotes sex , or is obscene, any more than saying the word “straight?” If I submitted RoboStraight.com or RobotHetero.com, would Afternic deny it? No way.
Afternic is not simply filtering out porn, sexual or indecent behavior, they are singling out gay domain names. RoboGay.com does not promote sex any more than RoboStraight.cojm does. And they know it.
It’s a private company, so I firmly believe that they can do as they wish. Seriously. I don’t give crap–I hardly have any gay names. All I want is for them to be honest enough to write the rules as they actually view them: NO GAY NAMES!
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As some of you know, I invest in .CC names. You can see my portfolio of 600 .CC domain names at Speculator.cc.
I noticed something very interesting tonight as I was at the computer with a glass of Grand Mariner, leisurely checking the status of what I thought would be upcoming Pending-Delete .CC names, so I can snatch them up. I have a list of over 30,000 registered .cc names that I have put together through various means. Periodically, I run this list through a program that updates the recently expired names from the list to see what is going to delete and what has been renewed. It seemed that it was only months ago that a very large number of the names would go unrenewed by their owners. But tonight I was shocked as I went through perhaps 1500 names that had expired in the last couple weeks. Only about a dozen were not renewed! And not all names are the cream of the crop either, although these are the better names that are registered.
I can only draw the conclusion that .CC name owners are becoming more aware of the rising value of these names. It’s a good thing I’ve got 600 of them already.
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I’ve just accomplished something I have never done before I’ve taken my two month old site, TravelVoyeur.com, form a PR0 to a PR5. A few days ago it was a 0 and now it is a 5! How did I do it?
Well, the first thing I did was before I created the site, I read the incredible book, SEOBook. It’s not cheap, but it’s worth every penny. Then I designed the site with what I learned from it.
One of the most importnat things I learned was the ultimate unimportance of being included in the Yahoo Directory. Since it could take up to a year to get listed, I chose to pay they $299 for a review of my submission within seven days (still, no guarantee of inclusion). Simultaneously, I created a PRWEB.com press release that I guess Yahoo felt was good enough to include in Yahoo News (read it here).
A pick up of the news here and there (not a lot even) and the site is now a PR5. Being moved up higher in the search results now, my keyword-rich pages are being found by web surfers looking for information on particular destinations. What’s really funny is that I am on page 3 (as of today at least) for the very high search count term “voyeur”. It’s not exactly my target audience, but even voyeurs travel I suppose! Hell, maybe even more so.
Now that I am PR5 and getting hundreds of uniques per day, I’m looking for link partners of other high PR sites. I prefer travel-related sites, but I’ll look at other non-porn sites if the ranking is high enough. Please use my contact form here or at TravelVoyeur.com to get in touch.
Now, if I just had the time to fix the SEO of DomainRookie.com! I put this site together before reading SEOBook and it badly needs some SEO work.
Just a few hours left at Sedo Auctions for my names XXXUpload.com and GirlSpaces.com. Better hurry if you want a bargain on these excellent names!
Dang it! I did it again. I forgot that once you choose to send a name at Sedo, based on an offer received, the description is LOCKED!! The reason to send a name to auction at Sedo is to get more exposure for the name and not creating a great description is a wasted opportunity.
And I just did this with a great name — LearnAjax.com — a subject that is very , very popular among internet developers, but perhaps could use some explanation for a domain name investor who sees the name on auction. Not everyone knows what Ajax is. But, programmers sure do. Wordtracker shows around 50,000 search requests a month and searching Google for Ajax Programming shows 28,000,000 pages!
But, I’ve lost my opportunity to explain it to those who don’t know, so I might not get the price I would like. In case you are interested, the auction ends Jan/07/07 03:05 PM EST.
Always, always check your description before sending a name to Sedo auction.
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You know, I often watch with amusement how domainers all follow the same old formula. Overture! Number of web pages! Pagerank! Sure, all that is very important, extremely important. But, that’s not all there is. You have to think differently too. In investing, anyone who does what everyone else does will end up getting clobbered in the end (watch those overpaying on snapnames in a few years).
I look at early trends, future technologies and often buy names that have none of the traditional metrics. I can get them cheap. Hell, sometimes I am able to hand-reg a name and resell it relatively quickly for a large profit.
Here’s a case in point that just happened today: I know that Virtual Worlds, in which people actually work and play, are going to be huge. Look at SecondLife already. Lots of entrepreneurial activity going on there. So, back in July I thought up the word Virtualpreneur. I may have not been the first to think it up, but I was ready to be the first to act on it.
But it had zero OVT, was not a real word and Google Search shows exactly 25 pages that have the term on it. The tlds were available (although now I see that the .biz version is taken and I cannot remember if it was back then or not). All metrics that would steer a traditional domain name investor away from the name were in place. Well, I registered Virtualpreneur.com at for $7 at GoDaddy anyway, on the basis of my perception of the future.
Today, I got an offer for a few hundred dollars on it. I countered with $750 and the buyer immediately took it. I actually should have gone for more. But, that’s over 100 times my money in less than half a year.
I’ve done this before. It’s called thinking, not following.
So, being the virtualpreneur that I am, I immediately went and bought the remaining good TLD’s for the name.
Think. Lead. Don’t follow.
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My name BlondeMoments.com is at auction at Sedo. It ends tomorrow, Nov/29/06 06:47 AM EST. While I acutally had a higher bid before than the $400 offer with which I sent it to Sedo auction, I was curious to watch one work with a name of mine. Heck, I didn’t pay a whole lot under $400 for the name at a tdnam auction. I think given what I had to pay at tdnam (always underpriced) and the interest I’ve had on it for the short time I’ve owned it, it’s a steal for the bidder at $400.
You can check out the bid here.
But hurry, time is running out!
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I thought I’d try something different. Since every domainer has different needs, two name owners can execute a trade and both can come out ahead. One doesn’t have to “get a better deal” than the other because one may need one type of name, and the other another type of name.
So, I thought for fun I’d throw out a name and if any of you have something of equivalent value you want to trade for it, let me know. Just post the name in the comments section.
The name I’ll offer up is one I just recently picked up about a month ago and I’ve already had three offers on it. There’s no traffic to speak of. It’s just one of those cool names that is both meaningful and memorable:
Gay this and that is big, as we all know. Travel is huge. And after doing a little searching I see that gay travel and sites catering to that market are pretty popular.
So, maybe you want to develop a site for this name, or maybe you just want to hang on to it. If you do want it and you’ve got something in your opinion of somewhat equal value you’d like to trade, just let me know.
Make sure you put your correct email address in the comment (it’s private) so I can contact you.
