Domain Magnate

Submitting your site to free directories is one of the easiest and cheapest (considering time and money if you outsource it) ways to get backlinks for your sites. These backlinks are good because you can choose your best suitable anchors, add some related text and keywords and have your site submitted to the correct subcategory to have it show up in a good company of similar sites. However most of these directories are new and many of the inner pages don’t get indexed, Google is also rumored to heavily reduce the weight of such links, but as any other links this can’t really hurt, but  can frequently do a lot of good.

I recently bought 1k directory submissions for a bunch of new sites I had built this month at a cheap price through one of the service providers on DP. Usually I just do these for all my sites to help diversify the links and gets some decent new well anchored backlinks. There has been a lot of talk about how useful these actually are and many SEO’s consider them rather useless, which naturally can be understandable – these directories are usually new, have no or low pr and have tons of links to other sites to carry any significant seo weight.

However fact of the matter is it works for me! Some of my older and more established sites show the directory backlinks at the first pages of backlinks in yahoo explorer and I’ve seen how those links can help improve serps and get new sites indexed rather quickly. But this time it was rather extraordinary – one of those new sites already ranks on #5 for its main keyword and #9 for the secondary keyword – all within a week! These aren’t very competitive keywords, so it’s not a big deal to rank for them, but as everyone knows things are always different with new sites. It may take months before Google lets a new site out of the sandbox and into the first page of the serps.

I’ve noticed significant ranking improvements across several of the new sites after dir submissions. Obviously out of these 1,000 directories where my sites are supposedly submitted to only a few will approve and list them and out of those just few will get indexed to provide a valid backlink in Google. However even if it brings only a couple dozen backlinks it’s well worth the money to increase the links ip and site diversity and mix it up for Google.

Now if you’re wondering where to get these I usually just find the cheapest offer on here or here with some reviews and make a bulk order for 10-20 sites to 1000-2000 directories each. The regular pricing seems to be just about $12-15 per 1000 dir submissions, but you can get discounts and sometimes even better, higher privileged service when ordering in bulk. It’s also worth doing this for established sites every once in a while and be sure to choose different anchors for link diversity.

There has been an unusually high amount of clearance sales and cheap lots posted for sales lately. People are likely coming back from the summer vacations and discovering that the renewals are coming, so trying to sell some names cheap and quick to raise money. This is the perfect opportunity for low budget domain resellers and flippers to go bargain hunting.

Before you dive into this it’s important to not get carried away buying too many domains, so check each one carefully.

How to evaluate the names?

• Google search counts estimation tool – as the main tool to estimate the popularity of the keyword
  
• WordTracker free search counts tool with Google Trends – to get a “second opinion” on the search volumes
  
• Google.com – to check for potential end users, advetisers and evaluate competition for the keyword terms
• Estibot Sales History – containing the largest history of reported domain sales it’s a great tool to see what people are buying
• Your Common Sense – sorry, no link for this one, you’ll have to Google it yourself..

Where to find them?

• DNForum Fixed Price Under $100
• NamePros Fixed Price Domain Sale
• DigitalPoint Domains for sale

What to Buy?

That will ultimately depend upon your purposes.  Higher search count .net and .org names can be good to build a site to rank it in Google and monetize. Lower search count .com names can be used to try to sell to end users, or simply resell on the forums or auctions. Buy when you have an idea what you plan to use the domain for: development, flipping, investment, addition to the portfolio, or anything else. And once you bought it make sure to bring those plans into action as soon as possible. Countless domains are being purchased just because it “looked like a good deal at that time” and when the time comes to renew them – they are dropped. So buy smart!

This happened with me yesterday. One of the not so nice sides of domaining. In short: a member blue777 was asking for cvcv.com domains to buy and I pmed him a list of my names, including hace.com which is a great cvcv.com domain with many meanings and over 100 million results in google, asking him to make his best offer and if I like it I might accept, so he offered $3,000 for hace.com and I accepted it. But a few hours later he replied withdrawing his offer.

It’s not the first time it happened to me, domainers face this kind of thing frequently. Usually however from “end users” or other newbie domainers. In most cases it’s ignored, sometimes people would post/complain about it, or leave a negative itrader. But the fact that it was an established member who’s been around DNF for years and had many itraders, as well as the fact that he felt he could retract his offer (even after it was accepted) as easily as he could make one made me post about this.

Have you encountered this kind of behavior, what’s your opinion on the matter? What should we do in such cases?

I started a thread yesterday on the DigitalPoint forums asking for 3 character domains to buy and 2 members already tried to scam me. Surprisingly the way they try to do it is extremely simple – they try to sell you a domain they don’t really own and accept payment through Western Union, Bank Wire, or MoneyBookers or even  paypal even though with paypal the transaction can be reversed. But I suppose they might be able to transfer the funds away before you do a chargeback in this case.

One of them is ShayGA. He pmed me offering to buy A66.com for $500. However a quick check reveals that it’s an active site and they are not likely to be interested in selling the domain. So I asked him to confirm that he owns the domain and he never replied. I dug a bit on him and found out that he only joined a couple days ago, but already had a lot of ‘sales’ going on. Most of these threads end with the members accusing the topic starter of being a scammer. I guess there are people who actually buy into this, otherwise he wouldn’t be doing it.

Update: I was told by another fellow domainer that this guy is also trying to “sell” that domain on NamePros. Luckily on NP and DNF the mods and members  are alert and swift in banning scammers.

Another one was Venliven – a recently joined member, I guess he joined when he saw my thread because that is where he made his first and second posts. It took me about 5 seconds to realize this might be a scammer by the strange question “What is your payment method?” – naturally it’s going to be paypal. I decided to play it out and see if I can get his details to post them here.

So I replied to his pm asking what were the domains – he answered with www.wut.com and www.juk.com.  To get the final confirmation that it was a scammer I decided to lowball and offered $2k for each (the actual market price for these would be at least $5k  each) and told him that if he accepts to pm me his bank and western union details, as well as moneybookers and I’ll see what’s easier for me to pay with. Scammers register new usernames daily, but in case someone asks you to send money to these addresses you’ll know who you are dealing with:

Western Union:
Zaid Lutfi , United arab emirates

Western Union:
Steven Burken
UpHill Sight 3/2

MoneyBookers:
w.a.t.e.r@hotmail.co.uk

Bank Account in UK:
39032157

Afterwards I asked him to confirm that he actually owns the domains by adding something in the whois contacts – he started sending weird messages with all kinds of lame excuses. Many of them didn’t even make much sense: “Without my hosting on I don’t have a server” – huh?

There are so many scammers on DP it’s ridiculous. And the mods don’t usually ban them since they don’t  break any petty rules, while DP mods don’t get involved in business between members. However those scammers are very easy to recognize. More sophisticated are the scammers that actually steal or sell stolen domains. Sometimes even experienced domainers fall victim to such crimes in this popular thread at dnf.

The Best LLLL.com You’ve seen so far! :: Click NOW :: Bulg.com, Afff.com, Bune.com

eFav.com – $4950
_The_ Best name for a social bookmarking site! Could be developed into something like Faves.com or Fark.com, or even Del.icio.us or Digg.com. Or build a site like allmyfaves.com or SocialMarker.com to list and help users manage all the bookmarks from other sites.
Short and easy to remember – the perfect opportunity to launch your own social bookmarking site and capitalize on the hot trend, or sell it to the next big thing like twitter!
Buy this and I will also help you find an affordable and good quality developers to make an excellent custom site for the domain and even help promote it.
Ever wanted to have your own social bookmarking start up? This is your perfect opportunity!

Bulg.com – $4950
Popular short word for Bulgaria, comes with a professionally developed mini site that currently ranks #4 for ‘Bulg’ in google and many other queries in Google, MSN and Yahoo.
Bulgaria has a population of 7.6 Million people, is a member of the EU and NATO.
Bulgaria is one of the most popular turist locations in Europe for it’s enormous historical and cultural heritage stretching back from the beginning of written history (6-5 millenia ago), throughout the Greek and Roman times and the Middle ages and up to Modern times. The cheapest housing in EU and excellent climate for both winter skiing and summer beach activities.

Afff.com – $2950

AFFiliate Forum. There are now many affiliate forums, like wickedfire.com, or wealthyaffiliate.com and new ones are openned all the time. Many charge as much as $100 per month for membership and attract hundreds and thousands of members.
With Afff.com you could stand above all these – short and premium domain instinctively related to the industry. Instasnt brand recognition and trust.
You could also build an affiliate forums list or blog to profit from the highest referrer commissions in the industry. Wealthyaffiliate.com even pay $175 comission per each member you refer.
These could be extremely profitable, one such forum launched recently made $25k in the first 2 days only – read on here

also
Adult Friend Finder forum
AFFF Aqueous Film Forming Foam
AFFF Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival
AFFF Aqueous Fire Fighting Foam
AFFF AKR’s Free Form Framework

AARR.com and DDRR.com $4995 for the pair
Two super rare domains with many acronyms. There are only 34 names like these with 2 premium letters repeating.

Hace.com – $6950
over 200 Million results in google, multiple acronyms and meanings, and many developed sites on other extensions.
Also receives some type in traffic on sedo.
Dozens of potential end users you can market this to.

Bune.com – SOLD

Zwee.com -  SOLD

Top LLLL.com sales for your information (that are not words):
Riva.com $200,000 2008
iGen.com $100,100 2008
Dora.com $100,000 2006
uNet.com $100,000 2008
Xian.com $83,500 2008
moka.com $72,223 2007
vida.com $70,000 2008
fern.com $50,000 2008
loco.com $50,000 2006
bedo.com $45,000 2009
mygo.com $31,000 2006
cmdx.com $30,350 2008
kwik.com $30,000 2007
conn.com $29,500 2007
cobb.com $28,500 2007
sida.com $27,000 2006
jojo.com $25,500 2008
bing.com $25,375 2007
ozmo.com $25,000 2008
racy.com $25,000 2008
reos.com $25,000 2008
osco.com $24,500 2008
boya.com $22,500 2008
ebio.com $22,500 2008

- listed on multiple forums
- Post sold to claim a domain – payment expected within 24 hours.
- Winner to be determined by time stamp
- Payments accepted by paypal masspay from established members or wire/escrow – buyer pays all fees.

There are quite a few webmaster forums around now, but none really good to provide the members with quality content, active marketplace and large and friendly userbase. With the recent degradation of DigitalPoint and several other big forums in the industry there is a demand for quality forum centered around webmaster issues.

Now there is a new kid in the block aiming to fill the void: www.netbuilders.org – less than 2 weeks old the forum already has over 100 members and 1000+ threads, growing quick. Some of the top threads: read more »

eBay has filed suit against Digital Point Solutions, best known as the owner of one of the more popular web site owner communities, and others over an alleged cookie stuffing scheme.

According to the filing lodged in the Northern California District Court, Shawn Hogan and Digital Point Solutions, Todd Dunning and Kessler’s Flying Circus, and Brian Dunning and Thunderwood Holdings defrauded eBay in a “cookie stuffing” scheme that made it appear that their companies should be paid commissions on eBay affiliate sales.

The scheme worked like this: users were automatically redirected to eBay without clicking on an eBay advertisement, resulting in an affiliate cookie being place on each users computer marked with the defendants affiliate code so that for future purchases they received a cut.

The complaint alleges that the defendants tried to hide their scheme, using “deceptive means to prevent it from discovering the fraud, and to conceal it.” eBay is demanding “compensatory, treble and punitive damages.”

It’s not clear whether users on Digital Point itself were redirected under the scheme, but it would appear from the filing that there was a direct relationship at least on some levels.

In one way, it’s so simple as to be brilliant, but did they really think they could get away with it, or better still that eBay wouldn’t notice?

Needless to say the scheme has been around for almost as long as the Affiliate marketing itself, however lately due to multiple posts on digitalpoint forums it must have spread out widely and gotten  out of hands.

The story is duscussed almost everywhere in the web:

 DP thread, 1, 2 , WickedFire, Sitepoint thread, blackhatworld, Digg and many more places. Will be interesting to see how it ends.

First time I’m seeing 3character.com guide lowering prices and not just lowering, but by over 20% in a month!

3-Letter .com – $6000 (- $1650 since July 1, 2008 report)

3 letter .net lost 3.6% according to the guide.

What’s gonna happen next with the LLL.com? Well no one knows for sure. From a discussion in DomainState:

• snoopy: Agree, personally I think we will see prices come back into the $3000-$4000 range on the low end.
• DomainDiscount: Recently sold a 3 letter .com in the mid Euro xx,xxx range. Was an enduser sale though.
• Globalise: Sold a pair of LLL.coms last week for $130k.
  Two weeks ago I bought an LLL.com with mediocre letters for $15k and sold it, two days later, to another domainer for $40k.
• doughmein: I think it signifies a market correction because these qualify as “token” domains that are being tossed around, and there’s no indication that the lesser quality ones will be in demand by end-users.

read more »

Namepros is having some technical difficulties and the forum is not working currently. This happens very frequently lately, which is getting quite annoying. They should get a new server, or something.

I got a bunch of pm notifications by email and I can’t view them.

Hey all,

I sell domains through forums quite frequently and always try to improve my sales threads and techniques, so I thought I’d share a few tips here in hopes that it will be useful. This post will mostly contain general tips, for more specific advice watch for the next posts in the series.

Include your terms.

This is quite important to prevent any disputes, or misunderstandings. Also to protect yourself from scammers and save time. I usually include something like this at the beginning of my sales threads:

– All prices are temporary and sale may end without prior notice
- Payments by bank wire, escrow, paypal (masspay, or add 4%), moneybookers, e-gold – all fees paid by the buyer, payment must be processed within 2 days.
- Bulk discounts are possible only if you buy 3 or more domains domains, pm for details.
- Please use who.is/domain.com to check registrar and expiry dates where not listed. All names should have at least 2 months till expiration read more »