Domain Magnate

I’m currently subscribed to 5 or 6 domaining newsletters and 4 of them send the emails [almost] periodically. They all go automatically to a special folder in my mailbox, called “newsletters”. Currently it has over 400 emails, accumulated in over a year.

While there is usually nothing interesting to buy for resellers, or domain flippers - if you’re looking for a good name for development, or investment it could be a good opportunity. Anyone can usually submit their domains to be published in the newsletter for a 10% fee in case of a sale an a 1-2 week exclusivity promise. If the domain doesn’t sell you pay nothing as a seller. The prices are almost always higher than what a domain would sell on the forums, or auctions, however sometimes bargains can slip through.

DomainsNewsletter.com by Kevin from BigTicketDomains.com wins the award for best prices and quality. There are names in varying price and quality ranges and with prices starting at only $50 even small time, beginning web developers can find good names to purchase. Even if you plan to find good names to try to resell to end users you may find them here. There are also frequent top quality generic domains for 5, and even 7 figures.
Kevin sent out 18 emails since I joined 4 months ago, or an average of about one email per week. However it’s not quite a weekly newsletter since there were 9 emails in March, none in February and only one in January this year.

DomainsForMedia.com newsletter by Eric Rice from DnCartoons.com is a close match by quality vs price as there are many good quality generics present for $xxx-$x,xxx ranges. The emails usually include larger lists of domains and note that offers will also be considered.
I’ve received 75 emails since joining in July 9, 2008, which is an average of about two emails per week.

The other two popular newsletters are by Evan Horowitz from HuntingMoon.com and Rock Latona from RickLatona.com.
Huntingmoon’s newsletter is notable because it lists the domains sold through the newsletter, along with prices, every month and also the pending delete domains, some with a drop catch service where to bid on them, such as SnapNames, or NameJet. Both these features are quite useful since it’s always interesting to see which domains actually sell and you have an opportunity to review some of the top expiring domains and pick some to bid on for free. The domains prices are usually in high $xxx to mid $x,xxx and vary significantly in quality, however resellers aren’t like to find bargains here, but end users can pick good names for development.
I’ve received 87 emails from Ivan since subscribing on October 11, 2008, which is an average of about an email every two days.

Rick Latona’s newsletter comes last in this review, but no the least. On the contrary it’s like the most popular one and has the highest number of subscribers. This newsletter usually includes a small section of text with Rick’s comments on latest event and links to his latest posts. The domains come in different forms, shapes and ranges. Lately also including names in other languages and tlds. Namely Spanish word domains which are usually priced at low-mid $xxx. Generally the quality varies, but there are frequently fairly priced domains almost in every email. This newsletter is supposed daily, however there are frequent brakes, probably because of Rick’s traveling. I’ve received 190 emails in little less than a year, making it about 4 emails per week on average.

And to add in conclusion: if you’re a domainer newsletters are a good place to try to sell your domains quickly, however it’s usually not the place to search for bargains.

About a year ago things were quite different and domainers were encouraged to invest by ever rising prices on both short domains and generics and recent buyouts (such as LLLL.com and premium letter LLLL.net’s) which proven to be quite worthwhile. Minimum prices for LLLL.com’s reached $65 during peak times and there was a healthy supply of buyers. So back in those times it made sense to buy lots of NNNNN.com’s as well and hold them because prices would rise eventually. Which is what many domainers did buying up to 1k of them each. I had 875 of them at a total cost of around $6k - several other investors purchased more than 1000 of them and now realize the mistake and decide not to renew most. read more »

BankRate Inc made a few surprising purchases lately, paying millions of dollars for small one man sites.

First was CreditCardGuide.com, a site that provides credit-card comparisons. According to compete.com it receives close to 200K monthly visitors from US. Still hard to imagine the site revenues being able to justify the $32 million pricetag the company paid a month ago. read more »

DomainMagnate brings you an exclusive interview with “trendicator” from namepros, who Had YXL.COM Stolen and Recovered It. Read through for first hand tips on how to keep your names secure and what you should do in case your domains get stolen.

- details about yourself, occupation, age, location.
my friends call me Max. I am a Chinese man in his handsome early 20’s
my username at namepros is trendicator

- How long have you been into domaining and how did you get into it?
i’ve been domaining for 2 years now. When first started, i was still at university, and tried to get a website for myself to impress girls, so i thought. One thing led to another, i began to stock up domains. read more »

Top sale in dnjournal’s report today:

$260,000 for TripleCreditReport.com

Looks quite overprices and suspicious indeed, and btw QuadrupleCreditReport.com is still available, should be worth at least 25% more

There are a few threads over at dnforum discussing this here and here

Some have suggested that similar sales might be fake. There can be many reasons to do this: someone trying to get attention to his domain and sell it for a good amount later, or for tax purposes, to get funding etc. There are many ways to fake a sale like that, so this is quite possible. read more »

Rewind.com @ $25K - A Good Deal?

Rewind.com was just sold for $25K on dnforum. Sold in less than 2 hours after it was posted.

Comments in the thread suggest it’s a good catch, but I don’t quite see why and how it can be used.

What do you think, is it a good deal or not?

“Similar” name viewed.com was sold for $5k a year ago on dnforum as well.

I had an interesting buying experience recently. I wanted to purchase a certain domain and inquired about it, the owner responded quickly saying that he “gets offers for it frequently and also has plans to develop it, however $10k would convince him to sell.” - a good reply you’d expect from a domainer.

That was quite above what I was going to offer, however I decided to try my luck and replied that my max offer is $1500 - which is a good market price for the domain. Of course I had little expectation from this since he made it pretty clear before that only $10k would make him part with the name. However surprisingly just a few hours later I received a reply saying that he’s ready to sell it for $2150.. read more »

I will be posting more interviews soon with different domainers of all levels, starting from the beginning domainers to the top stars of the domaining community.

Everyone gets a fair chance, the only requirement is that you have to own at least 10 domains and be an active member of the domaining world.

Post below if you’d like to do it and I’ll send you a short list of interview questions to your email.

For previous interviews check out the interviews category

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 »

Despite the recession in US economy and a certain amount of uncertainty in the domaining market July 08 have been pretty good for me. I had around $50k in sales, with over 2/3 of it being profit. While most sales were private and the buyers preferred to keep them confidential, couple of the top sales are through public auctions so I can mention them here:

Dickinson.com $12K on Bido
Krom.com $5,5k through AfterNic
Harlot.com $5145 on Bido (I owned 50% of this one)

I rarely disclose my earnings and report sales, however I feel this is needed to encourage others to see the hidden opportunities in domaining. What I like most about the industry are the large gaps. Appraisals always range widely and so do auctions and sales, it’s not unusual to see domains being resold for 2x and more shortly after. read more »