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 (more…)

An interesting series of posts by Rick here:

What makes a domain sellable?
What makes a domain sellable part 2
What makes a domain sellable, part 3
What makes a domain sellable, part 4

Some good tips there and I can agree with most. Domains with clear and obvious use are much easier to sell. They are however harder to find at good prices.

Short domains may have less possible development ideas, but they are a great collectible item which value will only go up.

This was posted at NamePros by betthelot:

If it helps, I can give you the other meanings of numbers in Chinese

Very useful if you are into numeric domains. Also explains why 4 is considered bad

1 single-mindedly, whole-heartedly, heart and soul

2 mandarin duck (it means that the good things appear in pairs)

3 promotion (especially in the officialdom)

4 death

5 me
(more…)

I recently stumbled upon shoemoney.com blog and found an interesting post about Berkshire Hathaway weekend meeting, featuring some of the legendary investor’s insights:

Religion - He is agnostic. A true agnostic. He just does not know and neither do I.

Investing - investing in what you know and understand. Diversification is for the idiot investor - I can’t agree with this more. (more…)

DomainMagnate.com presents an interview with Jeff from DomainBits.com

Details about yourself, occupation, age, location.
Hi Michael! Thanks for the interview. I’m in my late 30s, and live in Ottawa, Canada, with my wife and 4-year old son. My wife and I work together from home - on domaining as well as marketing and running our websites. I also write the blog DomainBits and write for DomainNews. I really like domaining as I like to do things my way, and domaining has no paths that you need to follow - you create your own path and your own success. Staying in my pyjamas all day, being around for my son when he’s not in school, and making good money are all good perks too!

What is your primary focus, e.g. generics, country tlds, short domains etc?
I think that for people who are newer to the industry, there are lots of good opportunities in ccTLDs. These domains are much cheaper than .com domains, and there is solid end user money coming into these extensions to ensure that they continue to do well in the long haul and are not simply speculative bubbles.

So, I concentrate on ccTLDs. I particularly concentrate on UK, Canadian and Indian domains. I’ve found .uk is a particularly strong ccTLD, and my .uk domains do well in terms of type-in traffic and end user offers. I’m in Canada, so I understand the local business climate well, and so I invest in .ca for that reason. I like .in and .co.in for the long term, as India is a huge market whose primary language is English and where there is still going to be a large movement to the internet by both consumers and businesses. (more…)

If you, like over 95% of other domainers, want to develop some of your domains with minimal effort and expenses into a site that can bring revenue, here is one of the best and easiest methods: Set up a bidding directory.

What is a bidding directory?

It’s a regular web directory based on the auction system. Webmasters can submit their links and the links with highest bid will appear on the frontpage of the directory. For example here is one of mine: Casino Bidding Directory, as you may see the highest bid is $100, and the lowest bid on the main page is $60. So a bid of at least $61 is required to be listed on the front page. Minimum bid to submit a site to the directory is set to $9, and you can see that most bids listed in categories are about that amount, for example in advertising

The main advantage of a bidding directory is that its completely automated. (more…)

This posts discusses the unique potential of the top quality CVCV.com names and provides valuable tips and updates on where to get them at bargain prices.

LLLL.com remains the most frequently traded type of domains between domainers on the forums and it’s thus important to know the prices and be aware of the market trends and potential.

High end 4L.com’s names, mostly cvcv.com had the highest increase as of lately and it’s not surprising. There are only 2500 quad premium (e.g. only containing the premium letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T) CVCV.com domains (consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, e.g. topa.com, dola.com, nama.com etc.). Out of these names containing H and F are lesser quality. Another 2100 cvcv domains consist of the above letters and one of: U, K; which are considered the best of the non premium letters. And add to these another 1500 domains including V, or W and some of the above mentioned letters. In my opinion these 2500+2100+1500 = 6100 names are the top of the creme 4 letter domains. Other letters: Z,X,Y,J,Q are usually harder to make a brand of and are less attractive to a western, English speaking person. (more…)

Check out this recent DNF thread

Who Really Knows?
I go against all the “rules” here for buying domain names. I get super long names (3-4 words my norm), often with hyphens and always a .org or .net. In the appraisal section, my names always get no response, 0 or “reg fee” values.

For instance, I offer up my watch-videos.net, a name everyone here said was a dog. And I agree. What’s to like? But somehow, someway…well, here are its last 6-month stats at parked.com:
Domain Name Clicks Revenue
watch-videos.net 2,751 $196.75

And I’ll share these few more examples of modest parking successes.
Domain Name Clicks Revenue (6-month parking stats)
stateboardofequalization.org 184 $209.58
equalemploymentopportunitycommission.org 61 $194.58 (more…)

An interesting post over at the NameBio blog about aged domains:

Recently, I came into possession of a domain name registered in 1991. This domain has been continuously renewed for 17 years. (its almost old enough to vote!). However, Ive run into a few question marks, specifically in regards to determining value. Clearly older domain names have Value, they are garbled up at the expired domain auctions quite consistently, and although most caliber domainers will say that “age is but a small factor” when it comes to a VERY old domain, it can certainly become one of the most important factors.

Why is age so desired? Primarily because all the good domains were taken first, thus in theory all of the quality domain names, should be old. I find this too be a reasonably accurate statement, with exceptions on both ends. Yes, some new domains are quite valuable (new technologies, new trends) and some old domains really have nothing to offer but a history of continuous renewal. (more…)

New LLLL.com price guide is out by Reece and we can see that prices have slowed a bit:

Data derived from TDVR.com, the largest LLLL.com database. Numbers in parentheses reflect Feb 17, 2008 statistics. Current prices reflect the results of the 500 most recent reported LLLL.com sales within the Feb 25, 2008 through Mar 5, 2008 timeframe.

*Minimum Wholesale : $48.00 ($52.00) -> 8%

10th percentile: $59.00 ($60.00) -> 2%

25th percentile: $65.00 ($67.00) -> 3%

Median: $85.00 ($81.00) -> 5%

75th percentile: $126.00 ($150.00) -> 16%

90th percentile: $400.00 ($445.00) -> 10%

How did this happen, what are the reasons and will the prices keep growing in future?

1. (more…)