my domain secrets exposed

For the past couple of weeks i’ve been been buying several domain names BELOW my normal registration fee of about $6.

Not only are these domain names cheap, but some of them have an estimated value of $1k+ with estibot. I’ve been teasing you guys with these stats without revealing any details but that’s gonna change. Just to tease you guys further, check out this domain valuation - a domain i’m just after getting my hands on for just over $6.

Not enough to get your attention? How about this valuation on a domain i picked up for just over $9;

So screw my last post of $5610 worth of domains, i now have $13,510 worth of domains having spent less than $100 on them ($91.93 to be exact).

However, as ‘Girish’ has kindly pointed out in a comment, estibot is not bang on with it’s valuations. I’ve said in an earlier post, i generally take 1/20th of estibots valuation as my own valuation just to keep me grounded…

Even if we go by my 1/20th rule, it still means the domains are worth a combined $675 - more than 7 times what i paid for them.

For brandable domains, it won’t get it right…. for cracked domains or domains with an extension other than .com, it probably won’t get it right either. BUT for generic keyword domains, it is pretty accurate.

A few examples….

• looks.com sold for $86k 2 years ago, estibot values it at $110k.
• webhelp.com sold for $30k last month, estibot values it at $17k.
• typo.com sold for $25k last month, estibot values it at $15k.
• language.org sold for $12k 2 months ago, estibot values it at $11k.

Equally, there are plenty of times estibot gets it wrong, but when it comes to dictionary words or two dictionary words together, it’s not as far out as you may think and the sales in recent years prove it.

Estibot, unlike the others, won’t bullshit you and tell you you’re domain is worth $10million. If it’s not worth anything - it’ll tell you. Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself on your own domains to take you back down to earth

Of course for the smaller domains valued at a few hundred, it becomes much more serious when you only get like $20 for a domain you thought was worth $300. It’s a massive difference to you… when you’re dealing with domains worth $10k+, getting $6k or even $3k doesn’t seem so bad, even though it’s a bigger drop…

At the end of the day, when you buy or sell anything, the price you buy or sell something for will be the price you and the buyer/seller deem the product to be worth. Much like selling a house, these sort of robots and even human appraisals are simply ‘guides’ - just because they say ‘x’ is worth $10k, doesn’t mean you’ll get it. You *could* get more… you could also (more likely) get less.

Only an idiot would register domains based solely on estibot valuations. Although i place a lot of trust in estibot, don’t be fooled - i don’t just use estibot to value domains… i’ll do my homework in google, see if there’s competition, try to find out if the domain has any history etc… if i don’t like a domain or don’t think i could do anything with it, i won’t register it, even if estibot values it at a couple of hundred.

The stakes are relatively low though for me, so i don’t spend hours and hours analyzing a domain and getting expert advice etc… at the end of the day, the max i’ve paid for a domain so far has been about $16 - it’s not going to bankrupt me

Anyway, i’ll be revealing all my tactics over the next couple of weeks (probably the week after this week as i’ve too much to do with my maths exam on thursday). I’ll produce a series of blog posts (about 3) to RSS subscribers only as i don’t want this to become too popular, too quickly, otherwise there’s too much competition, too many people use/try out the methods and it spoils the sense of bargain hunting for everyone.

It’s also a completely lose / lose situation for me if i blog about this openly as i’m simply adding extra competition for myself when it comes to getting these domains… At least if i keep it RSS only, it’ll help me boost my readership plus give something back to my loyal readers

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