value

what’s happening with the .me’s

So it’s been a month since the .me domain name extension was launched publicly.

Straight away, it was clear this was going to be a red hot domain and i, myself had to back track instantly on my initial ‘it’s another .eu’ attitude.

I ended up buying 5 at $40 a pop. All pretty strong, keyword domains - the safest bet in any extension. The .me auctions are still going on however… check out some of these figures…

toyota.me sold for $90,000 - that’s insane… surely toyota can just whip that domain from the owner under trademark law? - there must be some sort of loophole which prevents them from doing so otherwise only an idiot would pay $90k for a trademarked name.

Similar story with skoda.me - sold for $20k. With this sort of cash floating around it’s very difficult to see things slowing down online.

It makes you wonder what the guys buying these domains are thinking… are they simply taking a gamble? Do they know anything about domain names? Is it simply a case of protecting brand images?

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jackpot!!!

It’s been an exciting few hours for me as i’m after stumbling upon a HUGE niche. I’m just after registering 15 domain names in the .com extension for a total of $90 with name.com.

These are keyword domains…

• 4 x 6 characters long
• 7 x 7 characters long
• 4 x 8 characters long

These 15 domains combined, have an estibot value of $14,210… which is good enough in itself as it shows a glimmer of their potential value. Here’s the stats on some of the domains according to estibot;

Here’s another… that ‘max PPC income/day’ means if the domain can rank no.1 in google for it’s key words, it can expect to earn $9.63 per day using adsense.

If i had to value these domains right here, now, i’d say they’d easily fetch $5000+ at auction (for all) and it’s not too often you’ll see me so confident valuing domain names. But here’s the real punch.

Those domain names contain keywords. Keywords which have been searched for a combined 1,918,600 times in google in july ONLY. That works out at over 23 MILLION searches per year. Holy shit! That’s a lot of potential organic traffic

And it’s a real product too - not virtual services…. cold hard products you can pick up in your own hands and use. So this has massive potential for me to earn passive income through affiliate links.

The remarkable thing is - is that this is a pretty competitive niche, with plenty of ads in adwords and literally millions of search results. That sends the domain values shooting through the roof instantly.

Theoretically, i can rank no.1 in google for these terms as i now own the .com keywords. Due to the competition though it won’t be easy as i’ll have to out muscle some pretty massive sites like amazon.com, dabs.com and even ebay.com (yes, the product is IT related - which makes it all the more incredible that the domains were available!).

But no matter what happens, the domains i’ve bought today are worth a small fortune already and i’ve hit the jackpot in terms of unregistered domain names. Just yesterday i was furious with myself for not acting quick enough on an excellent domain name i came across.

The domain in question was ‘youngcarinsurance.com’ - not a fantastic domain, but i can tell you it has over 60,000 searches per month in google for those exact terms (hence the reason i was furious for not snapping it up ASAP). I’ve more than made it up to myself today though… one of my keyword domains got 450,000 searches last month in google alone

I still can’t believe they were all available… just goes to show no matter what people say, there’s ALWAYS some good unregistered domains out there for the taking. Doubt you’ll find any larger niches than mine though

Next week i plan on releasing some really golden information to you guys.. i said previously it would be in the form of blog posts for RSS subscribers only, however i’m thinking of creating a free ebook due simply to the fact that this information is too good to just let die. I’ve stumbled upon this massive niche using it. You’ll still have to subscribe to the RSS feed to get it however. More on that over the next few days….

how to value a domain name

These past few weeks, i’ve been beefing up my knowledge on domain names. I’ve also been beefing up my domain name portfolio, adding an estimated $13,000+ to what i already have (according to estibot).

Although i’m still learning, i’ve built up a huge collection of links and tips when buying / hunting for domain names and like i said in a previous post, i’ll be revealing all in a 3 part series of in depth blog posts for RSS subscribers only, which will be published sometime between 18th-22nd of this month (next week).

If you haven’t already subscribed, do so now or if you’re not familiar with RSS, simply pop in your email below and get the latest updates from this blog directly to your email address.

Domain names - unlike sites, are difficult for me to value. I see all domain names as $6 registration fees. So when i buy a domain, i don’t think i’ve bought something worth $5,000 - even though that may well be the case.

As a test of my own ability to value domains, i’m going to put my own value on a few domains coming up for sale on bido.com - we’ll see how good i am.

Here’s a list of domains up for sale over the next 9 days. I’ll put a value on each of them and re-visit this post 9 days down the line to see just how good i am. By the end of it all, i should be in a much stronger position to value my own domain portfolio more accurately;

• yardtrimmer.com - $410 ($1,000)
• ultimatemedicine.com - $130 ($80)
• panics.com - $670 ($4,900)
• wirepay.com - $1200 ($200)
• edaycare.com - $50 ($110)
• greatvenues.com - $400 ($390)
• fixedloans.com - $4750 ($8,300)

I’ve also added in estibot’s valuation in brackets. Hopefully, i’ve underestimated everything as it will mean my own domains are worth a lot more than what i previously thought. I’ve valued all these domains prior to checking estibot’s value… basically going on gut instinct or first glance.

So in total, i expect these domains to sell for $7,610 - estibot predicts $14,980 - we’ll see who knows best

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