As a domain name owner that is looking to sell, it’s always best to sell to an end user for your highest expected price. Doing this is much harder then one would think and doesn’t always fit the standards of a "Good Domain"!
The way I always look at domains before I buy them are pretty simple really.
- Does the domain speak for itself?
- Is the domain easy to spell, without several other ways it "could" be? (To, Too, 2 etc)
- Is there good demand for this market now or in the near future?
- Is the domain fitting to it’s extension? I focus on two extensions, .com & .org
- How important is the plural version of the domain?
For a market guide, I always use the weekly sales report on DnJournal.com . The main section that I focus on is what AfternicDLS has sold. Why do I do this? Because they advertise to businesses and I think a great deal of the sales reported are "End User" sales with a main focus of $2-$6K. Sedo.com does have end user sales, but they are harder to pick out most of the time. Plus they do not advertise the way Afternic does.
I keep telling myself, there has to be a key to this data provided! Each week I check out the sales and each week I keep scratching my head. Most of the domains reported, I wouldn’t even hand register and that’s the frustrating part!
Qooco.com which sold for $2,288. Now again, I wouldn’t even hand register this domain if I would see it in an available domains list. Now I do see why this domain "could sell" but really Anything "could" sell. A company with the acronym of QOO and add CO to the end. Now I see tons of 5 letter combos that end in CO or even 5 letter combos that end in INC with a 2 letter acronym available all the time. Are these risky investments? I would say so! Even if you look at the stats, it doesn’t improve the domain. It’s less then 2 years old. 2,360 returns on google for Qooco, doesn’t appear to get any traffic etc.
SportNow.com which sold for $3,000. If you say the domain, it doesn’t make sense. Sport Now? Maybe Sports Now but again, I think there are much better domains for $3K.
CsInsurance.com sold for $3,488. Now again, this sale is a needle in the haystack kind of sale IMO. There can be 1,352 combo’s of LLKeyword.com (Letter Letter, Keyword). No traffic, no links and only 2 years old. Now if you owned Candy Sands Insurance, the domain would make sense, beyond that, it doesn’t. Is it worth $3,488? I guess so to whoever purchased it, but again I wouldn’t even hand register it. Do I need to start buying domains like this????
i-House.com sold for $3,500. Maybe iHouse.com but to have the hypen, just doesn’t make sense! It is hard to brand and in my eyes, not even close to be worth $3,500. Appears to have little to no traffic, as the Alexa rank is from another domain etc.
Now the ones that DO make sense to me and domains that I would purchase today are like, PackingPeanuts.com $2,000. KayakRentals.com $2,000. TapeGun.com $2,500. ThrowRug.com $2,450 (the plural would be Much better) etc. All these domains are Clear, Make sense, have markets and all have an End User feel to me! If you split up the list of domains I would buy compared to the ones I would even buy at registration fee, they are pretty equal and pretty surprising really.
So I think the moral of the story here is, it’s wise to own generics as I think you have a much greater shot at getting your end user sales. Having "specific" or even weird domains do seem to pay off at times.
Follow your gut on what you buy. Be a Leader, not a follower. Just because others are not buying them, doesn’t mean you can’t sell them. Several of the above that I wouldn’t even paid hand reg fees for, returned nice profits in a couple years for the owners and most of them wouldn’t fit the "buy" standards for the majority. With selling anything, Luck has a great say in what happens at the end!
Jamie Zoch www.DotWeekly.com
