Archive for the ‘Domain Investing’ Category

How do I valuate domains and set an asking price

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

One of my reader Sumit asked me how do I valuate and set an asking price for domains when I don’t use any valuation tools like Estibot and others. I have also mentioned some factors which I don’t actually consider while assessing domains.

It’s an interesting question and many find it difficulty in setting up prices for their domains. Although I am not an expert or the domainer who mostly sell his domain in 5 and even 6 figures on regular basis. But if someone wants to know more as to how I operate my domain business, please continue reading.

When I was in initial stage of my domaining career, I did flipping and sold domains at sacrificing prices just in order to keep the cash flow going and must not stop buying and selling domains. But as I am quite settled now ALHUMDULLILAH, I can wait for the right buyer and play waiting game.

There are several factors in valuing my domains:

1) No urgent need of money. When you have good cash flow your sense of judgement gets change and you act accordingly. However, I have tried to get maximum out of every domain sale I can no matter what my financial position was. I admit of selling domains at lower price than I thought of their actual value but it was done purposely for the need of cash flow. Now when there is no urgency of funds, I feel I am on top of enduser and can demand what I actually want for every domain.

2) There are hundreds of domain I hold which are upgrades for companies. When you target 1 specific buyer, you limit yourself selling the domain and requires lot of patience and wait for that buyer to knock your door first. But I tell you… the reward is really fruitful and sometimes life changer. But in such cases, Neither I buy domains with having only one potential buyer on internet, nor I target one specific buyer when selling a domain.  But still wanted to share since many other domainers work in this way.

3) When targeting of one specific buyer, that company will definitely be having good backing of funds. If a company has got series of funding in millions of dollars, why cannot they spend a peanut of share on buying/upgrading their domain to a better one. The more time that buyer will delay, the more he has to pay because I have to consider many factors in increasing the price as the time goes by. My investment which is stuck for long time, aftermarket from where I buy domains is as always going up so my price will be adjusted accordingly. Once again I would like to say that neither I buy domains with having only one potential buyer on internet, nor I target one specific buyer when selling a domain.

4) That particular market is huge and has lot of potential. I don’t need of going into much detail about this because we as domainers know which niche has what kind of potential. But this is one of the factor I take into consideration for valuing my domains.

5) I don’t give much importance to exact searches and CPC of Google Keyword Planner. For most of domain acquisitions, I don’t even check these metrics. Also the length of domain doesn’t matter unless it has meaning, demand and potential. The more shorter, the better. Doesn’t mean longer in length domains are not valuable but surely less desirable than shorter names like 2L, 3L.com domains.

6) Number of existing companies. I take this metric into consideration when buying and pricing my domains. I normally check when that domain is possibility of an upgrade. I use DotDB for this purpose. When selling any 4L .com, I don’t see much benefit of checking existing companies through DotDB but Google is more helpful in such type of domains.

7) Registered in other extensions. Let’s take an example of one of my domain (BeeGreen.com). I prefer checking/considering DotDB and Google and rest of the factors I have mentioned in the entire post but just looking if BeeGreen is registered in other extensions doesn’t bother me at all. Yes, there is possibility of .net owner to buy the .com version but never sticking solely to this option of checking if BeeGreen is registered in lower extensions and decide how much to ask while selling the domain. The result will always be poor and I will leave plenty of money on table.

8) Language. Most of the domains in my portfolio consists of English words excluding 4L.com and brandable domains. I do have domains in many different languages but I try to buy good meaningful and very common words used in that language or has decent as well as common meaning in English language. I used decent because I don’t buy domains which has relationship with alcohol/adult/gambling. It’s difficult to sell less popular language spoken domain even in .com as compare to selling some German, Spanish, Italian words in .com. You have to see the domain you own is in which language and how much popular and common that word is in that language. Sometimes people prefer to have .de (German country code) domain than to have .com. Doesn’t mean you should not buy German language domains in .com but research is must. But if you seek my suggestion, I would strongly say to stick with English words in .com and diversify your portfolio once you have gathered good quality along with decent number of domains.

9) Comparable sales. Oh well… This is seriously useless for me for setting up an asking price for my domains. I do keep checking DnJournal weekly sales report and NameBio but that doesn’t mean I set asking prices after going through any comparable sales. Checking those sites keep me updated and helps me while buying domains so that I must not overpay it. But when I valuate my domains, I never check comparable sales because every domain is different. Demand of buyer is different, situation of seller is different and many other factors are involved.

10) The most important factor in my opinion is that buyer have to have the biggest idea for using the domain they are going to acquire from me. You will hear often from domainers who say that your domain is worth what the buyer is willing to pay. In my opinion, that just doesn’t make sense and that person might have no idea about this business. I always valuate and decide the asking price to whatever I want and sell at my own price. If the buyer doesn’t want at that price, he must not have the big idea for my domain. I simply pass which is difficult but that’s the way you should deal if you are to make fortune and change your life for betterment.

I would love to see what others think about my way and curious to know how you guys valuate and price your domains ?

Why it’s important to have valid email ID in WHOIS

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

Although this topic is covered by many other domainers but today I wanted to share my own perspective in this regard by giving you situation I was into.

There was a domain in early days Pets.CO (currently owned by someone else) which had an invalid email ID. I don’t remember the exact email address but it was something like name@domainname123.com and that domainname123.com was available to hand register! Anyone could have gone onto register that available name, setup an email which was showing in WHOIS and recovered the password by going through the “forgot password” procedure. That’s absolutely unethical and illegal but I am talking about a scenario of could have happened. Anyhow, I waited for that domain to get drop and grab it through backorder by companies like DomainMonster or Name.com but eventually the registrar grabbed the domain before it goes through the PendingDelete phase.

I was really frustrated with this situation and contacted the registrar and informed about the situation and as expected their response was like only the original owner can have the domain back. That’s fine but why the hell they snatched it!

Today I checked and can see the registrar and owner both are changed. It seems the previous registrar who took the domain (after the original owner didn’t renew) and might have sold to the current buyer. I have nothing to blame on new owner.

In the end, it was no one’s else loss but only of the previous owner who lost a premium domain easily worth around mid 5 figures IMO.

So it’s really important to keep your email address valid and updated in WHOIS. Although there are many other reasons for which you shall keep your email ID valid one.

Another thing to note is when setting up profile with a new registrar sometimes I may mistype my own ID so double check it. For example I use abm at abdulbasit.com and if I miss or add single letter so anyone can go and register and mistyped name and grab my domain and I wouldn’t even know it! So please make sure you are double checking email IDs you enter at any registrar.

Have you experienced something like this before?

Tips to use LinkedIn for domaining

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

At the end of last year, I bought a domain name “ScottWhite.com”, I can see there are 19,663 people having an account with LinkedIn.

On left side, you can click on Companies to see which are the companies having Scott White term in it. The search filter of LinkedIn is really poor IMO and it will show you the results of all companies which contains not only Scott White in their company name but also shows if this name exists in their description.

Now you will see 28 companies and you can easily filter those with the number of employees by selecting employees range through Company Size filter. Find out what company names have Scott White in it and try to contact them and see if they have interest in buying that domain.

Tips-to-use-LinkedIn-for-domaining

There is another tip you may use in order to find available domains to hand register and try selling to endusers.

Simply type in “Scott” in LinkedIn and select companies, it will show almost 9,000 companies which somehow has the word Scott. Now you will see Scott Kay, Scott Wilson, Scott Sports, Scott Builders and many more. Now search ScottKay.com, ScottWilson.com, ScottSports.com, ScottBuilders.com and others to see if any name is available to hand register. Do your own research, check TMs, other tools you use before buying domain and register it if you think can sell it for profit.

You can just leave the search blank and click on companies to see the result is 8,872,533. You can filter it according to your requirement and above I used Scott as an example to make things easier for you to understand.

Feel free to share your experience once you use this and/or if you have any questions, feel free to comment below.

Uniregistry Market is available now!

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

I have been testing Uniregistry Market since the beginning of this week and just now got an email from them which I thought to share with you guys:

“DomainNameSales is evolving.
Powerful tools that save you time.
The new Uniregistry Market is here. Same solid foundation as DomainNameSales, faster tools, instant insights, and an up-to-date modern user experience.

We think you’re going to love it. The best bit… we’re just getting started.

Seamless setup
If you already have a DNS account, simply log in to Uniregistry and link to it. This will give you access to all your inquiries right there in the Market. Like we said – seamless setup.

LINK YOUR ACCOUNT
 
One inquiry or a million, tools that scale
Managing a portfolio shouldn’t be challenging. We give you a complete platform capable of selling from the largest portfolios on the planet. So whether you have a single domain or thousands, you’ll never be lost with us.
Sell your way
List them for sale, mark them for offer only, or just plain ol’ park them to watch the revenue roll in – we don’t dictate
how you use your domains. We do, however, give you a complete set of tools so that whatever you decide to do can be done.
Instant completion
Your domains really are more valuable with us. Domains that live at Uniregistry with a “buy it now” price are eligible for instant checkout through our Registrar. Once added to the market, anyone can find your domains with a simple search from our homepage – checkout is instant and easy.
An inbox for everything
Manage all your sales inquiries with ease using a sales inbox designed specifically for the process of selling domains.

Reply, set reminders, quote prices, and do it all from a single interface. Act on individual requests or use our powerful bulk tools to manage everything in an instant.

Checkout for all
Accept the deal, send the checkout link, then kick back and relax. We’ve built our Secure Exchange technology into the Market – that means we take care of everything from the time you say ‘It’s a deal’ to the time the funds are received into your account. Complete sales with ease.

Did we mention that we’ll even help you out with credit card payments, wire transfers, and payment plans? We want you to sell your domains as much as you do.

Welcome to the future of domain name sales.”

LETS GET STARTED

 

Overall it looks great and will get used to with this new interface of handling inquiries. Easy to manage everything at one place which will save plenty of time and it’s super quick and user-friendly interface.

Better you guys check the new Uniregistry Market yourself and time to move all your domains to Uniregistry for guys who haven’t moved yet!

Feel free to post your feedback and suggestions which will help the Uniregistry Market team to fix those little bugs and improve it for ourselves. I found a couple and reported already.

Domain acquisitions and sales of January/February 2016

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

Today I wanted to share what domain acquisitions and sales I made so far this year and will share some of the purchases I did in the last couple of months:

288626.com, 982228.com, 668155.com – Bought several 6Ns last year and very few this year including these two of them. I buy all domains thinking of long term investment but if there is a decent offer, I do accept it.

AEHM.com, MBNI.com, SIBN.com, RIAM.com, ABWM.com, SGMI.com, AGAD.com, JMCL.com, CISG.com – I have been buying LLLL.com rather quickly than I did in past. I still see non CHIPS are undervalued and has plenty of room to improve in pricing so if your pocket allows you spend, buy some LLLL.com which you can get at bargain. Although I paid decent prices for each of them as I go after combination of letters in which I see lot of potential.

JamieLee.com – Is there any post of my acquisitions in which I didn’t mention a person name. I just love buying such type of names. Although very few sold to date.

BEB.org, CGL.org, PDR.org, TPA.org – I think they are undervalued right now like 4L .com non CHIPS. Although Chinese are not much into .org but there are plenty of non Chinese buyers (enduser) out there for buying a quality LLL.org

SpeedHero.com – My first domain with the word “hero” and reading the posts from Doron inspired me to buy this one 😉

Liget.com – Every CVCVC.com has some value and I like this one although it doesn’t have any significant meaning other than “park” in Hungarian language.

MorningDew.com – I love these type of domains which can be used as brand for many different type of businesses.

KitchenAndBathroom.com – A three word .com with “and” in it but is a perfect domain for any kitchen and bathroom related company. Explains everything.

LymeLight.com – May be a type of sale what Mike Berken’s does it on regular basis. But nothing to worry when buying this as I won’t seek for that high sale price 😉

ExpressPizza.com – Any startup or existing pizza company with this name?

ShopGreen.com – I would prefer to have GreenShop.com but that’s what I was able to get it. Still I like this name.

Feel free to share your acquisitions and if you wish, can comment about on my above purchases.

Let’s get into the sales part which I think will keep it short. I actually had so far 3 domain sales in the past couple of months

First two sales I cannot disclose the name due to buyer’s request. But the sale price was around mid 4 figs each.

The last domain sale which I made in February was of ThePropertyClub.com. There were a couple of interesting things in this particular sale which I wanted to share. First, the buyer approached me calling from UK and offered me £200. I politely rejected and told him I will sell for around 4-5K.

Next day, he called me again by offering this time 1K which was again rejected. At the same time he increased the offer to 1.5K. Again, my answer was the same.

May be the next day or a gap of one day, he called again and asked what will be the minimum I would accept. It was $4,000 and he accepted. Payment was made swiftly and deal done! Interesting part was that I made my first domain sale through a phone call when the buyer called at first. Although I have made very few sales in the past when I initially approached the endusers.

Last interesting thing, it was my first sale starting with word “The”. Took too long to make it first as I like domains with starting word “the”. I think of having around 20 domains starting with “the” and glad it started paying off from last month.

Feel free to share your domain sales and if you wish, can comment about on my above sales.