Archive for the ‘Domaining’ Category

How do you see it from your viewpoint?

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on September 25th, 2020

Hi everyone,

Today I received an email which I wanted to share with everyone. Usually I don’t share any emails on my blog but this is an interesting one.

Email ID: info@altid.com

Subject: why did you do that?

Message: Hello Abdubasit

My name is Daniel. I am a domainer and I have a question to ask you!

About 2 years ago, you shared some very important informations on you
blog/website that had a catastrophic impact on the life of all
domainers!

You said you wanted to help all the fellow domaines, but all you did was
making life difficult for us!

You shared the secret of how you buy domains and how you use Dotdb.com
etc.

I have followed all the auction houses and since that day ( it is
amazing how it started precisely after that post ) the prices of domains
began to climb slowly up!

You turned on the light but for the wrong guys ( not for the domaines ).

Ever since that day, all the rich guys with deep pockets and all the
speculators with tick wallets began to understand how they should pick
op domains from auctions.

As a result of that, today a domains that use to cost 300/400$ In
dropcatch or SnapNames, is now sold for 2000/3000$ !! All that thanks to
you sharing the secrets of domain picking!

sharing that sensitive knowledge only helped the rich guys to vacuum
clean all the valuable domains from the auctions. so it was a huge help
to the Chinese domain investors with limitless amount of capital to
invest in domains and a knife in the hearth of people like me and
yourself who cant afford to pay several thousands for a domain.

So you some how punished yourself (and the other poor fellow domaines)
in favour of the rich Chinese/american domain speculators.

If you wasn’t lucky to sell that fucking symphony.com for 375000$, today
you would be buying and selling domains for 200/500$! Allah helped you
to get success and as thanks, you fucked all the small domaines!

Now I have a question: why did you do that? was it to help domaines or
was it because you wanted to make yourself a name in the domaining
world?

You maybe a good domainer but you do not know any thing about the rules
of business.

Regards
Daniel Sommer

I was caught in a surprise to read it because of several reasons. First, I didn’t know my blog is getting such a huge traffic that it can change the domain prices in the aftermarket. Secondly, just because I shared a great service DotDB, I don’t believe things can massively change as far as the prices are concerned because any sensible domain investor would use several factors in deciding which domain to buy, what maximum bid to give, whether to buy or not, etc. and not only rely on one factor in their decision.

Just recently I published a post about NameJet where I’ve suggested others never use it and given the solid reason behind that. As said in that post, I believe some people won’t like me sharing such things openly and there may be more people like Daniel who will not like this post as well.

But… I’ll keep sharing what I want to, as far as I think it’s helpful to others.

Anyone is free to get jealous, angry or be happy. Neither I can please everyone nor I plan to do so. I’ll just continue sharing whatever I think is useful for others on a larger scale.

How do you see it from your viewpoint? Feel free to post your comments 🙂

Posted in Domaining 41 Comments »
Read More »

Why you should NEVER use NameJet

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on September 17th, 2020

Hi everyone,

I believe some regular bidders won’t like sharing it publicly but I don’t care for such mentality of people and I just love to share what I think is beneficial to others.

I don’t think this has been shared anywhere else but here you go…

Since NameJet and SnapNames have merged together for auctioning off domains, I see people still bidding at NameJet which doesn’t make sense. Let me tell you the secret…

When you place a backorder at NameJet, you pay 2.5% top of your original winning amount. Whereas if you win the same domain at SnapNames, you’ll pay only the final winning amount.

Also there is another reason for not placing backorder at NameJet and it’s the number of bidders are shown so anyone can sort by number of bidders to see what are the top most bid domains so they can easily enter in those which will ultimately create more competition.

So if someone doesn’t like this tip to be shared publicly, you’ve to think the other way around. Why to show a number of bidders and create more competition when you can place the same domain backorder and participate in an auction at SnapNames without showing any number of bidders? On top of that you’ll save 2.5% of your winning amount.

Feel free to give your feedback no matter how good or good it is 😉

Posted in Domaining 10 Comments »
Read More »

Afternic experiment of August 2020

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on September 3rd, 2020

Hi everyone,

When I first started sharing the January experience, I wasn’t expecting to continue sharing for this long but with the feedback I’ve received until last month has been exceptional. The main purpose of sharing my Afternic experience was for others to judge and decide for themselves whether to try their service the way I do or not. I know many of you have opted for Afternic ns3/ns4 along with BIN and found it more productive and few not as well.

Overall, I’m happy with my own results and others as well who were able to increase their sales which is what we need. SALES.

This is the 8th post of the Afternic experiment series after I published January, February, March, April, May, June and July results which I believe you’ll like it.

So July was the slowest month for me but August really covered everything and I’m very happy with that. Even though I’d no complaint that month as well but was slightly disappointed.

So coming back to the sales of August are as below:

The first sale happened on 12th of August (once again started late) in the shape of MicroBladingTraining.com for $3,500. I’d kept this for $3,988 BIN but after going back and forth, the Afternic broker was able to get $3,500. The buyer came in via GoDaddy.

Second sale happened on the very next day of GeoComm.com for $13,500. I remember having $15,888 BIN. The buyer came in with a $9,000 initial offer and $12,500 as final offer. The interesting and best thing about Afternic brokers is that you can easily trust them and they’ll give you the best in return. I actually said of accepting a $12.5K offer but requested to try once again and see if the buyer comes up… And fortunately he raised to $13,500. This is not something new for me as I’ve seen multiple times for myself and my fellow domain investors where the Afternic brokers have helped them get more than what the seller has accepted to sell it for.

Then again the very next day I’d another sale but this time the buyer hit BIN and acquired it. The domain was HarleyClinic.com which sold for $1,988.

And the best sale of the last month happened on 20th of August in the shape of BIN which was LivingLabs.com for $25,888. It’s a great feeling to have BIN sales happening at such price range. I’d this domain for many years and declined several offers including the highest of $5,000 when I used Uniregistry landers.

And then there was a sale of $5,000 which unfortunately I cannot share due to TM reason. I admit of acquiring the wrong domain but totally unintentionally so when the initial offer came in of $2,500, I requested to try and see if we can get anything above that mark or else accept this offer. So once again the Afternic broker did their job what they’re best at and got the buyer to $5,000. Apologies for not sharing the domain.

And the last sale of the month via Afternic was WeAreLiberty.com for $2,988 where the buyer hit BIN and purchased it.

All the domains were sold via GoDaddy except the GeoComm.com sale which happened via Afternic lander. Surprisingly no sale came via partner registrars. This shows the power of GoDaddy which is enough to make a good amount of sales for anyone holding good quality and quantity of domains.

The number of inquiries for the August was close to 550 and total number of domains at the end of last month were 4,170+/-

Total cost of acquisition was under $4,000 and total amount of sales was $52,864.

On the other hand, my friend Muhammad Aamir from DotCorner was happy to share once again his August sales via Afternic which I’ve copied below:

HavenGallery.com for $1,800 (Registerd $7.45 on 29th Jan, 2008).
ToonJam.com for $1,600 (Purchased for $10 back in March 2020).
PlasticRoad.com for $7,850 (12+ years old name – hand reg).

He also sold Peter.org for $8,855 privately which is another fantastic sale IMO. And the last sale was IronDecks.com for $2500 (registered for $5.99 on August 26, 2020 and Sold on August 28th DAN).

Aamir is a well experienced domain investor and he knows the ins and outs of this business so please don’t go on buying spree just because he sold IronDecks.com which was hand registered last month itself. He hand registered around 500 domains in a small period of time and from that this particular domain sale happened. It’s all about the quality, quantity, experience, timing, etc which matters in this business.

One fellow investor @Yusupbabay, the owner of Presiden.com shared one sale he made last month IndustrialHeart.com for a whopping $25,000. He acquired it for $59 and paid for 2 years of renewals. The reason behind this particular acquisition was that “I bought this domain because it was sold:
INDUSTRIALHEART.COM last sold for $ 22,500 on 2015-07-12 at DomainMarket”.

Honestly speaking, I would’ve never sold for that price, let alone asking that price. I just don’t get this domain but a sale is a sale and I’m happy for the seller. Congrats and thanks for sharing!

And I’ve a couple of answers to share which my Afternic manager was happy to share with me:

Q1) Does price reduction send any kind of alert to the past inquirer for that particular domain?

A1) We have measures in place within our automated email system to keep buyers engaged after expressing interest in a domain, but we do not automatically send emails to past inquirers when a domain’s price is reduced. This is an interesting idea, I will send it along to the team to review. As of right now if a seller is significantly discounting a sought after domain, they can reach out to our Partner Seller department at PartnerSeller@Afternic.com. We will be happy to review past inquiries on the domain and have the brokers reach out to drum up interest.

Q2) Also adding categories for domains make any increase in sales?

A2) Adding categories to listings does not have a measurable significance to sales velocity. The category information is not pushed out to our partner network. This feature can be used by our sellers to help keep track of their different verticals and can be seen on Afternic.com, but not across the network where the domains are distributed.

I believe this will clear out many of the investor’s doubts who were looking out for this and I’m very happy to see the detailed answers.

Thank you Afternic, my relationship manager, the brokerage team and everyone involved in making the overall experience so wonderful.

Feel free to give your feedback no matter how good or good it is 😉

Posted in Domaining Tags: , , , , , , 55 Comments »
Read More »

Suggestions for Afternic

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on July 28th, 2020

Hello everyone,

I was actually suppose to publish a different post but had to make this one last time. The reason is I almost finished this particular post but put on hold when I knew that what I was going to suggest is already implemented just in those days! Happy to see what Afternic brought in and that’s a must have feature.

I would like to say that I’m overall very happy with the decision of moving all my domains to Afternic landers which started in January but I’ll not shy away for not sharing what I think is worth to be implemented which will bring more fruitful results for both Afternic and their clients. I like the attitude of Shane Cultra who openly says what he likes and dislikes about anyone, whether it be a service, company or an individual.

So today I want to share what Afternic should implement for the betterment of both Afternic platform as well as their users.

1) 2FA is a must which no one can deny and should be implemented. If somehow your password is leaked or device got hacked, it’s easier for the hacker to login and change the sale price of your domain and buy it. Especially with Fast Transfers enabled, the domain will simply transfer out of your registrar swiftly.

2) Another thing which Afternic is missing and that’s to bring in Payment Plan option. I believe this will skyrocket the sales for all the domain owners holding good domains with the right prices.

3) One more thing which can be done is with NS3/NS4 landers like for example B4F.com, you’ll see sales lander. I think there should be a choice for the domain owners to either use this particular lander or have the same lander + BIN. In this case, the buyer who is not willing to negotiate and just wants to buy at the listed price can simply waste no time and hit the BIN and make the payment. And this should be made optional for domain owners to go with which option for their sales lander.

4) Another small change can be brought in is to release the funds in 2-3 business days after the domain transfer is complete instead of taking 7-10 days which is quite long time.

5) One small tweaking be made of allowing users to rename their payout methods as well as remove any which are unnecessary and no more required to be there which only creates confusion.

6) Last but not the least, since now I’m having 4,000+ domains in my portfolio, I receive domain reports every month from my Afternic Rep which is manually generated and sent to me. It would be really nice if this is made available in everyone’s account and whenever anyone is interested in to see the stats, can simply generate by it’s own. I’ve used several different parking platforms to date and if I remember correctly, one can download or check at the platform itself and see the stats. Also addition of traffic stats in the reports would be great and I believe it should be there so the domain owners can analyze the volume and other relevant data of incoming traffic.

Feel free to give your feedback as always and should you’ve any other suggestions to be mentioned, kindly do so.

Posted in Domaining Tags: , , , 25 Comments »
Read More »

Why you should renew domains in advance

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on July 21st, 2020

Hello everyone,

Today I wanted to share my point of view on why you should renew your domains in advance and the benefits of it.

So let’s check at how renewing your domains for a longer period than a year might prevent a big headache in the course of time.

1) If you’ve developed a website and worked hard for marketing your brand and receiving a great number of audience on your domain name, simply don’t let that site suddenly go dark because you forget to renew the domain on due time. So when your registration expires, any services associated with the domain (your website, email service, and so on) stops working. Sometimes the domain renewal alerts can easily get overlooked due to aggressive spam filters on your email account, an overflowing inbox, or any of life’s other distractions.

2) As it may happen with anyone and there are some situations happening around us which are not in our control like the current global situation regarding the virus and its impact to overall humanity. This may lead to weak financial condition, savings are needed to be used for some emergency and more important needs and last but not the least, the lack of domain sales can kill the cash flow in such tough times.

3) There are also some cases where investors tend to renew domains each and every month as the renewal comes for their large portfolio of domains but with any sudden death in family or the domain owner itself, hospitalization, any case of emergency, etc may put your domains at risk of expiring and ultimately to drop. So it’s better to renew a lot in advance.

4) Another positive side of renewing the domain is like when any endusers or domain brokers find the domain is near to expiration, they may try to wait for the domain to drop and either hand register it or backorder to secure the domain. But when your domain is renewed in advance let’s suppose for an addition of 3 or 5 years, chances are high that the interested party would try to contact and buy directly from you rather than waiting for years for the domain to expire.

So never give a slight hope to anyone that your good domains are going to drop anywhere in the near future. Give yourself peace of mind by renewing your domains far in advance so you don’t accidentally lose them.

As for my portfolio, when it was around 1,000 domains, it was quite easy for me to renew domains for at least a couple of years ahead of expiry. But with the portfolio growing and now little over 4,000 domains, it’s difficult to renew that much in advance. But still I have all my domain keepers renewed for an additional 1 year.

Feel free to give your feedback about my strategy and share your own to let others know.

Posted in Domaining Tags: , , 14 Comments »
Read More »

Web of Brandable Domain Names
Domaining blog recommended by Domaining.com
RSS FeedSubscribe

  • Categories

  • Archives

  • Meta