Archive for the ‘Domaining’ Category

Previous domain owner wants to take me in court!

Previous-domain-owner-wants-to-take-me-in-courtYou will find this quite interesting and funny. As many of us buy domains through auctions and recently I acquired a .net which I thought was good for reselling purpose and got for mid 3 figures. After acquiring it for 40-50 days I was contacted by the previous owner of the domain asking me to transfer back domain to him as there was some problem with the company he registered the domain. I wasn’t sure what he was actually referring to because of the broken non-English language.

He even said in his initial message that he will be taking me to court if I don’t transfer the domain back to him. It’s a generic term and there is no trademark with that keyword. It’s a short brandable word which must not have any trouble but isn’t he trying to scare me 😉

I have recently parked that domain with InternetTraffic and he came through by clicking the sales link and even tells me that how come you are trying to sell my domain. Well, I think I need to get his permission before I put the domain for sale 😉

I haven’t respond him yet and doesn’t need to do at least for now. It’s my first experience with a person wants to take me in court if I don’t transfer the domain to him in timely manner.

Keep reading and bookmark this blog as many more interesting stuff coming all the time 🙂

Have you experienced anything like that? Care to share your story?

60 days lock period of GoDaddy resulted in canceling the deal of my first hyphenated domain

60-days-lock-period-of-GoDaddy-resulted-in-canceling-the-deal-of-my-first-hyphenated-domainHello everyone,

I won’t blame GoDaddy for that and instead accept my mistake. Although this 60 days lock period is quite frustrating when the buyer asks for transfer out of GoDaddy. So today I would like to share one of the incident happened with me.

It was a .com hyphenated domain for which I contacted several companies and one of them asked the price. I responded back with US$2,000. Keep in mind that I don’t usually start by giving the price first but in this case I was in hurry to make the sale and asked for 2k which was fairly reasonable for a hyphenated domain. The buyer immediately accepted my offer and we initiated the process at Escrow.com with seller paying the fee completely.

The owner of the company asked me to wait until next couple of days as Director of IT will be in touch with me completing the transfer process. Once the payment was approved and I asked their GoDaddy customer# and email address.

The owner strictly said we don’t use GoDaddy as our primary registrar anymore and currently using Network Solutions. I tried to get the authorization code from GoDaddy but it was locked for transfer out and I was unable to retrieve the auth code until next one month. I informed them the situation and I received unfriendly message “We are recalling the money from Escrow.com and once the lock period is over you may contact us. Otherwise we are NOT interested.”

It was quite frustrating to see the funds going back and I was unable to do anything from my end. However, another bad news was yet to come which I wasn’t aware of. So once the lock period was off I contacted them again. This time they preferred to split the Escrow.com fees in half way between buyer and seller. I happily agreed because last time they paid full Escrow fee and deal was cancelled so they didn’t want to risk this time. I created the transaction once again with split fee but they didn’t responded even after Escrow sent them auto reminder. I contacted them to see if they need some more time to make payment.

Their reply wasn’t pleasing for me saying that after several discussions with our SEO consultants we’ve decided not to proceed with this domain name purchase. You may cancel the transaction at Escrow.com.

I admit it was my mistake not to check the status of domain at GoDaddy because recently I had brought the domain from another registrar. Lesson learned is never try to sell the domain if it’s locked and you are somehow unable to transfer to the desired registrar of domain buyer. Or you can at least inform the buyer that you will only be able to push this domain at same registrar (can give the exact reason anything you wish to). Make sure you inform them in the beginning so there won’t be any trouble like I faced in this deal which was at the end remained a sad story…

Have you faced anything like that before? Had any deal going out of your mouth ? 😀 Please share and don’t hesitate

Parking revenue of February 2013 with InternetTraffic.com

Parking-revenue-of-February-2013-with-InternetTraffic.comHello everyone,

First of all sorry for being in sharing my parking revenue of last month. Next time I will try to share it more quickly.

I thought of having a better month in parking as compare to January. But unfortunately things didn’t work out like I wanted. Although I made over US$200 but was nowhere near to US$300 which I achieved for the first time last month. I saw drop in my parking revenue for February even though adding 5-7 more domains in the whole month. As I mentioned earlier in one of my post my target is to reach US$1,000 p/month by the end of this year and hopefully I will hit that mark on time. And yeah, I hope to have better next month (March).

Just to add one thing that my highest money making domain was in technology niche.

It doesn’t mean I am complaining about InternetTraffic for the lower revenue in February but I just wanted to share with you all no matter if you hide your parking revenue with me 😉

But I would love to see if someone have big heart to share their parking revenue with their domain parking company 🙂

Investing in hyphenated domains

Hello everyone,

Today I would like to discuss and share my experience about hyphenated domains. To be honest I don’t invest much in hyphenated domains. Although I have quite a few domains with hyphen but I really don’t like them very much because it kills the value as far as selling is concerned and lot of traffic goes to the non-hyphen version domain.

Investing-in-hyphenated-domainsIf you see a two word hyphenated domain with huge number of exact searches and high CPC I would still suggest to carefully analyze the domain before you make any final decision. Check the past domain sales of hyphenated domains where you will find the non-hyphenated version have sold for much higher so don’t get fooled by paying higher price thinking you can sell it for big bucks like the non-hyphenated sold in the past.

There are two main countries where you will find the end-users quickly for your hyphenated domains compare to somewhere else. Those two are Germany and United Kingdom. People from both countries love to buy domains with hyphen. They even buy 3 word domains with 2 hyphens in it. So long tail domain looks crazy to me with couple of hyphens in between. If you are planning or in the middle of buying some hyphenated domains than keep these two countries in your mind while making any decision. If the domain can attract those targeted buyers than it will be easier for you to sell the domain to an end-user.

Make sure you don’t invest in hyphenated domains with any lower extension like .net/.org. Stick to the basics. I mean the .com. Still it’s risky to invest in hyphenated .com domains if you are not buying the right domain at right price.

Personally I may have 4-7 hyphenated .com domains and if I remember correctly I have never sold a single one to date. Although I have received offers but none of them attractive enough to sell that domain.

Care to share your experience with hyphenated domains? Don’t be shy and feel free to share with us.

Thanks for coming and reading.

Do not develop your domains if you are willing to sell them

Do-not-develop-your-domains-if-you-are-willing-to-sell-themIt’s my experience and I am sure no other expert domainer will disagree at this point. I have been developing some of domains for several years and have been parking as well. Just make sure of one thing as I am talking here about mini sites vs parking your domains. If you have the purpose of selling the domain by developing a mini website and waiting for the offers to come in than you are on wrong path.

There will be marginal chances of receiving any inquiries for the purchase of your domain. I suggest you to create a landing page of your own or park your domains where it’s clearly mentioned the domain is for sale. This increases the chance of receiving inquiries. I will give you an example of one domain which I have developed for quite some time OTAL.com. If I remember correctly I have not received an inquiry in the whole 2012. Whereas I have some low quality LLLL.com domains compare to OTAL.com and have been receiving frequent inquiries.

One of the reason behind the developed website is the potential buyer of that domain might think the project already exists and surely the current owner won’t sell his profitable company. I know many of you disagree because developed websites do sell but here I am talking the type of buyers who are not interested in buying only domain and not willing to pay anything extra for the existing project. There can be several reasons for that. One of them is the potential buyer is not willing to continue the project you have developed and have different plans and ideas for that domain.

So to conclude the post I would once again suggest you guys to create your own landing page for the domain or park at some good companies like InternetTraffic.com, Voodoo.com, Bodis.com to get more exposure in order to sell your domain names.

Feel free to shoot any comments. No matter how good or bad they are 😉