Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

Parking revenue for June 2014 and other updates

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

I am always doing test and trial with my parked domains by changing the categories/sub-categories and see if the revenue increases. Most of the time I face decline which is not an issue because this is how we all learn and gain good/bad experiences. Last month June 2014 was the same case where the revenue dropped compare to the month of May 2014. Below is some of the parking stats which might be helpful to you in some way…

Total visitors – 95,000+

Total clicks – 4,900+

Total parked domains – 675

Total revenue – $630

Top niche which made the most – Games

$$ made on a single day – $65

RPM – $6


If you have checked the May 2014 revenue than you must have noticed that even after adding around 25 domains the revenue still dropped. As you know my goal is to reach $1,000 in parking revenue and that time I must be having 1,000 domains under my belt which means I am aiming to make $1 per domain every month on an average.

So looking at the above figures, I am behind my target and needs to keep the number of domains and revenue to be the same. Won’t mind if the revenue increases against the number of domains in my portfolio 😉

On the other side, I have been parking max 5 domain with Bodis and received an announcement from them which I thought to share with you.

“We are excited to announce that, starting this July, we will be processing our users’ payments even faster than before. As you know, we are constantly trying to improve our platform and our service. Therefore, we have decided to spend additional resources to process user payouts on our new NET 7 payment terms. That means that you will be paid out even faster from now on – in just one week after the end of a month.

We hope you are as excited about this as we are. If you have any questions regarding this change, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Bodis Support at support@bodis.com.

Sincerely,

The Bodis Team”

I think it’s good news for domainers who are using Bodis as their primary parking platform. Nothing big for me as I have parked very few domains with Bodis because they are banned by Google and DomainNameSales.com doesn’t pay that well for those names. Although they promised to make changes in future but I haven’t tried to park those domains at DNS recently. If any of you have parked Google banned domains with DNS and seen spike in revenue just let us know.

That’s it for now. Feel free to post a comment or suggestion if you have any. I will happily take it 🙂

Symphony.com sold by AbdulBasit.com for $375,000

Symphony.com-sold-by-AbdulBasit.com-for-$375000Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

At this great moment, my heartiest thanks to Almighty ALLAH (The Most Merciful and Beneficent) who always strengthen me with firm belief and right guidance, and thanks to my family as well, they are always a great support specially my father who brought me in this business.

AbdulBasit.com sold Symphony.com for US$375,000, a great milestone is crossed as I was hoping to achieve this goal in current year. This domain was registered since 1997.

Credit to Frank Schilling for making great platform in the shape of DomainNameSales.com and the entire team for doing great job all time. This domain was brokered by Jessica Ebanks of DomainNameSales.com. She did fantastically well in closing this deal successfully and is one of the best domain brokers I have ever worked with. The buyer approached us and gave their initial offer in high five figures. After exchanging several emails we were able to wrap up this deal swiftly through Escrow.com.

I wish all the best to the new owner of Symphony.com and hope to see something big coming up.

Your comments are welcome no matter how good or good they are 😉

Domain Backordering Companies I have known so far

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

I have joined Domaining.com this month and it’s my first post after enrolling in – thanks to Francois.

Today I would like to share the domain backordering companies I have worked with. None of them are listed in any specific order.


SnapNames.com

Snapnames-backordering-companySince long time I am using their service and witnessed they have the best catching ratio by far. I am always confident giving BO with them because most of the time they are able to catch domains and beat the competitors even though there are some new companies recently launched.

They also offer pre-release domains as they have done partnership with many registrars and those expiring domains are exclusively auctioned off at SnapNames. You can find many good domains out there.

 

Name.com

Name.com-backordering-serviceThey are good at catching .tv/.cc domains but once in a blue moon Name.com will grab a decent .com on your behalf. Not sure when that they will come for me like it happened with the owner of Mouthwash.com which was some time back caught by Name.com. No harm is giving BO with them but most of the time good names are already backordered so very slim chance left if you are going to BO when a name enters into PendingDelete status. What you can do is to place BO when the domain enters Redemption Grace Period (RGP). At this stage, people normally don’t place BO with Name.com because they charge you upfront and your money is stuck until the domain gets dropped and will be available.
Personally I don’t use Name.com much for backordering .com domains because chances are quite low and I don’t need to stuck my money with the company who normally grabs almost nothing good. One thing I like about them is they take BO on first come first serve basis but there is lot of room left for improvement in increasing the catching ratio.

 

DomainMonster.com

DomainMonster.com-backordering-companyI have used them in past to backorder .cc domains and was really happy to see them catching some good domains for me. Wrote a review about them in past. When they newly launched the BO fee was as low as $19 + domain reg fee. Since then they have increased up to $64.99 which is costly. The only thing I like about them for .com backordering is they don’t charge you anything upfront. Only when the domain is successfully grabbed on your behalf. But that never actually happens 😀

 

Pheenix.com

pheenix-backordering-companyThis is a new company and to promote themselves they offered people to backorder on first come first serve basis. I was excited to see new competitor in backordering business and some time later they changed their business model to private auction. I left them for quite some time and the CEO of Pheenix.com “Tan Tran” actually offered me couple of free BO credits which I declined because I was disappointed to see them making private auction system. They started with first come first serve basis just to get clients and when they reach their target, everything was changed.
Recently I joined back Pheenix when I saw them beating SnapNames and other companies. Impressive to see them catching some good domains and I have won some nice names for myself.

 

DropCatch.com


DropCatch-another-backordering-company I have joined them since their launch of “beta” and I don’t need to say much about them. One of the greedy  companies I have ever worked with. I just dislike their system of making public auctions. People’s hard work is drained off in seconds who placed backorders initially. You can read more about them here.


NameJet.com

Namejet-backordering-company They are not as good as SnapNames in catching Pending Delete domains but you are going to find lot of great domains auctioned off daily from the pre-releases. Similar to SnapNames, they have many registrars affiliated with NameJet and all expiring domains registered at them are auctioned at NameJet.

 

GoDaddy.com

godaddy-backordering-companyI used to BO domains with GoDaddy several years back and I can say they are one of the poor companies in backordering domains. Never caught a single decent domain. I have even heard that some people successfully beat GoDaddy by hand registering domains and at the same time the domain was backordered with GoDaddy! Funny and may be true story because I have read this from many people. Also I have previously written about GoDaddy backordering service here.

 

 

1API/Hexonet.net

hexonet-domain-backordering-company They launched backordering service for .cc domains in 2010 and I was in the first few to join them. When they caught first domain, there was another person who had placed backorder for the same name and it went to public auction. The same greedy business model which is currently operated by DropCatch.com. It was a domain which were merely worth few hundred bucks but they auctioned at GoDaddy Auctions for some days. That domain went for over $1,000. I was really angry at them and their CSO responded it’s newly launched service and we are soon going to make it private auction system and they did it some time later but since than I have never used and I feel it was a good decision by me. I wrote in detail about Hexonet.net in the past which you can read here.

Dynadot.com

They charge you upfront some $14.99 so I paid them in advance thinking they will some day catch a domain for me. Yes, they are also doing private auction so not as bad as greedy DropCatch. But I found the poor thing about Dynadot was when I backordered several domains and they failed each time so I thought to ask for a refund but they declined to refund back and said I am forced to use this fund at Dynadot. dynadot-backordering-company
That’s nonsense really! Now for this purpose I cannot backorder some crappy name to get rid of them. Personally, I don’t recommend any one using them because they don’t catch any good names for you so the money is left with them.

What’s your experience with any of the above companies? Feel free to share any other backordering service you know.

Domain Parking Revenue for May 2014 which was record breaking

Domain-Parking-Revenue-for-May-2014-which-was-record-breakingHello and Assalamo Alaikum,

If you remember I was hoping to have better next month in parking as mentioned in my previous month’s parking revenue post and I got it right. I added some more domains to DNS and was able to hit the $900 mark!

I can sense the drop in revenue from this month because the domains which made significant revenue last month were having temporary traffic boost. From now onwards, I have decided to share some approx stats of my parking which might be useful for you in some way…

Total visitors – 110,000+

Total clicks – 6,200+

Total parked domains – 650

Total revenue – Won’t share the exact amount but it was over $900

Top niche which made the most for me – Telecommunication

$$ made on a single day – $54

Stay tuned for my upcoming posts as there is going to be some exciting news 🙂

DropCatch.com – new domain backordering company with worst possible issue

DropCatch-another-backordering-companyHello and Assalamo Alaikum,

I am not sure if you guys are aware of new backordering service which was publicly beta launched some time back. I came to know about them when I placed the backorders with SnapNames, NameJet and other companies I found that it was caught by a company called DropCatch.com.

Later I found they are part of HugeDomains and they have caught over  1,000,000 for themselves and recently launched DropCatch for public. They offer backorders for .com and .net domains only. According to the conversation I had with them in past they currently have no plans to expand this to other TLDs.

So when I placed my first backorder it was clear that I was the winner because I received an email from them being the winner and can proceed to make payment of $59 and I tried to topup my account but later found that there were some more bidders and their support team apologized by saying we are still in beta and there was a bug which has been fixed. So ultimately the domain went through 5 days auction process. Yes, 5 days auction.

I gave my feedback to their team for changing from 5 days to 3 days and change the auction finish time 3 hours earlier which is quite near to what SnapNames, NameJet and other auction platform time ends. I was happy to see both these changes were made quite quickly and I appreciate that.

But the main problem is whatever the domain I have backordered goes into “Public Auction” since I started using them still exists and they don’t just care about it. Surely, it will hurt them in future and I hope they will listen to their clients or start losing them quickly.

This “Public Auction” is the worst thing I have seen at any backordering company. Let me give you an example for recently concluded auction at DropCatch. I backordered Bespoke.com along with other 44 bidders who had ordered this domain before it was caught by DropCatch. So once the auction started until it finished there were a total of 54 bidders. An increase of 10 bidders jumping into the action and I tell you all those additional bidders came really pumped up the bidding war. My highest bid was in five figures but if those people hadn’t come my chances to win that domain were far better.

Now I don’t have any complaints for those who jumped in at later stage or were not part of the initial backordering stage. All I have problem is with DropCatch system and their team who doesn’t really care about this. I have asked them numerous times to get rid of this or you will start losing interest from people involved in using your backordering service. Their answer as always was that I am the ONLY person who is asking for this change and no one else does!

Is that what you think DropCatch? Check out the comment section at DomainNameWire and you will come to know if I am the ONLY person dissatisfied and asking change for betterment.

This doesn’t make any sense to me that 2 people doing their research, putting all efforts and time finding the gem out of the rough and once the auction starts I simply jump in and start bidding including all other people who were not aware of that domain before the domain got started as public auction. That’s simply waste of time and utter nonsense for the person who did this research. Do you (DropCatch) think we domainers have plenty of time to waste?

Yes, I am still using them because there are not much people who knows about them compare to bidders at SnapNames and NameJet. So with less competition there is always a chance to get a domain at lesser price.

So any one had experienced DropCatch backordering service and what are your thoughts? Feel free to post a comment 🙂

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**UPDATE**
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Received a response from DropCatch.com official after I sent my and DNW article link mentioned below:

Hello AbdulBasit,

We are following the domain name article and have been discussing the issue you have raised for quite some time.

These things don’t change overnight and we will let you know (probably with a DropCatch blog post) what we decide to do when we have decided it. A lot goes into keeping something like this running. Your patience is appreciated.