A newbie asks some good questions.
I received an e-mail from a new domainer yesterday. He asked good questions so I’m going to respond through the blog.
>I’m new to the domain game, and must say that I enjoy your site. There’s
>a few things I just “don’t get,” and was wondering if you could shed some
>light on them.
>
>But first, I thought you might be interested to know that
>homeimprovement.net, a dropped name picked up by Pool, went for $8,733 in
>the closed auction (only open to others that backordered it). I know
>because I participated in the auction (I stopped chasing it at around $7
>K). (hated that fact that they have no support people to call on the
>weekend, and don’t meet their 24 hr email return policy, but that’s
>another story). What do you think it could fetch if the buyer turned
>arount and tried to flip it to the broader domain community?
The domain dropping markets are fairly efficient, so the final bid price is probably fair. Sometimes domains go for more during the drop than they would on the resale market because people get swept into the excitement of auctions. Could HomeImprovement.net sell for than $9,000 in the aftermarket? It could, but .nets aren’t known for swapping hands at high prices.
>Who do you think are the best companies to deal with when trying to pick
>up dropped names?
This is a tough question now that so many drop services have exclusive agreements with registars to grab their dropping names. SnapNames gets most of the great domains because of their relationship with Network Solutions and Register.com. These were the two early and big registrars, so they have a lot of old domains that expire. Pool.com has lost is luster because it doesn’t have the exclusive relationships the other drop services have. eNom’s Club Drop is fairly good. NameWinner.com is a good source to catch domains dropping from Dotster. GoDaddy’s TDNAM is decent but only captures GoDaddy’s expiring domains.
>Here’s what I don’t get:
>
>- 3 letter domain names – why are the so valueable when most of them seem
>like jibberish to me?
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. 3 letter domains are rare, easy-to-remember, and are acronyms for a number of companies. Let’s take three random letters …RBC. RBC.com is the domain of RBC Financial Group. Here are some other companies that would like to be known by this short moniker: Regal Beloitte CP (publicly traded), Radio Bible Club Ministries, and several others.
Here are some other things you can do with RBC.com.
>- alexa page ranked names that again seem like jibberish to me e.g. IR3X
>for $65,000. What that all about?
IR3x.com gets a lot of traffic. The buyer knew this because of the domain’s “Overture Score“. This represents the number of times someone entered “IR3X.com” into a search box or search toolbar related to Yahoo’s network during one month. IR3X’s OVT+Ext score for March was 2,884. If almost three thousand people accidentally searched the the URL then you can bet a lot of people typed it into the browser.
>- alexa page rank – I don’t understand the ranking system. Is it that
>important?
Yes and no. It’s a good way to measure the traffic a domain gets, but it must be used with caution. It measures traffic based on its user base, including people who have downloaded the Alexa Toolbar. You’ll find high Alexa ranks for domains that are more likely to be visited by Alexa users (including Alexa.com). This number can potentially be manipulated. Overture scores can also be manipulated. You must look at the complete picture: Alexa Rank, Overture Score, inbound links, previous owner’s stats, value of the keywords, and common sense.
>I’d also appreciate it if you point me in the direction of any
>resources/tools that you think I might find useful.
SnapCheck.com is a free resource for finding quality expiring domain names. Once you get serious about this business, you need to pick up a copy of Domain Research Tool. It costs $249, but it’s well worth the price. Visit the Domain Research Tool web site for details.
>
>thanks,
>Reader
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