Be sure to read my first two posts (if you haven’t already) to hear how I got started:
- Investing In Domains - One Noob’s Experience (Part 1)
- Investing In Domains - One Noob’s Experience (Part 2)
After writing those two posts, Matt from DomainersEdge.com offered to let me try the services he offers and I’ve really enjoyed that opportunity. In the interest of full disclosure, he has given me a one month free trial. You’ll be the judge of whether or not that colors my opinions or description of his site. At a future date I’ll write a post describing what I like and dislike about his site. For now I’ll speak in general terms about how it’s helped me.
In my ongoing research, I came across a post by a domainer who started out the way I did: indiscriminately purchasing a bunch of domains because they sounded good. As Matt from DomainersEdge.com rightly points out, traffic (which translates into cash) is king. None of my first 100+ domains were really going anywhere because they had no traffic. They were virtually all newly-registered domain names with no history, expiring links, Alexa.com ranking, link popularity, etc.
If those terms are new to you (just a short time ago, they were to me too) check out Matt’s screen casts which will show you more about what his site will help you do. He also shares some very useful information regarding what makes a domain valuable:
http://www.screencast.com/users/AntiSoma/collections/85afd561-b758-4723-b3aa-8d659254b132
Matt has also been very kind to answer several questions that I’ve posed to him via e-mail. He’s been patient and has given me some great information. Though his time is probably in short enough supply that he can’t offer as much personal attention to a large group of people, his insights have been sufficient to keep me going at a hobby that I thought I’d need to leave behind after some bad initial luck.
After conducting fairly extensive research into which domains might be worth purchasing, I settled on 22 and again purchased them at GoDaddy.com for the following reasons:
- For some reason I still like the DomainsByProxy.com service which is free when you purchase (I believe it’s) six or more domains
- I wanted to participate in some of their auctions which requires an annual membership fee of $4.95, and I got two cheap domains with that non-domain purchase
- I found an online coupon code that saved me an additional $5 or so off my total purchase
I immediately parked the domains at Sedo.com and in about two days I’ve had 70 page views with 2 clicks for a total of $0.10. That doesn’t establish any kind of trend that will result in my early retirement, but it is quite a bit better than my other 50+ domains which have taken about a month to give me 303 page views with 15 clicks and $0.67.
It’s generally accepted that if you really want a domain name that’s expiring, you should backorder it at all the sites offering that service (Enom.com, SnapNames.com, Pool.com, etc.). That gives you the best chances of getting it. If multiple people backorder the same domain name, it goes into a private auction where the highest bidder takes it. Last I checked, Flckr.com was up to $520. Is it worth that much? (That’s not a rhetorical question — I don’t know the answer.)
I can’t take full credit for these latest moves; Matt recommended looking at (and participating in) some auctions to get a better feel for what people are willing to pay for different domains. It has been very interesting. Maybe I’ll even get to a point where I feel comfortable spending more than $100 for a single domain name. It would be nice if I knew it was worth that much money, but I suppose there’s an element of risk and uncertainty in everything.
There are several steps that I plan to take going forward:
- Get all my domains that are parked at GoDaddy.com moved over to Sedo.com and optimize them
- Further optimize my parked domains at Sedo.com - I have some domains with decent (by my standards) unique page views and pitiful click throughs
- Continue using DomainersEdge.com to research and purchase domain names
- Keep posting information about my experience to help you determine whether it’s something you’d like to do (or help you a little if you’ve already started)
Question of the day:
What have been your most successful techniques in making money with domaining?
Related posts:
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