Since early 2005, I have been investing/trading with 4 letter domain names. I started this thread due to the large variation in opinions on how many four letter domains there are available. When I started, I heard a range on viewpoints ranging from 200,000 down to nothing. What I learned that most people did not know how many were available.
Sources of Error for the estimates in number of available 4 letter domains include:
Traffic Testers: These are people who buy thousands of domains at a time to see if the domains are being visited and only keep the small percentage of domains that have regular visitors and cancel their orders for the domains that don't have a regular flow of visitors.
Inefficient ways of making estimates: There are over 450 thousand possible 4-Letter domains. There are short cuts that people can take in estimating the number that been registered that don't include all domains. One short cut that is often taken is for somebody to search through a list of previously available 4 letter names that they purchased (or got for free) and assume that all the names that are not on that list are registered.
People quoting old information:The variation in the number available changes all the time. Estimates that are months old are very different than up to date estimates.
People manipulating information for a sale:It definately is true that incorrect information on the available number of 4-letter domains can intensionally be manipulated to sell 4-letter domains at a higher price. Typically the lack of supply tends to motivate people to pay higher prices.
As a 4-letter domain trader, I believe that the information of how many 4-letter domains there are is extremely valuable for two main reasons. Firstly, my pricing of my names is subject to the amount of work it requires for customer to find for similar name. Secondly, if I want to increase my stock of 4-letter names than the information of how many there are at reg fee prices is essential.
I decided to update this thread when the number of available 4-letter domains dropped to the following levels:
22% Remaining - 25th January 2006
19% Remaining - 31st March 2006
16% Remaining - 29th June 2006
13% Remaining - 1st August 2006
10% Remaining - 15th February 2007 (crossed without traffic testing early April)
9% Remaining - 26th February 2007 (crossed without traffic testing early May)
8% Remaining - 2nd March 2007 (crossed without traffic testing in June)
7% Remaining - 21st March 2007 (crossed without traffic testing early July)
6% Remaining - 3rd July 2007(crossed without traffic testing some time in July)
5% Remaining - 1st August 2007(crossed without traffic testing August 11)
4% Remaining - 14th August 2007(crossed late August)
3% Remaining - 15th September 2007(crossed In September)
2% Remaining - 14th October 2007
1% Remaining - 31st October 2007
0% Remaining - 2nd November - COUNTDOWN COMPLETE!
Although, the number of available domains does sometime rise straight after it drops due to traffic testing and people dropping their domains, I don't consider it worth mentioning unless the rise is as significant as a 3% rise in the number of available domains.
Types of Four Letter Domains that have run out include:
- ALL OF THEM!
Since I started this thread important event about four letter domains that are worth mentioning happenned:
1: Late March/Early April 2006 there was a significant shift in the market for brandable (fake words) 4-letter domains and they started selling at significantly higher prices and the market for the names has been a lot more active ever since.
2: In July 2006, a namepros member 3par launched DYYO.com as a site committed to educating people about 4 letter domains. This is an excellent resource for those who are interested in 4 letter domain names.
3: In early February 2007. All the 4 letter domains starting with the letter A ran out.
4: wasistdas won QQNQ.COM, PCZV.COM & IQKE.COM for the competition for predicting when the 4 Letter domains would run out
__________________________________________________ _____________ Initial Post
Less than 23% of the 4 letter domain names are unregistered. I thought I'd try to keep this thread updated every time I discover another 1% reduction. I am now routinely checking the percentage of unregisted 4 letter domains.
I think it's hard to imagine a costant growth of this kind of domain registration, due to the obvious large amount of them who drops every day, and also for the fact that some really bad letters combination are not interesting at all (i.e. something like jhxk.com or yqhk.com), unless somebody will think to register them all in bulk..
At the moment the only valuable names are those pronunciable and brandable I guess, and obviously the meaningful ones.
I recently picked up oult.com and heok.com at Snapnames - mainly because I put a load of them on my backorder list and had forgotten about them! But whether they are worth any more than $60 ... I have my doubts.
__________________ Wolfmother.net - Wolfmother fan site - the original and best
they seem to have caused plenty of talk in recent times, i only own one as of now.. and the combinations left dont really interest me at present. I will keenly follow this though. Thanks for the updated info =)
It's one thing to have all of them 'registered' but quite another to have them selling for a profit! We all know there are about 17K LLL.com combos and that jumps up to 450K for the LLLL.com. I've seen tons of LLLL.com (some nice ones) for under $20 all over the place. Then again - who knows that could happen. I bet the value won't go up much for at least another 2-3 years however.
I got 9 so let's hope they expire before I gotta pay the renewals again :P.
TXGC.com
TXEO.com
NVCJ.com
NVGJ.com
VPOF.com
JQJJ.com
TXBQ.com
EZLH.com
MPBJ.com
Solid/brandable LLLL.com values are increasing, while the lowest quality are reaching just around reg fee at this point -- I believe we'll see 95% of the names registered by next year
I don't know why people are jumping after these. It's basically copying off the hype over 3 letter domains. Buying random 4 character domains is beyond me... personally I see no value in them. Personally I think the people registering random 4 character domains will be disappointed in the end.
__________________
Girls are like domain names; the ones I like are already taken.
I don't think so. 4 letters .coms are always good acronyms, exept for those with really bad letters combos. If they are pronunciable (aka brandable) they could be worth some, if you have to create a new brand or to name a product, a short name is always a good choice, for marketing reasons.
I belive that when they will be all regged, their value could increase a quite a lot, of course not like 3chars, but more then regfee for sure.
Not sure how long those of you posting in this thread have been around the business, but a few years back, almost ALL LLLL.com's were registered. Eventually people dropped many.
i often wondered: take the phone book, thumb to attorneys, pick the ones with long names and pitch them a LLLL.com
here's one from my available list:
fbrj.com Available
Flottmeyer Burgos Ryan and Johnson Attys at Law
think i could get them to pay $100
on another note: is it considered "bad form" to acquire local or close by business names .com and try a sell them their name for $100 (basically a $90 finder and acquisition fee)
A COUNTDOWN doesnt start at 23%.. and I really don't want to see the fact that there are so many % of these pointless 'QXYZ' LLLL.com domains every time it does down a percent.
There are (approx) 105,104 LLLL.com domains left... this 'countdown' is simply insane...
It will be a while before these domains have a big worth as just random characters.
- Luke
In other words: 23%... 'Lets have a countdown' hahaha, don't make me laugh
Quoting VURG in another thread: My calculations are that around 4 thousand have been registered in the last 3 weeks. This was done by testing two samples of 2589 4 letter domains.
~102 thousand domains
~1300 registered per week
= 78 weeks till all registered.
78 weeks is not a long time, but now that only the worst letter combos are available, it's hard to beleive in 78 weeks only. Maybe it will take 2/3 years to see them all regged, but at that time the people will start to keep this names I guess.
The "all LLLL.coms" registration of 2001, wich someone above have stated, was probably made by someone who regged them all to keep only those getting type-ins, and dropping the rest within the 4-days grace period, without paying the registration fees.
Non-word 4 letter .coms are a graveyard for domain speculators. Instead of buying 100 LLLL.coms at $10 annual renewal fee it would be better to buy one good .com for $3,000. If it is a good .com at least you can expect to get your money back and if LLLL.coms go up in value the domain name you bought for $3,000 will go up by a greater percentage. Paying annual renewal fees on a 100 LLLL.com domains will quickly wipe out any money made by a fluke sale. But it is your money and you are free to lose it any legal way you like.
