IT.COM

opinion What I've Bought in the Past 12 Months and Why

NameSilo
I've often read posts from Elliot Silver and other bloggers about their recent acquisitions, and I have always found it fascinating to see what others are buying. I've endeavored to create a similar post below, and I hope that you get some interest from it.

My domain sales and acquisitions are nowhere near the level of many domainers, but given my budget and strategy I'm fairly happy. Below is a list of a few of the domain names I've acquired over the past twelve months. As always, you're welcome to post comments.

Two word .COM's
Most of my acquisitions over the past 12 months have been two word .COM domain names. They're something I've always focused on, and I have had some success in selling them on. Of course, I do have a number of criteria when choosing which domain names to go after. These criteria include the age, popularity of the words or phrase, and the potential end users should I decide to flip the domain.

Some of my better two word .COM acquisitions include:

PhotoRetoucher.com - a domain name that I'm now using for my retouching portfolio. This was acquired privately earlier this year, and I'm in the process of making a website there. I've already had one offer for the domain, but I'm choosing not to sell this one.

PhotoRetouching.com - at the same time as acquiring PhotoRetoucher.com, I also bought PhotoRetouching.com. Again, this was a private deal, but it was purchased from a different company. Both domain names cost almost exactly the same to buy. I opted to flip this domain name and listed the domain for sale on Flippa. It sold after a 30 day auction.

LandscapeArchitect.com & LandscapeArchitects.com were acquired late last year using the SnapNames platform. Initially I had plans to create an online landscape design business, but it got more and more complicated to complete. In the end, I sold both domains to a Landscape Architecture magazine.


Location + Profession .COM's
Another type of domain name that I like to acquire are location+profession .COMs. Recently, I've acquired BaltimoreCosmeticDentist.com, PhoenixCosmeticDentist.com and DetroitCosmeticDentist.com. Not the best domains you'll ever see, but each city has an abundance of cosmetic dentists who are all looking to get ahead of their competition.

Another domain in this category that I acquired recently is LongIslandCriminalLawyers.com. Yes, a four-word domain name. All you need to know about this is that I sold it last week for a 2,300% ROI (Return on Investment).


Exact Match .COM's
This type of domain is becoming less popular, but there are still some good acquisitions to be made here. One such example is DentalWebsiteDesign.com, which I picked up from NameJet at the end of last year. Dental Website Design is a very competitive industry and is potentially very lucrative. (The Cost Per Click used to be something like $33.)

After creating a lead generation website, and bringing it to as high as number three in the competitive search rankings, I sold the domain along with the website to one of the companies advertising for the term.


4 Letter .COM's
Every domain investor knows about the new wave of Chinese investors looking to acquire short domain names. As such, I've acquired a few four letter .COM domain names through NamePros.com's marketplace and via private acquisitions.

My best performing four-letter .COM domain is GPFN.com that I acquired on NamePros.com just a couple of months ago for low $xxx. I seem to get three to four offers per week for this domain name all for higher than I paid for it. I'll be waiting until 2016 before I look to sell any four letter .COM domain name.


LLNN.com Domains
This category of domain acquisition may surprise you a little, but I think that this could be the next category which Chinese investors look at. For now, they have a very low acquisition price with great bargains to be found on GoDaddy's Closeout site. As with numerical domain names, I believe that if these are to be a successful category, then repetition is key.

I've acquired domain names such as RR63.com and XE99.com recently, which are both starting to receive type in traffic.


Other TLDs
I'd say that 90% of my domains are .COM, but I have a couple of domain names from other TLDs which include ppi.online and fvt.cc. Of the new gTLDs, I have just three domain names, which probably tells you my current position when it comes to investing in them.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
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Nice acquisitions James, I love seeing other peoples buys too.
 
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Interesting. You seem to be able to make a lot of domain sales.
 
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@impulse - yes, I'm very active with outbound sales.
 
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Maybe you should try being a domain broker, in addition to a domain investor.
 
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I think the LLNN market is perhaps a sleeping giant ?
 
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@evirtual1 I think it's a logical next step for Chinese investors. I might be wrong, but hey.
 
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I have dipped my toes in as well
 
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What do think of LLLN'S or NNNL's ?
 
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Some seem to be selling well (according to NameBio), but I haven't invested in any.
 
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nice write up James, that's great. strategy u've got.
 
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Nice ROI for a four word domain name, James.
 
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Hello @jamesiles !

It’s always very insightful to me to see how more experienced and successful domainers are conducting their endeavors! This article is very useful to me!

Thank you!
 
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Thanks for sharing James. How would you choose Location + Profession .com names?

I mean do you use Google Adwords : Keyword planner to check traffic for the keywords or how?
 
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Sup James!

Thanks for the write up. Nice to see some of your strategy when it comes to investing in domain names. Makes a lot of sense your mainly still purchasing .com domains. Congrats on the sales as well.

-Omar
 
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@Venu Prakash I usually look at how many companies there are in the area, and how active they are online (do they have Facebook, do they advertise, has their website been updated recently, do they own other domains).
 
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@wealthtaker101 I haven't invested in any LLLN.com domains so I couldn't really comment. NameBio reports 7 LLLN.com domain sales for September - six of which are in the low $xxx
 
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Thanks for sharing @jamesiles - I appreciate the explanation of the "why" behind your acquisitions.
 
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LLNN.com Domains
This category of domain acquisition may surprise you a little, but I think that this could be the next category which Chinese investors look at. For now, they have a very low acquisition price with great bargains to be found on GoDaddy's Closeout site. As with numerical domain names, I believe that if these are to be a successful category, then repetition is key.

I've acquired domain names such as RR63.com and XE99.com recently, which are both starting to receive type in traffic.

:xf.frown: I'm a bit saddened to see that someone has posted this, because the cat is out of the bag, but indeed you are 100% correct. A lot of domainers have detected this, and have been somewhat quiet about it.

I knew the cat was going to be out of the bag soon, as I was alluding to in a previous post... I was going to do a full write up in a few weeks once the news was out.

I've got to give credit where credit is due, @equity78 has been following the LLNN trend first, covering the saga of TB12.com and this caught my attention. Maybe it's time for that article you've been working on for forever!

LLNN.COM is on track to being the next Chinese 'Chip'/'PinYin' friendly domain name. The permutation math supports it, the sales data supports it, the demand and use supports it. If anything the fact that this is going on without people posting about it in the forums just shows how strong this namespace is going to be.

If you know about the early signs of NNNN growth, you will see some thrilling parallels to LLNN's

The premium LLNN's have been selling for $500+ at auction - the most expensive one I bought last week battling against multiple Chinese buyers to the tune of $680+

Again, the most important part of the LLNN niche is that it has formed naturally, nobody rushed to NP trying to guess if it was the next trend, or was blasting out LLNN lists etc... it became a trend on its own.

The reason this happened is because Chinese are actually developing on the namespace AND using it as a chip. In addition, there are going to be a lot of western sites that use the LLNN format - so LLNN isn't going to be just a strong domain for Chinese investors, but for the west as well.

I wrote a quick guide on how to buy LLLLs and I will be writing one soon on how to buy LLNN's, because there is a lot to understand before you jump in head first - that a,e,i,o,u,v mindset does not always apply here.

LLNN's will be equal to todays PinYin LLLL price within 6 - 15 months - welcome to the next buying trend.
 
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