discuss One premium vs many hand regs?

[abstractdomainer]

Here are the details:

1) What I refer to as a premium domain is a name that can be purchased for $250 in an auction and has the potential to sell for $2000-$3000. The upper bound for this name being $4000 or so.

2) The second list is a set of hand-registrations which each cost $5 and you may register 50 hand registrations for the same price. Consider a scenario where you are good at hand registrations.

The difference between the two approaches is the risk:

While in the first case, the name is a decent one, the chances of selling could be high. However, since it is just one domain, if it doesn't sell, we are looking at a multi-year hold and no cash flow.

In the second case, the risk is that they are all hand-registrations, and chances of selling such names are usually low, given the low sell-through rate of hand-registrations. However, since there are more number of names (and given that you are pretty good with hand-registrations), the risk is low in terms of having a cash flow.
However, if you have to go for a multi-year hold, the charges and the overall cost may be high.

Which one would you choose and why?

I am particularly inclined towards the hand registrations because of two reasons:

1) Potential to diversify the risk, given that at least one of the 50 hand regs may sell for $999.
2) Potential to outbound and close some of the other domains for some price.

This strategy may not exactly make the $3,000 which the one premium domain with potential can make but, chances are, that I may end up making $1500 from the hand registrations at a lower risk than $3,000 at a higher risk (if at all).

But then again, this can be argued both ways. What's your pick?

 

[Arfy]

Premium in my mind would mean spending high 4 figures upwards.

 

[boker]

I agree with you, even 15 to 20 years ago it probably still took me around 10 hours to select each chosen. domain to hand register. Today I know that same 10 hours times 3 wouldn't turn-up anything decent and available to register. Sure you can 'Invent' a business concept and then equally make-up an appropriate domain to fill that imaginary business concept. So on that level hand-regs still work and probably appropriate - Just don't expect anybody else to be looking to fill that same Spot and therefore want your domain(s).

The problem for many is even today you have to be really committed regarding the time you put in checking all the close-outs and domain boards - most are just to impatient to spend that time at those sites. I'm happy to admit I doubt I could do it all again via the secondary market. But today I do believe it is the only real option for beginners in general. You still need a good eye though

I'm curios what a decent ROI means for you, no matter if we are talking about aftermarket, closeouts or hand regs. If you could share what decent would mean per portofolio and for individual sales, could be great...also, the time frame will help also.

 

[boker]

The problem is moot. You can't buy a premium domain for $250 and you can't register 50 domains for $5 each (I assume we're speaking of .com because you didn't mention otherwise).

But ignoring the prices, I'd say it's best to mix both approaches. Hold a few premium domains (as many as you can comfortably afford to purchase) and play around with handregs and closeout picks.

We agree on the mixed approach, but why are you saying that a $5 average it's not possible? My average was $3.8 this year and it was even lower last years. Dynadot, epik, namesilo, they all have a few times a year the $5.49, $5.99, $6.99 offers. Also, there are plenty of smaller registrars with $1, $2 offers, so perfectly possible.

 

[novasyd]

1. Reseller
2. Domainer

Choose your pill :D

 

[boker]

If you are hand registering domains in 2020, there are already 140M+ .COM taken. It is slim pickings when it comes to finding anything decent.

Also, that premium domain gets cheaper over time. $250 now, $10 a year to renew. $260 over 2 years.

If you renew all those $5 hand registrations. That is $750 total over 2 years. If you renew 50% that is $500 total over 2 years. As time goes on the holding costs get more and more expensive.

I would probably just stick to GoDaddy closeouts or NP buys for that budget. You are likely to get higher quality domains vs what is available to hand register. I think a middle ground of 5-10 x $25-$50 domains is likely to be better.

You need a mix of both quality and quantity if you want to make passive end user sales.

Brad

Correct me know if I'm wrong. As you say, there are 140M .com registered, with around 3-5M new one's every year. BB sells something like 2-3k domains a year, I suppose SH sells around the same, BP adds a few and the same the smaller marketplaces. So, only the few brandable marketplaces, they sell 10k or so domains in a year and around 90% of them are handregs from the last 1-2 years. If we add to this the every handregs sold by the rest of domainers, through afternic, godaddy, sedo, efty, dan and the others...I can bet the total number goes over 100k handregs sold in a year. So, out of the total 3-5M registered, it goes well over the standard 2%.

 

[bmugford]

Correct me know if I'm wrong. As you say, there are 140M .com registered, with around 3-5M new one's every year. BB sells something like 2-3k domains a year, I suppose SH sells around the same, BP adds a few and the same the smaller marketplaces. So, only the few brandable marketplaces, they sell 10k or so domains in a year and around 90% of them are handregs from the last 1-2 years. If we add to this the every handregs sold by the rest of domainers, through afternic, godaddy, sedo, efty, dan and the others...I can bet the total number goes over 100k handregs sold in a year. So, out of the total 3-5M registered, it goes well over the standard 2%.

There might be a net gain of 3M-5M .COM in a year, but new registrations are much higher than that.

That is the net gain when you take new registrations and subtract drops.

So for instance you might have 30M new registrations and 25M drops that lead to that net gain.

I have read in the past via Versign reports that the .COM renewal rate is around 75%. You can see how many new registrations it would take to outpace that with a net gain. The sell through rate of new registrations is far from impressive.

Brad

 

[boker]

There might be a net gain of 3M-5M .COM in a year, but new registrations are much higher than that.

That is the net gain when you take new registrations and subtract drops.

So for instance you might have 30M new registrations and 25M drops that lead to that net gain.

I have read in the past via Versign reports that the .COM renewal rate is around 75%. You can see how many new registrations it would take to outpace that with a net gain. The sell through rate of new registrations is far from impressive.

Brad

Yes, but probably, lot's of the new registrations are actually most of the one's who dropped earlier, so it's something the same. I can bet that the domains registered for the first time, who were never registered before are under 10%, probably way lower. I'm doing lot's of handregs, but I can tell you, by checking whois, you don't register to often domains never registered before.

 

[bmugford]

Yes, but probably, lot's of the new registrations are actually most of the one's who dropped earlier, so it's something the same. I can bet that the domains registered for the first time, who were never registered before are under 10%, probably way lower. I'm doing lot's of handregs, but I can tell you, by checking whois, you don't register to often domains never registered before.

The new registrations, drops, and net gain are empirical data. They can be easily quantified.

Your numbers are using a lot of speculation that can't be quantified.

Brad

 

[boker]

The new registrations, drops, and net gain are empirical data. They can be easily quantified.

Your numbers are using a lot of speculation that can't be quantified.

Brad

A lot of speculation based on mine and a few others experience, that's the most exact data we have. I'm sure we can find somebody to give us an exact number of new registrations for a year. Also, if I can remember correctly, only around 25% of the total numbers are using a parking page, landing page or not revolving, so that reduce even more the numbers of new registrations done by domainers. Also, out of the total number of parked/landing pages, lots of them are in hand of end users who didn't find time to develop them, so that's even lower. My opinion, based on speculation on what data I have and experience, is that the STR of a hand reg is well over the standard 2%. Off course, the price tag is another story, here are included also xxx sales, but when you register a domain for $5 and sell it for $500, the 100x revenue should be more than enough, it's the same as selling a $25 closeout for 2.5k, or a $250 domain for 25k (which is very hard to do it in these times).

 

[boker]

The new registrations, drops, and net gain are empirical data. They can be easily quantified.

Your numbers are using a lot of speculation that can't be quantified.

Brad

A lot of speculation based on mine and a few others experience, that's the most exact data we have. I sure we can find somebody to give us an exact number of new registrations for a year. Also, if I can remember correctly, only around 25% of the total numbers are using a parking page, landing page or not revolving, so that reduce even more the numbers of new registrations done by domainers. Also, out of the total number of parked/landing pages, lot of them are in hand of end users who didn't find time to develop them, so that's even lower. My opinion, based on speculation on what data I have and expericence, is that the STR of a hand reg is well over the standard 2%. Off course, the price tag is another story, here are included also xxx sales, but when you register a domain for $5 and sell it for $500, the 100x revenue should be more than enough, it's the same as selling a $25 closeout for 2.5k, or a $250 domain for 25k (which is very hard to do it in these times).

 

[dombastic]

1) What I refer to as a premium domain is a name that can be purchased for $250 in an auction and has the potential to sell for $2000-$3000.

If you can do it repeatedly, then do it.

 

[4better]

One premium vs many hand regs?

I have tried them both. Selling a premium LLLL for a decent ROI. However, a lot of hand regs sold for decent ROIs too. It really depends on what kind/type of domains are purchased or registered. If based on my experience, got more profit on registering and selling hand regs. However, if premium purchased costs more than $250 considering the quality of the domain being purchased, a much greater profit is in store imo.

 

[BaileyUK]

I'm curios what a decent ROI means for you, no matter if we are talking about aftermarket, closeouts or hand regs. If you could share what decent would mean per portofolio and for individual sales, could be great...also, the time frame will help also.

Wow, this would require a books worth of answers - I've never looked at domains I've owned and sold individually , yes it is all about a gross and overall return. Profit wise it has been the last ten years that I've really reaped the rewards from my domains.

There is a part of me that tried to see the paydays as just a return on savings (albeit those savings were in domain investments) Then as time went on I realized I was good at it. ((Well the paydays were saying such)

I'm going to just guesstimate an answer but i'm getting comfortable with the thought that for every penny/cent I've spent I've reaped a four fold return overall. I don't doubt for one moment that with the right financial market knowledge I could've seen similar returns on other investments. But domains really struck my fancy - I'd spent years at college with Hard/software familiarization 1980's (Qualifications coming out of my ears)

one-day i might take a retrospective look - but around 10 to 20 k hitting my bank account every year (pretty consistent) I'm happy with my so called savings account

 

[Masay]

No 2 if you got time, option 1 only to set and forget..

 

[Recons.Com]

As I said in another similar thread, a $250 GD auction domain is essentially the same quality as a $11 GD closeout domain, it only depends on whether someone places the bid in the last minutes or not. So between these two it's often better to go for the $11 domains. Better quality domains can be observed above $500 and premium domains are rarely seen below four figures.

Now about handregs - it hugely depends on who regs them. For beginners it's a tempting strategy but very rarely effective. Seasoned domainer's handregs can outperform $250 acquisitions, so it's safe to mix them in. But for a newbie to rely solely on handregs is a straight way to failure IMO. Maybe break even if they're lucky and push one of them through SH.

Brilliant post!

 

[Recons.Com]

Yes, but probably, lot's of the new registrations are actually most of the one's who dropped earlier, so it's something the same. I can bet that the domains registered for the first time, who were never registered before are under 10%, probably way lower. I'm doing lot's of handregs, but I can tell you, by checking whois, you don't register to often domains never registered before.

Spot on there. Hand registrations shouldn't be bulked together as single category. Recent drops are often the same quality as closeouts and have been previously owned, often for a decade or longer combined. It just takes longer to find and you lose the consecutive age.

 

[twiki]

Good discussion about hand regs here! I was about to start a different thread, well, this one is right on the subject.

I've been doing some personal research on this lately as I wanted to settle the myths, once and for all - such as "all good .coms are taken" etc. Wasn't going in biased about it - prepared for an result either way.

Well, here is what I have learned, and how.

On a normal / daily basis, I don't do hand regs. The reason is simple, most money are obviously in pre-owned domains, which I either buy or catch. Anyway, to be more specific 99% of my domains are .coms (sitting on 3K right now).

From time to time I do some hand regs, when there's a decent offer (like $5 or $6). It is obviously a challenge to still find 4-digit value .coms that are not regged already. You might spot some of these in the "Report sales thread", well they are encouraging, but still rare.

I'm a tech so I have my own tools. In the last 1-2 weeks I've been sifting through 1M un-regged-yet .com domains. My tools are constantly improving, fruit of an insane amount of work, and right now I got to the point where my tools can generate my pricing for me. If I look at a domain and figure out the price, well, the tool is most often going to put the same price within a +/-$50 difference. Anyway - without the tools I wouldn't be able to efficiently scour such an amount of domains. I prefer to let them run and use like 20 minutes here and there to go over the result. (Edit: It's almost as if I have a "partner" right now, always willing to give another opinion on the value of a certain domain).

For hand regs, I look for domains in the 1-2k range retail value. I wasn't expecting any.

But in the end, I got about 50 domains or so. A few are in the 3K range, all others are above 1K. Some are not bad at all, however I realized that it would be extremely difficult to spot these with everyday name generators and such. You need much more powerful tech and it seems I'm heading this way.

On the other side, last year I've regged a few .coms (were much weaker back then, as the tools have improved largely in the last 6 months). Well, the thing is, they have covered their costs already - some have sold. Not in profit yet, but hey, still 6 months to go and several that will be renewed. Not that bad.

So my response to this is the following.

There is still a ton of .com names still worth regging. They are just difficult to figure out (comparing this with finding gold in an already used mining location, there are still bits and pieces left). If you aim for the $500-1K range, then I can tell you that there are still a gazillion .com names worth regging in that range (I just don't go below $800-900). Many users can do outbound (I don't), well, with such regs you can make a good living if you know how to outbound as outbound prices tend to be higher than marketplace ones. Anyway. And these aren't even GEO domains, they are all generic 2-word .com names worth regging and selling.

SO my answer is, .com hand regging is definitely still a thing, although it becomes tremendously difficult for the average domainer to do so. I'm a bit lucky, but my luck actually comes from years of hard work and I still continue to work a lot on it.

And to end with another myth out there, "all automated appraisals are worthless". I'm afraid that's also false.

It's just the public appraisal tools already in the market that aren't. Automated appraisals can be (almost, with a grain of salt) just as good as you and me, if AI is involved and they've been trained by a domainer. (Edit: this would work for a specific type, I only do 2 and 3-word coms, no numbers, no hyphens).

And to whoever doesn't know, AI is already here, it just won't go public as it's much more financially efficient to run it, reg and flip rather than to rent it out.

( Edit: Regarding closeouts, I'm going to tell you right here that there are much more good domains still not regged (available) that are far better than most closeouts. I don't find much at closeouts, if any, but hey, a very well trained eye (better than mine) can spot gold anywhere. I just beg to differ as in, there's far more stuff out there not regged yet than scouring GD closeouts. I also agree with the fact that closeouts are in most cases better than auctions. )

 

[dombastic]

why are you saying that a $5 average it's not possible? My average was $3.8 this year and it was even lower last years. Dynadot, epik, namesilo, they all have a few times a year the $5.49, $5.99, $6.99 offers. Also, there are plenty of smaller registrars with $1, $2 offers, so perfectly possible.

$3.8 per .com registration?

Are you sure?

 

[pablohc86]

i would go for 1 250$ domain because i feel safer buying something that is interesting instead 50 fresh reg that could be worth 0 and will bring lots of renewal fees, longer management time......
if you also want to sell a 250$ domain in the wholesale market you should be able to do that pretty easily and fast...
can't say the same with 50 handregs

 

[abstractdomainer]

Just a follow up. If there is no traffic to your offer page the reason is only one: nobody has interest in your name. You can renew it of course, the registrar will be very happy

That's totally wrong. See any of the brandables sales and you'd know there were no traffic but the name itself was appealing.

I agree with you, even 15 to 20 years ago it probably still took me around 10 hours to select each chosen. domain to hand register. Today I know that same 10 hours times 3 wouldn't turn-up anything decent and available to register. Sure you can 'Invent' a business concept and then equally make-up an appropriate domain to fill that imaginary business concept. So on that level hand-regs still work and probably appropriate - Just don't expect anybody else to be looking to fill that same Spot and therefore want your domain(s).

The problem for many is even today you have to be really committed regarding the time you put in checking all the close-outs and domain boards - most are just to impatient to spend that time at those sites. I'm happy to admit I doubt I could do it all again via the secondary market. But today I do believe it is the only real option for beginners in general. You still need a good eye though

Amazing pointers there.

We agree on the mixed approach, but why are you saying that a $5 average it's not possible? My average was $3.8 this year and it was even lower last years. Dynadot, epik, namesilo, they all have a few times a year the $5.49, $5.99, $6.99 offers. Also, there are plenty of smaller registrars with $1, $2 offers, so perfectly possible.

ANd which are these registrars who offer $1/$2 names?

 

[passini]

That's totally wrong. See any of the brandables sales and you'd know there were no traffic but the name itself was appealing.

You seem to have already all the knowledge and all the answers by yourself, even if you look like a newbie since you joyned a couple of months ago. So why keep asking if you already know everything? Are you paid by namepros? Why loose yours and our time keep posting threads if you know everything???

You are annoying.

Anyway sorry I am not so expert, I am here not so much longer than you, only 14 years...

 

[passini]

Anyway sorry I am not so expert, I am here not so much longer than you, only 14 years...

Acually 16 and not 14, btw nothing changes, I am still studying because I know is the the only way, things changes and you have to adjust your knowledge as time passes, I read all advices, and I give mine. The problem is when someone is not able to give any practical answer but just say this don't work, this is wrong without having a clue about what works and what doesn't.

 

[boker]

A

Acually 16 and not 14, btw nothing changes, I am still studying because I know Is the the only way, things changes and you have to adjust your knowledge as time passed.

After 14/16 year you should know better. I can give you a list with .it(because you're italian, no?) domains sold in the last year, without any traffic and which nobody wanted them until now, but looks like you can still sell them and I can give you an even longer .com list(and I'm not doing this even close to 16 years)

 

[passini]

A

After 14/16 year you should know better. I can give you a list with .it(because you're italian, no?) domains sold in the last year, without any traffic and which nobody wanted them until now, but looks like you can still sell them and I can give you an even longer .com list(and I'm not doing this even close to 16 years)

We were talking about the poll of the OP, what to do with 250 dollars.

I gave my answer and a practical advice about what to do after one year. Of course every domain just need only one buyer and if you have a large portfolio with regular sales you can keep many more names based on your knowledge and on your earnings, I do myself.

But the thread was about something else, 250 is a starting micro budget and so it is useful only for who is starting now.

The only problem I have with OP is that he didn't give any advice to beginners, just keep saying mines are wrong without give some alternative views even when I directly asked...

 

[abstractdomainer]

Personally I think there are lots of decent hand reg's available to register. I'm actually starting a business that involves virtual tasting of spirits like scotch whisky, bourbon, irish whiskey, tequila, vodka etc. I've actually registered almost a dozen decent names that pretty much cover all the bases for virtual tasting. It's the pandemic and my personal experience involving "Zoom Happy Hours" that's driven me to drink in the comfort of my own home.

This is just one area I know for a fact there are lots of decent names to hand reg. Many of my decent domains have been been previously registered for up to 20 years before i find them. Many peers and even other domainers are surprised when I share with them some of my diamonds in the rough.

My portfolio of domains has improved significantly since I started this strategy a few years ago. Finally, the other thing that adds value to my domains is my strategy, experience and expertise in the area of outbound marketing.

Finally, the fun factor is immeasurable

Sounds like a cool idea. Share the URL once you have developed it!

Totally agree. I think it is the best path to build a good portfolio.

I only handreg names when it appears a new technology, trend...related to.

But not expired domains. I prefer Expired Domains Auctions by far.

And what is the average cost of acquisition per domain that way?

Premium in my mind would mean spending high 4 figures upwards.

Ya I meant not literally! In the budget that we are talking. That way!