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discuss Let's discuss drop regs ( quality and pricing )

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twiki

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I'm curious if anyone else here does drop regs on a regular basis, and if so:

- What kind of names you go for? ( Don't post the niche if you don't want to )

- Single words, 2-words, more?

- TLD? Note, I basically only do .COMs nowadays

- What kind of pricing do you use? 3-fig, 4-fig?

- Do you backorder? (note, I don't, this would increase the base price of domains too much).

My goal today is only to realign my prices a bit. While I do have some 4-fig sales (sometimes reaching 15K/month), on a daily basis xxx range sales are my bread and butter. Currently most of my names are in the 4-fig zone(

As everyone probably already knows about me from the sales reports.

I'm thinking I might be overpricing in the 4-fig zone. The thing is, 4-figs are usually taken by DC or another registrar snap so it's difficult to get them. I tend to believe that you have to be quite insightful to get something valuable that flies under the radar (even 5-fig, I have quite a number of those).

So the bulk of it is still 3-fig material.

What do you think? Obviously buys and auctioned domains are usually more valuable than drop regs. Same for hand regs, if done properly and with enough insight and research you can get high 4-fig or even mid 5-fig for a good hand reg. Not the same for drops I think = again most of those valuable are snapped asap.

So what do you think? I might be missing something here. I might be overpricing cause usually when I tend to stick to 3-fig I make the most. And I have plenty of "material" to sell.

September has been profitable but not as other months so it got me thinking deeper.

Thanks!
 
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I think you are missing something by not backordering. I get many backorders from $10 to $59. I got a backorder for 8.49 and sold 8 months later for 12 K. Another 5.5K sold at day 60 after the backorder. Another 7500 hundred at 11 month mark (and these are just this year). I have sold more than this but I only share actual end user sales/prices.

The benefit to backorders is you don’t have to be online poised to reg (like many are) at the exact time of the drop. Waiting for a drop, its less likely you get it if its any good at all. Great names do slip through the cracks here and there so backorders are still a useful tool.

I only do dot com. I only do shorter length domains. I never do long names or non com. Like many others, I check the drop lists every day.
 
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I think you are missing something by not backordering. I get many backorders from $10 to $59. I got a backorder for 8.49 and sold 8 months later for 12 K. Another 5.5K sold at day 60 after the backorder. Another 7500 hundred at 11 month mark (and these are just this year). I have sold more than this but I only share actual end user sales/prices.

The benefit to backorders is you don’t have to be online poised to reg (like many are) at the exact time of the drop. Waiting for a drop, its less likely you get it if its any good at all. Great names do slip through the cracks here and there so backorders are still a useful tool.

I only do dot com. I only do shorter length domains. I never do long names or non com. Like many others, I check the drop lists every day.

Backorders don't help me much. In fact I've never had a successful backorder so far so I'm just wasting time.

First category of names, high value ones, you're going to bid on them at DC or SN, that is for sure.

Second category - average backorders, I get the same at much lower pricing. I already have enough experience to tell beforehand which goes where, and I rarely am wrong. Medium competition domains have several backorders on them from many registrars, result is again not that good. I've tried many registrars and the result was the same. (Edit: my backoders end in no result).

And the last part I can manually reg without any stress whatsoever. And save $$ a lot.

I don't mind being prepared for the drop, in fact it's part of my routine as I watch things unfolding and look for what people get and through whom.

There might be differences in portfolio at play here though. In fact I'm almost sure about that.

Don't get me wrong, I still have profitability on these. For .coms, even if I sell xxx range, I almost get more margin than I pay for the bulk in renewals. So that's like 40-50% margin from the sale. Which is great for any business. September has been bad in sales, well, I'm still floating above the water (income is positive) despite that. I just want to improve things further. Perhaps in types, quality and quantity of names.
 
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You guys both right and backordering may or may not work depending on the strategy.

If @twiki and me we'll go both for the same pending/delete names and I will backorder and he is not - I will snap it, and I don't have to go to DC or SN, many ''medium wanted'' domain (some two words niche) Dynadot will catch it for me for 20 euro. So, in this sense I clearly will have an advantage (although I pay more, it's not a hand-reg), but I'll get the name.

But I think what happens here is that @twiki is able to spot some gems in the dirt (in dropped domains) using some software that he probably even wrote himself. In this sense, if you don't go for specific names in a manual way beforehand (pending-delete), but are able to apply a certain metric that work for you, going directly to the trash can, run it fast and then choose manually out of like 30-40 ''rings'' to find few golden ones - hey, why bother to backorder? Awesome strategy then, no point of backordering, totally agree.
 
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You guys both right and backordering may or may not work depending on the strategy.

If @twiki and me we'll go both for the same pending/delete names and I will backorder and he is not - I will snap it, and I don't have to go to DC or SN, many ''medium wanted'' domain (some two words niche) Dynadot will catch it for me for 20 euro. So, in this sense I clearly will have an advantage (although I pay more, it's not a hand-reg), but I'll get the name.

But I think what happens here is that @twiki is able to spot some gems in the dirt (in dropped domains) using some software that he probably even wrote himself. In this sense, if you don't go for specific names in a manual way beforehand (pending-delete), but are able to apply a certain metric that work for you, going directly to the trash can, run it fast and then choose manually out of like 30-40 ''rings'' to find few golden ones - hey, why bother to backorder? Awesome strategy then, no point of backordering, totally agree.

TBH lately I prefer to do manual. Software based regging is much overrated. It is a solution only if you're lazy and don't wanna reg names yourself.

I can pick any good priced registrar in this way, with the best offer and quality I can accept, and do not depend on an API. Besides, registrar API's are in these times, really slow.

I have a lot of experience so I can classify domains beforehand. I can predict if this will be taken within a minute, within an hour or snapped due to competition.

So software-based regging doesn't help much - if at all - except when I am missing so I program it and then go out do to whatever I'm up to.
 
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TBH lately I prefer to do manual. Software based regging is much overrated. It is a solution only if you're lazy and don't wanna reg names yourself.

I can pick any good priced registrar in this way, with the best offer and quality I can accept, and do not depend on an API. Besides, registrar API's are in these times, really slow.

I have a lot of experience so I can classify domains beforehand. I can predict if this will be taken within a minute, within an hour or snapped due to competition.

So software-based regging doesn't help much - if at all - except when I am missing so I program it and then go out do to whatever I'm up to.

:xf.rolleyes::xf.rolleyes::xf.rolleyes: I do pretend I believe it regarding software part :xf.grin::xf.grin::xf.grin:
Regarding your ability to spot manually - no doubts, but out of tens of thousands drops?
 
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:xf.rolleyes::xf.rolleyes::xf.rolleyes: I do pretend I believe it regarding software part :xf.grin::xf.grin::xf.grin:
Regarding your ability to spot manually - no doubts, but out of tens of thousands drops?

You're missing important parts of the process. I don't just reg names. I process information and learn.

I like to think over a name in the last minutes before I register it. Often I skip some of those I've selected because of an afterthought. Either I spot a problem, or decide it's not worth it after all. So again my process is different and doesn't just do regging. I like to also do forensics on what has been regged, by whom and how soon. This tells me more about market shifts in progress etc.

By next day, usually even the crap is registered already, but that part doesn't interest me. I like to see which are coming in fresh.

Edit: Not to mention that I'm also spotting gems I've missed previously, by doing this. Quite important.
 
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You're missing important parts of the process. I don't just reg names. I process information and learn.

I like to think over a name in the last minutes before I register it. Often I skip some of those I've selected because of an afterthought. Either I spot a problem, or decide it's not worth it after all. So again my process is different and doesn't just do regging. I like to also do forensics on what has been regged, by whom and how soon. This tells me more about market shifts in progress etc.

By next day, usually even the crap is registered already, but that part doesn't interest me. I like to see which are coming in fresh.

Edit: Not to mention that I'm also spotting gems I've missed previously, by doing this. Quite important.

Sure! (y)(y):xf.wink::xf.wink:
 
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My experience with drop reg domains is poor, they generated few sales for me less than 12% of my total sales and at lower average sale price. So I stopped doing hand reg for that reason. Also it consumes a lot of time to look at drop lists.

Besides most hand regs are 3 figure domains that will rarely sell for 4 figures or above. You can pay more and get higher quality domains that can sell for 4 figures with the same STR of 3 figure hand regs.
 
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My experience with drop reg domains is poor, they generated few sales for me less than 12% of my total sales and at lower average sale price. So I stopped doing hand reg for that reason. Also it consumes a lot of time to look at drop lists.

Besides most hand regs are 3 figure domains that will rarely sell for 4 figures or above. You can pay more and get higher quality domains that can sell at 4 figures with same STR of 3 figure hand regs.

I definitely agree with this.

The only difference being that most of my sales are in 3-fig and that it's quite profitable even like this. Otherwise you are right.

What is 4-fig is usually snapped, and I've seen loads of crap snapped lately. Totally not worth a backorder. Also look at DC auctions lately. Few good names, but most are waaay overpriced for what they are.

I've priced most of my drop reg portfolio 4-fig in the last 2 months. That means sticking to the high retail possible price, no discounts. In hindsight, I think this is an error on my part. In fact this is what I wanted to establish mostly. I've observed that even in my case the hidden enemy is always overpricing.

May I ask what do you do lately? Auctions buy? Closeouts? NP? Just curious.
 
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:xf.rolleyes::xf.rolleyes::xf.rolleyes: I do pretend I believe it regarding software part :xf.grin::xf.grin::xf.grin:
Regarding your ability to spot manually - no doubts, but out of tens of thousands drops?

Ah, now I understand what you were implying.

I definitely use software to spot the names and do my research. IT would be insane otherwise.

I just don't use it to do the regs themselves (in most cases). That I do by hand for lots of different reasons, and often I switch registrars for a better offer; well not all of them have an API for example. Or at times they do not work (a couple times Dynadot was down for 15 minutes right in the drop window for example).

Edit: Sometimes their registry connection fails for whatever reason, or you might run out of balance if not carefully watched etc. In such cases you lose the names if you're not present at it.
 
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May I ask what do you do lately? Auctions buy? Closeouts? NP? Just curious.

I mainly do:
  • Namperos
  • GD Closeouts
  • Private acquisition

I rarely buy from Auctions because of crazy prices.
I do backorders sometimes but not often.
 
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I definitely use software to spot the names and do my research.

Problem I found is that most parameters used in ranking domains like for example in expireddomains.net are useless, I don't look at search volume, cpc, competition, backlinks. Only number of TLDs and domain age matter for me, but even these 2 parameters are not very useful most of the time, for example most of "non-auction" domains have only 1 TLD taken, and regarding domain age I only use it to exclude domains that were born 1-2 years ago because they will be mostly crap hand regs not worth holding.

I reached a conclusion that if you are looking at domains then the only factor that matters is the human intelligence, all other parameters are only useful in filtering out less quality domains and reducing the number of domains to look at (for example I found it useful in Closeouts to exclude domains with GD appraisal less than $1200 because in my experience they are 99.9% rubbish).
 
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Problem I found is that most parameters used in ranking domains like for example in expireddomains.net are useless, I don't look at search volume, cpc, competition, backlinks. Only number of TLDs and domain age matter for me, but even these 2 parameters are not very useful most of the time, for example most of "non-auction" domains have only 1 TLD taken, and regarding domain age I only use it to exclude domains that were born 1-2 years ago because they will be mostly crap hand regs not worth holding.

I reached a conclusion that if you are looking at domains then the only factor that matters is the human intelligence, all other parameters are only useful in filtering out less quality domains and reducing the number of domains to look at (for example I found it useful in Closeouts to exclude domains with GD appraisal less than $1200 because in my experience they are 99.9% rubbish).

There's always a tradeoff here. And I've found some great names valuated significantly lower than $1200.

The more you filter by any rules, the more you're going to miss certain good names.

The less you filter, the longer the list and more work for your head.
 
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Ah, now I understand what you were implying.

I definitely use software to spot the names and do my research. IT would be insane otherwise.

I just don't use it to do the regs themselves (in most cases). That I do by hand for lots of different reasons, and often I switch registrars for a better offer; well not all of them have an API for example. Or at times they do not work (a couple times Dynadot was down for 15 minutes right in the drop window for example).

Edit: Sometimes their registry connection fails for whatever reason, or you might run out of balance if not carefully watched etc. In such cases you lose the names if you're not present at it.

Yes, that's exactly what I mean, that you have tools to narrow down the circle so much that the rest you can filter out manually pretty fast.
 
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There are pockets of value in expiring Names but 90% are garbage its like sifting through a pile of manure for precious stones
 
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There are pockets of value in expiring Names but 90% are garbage its like sifting through a pile of manure for precious stones

Maybe like 99%+ are junk.

To me it looks like detecting for gold on a terrain that has been mined by others for a century. You still get some specs of quality but only now and then. Still there is money to be made even on the lesser value pieces, if you know exactly what you are doing. But it's hard business indeed.
 
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Seems like for most of you backordering > drop regs. Strangely enough, for me it's quite the opposite and I only do drop regs. I agree with @twiki that these names then sell mostly in the 3-fig range. The only other thing I do is GoDaddy expired auctions but not so much lately. Tried Godaddy closeout and Dynadot expired domains as well but both of them didn't work for me.
 
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Seems like for most of you backordering > drop regs. Strangely enough, for me it's quite the opposite and I only do drop regs. I agree with @twiki that these names then sell mostly in the 3-fig range. The only other thing I do is GoDaddy expired auctions but not so much lately. Tried Godaddy closeout and Dynadot expired domains as well but both of them didn't work for me.

I do some closeouts etc. But the purchase price is much higher (so is for the backorders too) in comparison with standard drop regs, so it;s harder to make a profit unless the name is indeed good. This means a lot of work, sifting and much less buying.
 
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I do some closeouts etc. But the purchase price is much higher (so is for the backorders too) in comparison with standard drop regs, so it;s harder to make a profit unless the name is indeed good. This means a lot of work, sifting and much less buying.

And then the only thing a domainer's heart desires more than selling a domain is buying one. :xf.wink:

For me closeouts are just too effortful and the $$$ you get over drop regs doesn't justify the extra work. IMO
Happened to me multiple times that I was about to purchase a closeout and by the time I got to the checkout, it was already gone.
 
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I think every domainer starts out or goes through the scouring of endless lists and practices the drop and instant hand registering. For me, I do not have the bandwidth nor the patience to deal with such low hanging fruit. I would rather sit and hand reg first time LLLLL.com or higher niche domains while attempting to predict the next or upcoming buzz term trend, which zaps my energy just thinking about it.

Eventually, those who don’t get burnt out or go broke realize the pure domainer experience and real money is with the backorder & go to auction process.
 
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I think every domainer starts out or goes through the scouring of endless lists and practices the drop and instant hand registering. For me, I do not have the bandwidth nor the patience to deal with such low hanging fruit. I would rather sit and hand reg first time LLLLL.com or higher niche domains while attempting to predict the next or upcoming buzz term trend, which zaps my energy just thinking about it.

Eventually, those who don’t get burnt out or go broke realize the pure domainer experience and real money is with the backorder & go to auction process.

Great response. You're not wrong on that. But again, I think it depends on the domainer. Yours is an easier path, and countless sales reported here tend to be what you mention. For many, it might be the sane way indeed.

I could also personally disagree, however.

I've made successful, growing 6-fig business from this. And the margin is solid and growth is excellent, at least doubling per year. But I designed it and run it as a business, not as an individual domainer. I do have a ton of energy; even though I'm not young anymore. And great speed at selecting domains from lists even of very large sizes (many thousands). Guess all that makes a difference.

Edit: Forgot to say that lately I'm using smaller nets for fewer but bigger fish though and that I'm intensifying buys. I will have to make a decision either on leaving drops OR I might make my drops segment a separate business line that someone else will manage for me.

Edit2: Domains won't take more than one hour per day for me as needed. But I spend more usually, just out of passion. Every day I figure out something new. Otherwise I have two brick and mortar businesses to run at the same time, one long established the other brand new. And yes I do have a life as well. So everything it's possible if you're well organized.
 
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