sales How I made $8k+ selling brandables... (and how much it cost me !)

HDmarketing · Apr 2, 2018

Happy Easter everyone

As I am doing some kind of recap of my different ventures right now, I thought I'd share the story of my journey through brandables domain names. I think some of the data and resources can help those starting in this field!

I grew interest in brandables about the end of 2015 ago because I thought it involved a bit of creativity in finding the names AND you could still handreg good brandables. Pretty quick I opened accounts with Brandroot and Namerific and tried to get a feeling of what was a "good" brandable, especially one that could get listed (and hopefully sold!) on these platforms.

1) Building lists from marketplaces and past sales

First I built lists of domains found on marketplaces. My goal was to understand the different types of brandables and their price tags.
In order to do this, I wrote some simple php code to browse and parse the marketplaces' websites.

This approach was a bit too comprehensive. I realized a better goal was to actually find the kind of names that SELL!! So I used past sales tools like Namebio and DNpric.es and scoured brandable sales lists like the ones compiled and published by users here (e.g. @Doron Vermaat : 1134 domains sold at Brandbucket)

2) Analysing the lists

Once I had these huge lists of names (about 70k listed names and 3k sold names), I tried to categorize the names.

2.1) Sold at Brandbucket

To give you an example of the kind of analysis I did, here is the results of the "1134 domains sold at Brandbucket" list:

a) 84% of the names are 13 Letters or shorter

b) Among the "very short names", you can have:

4L: I decided to not even consider these as they were way out of my buying power and a niche of their own
5L: 13% of total sales. 95% madeup / 5% short words.
6L: 11% of total sales. 55% madeup / 45% combo or sentences
7L: 45% madeup / 55% combo or sentences
etc...

c) "combos" are names built by sticking two words together : Namepros is a combo of Name + Pros... Madeup / combos are built using short words. I extracted most used short words:

Ad
Pay
Car
Sys
Ink
Ego
Web
Joy
Tap
Bank
Hire
Free
...

d) Words can be madeup by replacing letters (i => y...)

2.2) Past CVCVC.com sales from Namebio VS. Brandbucket listing

This is a second example of the kind of analysis I performed.

Analysing 2278 CVCVCV on Brandbucket, I determined the most frequent first letter was V (13% of the total), followed by Z (8%) and M (7%). And that names started by V started mostly with VO (35%).

Analysing 1265 CVCVCV sales from Namebio I gathered the following type of informations:

- more half of the names (54%) started with one of 7 letters (M: 11%, S:10%, C, T, L...)
- the most frequent syllables were MA, RE, SA, CA etc...

With only the first Brandbucket analysis in mind I would have started immediately looking for available voCVCVs, but the analysis of actual sales showed me that these accounted only for 0,6% of total CVCVCV sales, VS 4,8% for maCVCVs. 8 times more!!

3) Choosing a strategy: what kind of names to buy and where to list?

With data analysed, I had now to choose a strategy to buy names.

I decided I would apply the following rules:

Stick with short names <= 10 Letters
Put emphasis on 5L CVCVC / VCVCV and 6L CVCVCVs because they provide more "easy to spell" names
Generate combo names with one "strong" word that appears often in the sold / listed lists I had built

I decided I would use two sources to buy names : handreg and catching dropped domains. My initial idea was to get about 200 names quickly and list half of them on a brandable marketplace and half of them on afternic/sedo/flippa with a landing page that had a for sale banner somewhere. This would be a test before going bigger (let's get 10,000 names! Yay!).

4) Generating the names

4.1) Patterns
I wrote simple pieces of PHP code to generate 5L and 6L patterns and checked availability on Namebright bulk checker. Unfortunately this led to HUGE lists of available domain names. I tried to go through these but after a few minutes I felt every name was okayish and always ended up with hundreds of possible registrations... I decided to narrow the possibilities, for example, with 6L.com I'd look for repeating patterns (makoma.com) or patterns with same vowel like vabaza.com. With 5L.com I'd look for CVCVCs or VCVCVs or paterns with double letters at the begining or end : ooLLL, LLLoo...

I also set up email alerts for dropping domains through the excellent website ExpiredDomains.net. To catch these I used Desktop Catcher, a great piece of software I found through Namepros.

4.2) Combos
What I call combos are names built by sticking two words together : Bitcoin is a combo of Bit + Coin...

Remember in 2.1. I built lists of frequent words ? I wrote a small php page where I could enter a word (list of words) and add to it any prefix / suffix from a predefined list.
For example, here is a short part of my current prefix list :

my
go
bio
geo
car
max
zen
bit

I'd then enter the word I want to generate names for (e.g. "Trade") and get a list like the following in the bulk availability tool.

MyTrade.com
GoTrade.com
BioTrade.com
GeoTrade.com
CarTrade.com
MaxTrade.com
ZenTrade.com
BitTrade.com

I would choose my main word ("Trade" in the exemple above) either from my list of words appearing frequently in combos or from what is trending now.

After a few months I trimmed the list so it generates about 1200 names for the main word. At the start I had more about 5k names. I realized over time that it's better to have a shorter but more efficient list of possible candidates to register.

Today, on a strong main word like "Pay", I have only 3 possible handregs (and they are not good names I'm afraid). I consider that indicates my list of suffix / prefix is good enough that it generated about 1200 names worth registering, since they are already registered!! With less strong words, of course, I'm left with more names I could register...

As a side note, I've also used some website name generators, but I've always prefered my homemade solution because I know how I built it and why I chose these suffix / prefix! You'll find these sites in the references below.

5) Buying and listing names

With all these rules and tools in hand, I started buying and listing names. I used coupons whenever I could and focused on one brandable marketplace, Brandroot, with the following reasoning. They disclosed somewhere (here on NP I guess) that they sold about 6% of their inventory of about 12,000-15,000 names. I thought I could list about 100-150 domains and thus about 1% of their inventory. Ithought I would have some visibility on the platform and thus have a chance to sell between 3% and 6% of my inventory there. $10/listing + $4 to $8 per handreg depending on the coupon. The experiment would cost me roughly $2k. If I sold 3 to 6 names and get about $1-1,5k after commission, I would be OK.

Back then, Brandroot had a long approval process, and a lot of my submited names were refused. That was OK as I listed them on Afternic as I wished to compare both platforms.

6) Results

These are the results, some of the names have been listed for 2 years now (started dec 2015 but seriously in feb 2016).

Brandroot : 144 names listed / 5 names sold

Kitono: $2,990, got $1,993 after commission. Held 7 months. Handreged because easy to spell CVCVCV with repeating "o"'s.
Vamaza: $1,290, got $901 after commission. Held 10 months. Handreged CVCVCV easy to remember with A's only.
ExoCode: $1,450, got $815 after commission. Held 1.5 years. Handreged because was an available combo for the word "Code" generated by my php generator.
Traverce: $1,625, got $896 after commission. Held 11 months. Handreged because was on a list of brandables previously listed on one of the platforms and I felt it had potential.
TradeViser: $2,995, got $1,855 after commission. Held 2.5 years. Handreged because was an available combo for the word "Trade" generated by my php generator.

So, if we take december 2015 as a starting date, in 2 and a half years I

Sold 5 names for $6,460
Payed in registrations + renewals + listing about $3,515

I netted about $3k ($2,945)

Afternic / Public Whois : 200 names listed / 2 sold

Mokono: $500 direct offer, talked up to $900. Held 3 months. Got from Snapnames for $85 because I thought it was a good CVCVCV easy to remember with O's only.
Proofus: $1,475 Afternic BIN, got $1179 after commission. Held 8 months. Handreged because was on a list of brandables previously listed on one of the platforms and I felt it had potential.

So in 2 and a half years I

Sold 2 names for $1,679
Payed in registrations + renewals + listing about $3,449

I lost about $1,8k ($1,770)

7) Conclusion

The experiment is clearly in favor of the brandable marketplace over regular marketplaces. One could argue that the names I listed elsewhere were the leftover from the brandable marketplace, but I had many CVCVCV names that seem really equivalent to me in terms of quality on both Afternic and Brandroot and I sold more of them on the latter.

I must admit I've lost interest in trying to list names on Brandroot though. They have now over 20k names and I'd need to add about 70 to reach back my 1% exposure. I hoped to sell between 3 and 6% of my names there, but the end result is 3,4% in two years => less than 2% per year. In short, the waiting game gets a bit boring... I don't know. Maybe I should liquidate these and buy myself some bitcoins

I tried to launch my own marketplace to see if I could have more success than with Afternic. Called it BrandCombo.com. So far I only got a few price inquiries after 1 year of it being online. I'm pretty sure I don't have the critical mass for it : I listed xx / low xxx names. My guess is that below 1,000 names it's hard to get a marketplace effect where you can generate traffic and get visitors interested in more than one of your names.

That was quite a long one! Thanks for reading this far. Hope that gives food for thought to some of you

8) References

Past sales brandables
DNGeek: Brandable domain name sales of past week

Past sales websites
Namebio: link to past CaCaCa.com sales
DNpric.es : link to 6L.com sales above $1000 in 2018

Bulk check for available names
Namebright

Expired names email alerts
ExpiredDomains.net

Dropcatcher software
DesktopCatcher

Brandable platform I listed on
Brandroot
BrandCombo (my own)

Generate Names
Lean Domain search: generate names for the word Robot
Wordoid
Portmanteau generator: Travel + Velocity = Travelocity
Invent-a-word
WerdMerge

Foggy · Apr 3, 2018

I had a somewhat similar trajectory though I have focused on invented brandables. By the end of 2014 I had 150+ domains, by the end of 2015 I had 100 more, and by December 2016 I had 400 domains, all caught on the drop or using Pheenix. From 7/1/12 through 12/31/16 I grossed $19,779 and netted $13,864 after all expenses. My first four-digit sale was at BB in January 2014. In June 2017 I purchased Desktop Catcher and also last year purchased (and sold) a few domains here. I joined NamePros in October 2016 but really began paying attention to it in 2017, it's a wonder I didn't go bankrupt without all the insight here.

I have 224 domains listed at BB and five in review (and sold 20 there all told); at BrandPa I have five listed, three underway and five in appraisal.

Anjani · Apr 3, 2018

I wish everyone writes their true story the way it is..This piece has helped me to pull my head out of the clouds

would be wary of investing too much money or time into domaining. Thank you!!

Nezam Uddin · Apr 3, 2018

THE proper way to domaining -

Invest one week, few thousand dollars worth of really valuable domains. List it on a single platform on BIN.. Configure something like auto transfer on payment receipt and then shut down your pc and throw your wifi router and pretend that you've just donated that wealth and go on with your normal life. Forget that you even know what's domains. After a year, get back here and checkout your sales, you will really find investing on domains good this way since now you've had profits without -

Losing patience
Hypertension and trauma
Risk of loss and many other intangible things

Name Trader · Apr 3, 2018

Anjani said:
I wish everyone writes their true story the way it is..This piece has helped me to pull my head out of the clouds would be wary of investing too much money or time into domaining. Thank you!!

Yep. It's a high risk business at all levels. For beginners as well as for huge companies like HugeDomains.

domainer111 · Apr 4, 2018

Yes a great post. Imo it's much harder once you get away from descriptives or two-word keyword brandables so that is a good performance. Interesting that Brandroot beats Afternic.

Michael Cyger · Apr 4, 2018

Great summary of your strategy and tactics! Thanks for your complete write-up on your past 2.5 years as a brandable-focused domain name investor.

I think it's especially useful for those starting out in their investing journey because brandables are the one type of domain name that newer investors can get into with the lowest cost.

HDmarketing said:
But when I look back, I spent a nice time doing research (I love that part, I have a PhD in theoretical chemistry) and I didn't need that money to pay the rent. So one could say I did that as a hobbyist.

Do you have a rough estimate on how many hours you spent per month on your domain name investing activities?

HDmarketing · Apr 4, 2018

Michael Cyger said:
Do you have a rough estimate on how many hours you spent per month on your domain name investing activities?

Since I stumbled on that Ali Zandi interview by a certain M. Cyger which started it all for me (!) I must have spent between 2 and 6h/day for 2 years, which is 60 / 180 hours a month. But to understand this figure, you need to know all these years I've been a full time musician, so my "daily job" does not require office hours. Quite the contrary.
All these hours were not used on brandables. I tried

chinese letters and numericals
EMDs
One word .info
French domain names (I'm french)
Future trends keywords
...

By the way, thank you @Michael Cyger , I spent a great time going through your interviews!!

Nowadays, I spend more about 2 to 4 hours a week: I just check my emails for some expired domains alert daily and participate in an auction from time to time. I trimmed my portfolio from 3,000 names (a lot of bad ones) to 600 (less bad names) and I think I'll bring that to 300 this year. Not all my ventures brought profit as you can imagine and my interest is slowly fading.

I think more and more that the best way to profit is to sell / flip quality names with outbound effort and good vending skill. On the contrary, what I wanted to develop was some kind of automation: I was hoping to discover through analysis a few criteria to detect reasonnably good handregs and then just list them and wait for passive sells. Eventhough this worked to some extend, the process was never automated enough and the mental cost of renewing 98% of an inventory is heavier than I expected.

It also was a way to know myself better. I've been using a trading bot recently to trade cryptocurrencies (don't advise anyone to do so though unless you know how much you're prepared to loose!). The feeling of having daily wins, even small ones, is really what I need. A business where you may wait weeks / months for sales is probably not for me. In both case you wait (once setup the bot works alone 24/7, once listed the name waits for a buyer 24/7), but in the first one, you can check for some action, get realtime data and act on it.

xynames · Apr 4, 2018

While reading the initial post back of my mind was that this doesn’t add up to $8k profit. Only to find

HDmarketing said:
Yes ! The $8k was to bring your interest

You don’t need to “bring our interest” using a completely erroneous subject title at a place like this with fellow domainers.

Of more value would be a correct summary of what happened from the getgo.

Also - unless you’re listing the exact same names at Brandroot as at Afternic, which I assume you are not although actually I do not know because you did not clarify - then the strength of the names listed at BR might be the reason for the superior sales versus the quality of the marketplace.

Bean · Apr 4, 2018

Thoroughly enjoyed your post!

You did a great job analyzing those lists and it paid off, congrats

I wonder how this little experiment would've turned out if you'd spent the whole of your initial $2k investment on 4L's. I mean weren't 4L's still relatively cheap in 2015?
You would've ended up with a much smaller portfolio but that means less money spent on renewals.
Any thoughts?

HDmarketing · Apr 5, 2018

xynames said:
While reading the initial post back of my mind was that this doesn’t add up to $8k profit.

Read the full title my firend, there was a hint...

xynames said:
Also - unless you’re listing the exact same names at Brandroot as at Afternic, which I assume you are not although actually I do not know because you did not clarify - then the strength of the names listed at BR might be the reason for the superior sales versus the quality of the marketplace.

You'll have to believe me that the names are comparable, at least for CVCVCVs.
And yes, all Brandroot names were listed on afternic as Make Offer.

HDmarketing · Apr 5, 2018

Bean said:
I wonder how this little experiment would've turned out if you'd spent the whole of your initial $2k investment on 4L's. I mean weren't 4L's still relatively cheap in 2015?
You would've ended up with a much smaller portfolio but that means less money spent on renewals.
Any thoughts?

Ha ha, I would have been filthy rich

I never think that way because, you know, I've heard about Bitcoins 5 years ago already and I could have...

Research, information, dedication... And a bit of luck is welcome in the choice of the ventures.

Brandworthy · Apr 5, 2018

HDmarketing said:
And yes, all Brandroot names were listed on afternic as Make Offer.

That's a very interesting aside. Normally we cant expect to compare the brandable marketplaces with regular markets since the former impose strict exclusivity conditions. In this case, by breaking those rules you've provided some insight we wouldn't usually get.

Acroplex · Apr 5, 2018

The analysis of your modus operandi is commendable. The results are clearly pitiful due to one reason primarily : you sought and/or accepted low offers for the domains sold. Solution: raise your asking prices.

Even with brandables there is great opportunity for money-making. In fact, many modern start-ups are willing to pay top dollar for the ideal brandable domain. Most will pay high four, and five figures quite often.

Regarding the high commissions of these marketplaces, since you rely on inbound sales, I would recommend using Uniregistry Market and self-broker your domains. You keep the entire amount and deal via Escrow.com. Or use the BIN pricing system and rely on the Uniregistry Market and automatic commission.

Thanks again for sharing your results.

KhaledA · Apr 7, 2018

Nice sharing and good insights!
Thanks .

PHILIPPE RAVEL · Apr 8, 2018

Thank you so much for your post.
You are an artist and a business man...

Criterion811 · Apr 8, 2018

Amazing quality post

Thanks!

FintechNames · Apr 8, 2018

Another quality post on namePros! Thank you for sharing it.

namelancer · Apr 8, 2018

Someone said that the best school of writing is talent.
I commend your efforts of reliance on automated solutions in finding names, but the idea of using machine-generated methods for something that is heavily dependent on the spark of divine inspiration (as the default modus operandi of in-house branding teams that produce best results out of protracted brain-storming sessions) is slightly sacrilegeous. Of course, properly analyzed sales data should be used to weed out potential market failures, but it should be applied in the postcriptum phase of a brandable creative process and not at its inception.

-AR- · Apr 8, 2018

It's a lot of work you have put in so well done. But that is not a lot of money for the amount of work you have put in, but most domainers have done what you have done to get to a certain level of success after many years. Although most have probably done it with a lot less registrations. So maybe improve your strategy based on your findings, use some of the advice you get from here and carry on?

marijuanadomain · Apr 8, 2018

thanks to Godaddy's 99 cent coupons ( the good old days) and the cheap 4L domains I bought dirt cheap at $15 a piece years ago..
I am making $$$$$
easy peasy hobby.

FolioTeam · Apr 9, 2018

Thank you very much for this very great piece.

Foggy · Apr 9, 2018

HDmarketing said:
I trimmed my portfolio from 3,000 names (a lot of bad ones) to 600 (less bad names) and I think I'll bring that to 300 this year.

All other things aside, I believe this is where you went off the rails. That is a lot of names to acquire over such a short period of time (you began in December 2015).

The process can't be completely automated—that's why online domain name valuators are so far off the mark. If the process could be completely automated then the brand marketplaces wouldn't need sellers, they would just write an app. On the other hand, automation has helped me reduce the time spent looking at domains for sale from as much as six hours to one hour a day.

As I have said elsewhere, the ultimate question of a good brandable is: would a company name themselves that?

What I found interesting in our trajectories (see above) was that we both focused on brandables and began about a year apart—with me only acquiring 100 domains after the first year. The differences are I don't code, I don't speak French, and I have never exceeded 600 domains (though I am getting close).

I appreciate your thorough and honest analysis. Because you have the right attitude it was inspiring regardless of the amount of time/$ expended.

maxtra · Apr 9, 2018

Thanks for sharing @HDmarketing! Great insight.

SamDam · Apr 11, 2018

Thanks @HDmarketing for sharing all these organized analyses, but I think it not the end of the story, with few tweaks you can still keep its title as it is.

HDmarketing · Apr 12, 2018

Foggy said:
All other things aside, I believe this is where you went off the rails. That is a lot of names to acquire over such a short period of time (you began in December 2015).

Ooops, no there is a misunderstanding here : that answer of mine was about ALL the domains I had (hundreds of $0.88 .info for example). I must have had 400 brandable (now 250).

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