BrandBucket Experience

[xtremex]

hello

I am new to BrandBucket. Before getting my hands on this

I wish to experience about brandbucket from my fellow members


Thanks

 

[JimJammy]

So my first year in brandable domaining ends, and I thought other newbies to brandables might be interested to see how I've got on...

I'm a long time domainer but a complete newbie to brandables. I thought this might give me an advantage on picking/selling domains compared to other brandable newbies.

My average purchase price of a brandable domain is around $20 (and rising!). I got very lucky in the early days, hand registering domains with GoDaddy coupon codes over 3 different accounts, unfortunately those days are gone and now I tend to drop catch or buy the majority of my domains from other domainers.

After I've purchased my brandable, in most cases I put up a landing page, this could be on my own website, Efty or more recently the new namesilo landing pages. I work very hard, spending 5+ hours a day (on top of a full time job) conducting outreach or attracting attention to my domains for sale. Very rarely do my domains sell all by themselves.

I've chosen to list my brandable domains solely with BrandBucket. I don't list with any other brandable marketplace. I submit all of my domains to BrandBucket immediately upon purchase. Having already put them on a landing page, this gives me a window of around 1 week-10 days to sell it before BrandBucket approves/denies my domain (in the early days this could have been as long as a month!). BB rejected names stay on whatever landing page I've built.

I also reach out to other domainers or people in the industry regularly. Sometimes, it's not what you know, it's who you know . There are also a lot of really nice domainers out there and it's great to keep in contact. Through this contact I've sold a large portfolio of BB published names and another large portfolio of BB rejected names. I've also had small sales of both published and rejected names here at NP.

Answers to all of those little questions:

I already owned a sizable brandable domain portfolio from my usual day-to-day domaining and I've purchased 1,000+ brandables this year. Looking back I clearly had no idea what I was doing when I started buying names specifically to list on BrandBucket. I have (or will be) dropping at least 200 domains, as smart as I thought I was, I clearly wasn't!

I currently have 750+ names on BrandBucket (added a lot in the last few weeks).

I would have had 1,000+ names on BrandBucket had I not sold off some published names.

Almost 500 names were listed free via the voting system.

Over 500 names cost me under $4 (thanks GoDaddy and Domain.com!).

My acceptance rate at BrandBucket is dismal, I'm currently running at a 32% acceptance rate. As I've learned what BB wants/accepts this has improved. I was getting 1 in 10 accepted at first, now it's more like 1 in 10 gets rejected.

My one year bottom line is:
Revenue from BB @ $20,000
Revenue from end user sales made myself @ $14,000
Revenue from one off sale of BB published names @ $4,000
Revenue from various sales of BB published names @ $2,500
Revenue from one off sale of BB rejected names @ $8,000
Revenue from various sales of BB rejected names @ $500

$49,000

Poop! I didn't quite make that $50K. There is my motivation for this year!

Good luck to all other BBers too :D

 

[JimJammy]

I'm a little late with my second year update at Brandable domaining (my apologies). My first year can be found in my signature below.

As at the 30th June 2016 (end of my first year) I had:
750 names on Brandbucket.
200 names on my own website.

My one year bottom line was:
Revenue from BB @ $20,000
Revenue from end user sales made myself @ $14,000
Revenue from one off sale of BB published names @ $4,000
Revenue from various sales of BB published names @ $2,500
Revenue from one off sale of BB rejected names @ $8,000
Revenue from various sales of BB rejected names @ $500
I finished my first year with $49,000.

As at the 30th June 2017 (end of my second year) I had:
1400 names on Brandbucket.
300 names on my own website.
200 names various/elsewhere.

My second year bottom line was:
Revenue from BB @ $20,000
Revenue from various sales of BB published names @ $500
Revenue from end user sales made myself @ $23,000
Revenue from one off sale of BB rejected names @ $16,000
I finished my second year with $59,500.

So yeah, as you can see my BB portfolio has almost doubled yet my 'income' from that line has stayed the same. I've actually had fewer sales but the value of those sales were more. I also do 'non-brandable' domaining and I've not included those figures in here, there is a further sum of $4,000 that I couldn't decide whether it was brandable/non-brandable so I left it out. I've also gained confidence to market brandables and find end users in this area myself (as you can see by my sales figures). The biggest game changer for me was the sale of Wemmo on Brandbucket. That was my final mortgage payment! I'm now mortgage free and have been domaining full time for the last 6 months. That's everyone's dream isn't it?

Future plans. I've learned a lot in this last year. Mainly to concentrate on my own domaining and not what everyone else is doing. Unfortunately when I started in brandables I didn't have the capital to go for 4 letter or high quality domains so I've had to build my portfolio slowly and patiently @ roughly $20 per domain. I want to continue to build a quality portfolio of names without increasing the amount of brandable domains I own. Effectively (hopefully), I'll obtain better domains and drop/sell off cheap the poor quality stuff I picked up in the beginning. I also intend to make more of social media to market myself (not my domains). I'm a big believer in "it's not what you know, it's who you know". I've made some great contacts/friends over the last year which has been very profitable for me, and I intend to reach out and make more.

For the record, it's now almost the end of August (nearly two months into my third year) and I've had 3 sales totalling almost $5,500.

*Revenue from BB = funds in my hand after commission and fees.

Good luck to all other BBers too!

 

[Calvenor]

It looks like some people haven't been very lucky lately, getting their names accepted by BrandBucket. On the other hand I seem to be enjoying all time high acceptance rate and I'm grateful for it, so I thought I'd share my latest names that got "green light" from BB, their suggested prices and some extra info in hope that it can be of help.

actada 2015-04-09 Accepted $2,495 - built from "act" and loosely derived from "action"
capiza 2015-04-09 Accepted $2,995 - derived from "capital"
deuxy 2015-04-09 Accepted $5,295 - built from "deux", French for "two"
jetoa 2015-04-09 Accepted $1,395 - built from "jet"
jeunea 2015-04-09 Accepted $1,795 - built from "jeune", French for "young / youthful"
lovago 2015-04-09 Accepted $1,995 - fusion of "love" and "go"
nanoxa 2015-04-09 Accepted $1,895 - built from "nano"
ingrea 2015-03-28 Accepted $1,495 - derived from "ingreat", meaning "to enlarge / to make great"
majexa 2015-03-28 Accepted $1,795 - derived from "majestic"
solrea 2015-03-28 Accepted $1,295 - built around "sol", meaning "sun" in many languages
viviga 2015-03-28 Accepted $1,495 - derived from "vivir", Spanish for "to live"
exudia 2015-03-24 Accepted $1,395 - derived from "exude"
wearza 2015-03-24 Accepted $1,595 - trendy play on "wear"

I'd say that in 4 out of 5 times I pick names based on a keyword they either contain (wearza, nanoxa, jetoa, jeunea) or are derived from, directly or loosely (capiza = capital, majexa = majestic, viviga = vivir). The best names are usually those built around or derived from English words, but BB also seems to have high appreciation for names with root word steming from Romance languages (Latin, Italian, French, Spanish).

Occasionally they accept names with roots in some other languages, like they did with my Efria (efri = topmost in Icelandic), Nitoa (bind or staple in Finnish) and so on, but I believe such names are accepted mostly for their sonic and visual quality, that is for being succinct, straightforward and somewhat exotic.

Every now and then I go for pure brandables that appeal to me simply for what they sound and/or look like, but not very often. Even then I do my best to find out whether there is a connection to some language, something I can use for my pitch, so to speak.

I haven't had any luck at all with my 4L names so far, roughly 10 of which are spread across 3 brandable marketplaces. Given their ever higher acquisition cost and poor conversion (so far) I decided to stay away from them completely for the time being.

On the other hand 5L and 6L names are literally lying around in troves, freely available and waiting to be plucked. And yes, that means that every single of my 5L and 6L names is a hand reg. I try to stick to these as they are fairly short, but still long enough to be connected to or directly derived from some keyword and hence assigned a proper meaning to. I see that as lending them an extra value in eyes of potential buyers, whereas in case of 4L names people often have to resort to all kinds of explanations to get a point across.

Keywords I look for in my names must convey preferably positive, or at the very least a neutral meaning, and be as wide and universal as possible. For example in the aforementioned list keywords are, from top to bottom: act/action, capital, two, jet, young/youthful, love+go, nano, ingreat, majestic, to live, exude, wear. Most are applicable in many ways and none carry negative impressions such as, I don't know, cry, tears, sickness, fall, crash, burn, drop, lose, hang etc. You get the drift.

Trendy suffixes that I like, which also seem to be popular with all brandable marketplaces are, but not limited to, -xa, -xo, -xy, -za, -zy, -zia, -go, -ga, -ro, -us, -ius. I don't care much for -ly, even though Michael Krell does seem to have a lot of success with it. Hats off for that.

Whenever I go through droplists, I have several tabs open:

1) Expireddomains.net - absolutely your best friend

2) Unibrander - globally wide trademark search (I used Markify before, but it is no longer free)

3) Google translate - unless the meaning is clear, run any word you like, part of it or slightly changed form
through GT and you may be surprised with results

4) Google search - I always check the name I like in "quotes", as it's good to know what number one search engine has to say about it in general and what are search volumes (not that it hugely matters though)

5) Dofo.com - info on past registrations and some extras, like screenshots of previously hosted sites on that domain, estimated search volume

6) Online dictionary of your choice for some of those "elusive" English words

7) BrandBucket - last but not least, once I find a keyword my "name candidate" is based on, I like to run it through BB search in order to see how many names based on that very word have been accepted so far and how strictly do they actually follow the form of a keyword, that is whether they are loosely related or directly built on/from

What else? Well, typos, names with double letters and those missing letters from a keyword I haven't had much luck with in terms of acceptance, not in BB or anywhere else for that matter. I don't have many, but some like Suirl (swirl), Lngua (lingua or lengua = language), Emryo (embryo), Urbbo (urbo as in urban) have never gotten a green light in any of brandable marketplaces. Maybe it's just me and maybe it's sign of times, or trends in this case.

Just to further illustrate that there are still decent 5L and 6L words freely available, here is the list of names that I "collected" over last several weeks, hand regged yesterday and finally submitted to BB for a review:

Apzia - built from "app"
Axyro - derived from "axis"
Baoxy - built from "bao", Chinese for "package", and also loosely reminiscent of "boxy"
Coribo - very loosely reminiscent of "corida", no other meaning, but I simply liked it for its Spanish flavored sound
Cribea - built from "crib"; all things baby
Emveo - built from "emve", Zulu for "back" - think along the line of "holding your back" or "backing you up"
Fivezy - built from "five", as in "top five", "big five", "high five"
Mobzia - built from "mob", so it can be perceived as either "mobile" or mob as in crowd (funding/sourcing)
Nidoro - Latin flavored and built from "nido", Italian for "nest" or "home"
Oasius - clearly derived from "oasis"
Qodus - loosely reminiscent of "code", but otherwise loved for its highly business-like form
Vuvuo - short, soft, baby talk like and with repetitive syllable; no special meaning though
Wavezy - built from "wave", jovial and cheerful
Zizago - vivacious "go" at the end and strongly reminiscent of "zig zag"

Sorry for this wall of text and somewhat brainstormy outline of it. I just kept writing whatever came to my mind without clear respect for structure, but I hope that at least some of it may be of use to you. Good luck

 

[sofiapartner]

sold another one today for $3XXX
thanks, BB. Doing a great job - 3 sold for 40 days. And I have only 12 published.

 

[campout]

I'm happy to report my first sale on BB:

J O B O D O

This is obviously a strong keyword, and a widely accepted suffix which is easy to pronounce and spell.

* The sale occurred at 3,637 listed-days.

 

[Zoltan P.]

Pretty good month so far, 3 brandable sold. I just got the email from BB.

BR: f*r*u*t*t*i*o
NR: f*i*g*h*t*t*o*w*n
BB: v*i*r*o*x*y

 

[Dimitris]

Happy to share my stats with you, purely for educational purposes. Intention is not to brag about my sales; but to make you revisit and possibly revise your investment/sales strategy for more sales and less naming choice mistakes and to keep your faith and loyalty to the BrandBucket platform. Simply because it is possible. Keep that in mind.

• I've been very inactive for a very large time period for reasons unrelated to domaining. I regret that because I strongly believe that my stats would be much much better, with a lot more sales and a larger portfolio of brandable names. Unfortunately due to not having a choice due to personal reasons, I left my account activity on autopilot for a long long time. Surprised to see that many of the naming choices I made when I started, still convert into sales even with very low activity.
• 180 names published overall. Low volume portfolio.
• Over 55K in net profit on BB since Jan 2015, with 35 sold names (in 49.5 months Jan 14 2015 to Today Feb 27). Yes, about a year in 4 years 1 months 14 days with no sale...
• Last BB sale 1 week ago.
• Many of rejected BB brandable names were listed and sold in BR and other domain selling platforms like Sedo and Afternic totaling in over 60K net profit. Most recent example of such sale: V I A W A L L E T - sold fast 3 days ago for 3999 on Afternic.
• More than 50% of sales were hand-registered domains. There remaining percent were closeout GD domains, backordered domains, trades here in NamePros.

Tip:

Choose a name you are 1000% confident that it will be sold for a very good end-user price at some point. It doesn't have to be sold on BB. If BB does not accept your domain, do not lose faith. Try all the available options and the worst case scenario would be to sell it for a reg fee - but do it! Don't wait until it is time to renew it again.

Making the right choice is very very difficult. It takes hundreds of days and nights analyzing sales data, trends etc. What is crucial is focus on building your experience in identifying the right domain investment and not go "bankrupt" with dumb naming choices. Of course you have to be lucky as well.

Set a budget for a year. An amount you are comfortable and willing to lose. Do not exceed it. Learn by your mistakes. Reinvent your strategy. Improve. Profit more - you are more confident now.

 

[wwwulff]

Just sold Love/Fund

 

[Beezy]

Got my first sale tonight! In escrow.

Glad to have snuck one into 2015.

 

[KDN]

Just sold S/A/F/E/R/W/A/L/L/E/T. Woohoo! Looks like sales improved after the website rebuild!

Great job, BrandBucket!

 

[Simon Taylor]

Got a nice email a few days ago, first bb sale.

I'm hoping they aren't like nr where I've negotiated a deal to have the other party disappear

 

[JimJammy]

BrandBucket snaps up Keith deBoer as Brand Ambassador

http://dngeek.com/2016/09/keith-deboer-brandbuckets-newest-ambassador/

Waaahhhaaayyy!! Congratulations Keith, you have so much to offer the brandable space (and have inspired so many people aready ) I'm sure you will thrive in your new position.

And it's great to see Brandbucket going from strength to strength.

 

[AndrewRice]

Hello Everyone,

I'm new to NamePros, but have been buying brandable domain names off and on for over five years. Recently, I was fortunate enough be invited into the BrandBucket Brand Ambassador program. My business Brandiogo.com now has a little over five hundred brand names on the BrandBucket marketplace.

In the hopes of saving you all some time and money, I'd like to share some insight into my brandable name buying process:

On the Name Finding Process: I generally find brandables wherever I can. Many are found through the name drop lists, and some are hand registered. I've also purchased through other domain investors and had some success buying through GoDaddy auctions and SnapNames auctions (years ago).

General Name Buying Advice: I try to imagine whether I would be willing to make a logo and build a business on the name. I figure that if I can't visualize a business being built on the name, then it probably isn't worth buying.

On Two Keyword Names: The two keywords should make sense and add to the brand's meaning as a whole. The name should flow well. Example: P*R*E*S*S*F*R*E*N*Z*Y

Three Keyword Names: Finding a good brandable, three keyword name can be tricky. It's ok to have a three keyword name if all three words flow really well together and add meaning. There are even situations where three short words have more meaning than two. Some good examples include R*E*A*D*Y*F*O*R*D*U*T*Y and W*I*L*D*M*A*N*C*R*E*W. To be honest though, if you are just starting out buying brandables you should probably avoid three key word names.

Made up Names: Ask yourself if the name flows well, is memorable and if it has any rhyming qualities. One cool name that I have is also a palindrome A*D*A*R*A*D*A. I would also check out Calvenor's post earlier in this thread: Calvenor's post on made up names.

As you gain more experience it will become easier to tell whether a name is good or not. Much of this is based on whether the name flows well, makes sense (when it comes to keywords) and is memorable.

I'd be happy to field any questions.

 

[12345]

I had a really good last 5 weeks on BB. Here are my sales...

C y b e r s p r o u t
S i m p l e R o b o t
S w i t c h P u l s e
W o r k P i l e
Z e n o z a
R e c r u i t P a d
F u t u re W h e e l s
R e a d y S t r e a m
T e c h S i l o
N e t w o r k S t a c k
H e l l o P a y m e n t
P a y M y T a b
P r o v i d r
C a r v e z a
Z e n S t a t e
H e l p N i n j a
S i l e n t B o o s t

 

[Dimitris]

Hi guys,

I sold my 9th name a few days ago. It was regged back in April 2015. I have 9 sales since Sept 2014 with 76 published names, most of which were added to the marketplace last summer. I've been selling almost monthly and I share some names with my business partner in another profile. We have around 4 or 5 sales from his profile if I remember correctly. Some names that were rejected by BrandBucket were sold in BrandRoot, and the contrary. I managed to sell other names via Sedo. Most of my sold names were hand-regged after research, some were discovered in GD close-out lists and others were caught via Pheenix.

No matter the number of names currently published on BrandBucket, if a buyer knows what he wants, he will do the search, browse a few pages with names related to his keywords, find and buy your name. Also, half of the names I've sold have a slightly different logo now.

Regards,
dpan

 

[starizec]

Sold
B O L D D E F E N S E
for low x, xxx. Name was on site for about 50 days.

 

[12345]

Very fortunate to have a nice September. Here are my sales...

L A U N C H D O C K
H E A L T H O R B I T
H E Y D A T E
K I C K C H A R G E
M A P F I R S T
H E L L O F O C U S
F I L M L Y
Q U A N T O X
Z E N L E A D S
C A R E G I V R
W O R K S U P
M O B I L E M E L O N
C A R E E R S P R O U T
W O R K C A N D Y
D E L I V E R Y R O C K E T
S T A C K E R R
C U L T U R E L Y
T H I N K E R L Y
Z E N O T I

 

[Brandworthy]

Sold O * D * A * V * A which went live 2 days ago. My quickest sale so far on BB.

 

[Mike K]

Sold another domain on BB - first sale in 2 months. w*e*l*l*i*x*a - listed since July.
That will help with all the renewals coming due.

 

[Dimitris]

I sold another name on BB for close to mid XXXX, I will report it here when I receive the payment. It was listed for 12 months.

The name is S/U\N/T\O/R\O.

 

[AndrewRice]

I just sold a BrandBucket domain: L/u/m/i/d/o/r/a

 

[Houssaine]

Sold my first domain with BB yesterday. I've joined BB since March and published 4 domains with an acceptance rate of 16%.

 

[Doron Vermaat]

Just sold S T A R T F O X . C O M on BB.

 

[Doron Vermaat]

Sold L a u n c h M o n s t e r .com on BB today in the low-mid X,xxx range. This is my 10th sale with BB since April 2013 (when I created my account) and I have 97 remaining domains listed. This name was listed since 29 December 2014.

 

[JimJammy]

If someone did this, it would be mighty kind of them to share the statistics here.

I've been tracking their servers for a while now. This his how many domains that have sold that have been removed from their servers, note that some buyers leave their domains pointed at BB for a while (I suppose until they are ready to use it) so these figures are 100% accurate but not accurate to each month. I won't share which names sold but...

June - 40 names removed that sold - ?? Michaels, I wasn't tracking then.
July - 36 names removed that sold - 12 of them were Michaels.
August - 44 names removed that sold - 2 were on Michaels previous sales lists and Michael hasn't posted his August list yet.

I haven't included Margos as her whois is hidden and I can't be 100% sure the sales I think are hers, are actually hers. An average of 17 domains are being removed each day. This includes the sales above, people removing their names and drops. Several portfolios have been removed this month. On 15th August I noticed an entire 300+ portfolio get removed. These domains do not point to BB yet are still listed on BB, I'm sure they will disappear soon.

There has been one regular repeat buyer, he has found many of us direct recently...

I've also just sold another name, low x,xxx.