Try this exercise to help teach yourself about domain names that sell to large corporations for top dollar:
1. Go to Jamie Zoch's website at DotWeekly dot com
2. Read through every post he has ever written under the "Domain Movers" banner
3. As you read each post, type into a spreadsheet the names of each .com domain name that a large corporation bought for a new business, product name, or other new brand name (i.e., not any domain name that already includes their existing brand name in the domain name like Amazon does a lot of -- those are simply 'brand protection' registrations to protect their trademarks, which you want to avoid like the plague)
4. Read through your long list of domain names you typed into your spreadsheet and start to cust and paste them into categories, like LL.com, LLL.com, One Word .com, Two Word .com, Three Word .com, Made Up Word .com, etc.
5. Identify the patterns of the kinds of .com domain names that large corporations buy, as reported by DotWeekly
6. Once you see the patterns, start to watch drop auctions at GoDaddy.com, NameJet.com, SnapNames.com, and DropCatch.com BUT RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO BUY ANY DOMAIN NAMES FOR 30 DAYS; only watch, do not buy for a full 30 days; make sure the auctions are drop auctions, not some other domainer just listing his or her domain names with reserve prices
7. Start to notice how much the domain names with the patterns you identified sell for at the drop auctions; these are the wholesale prices those kinds of patterns go for
8. Determine if you can afford to pay those kinds of wholesale prices, or not
9. If you cannot, it might be best for you to exit domain name investing – the best names are typically on the drop auctions; the best names get bid up to healthy wholesale prices; you need the best names with the right patterns to one day ultimately sell for a retail price to an end user that is a large corporation with deep pockets and a general indifference to paying upwards of $XX,XXX to $XXX,XXX for a .com domain name; if you cannot afford to play the game, it may be best for you financially to not enter the game at all; or, find a different, lower cost strategy within domain investment (e.g., picking up $9 bargain names and flipping them for $250 to $350 a piece, a la Josh Eisenhower at DSAD.com)
10. If you can afford to pay those kinds of wholesale prices, welcome to the game!
Lastly, remember that there are a little less than 150,000,000 or so .com domain names in existence. Keep in mind that less than 1% are .com domain names that a large corporation would ever want to buy from anyone else to use in their businesses. That means only 1,500,000 .com domain names are "investment grade" domain names. That's a relatively small amount. All the rest are .com domain names that are simply not marketable to large corporations, no matter how much the domainers who own them believe otherwise. You want to ignore those 99% domain names and resist the temptation to register them or bid on them at auctions (don't worry, we all fail or have failed at the resistance). If you follow all of the above instructions and understand what you uncover from having done the exercise, you'll be in a much better place as a domain investor. Possibly a lot richer to boot.