In Your Opinion Question on Domain Business

[ddrassociate]

Nowadays is there still a good chance to register a nice domain that will bring in profits in the high $XXX or do you have to really develop the site to make the money. Personally, the best name of mine that sold by itself without a site was Geometrybook.com for $50. My nice sales were sites I developed and sold for $XXX. So my main question is, are there still possiblities to find great domains not taken and sell for a lot?

 

[IAmAllanShore]

Eh, what has value to me doesn't have value to others, and I'm sure they feel the same way. IMHO, it's more about "shopping it" to the correct audience, and trying to create a need where none exists.

So, yes, it is still possible to find gems, IMHO.

-Allan

 

[Grrilla]

Most of my sales have come via unsolicited offers from my site or via whois lookups.
I have sold a few at forums at typical wholesale prices that barely cover my cost.
To date, I have not sold any names via email solicitation, but have not worked that approach enough to really get a read.

~~Snip~~
Oops. Went a little OT

 

[Qwert]

If your expecting to just go out and register a domain and sell it for that much good luck. You can get expiring domains and sell them in the thousands sometimes but you gotta watch them, backorder them, and hope you get lucky. It won't happen too often that you can just get that kind of money from them though. You can make a profit easially but nothing like XXX.

 

[ddrassociate]

Oh I don't expect that. I havent yet attempted to backorder names that I think are profitable but I plan to soon. Thanks for your replies guys.

 

[Qwert]

Well a domain that expired and I wanted to get, (couldn't someone nabbed it before me) but it sold for $3600 so you can make money if you're lucky....

 

[ddrassociate]

Nabbed it for $20 backorder fee?

 

[1rrr1]

Nabbed it for $20 backorder fee?

lol i wish that was me

 

[dgridley]

Best shot in my opinion is with a developed site if you're looking for big money...

 

[DavidH]

Most of my domain sales turn from reg fee (or near reg fee) into low-mid $xxx with a few reaching high $xxx or even more - some sales come from unsolicited approaches due to my For Sale page but most come from emailing potential end users.

The key seems to be finding commercial names that end users will be prepared to spend money on, and trying not to be too greedy on price - I am sure that I have undersold a few names but if I can increase the throughput...!

DavidH

 

[mole]

So my main question is, are there still possiblities to find great domains not taken and sell for a lot?

You referring to .COM? There are. Only thing is that finding them is like looking for a needle-head in a haystack. Also, luck plays a very big part in your specified strategy.

 

[Tippy]

I've hand regged a few made-up names @ $9 and then resold them for mid $XXX, so it is possible. That was like 1-2 years ago so getting these types of names are hard now-a-days with the huge increase in Domain Resellers over the past year or so.

Mike

 

[Mark]

Nowadays is there still a good chance to register a nice domain that will bring in profits in the high $XXX

Quick answer - Yes ....

Are they easy to find - No .... But there are some still out there ~ :imho:

 

[billinchina]

Don't waste your time and money running after availables unless you hear of a new product, service, or news event which is unregistered.

 

[geoffe]

I remember not long ago I saw CyprusPropertySales.com dropped and it recently sold for 2200 on Afternic. Have you looked at Afternic latley? Nam there are some odd names going for very nice prices.

 

[VisualArtistFrankBonilla]

Not my regular job

I'll put it this way. I am glad this is not my regular job. After about 1 year playing with domain names, I would find myself very hungry!!!!! More like starving!!!! But, gotta keep trying. It's like any other business, just because you invest money, doesn't mean it will work, or make you lots of money. How about the restaurant business?? How many are doing great one day, then gone the next week, or month.

I can retire from my job ( 30 years now, and a good job) , any time after 3 years. I just hope I can build up a little extra income source by then with domain sales, and/or a little www.Sedo.com parking.

 

[Grrilla]

...finding them is like looking for a needle-head in a haystack.

The same could be said of finding a drop of a decent .com or a good any.tld name, that makes it under all of the radar screens and can be hand regged or picked up by one of the more passive, (and less expensive), backorder services.
Back in Jun, I ran across 195.us which was showing avail. on the open market. Couldn't reg it at the first two registrars I went to, who were showing it as unavail., but landed it at a third. Not a heavy hitter, but not bad for a hand reg, considering that by Jun, all 3LL and 3NN majors were in the backorder bracket.
Other than awkward, prefixed/suffixed adverbs, (ie unconstitutionally.com is avail.), or very obscure/archaic words, (often the second, uncommon spelling alternative), single word .coms aren't there.
Prompted by this thread, I pulled up the single word .coms that I had hand regged, (from my last attempt at mining them): knuckler.com, mineable.com (he-he), and unhistorical.com are my little string of,(gulp), "pearls".
Now that's a list that should cure anyone of spending too much time in pursuing the genre. But than again, others may have search techniques that are better than mine.

 

[ddrassociate]

So some registrars say a name is unavailable when in fact it still is?

 

[Premium]

So some registrars say a name is unavailable when in fact it still is?

Really?

 

[Grrilla]

So some registrars say a name is unavailable when in fact it still is?

I think in this case, it was a instance of having just stumbled upon a name that was such a fresh drop, that the whois servers of the first two registrars I tried had not been updated. At least that's what I think. I hadn't tracked the name and didn't have any history on it, so I don't know exactly how it got there. The registry's whois server showed it available- just had to find a registrar that had been updated to show the same thing.