Invest or not?

[felilah]

Hi namepros! I recently got into domaining and have bought two domains so far (allinvestorinsights.com, financialbot.ai). I decided to read and learn more about investing in the right names before buying more.

While looking up domains, I got a few available dot coms which are still unregistered. These are names with high brand-value potential, and SquadHelp agrees with me, although both EstiBot and GoDaddy valuator doesn't value it much. The names I looked up were <10 L and had some variation of it registered. I'm thinking since it hasn't been registered yet, it probably isn't worth that much? There must be a catch right?

I also found a 5L .com domain which is a letter-play on a pretty common word. Another 8L .com brandable two letter word domain. Unregistered. I was gonna impulse buy those as well, but thought again. Surely I must not be the first person to have thought of these domains right? So what's the catch? GoDaddy shows valuation of $1.8k for both, but EstiBot valuations are still low. Should I dive in? Will I regret it later? How can I make sure I'm not making a bad decision? Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

 

[mogo]

Hi, I would advise you to take more time to learn, you'll find almost everything you need in this forum, most of the questions you got in your mind were probably answered here in the past.
Here is some advices and some mistakes to avoid :
- in .com focus on 2 words domains, stay away from 3 words or more
- Don't rely on automated appraisal tools
- It takes time to be able to spot valuable from non valuable domains, and there is no shortcuts.
- In the .ai extension most valuable domains are one word domains registered in a lot of other extensions or related to AI or both.
- don't buy until you learn enough, if you just start buying from day one all you gonna do is waste your money
- the domain's extension have a big impact on its value, you can have a 2 words .com domain worth $5000
and the same 2 words in another popular extension worth $0

 

[Sjpals]

The advice above is good. Also, look at commercial business end use. Will a big business pay money for your domain. If not, then it’s probably not worth it.

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

What kind of business would you put on the name(s)?
If you cant build it out into a money making business, its garbage.
Looking out window at Dollorama
What a wicked name.
Namepros ,awesome domain though some would say singular should have been used because its shorter
Domain.io wicked
Letter plays are neat but waste of time and money

Domaining is dead anyways I hear, looks like I will be living in my camper van 2

 

[VadimK]

Impossible to tell without knowing the names (and I don't advise posting them here).
Don't assume automatically if it's available to handreg it's bad. Many people will say so, but it's bullshit. There are names that still can be hadregged and sold, even not for trending words.

But to give more details is simply impossible. No one can tell if you regret it or not or if it's good or bad decision. If I could tell every time with 80% possibility I won't regret my reggs and purchases I'd be a millionaire by now, to say the least.

Pay zero attention to appraisals and stay away from trademarked names.

 

[Jannes]

Unregistered doesn't mean no one considered it good. Check hosterstats.com if any of them have been registered before (or if that site is unavailable, use e.g. completedns.com/dns-history/ ). Then check web.archive.org to possibly see how they've been used.

 

[felilah]

Hi, I would advise you to take more time to learn, you'll find almost everything you need in this forum, most of the questions you got in your mind were probably answered here in the past.
Here is some advices and some mistakes to avoid :
- in .com focus on 2 words domains, stay away from 3 words or more
- Don't rely on automated appraisal tools
- It takes time to be able to spot valuable from non valuable domains, and there is no shortcuts.
- In the .ai extension most valuable domains are one word domains registered in a lot of other extensions or related to AI or both.
- don't buy until you learn enough, if you just start buying from day one all you gonna do is waste your money
- the domain's extension have a big impact on its value, you can have a 2 words .com domain worth $5000
and the same 2 words in another popular extension worth $0

Thanks for this advice! I am learning the hard way that 3 word domains aren't gonna sell well. I'm sidelining all the dot coms for now and will continue to learn and exercise caution while investing.

As for appraisal tools, what else do you recommend? How would you value my two domains -
allinvestorinsights.com
financialbot.ai

I know these doesn't sound promising, but ideally, I would like to sell at least one of these before buying more

 

[Kyle Tully]

I know these doesn't sound promising, but ideally, I would like to sell at least one of these before buying more

The average sell through rate of good domains is roughly 1% per year.

So even if we say these are good domains, you would expect to sell one of them sometime in the next 50 years or so. And I think these are below average domains.

Keep reading and learning. Then invest when you know what a good domain looks like.

 

[felilah]

The average sell through rate of good domains is roughly 1% per year.

So even if we say these are good domains, you would expect to sell one of them sometime in the next 50 years or so. And I think these are below average domains.

Keep reading and learning. Then invest when you know what a good domain looks like.

Dang those are some very discouraging numbers lol. So I will have to keep renewing the domains for many many years? I was hoping a two year time frame would be enough to sell these off.

Will keep learning then, thanks.

 

[felilah]

Impossible to tell without knowing the names (and I don't advise posting them here).
Don't assume automatically if it's available to handreg it's bad. Many people will say so, but it's bullshit. There are names that still can be hadregged and sold, even not for trending words.

But to give more details is simply impossible. No one can tell if you regret it or not or if it's good or bad decision. If I could tell every time with 80% possibility I won't regret my reggs and purchases I'd be a millionaire by now, to say the least.

Pay zero attention to appraisals and stay away from trademarked names.

Thanks! That does give me some hope :D

How do y’all go about pricing your domains then? I keep seeing these estibot and godaddy valuations thrown around, along with comparable sales numbers from namebio. What else do you use to fix your price?

Also, could you tell me what exactly should I do to make sure my domains aren’t trademarked? I got to know allinvestorinsights.com has some trademark infringement when I tried listing it on GoDaddy for sale.

 

[felilah]

Unregistered doesn't mean no one considered it good. Check hosterstats.com if any of them have been registered before (or if that site is unavailable, use e.g. completedns.com/dns-history/ ). Then check web.archive.org to possibly see how they've been used.

Thank you for these sites. Will check them out!

Although, if it was once registered and then dropped, doesn’t that mean the domains hold little value?

 

[Jannes]

Thank you for these sites. Will check them out!

Although, if it was once registered and then dropped, doesn’t that mean the domains hold little value?

Openai.com has been dropped many times. Granted, it has always been quickly re-registered, but sometimes valuable names drop without anyone noticing, especially if they are "before their time".

 

[VadimK]

Do not pay attention whether or not it was dropped and how many times. That's 100% useless, does not mean anything.

How to price domain names is highly subjective, it's not a science. Check NameBio sales, for brandable you can throw it to Brand Bucket at least for estimation, or check popularity of keywords with DotDb... and still put the price you feel to, then play with it for a year. The ''how to price it'' thing comes with experience.

To check for trademarks:
https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-results (in USA)

Good Luck!

 

[holkapolka]

Check if domains are blacklisted at google or other sites that offer such service, also if they very many bad links, I bought once a domain having massive bad links and it takes too much time to remove them, if they are clean why not buy?

 

[mogo]

Dang those are some very discouraging numbers lol. So I will have to keep renewing the domains for many many years? I was hoping a two year time frame would be enough to sell these off.

Will keep learning then, thanks.

As mentioned above, the average industry sell through rate is 1% per year, meaning out of 100 good domains you sell one a year, you can't expect sales from 2 domains, domain sellers have hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of domains to be able to generate sales regularly, or some have smaller portfolios but it consists of high quality and highly sought after domains. And don't just rush to build a big portfolio , if you have 500 bad domains you'll sell 0 domains, you must combine quality and quantity.