Tips on How to Hand Register Good Domains

Any experienced veteran domainer will tell you that it’s best to buy a better quality domain name on the aftermarket or on the drops than to hand register a lot of subpar and useless domains and I tend to agree with this considering that by buying domains on the aftermarket and on the drops you are actually tapping into the creativity and brain power of many people that have dabbled in to domains before you instead of just relying on your own perhaps limited knowledge and abilities to think of good domains.

But if you are going to hand register domains anyway at least you might want to sharpen your skills so perhaps you won’t just waste your money on collecting a lot of low quality and useless domains.

There are some websites that can help you come up with new domain ideas and perhaps those who have had good results with them can mention some of them in this thread, but it might take a little longer for automated websites to really understand every aspect of what they are suggesting, maybe in the near future AI can help us find some good domains, but until then I think that it might be best to rely on our own intuition and research to come up with some good domains or at least learn how to pick the gems in a long list of automatically generated domain suggestions.

Since most good domains are already taken it might be best to concentrate your efforts on new trends where there might still be some good opportunities left to find a nice domain, I personally like new technology trends and have noticed that a lot of good domains that were registered many years ago are becoming available again because the original registrants didn’t have the patience to wait for these new technologies to mature or that they just couldn’t bear the renewal charges and let their domains drop too soon, of course any domain that is worth its while is going to be grabbed by the bigger companies and those who have more resources available to them, but there might still be some good domains that fall through the cracks and don’t get noticed by anyone.

Another area of interest might be brandable domains in which you have to come up with a made up word or a variation or play on an existing word that can stand out amongst the thousands of other possibilities that are out there. There are a few threads about brandable domains that you might want to read first before getting involved in this category of hand registered domains.

As far as new trends go pick a popular keyword in a certain field which we can call the Root or Base, or Key element in your domain and then try to add words that complement it in the front of it or after it in order to come up with some RootElement+Word or Word+RootElement ideas for your domain (keep in mind that RootElement can be in the form of abbreviations like EV for electric vehicle and Word can be Noun, Verb, and Adjective or some of the more popular suffixes or prefixes in some cases) you shouldn’t be discouraged by the fact that many of your ideas might already be taken, after all if it was a good enough idea that occurred to you then you can bet that other people have also thought of it too, but if you check 20, 30, or 50 (or even 100) combinations eventually you might come across one that has fallen through the cracks and that has gone unnoticed by others.

When hand registering domain names its important not to go overboard and end up with too many domains that are hard to manage, ideally you might want to keep your portfolio very small and work on upgrading its quality by letting some of the lesser quality domains to drop and replacing them with better domains, but keep the size of you portfolio the same, because if you let it get too big then it will become very frustrating to sort it out and keep up with renewals.

Also don’t go too deep into a category that is only going to make sense to a small group of people, some technical terms even though might make sense to you in your field of expertise, but it might not make that much sense to the general public, so try to register domains that the average person can understand and appreciate.

When doing research to see if a domain is available be aware that there are a lot of prying eyes out there, some registrars and registries even give out the lists of domain and whois look ups and if you don’t register a domain name quickly someone might grab it before you have a chance to think about it or come up with the money to register it. This has been a problem in the domain Industry for a long time now and as unfair as it is for others to wrongly take advantage of your research (which amounts to insider trading), but apparently it continues to go in to this day.

Also don’t just give a Like for new hand registered domains just to please others, because you are not doing anyone a favor if you are not honest about the quality of their domains, and by liking the less quality domains you might be encouraging some to go down the wrong path and keep registering more useless domains.

If you have any tips concerning hand registering domains please feel welcomed to share it here, but keep in mind that this is not about whether hand registering domains is a good idea or not, this is more about teaching those who are wasting their money on low quality domains to be able to find better domains to hand register if they are going to do it anyway.

Thread Rules:

Everyone’s opinions, tips, and analysis are welcomed, but keep your comments constructive, professional, and on topic. Personal attacks and belittling of others are not tolerated. If your domaining model and strategy don't agree with hand registering domains and that you don’t believe that anyone should be hand registering domains then this thread is not for you, this is to help those who already are going to hand register domains by teaching them how to come up with better ideas so that they won’t end up wasting their money on a lot of low quality and useless domains. Also If you provide any stats or info concerning domains or anything else that pertains to this thread be sure that they are factual and please indicate the source, otherwise if it's just your opinion then put IMO at the end of your post. (In My Opinion)

IMO

 

I find many such domains which had a period of having been registered only for a single year somewhere in their history. It is beyond my understanding why people expect an immediate (=same year) sale. When anyone registers an emerging technology domain, they should be ready to keep it for 10-15 years at least. It may prove to be worth, it may not prove to be worth. But nobody has any right to say it was a "wrong" name if they didn't hold it for that long. That doesn't qualify as a try.

In fact, 10-15 years may not be enough. There are quite a few "robot" domains which were registered 20+ years ago and then dropped in the first decade. Its 2020 and while we can already feel the breath of upcoming robotic era, its still too early!

What does a low-end aftermarket name has which an available one does not? Basically just a history of not being available. One can lay foundation for that immediately for their new name by paying for 10 years of registration. Ten years registration costs about the same as a dropcatcheddropcaught name without or with very little competition. One doesn't have to pay for 10 years at once though, just keep it in mind that their name reaches the same status of "having been unavailable for 10 years" in 10 years.

 

"As far as new trends go pick a popular keyword in a certain field which we can call the Root or Base, or Key element in your domain and then try to add words that complement it in the front of it or after it in order to come up with some RootElement+Word or Word+RootElement ideas for your domain (keep in mind that RootElement can be in the form of abbreviations like EV for electric vehicle and Word can be Noun, Verb, and Adjective or some of the more popular suffixes or prefixes in some cases) you shouldn’t be discouraged by the fact that many of your ideas might already be taken, after all if it was a good enough idea that occurred to you then you can bet that other people have also thought of it too, but if you check 20, 30, or 50 (or even 100) combinations eventually you might come across one that has fallen through the cracks and that has gone unnoticed by others."

For the above there are loads of resources where you can get the most popular selling keywords, suffixes and prefixes (I have shared a spreadsheet with this information) and if you use a tool like http://kombinator.org/ (cobines those keywords with your root word)
and then bulk search using https://www.namebright.com/BulkSearch (5000 names and removes all names that are regged) or https://www.name.com/names (10,000 names and shows all combinations) you can very quickly put together large lists that you can research in your spare time

"Also don’t just give a Like for new hand registered domains just to please others, because you are not doing anyone a favor if you are not honest about the quality of their domains, and by liking the less quality domains you might be encouraging some to go down the wrong path and keep registering more useless domains."

The above is very good advice - I would rather get honest constructive feedback, rather than a token like.....

 

It's also worth mentioning that if you want to take your chances with New gTLDs (New Generic Top Level Domains) then that's a whole different ball game that you need to familiarize yourself with before registering any domains, there are also a few threads about New gTLDs that you might want to read in order to be able to make more informed choices, but here are a few things you might want to keep in mind:

- Not all New gTLDs are the same as far as quality, popularity, and suitability.

- New gTLDs were primarily designed and priced to meet end user needs and demands and might not all be a practical choice for domainers.

- Most New gTLDs came out in 2014 in the first round that was opened to the general public and so you have to do some research to find the ones that have risen above the rest over the past few years.

- There might be another batch of New gTLDs released in the future and of course you might be able to find better domains if you are there right at the beginning.

- Keep in mind that the registries keep most of the better domains for themselves to sell directly to end users and so in effect they have become more like domainers themselves that hold large portfolios.

- Although registries try to keep the best domains for themselves, but there is still the rare chance that you might be able to hand register a reasonably good domain that might have fallen through the cracks and gone unnoticed, but nowadays this is getting more and more difficult and so you might be better off by looking in the drops or the aftermarket.

- Currently the value of the domain is incorporated in its renewal charges for most New gTLDs and although that might be okay for end users who just want one or two domains, but it's not very practical and sustainable for domainers to hold a large number of New gTLDs that have high renewal prices and so unless you are a high roller domainer that deals in million dollar domains it might be best to stay away from domains with high renewals because sooner or later you are going to end up dropping them.

- The best choices for domainers are the New gTLDs that they can get at low registration and low renewal charges and which the left of the dot and the right of the dot are perfect match for each other and that there is a natural correlation between them in the way that the domain looks and sounds.

- Keep in mind that many of the New gTLDs still have to prove themselves to be viable choices when it comes to being used by the general public and as such you might have to be able to hold on to them for several years before you see any interest even in the best of the domains in this category. That's why having domains with very low renewal charges is a very critical factor when it comes to New gTLDs.



If anyone has some more tips about registering New gTLDs please feel free to share them here but remember that you still need to abide by the thread rules, this is not about whether New gTLDs are better or worse than the older legacy extensions, but to help those who are interested in investing or collecting New gTLDs to be able to make wiser choices.

IMO

 

Tips on How to Hand Register Good Domains
1. smoke a joint of marijuana and drink jack
Daniels,do not stay Thirsty while registering domains

2. set your CC # as
auto pay
3.open your GD account and start typing and typing and click Check Out when done
4. Be patient and Pray
5. Repeat, repeat repeat

 

Re: Hand-registered domains.............

• Read industry journals to find future trends, pilot schemes, test ideas

Re: hand-registering in general.............

I focused the 1st half of 2019 on hand-reg
Result: 90% worthless
I focused the 2nd half of 2019 on drops
Result: Had a $1,000 inquiry last week on a $10 hand reg

 

That's actually good advice if it's meant as sarcasm,

Don't register domains if you are not in the right state of mind, and don't go overboard registering a bunch of domains thinking that you have discovered a treasure mine, make a list of all the domains that you have found to be available and reevaluate them over and over until you have shorten your list to just the best domains that stand out in that batch.

IMO

 

One way to evaluate your choices of keywords is to find out how many times a keyword or a combination of keywords has been searched for by others every month and also how many results there are for them in the major search engines. In either case always select the "Exact" option to get a more accurate data.

Google keyword planner is a good tool for this although you might have to be logged in to your account in order to use it, WordTracker is also a good too, there are many other websites that give you data about keywords that perhaps others can mention here if they have had good results with using them.

As you get more experienced you might be able to recognize certain domains that might have some inherent value even if they don't have good search and result numbers associated with them.

IMO

 

Thanks oldtimer...i'm an oldtimer too of sorts. I live in the US (Virginia Beach aka "757"), and have been hand registering domains for about two years now. What I do has a lot to do with my background and experience in business. I've worked in and around the financial services industries, the real estate and home building industries, the healthcare industry and the restaurant and food service. I've actually had the least amount of experience in the restaurant and food service industry, but it's so much fun I've carved out a niche in it. The first year I spent hand registering mostly new gTLD's in fields that I knew like; .loans, .golf and .clubs, .homes. I owned what I believe were some pretty good domains in each of these extensions but couldn't find the time to market/sell them to the outside world. Most of those domains have expired with the exception of .homes that I plan on sticking with for now. In year 2 I evolved into a .com guy, and 80 to 90% of my 1,000 domains are .coms.

I generally carve out niche idea's that I want to build a portfolio around. Think of it in terms of a builder/developer buying 12 adjoining lots in a particular development that has plans for 100 homes. My 12 homes will have many of the same features, but will have different amenities in order to attract a variety of buyers. And since I'm hand registering domains that cost no more than $10 each, I'll budget $120 for my development. An example of a restaurant and food service portfolio might include domains like: MissionBBQ.com, DominosPizza.com and RedLobster, etc. An example of a real estate and homes portfolio might hold; HiTechHomes.com, NewYorkHomes.com and ComfortHomes. I could go on and on, but I own at least a dozen niche specific portfolio's that have from 10 to 50 domains that I intend to "outbound" or target the specific industries they were purchased and intended for.

Finally, I recently learned about Geo specific domains and have a portfolio of "757" domains like Welcome757.com, 757Mortgage.com and Ocean757 etc. In about 30 domains that I paid $300 for, I've covered most of the industries that exist within the "757". As such, I plan on taking a similar idea to other regions of the US.

I've also learned recently that my domains fall in a price range of $250 to $1000, thus that's my sweet spot. I don't participate in auctions because they don't fit my agenda. Good Luck everyone, and thanks oldtimer for starting this thread.

 

Every line here makes sense to me now. Many people have advised me to register or acquire good quality names and I realized it late and now I'm cutting down the size of portfolio by dropping names that don't make sense.
Also I have started researching and reading few articles every day and I'm making slow progress every day.
I too bluntly advise newbies if their names are any good and helping them in anyway I can.
i'll only buy 1 name in a week or month but it should be worth holding.

 

Here is an example of two domains that I just hand registered today:

RighteousForce.com

and

RighteousForce.org


Lets all be Righteous!

 

Good Job Oldtimer....here are two domains that I just reg'd

WordVest.com and Wordinvestigator.com

Now I can tell friends and peers I'm a word investigator who works for WordVest. I've been wondering how to explain to non domainers (that's pretty much everyone else in the world) what I do for a living. I actually use to own a company called Inquisitor Investigations and my new gig fits the narrative

 

Still want mention, hand-reg is not something bad....for me, it is a less-risk play for junior player, hand-reg is kind of protection for your money(unless u reg too many), it give u a low-cost chance to play.....if u not go thru this cycle, and u spend big money to buy from the market...ur cost of mistake will much higher...

so, specially for newbie, hand-reg and sell and drop is something u better go through for a while before u plan to spend huge $.

on the other hand, if u skill enough like some member here, hand reg is kind of creative/rewardable experiense as well....the ROI is huge for right name...

so, why not hand-reg ?

 

whats your personal profit from handregs?

 

In this context, do we consider names we picked from deleted list on ED as handreg?

 

Frank you got upset when your real name was disclosed on the forum a few months ago, now you are here asking me for personal information.

We all are here for different reasons, I am more of a hobbyist and collector when it comes to domaining and as such am not aggressively pursuing profits like most other people here, domaining for me is a means of expressing myself more as an intellectual and activist than as an entrepreneur and it also helps keep my mind sharp at my old age. I do have sale Landers for my domains in the hopes that I can passively sell couple of domains here and there to help with renewals, but I haven't pursued selling domains in a serious way ever since I developed some disabilities due to having a heart attack and some other health issues a few years back. At this time I only want to be involved in the entertaining and fun part of the domaining by keeping a small portfolio to keep myself occupied, but in my condition I can do without all the stress and anxiety that is associated with running a full fledged business like some of the other people here are doing. The very first domain that I registered almost 20 years ago was GlobalReform.com , I originally registered that as a package which included the .net and .org versions too, but I only were able to hang on to the .com version over the years. I eventually like to create a website for GlobalReform.com so that I can put all my thoughts and ideas in one place. I am also considering forwarding most of the domains in my portfolio to this one in order to give it more exposure, that's why I rather be able to hang on to my domains as a collection instead of selling them.

Now that I was able to register RighteousForce.com and .org yesterday I am also thinking of making a website for it and putting an article or two on it to encourage everyone around the World to be more Righteous in their thoughts and actions specially now that the World is going true some dangerous times. Although I have many things that I like to do, but I am somehow limited by my health conditions, I might have to go for some kind of heart procedure in the near future, I am trying my best to get by with my daily life as it is getting more and more difficult due to getting older specially with my health conditions. I take refugee in domaining as it's the only thing that I have to keep me occupied considering that i can't take part in any physical activities or sports. So take it easy on an Oldtimer here and no more personal questions please.

And as I already said lets all be Righteous

 

That's all good stuff oldtimer. This may be a little personal too, but how's your sense of humor I think most of us can use a little more righteousness in our lives and maybe a lot more laughter. There are way more good things happening in the world than bad, but good news doesn't sell. Maybe our youth should be required to take a good news class, or just smile for no good reason I enjoy your commentary.....keep it coming

To stay on topiic I think I'll start working on a few more good news domains like DomainsthatMakeusLaugh.com Cheers!

 

My motto is:

Be Righteous and be Happy and help others to be Righteous and Happy too.

Now lets get back to discussing hand registering domains, I like to hear from some of the people who have managed to find some nice domains that were surprising to see were available.

 

Hand reg is not useless but it is not for everyone, newbies should stay away from hand reg because it is really very hard to be done right!

 

Well Newbies have to learn somehow, and hand registering a few domains might help them learn to think of better domains, hand registering could be a good exercise for your brain as long as you don't go overboard with how many domains you get, having a portfolio of 50 to 100 good domains is better than having a large collection of mediocre domains that can become frustrating to renew and manage.

In my opinion Newbies should aim for having a small portfolio of good domains and concentrate their efforts on upgrading the quality of their domains while keeping the overall size of their portfolio still the same.

Also it might be best to shorten the list of the domains that you are doing research on by evaluating and reevaluating it until you end up with a handful of the best ones and then pick two or three amongst those to register, then repeat this by coming up with a new batch of domains to do research on.

IMO

 

yes, actually I was very upset when Rob Monster from epik/com exposed my real name here at namepros without any proper reason just in order to compare me with the worst of all nazis who happens to share the same last name with me ( actually the most common name in germany).


And I was upset because he could only do so as I 'm a customer at epik/com
To me, that was a severe breach of privacy.

Maybe you can understand.



The reason I was asking you is related to this tweet from Mr Rick Schwartz:

 

Well Frank the whole point of making this thread is to be able to learn from the collective knowledge and experience of the many members who participate in the discussions here and not just one person.

IMO

 

Generally I would agree, but like with anything else practice makes perfect...albeit I'm far from perfect. One can sit on the sidelines and observe, but there's nothing like diving in head first and seeing if you can survive. btw, it's not for everybody, but if you think you can do it you probably can.

I've invested in stocks, real estate and my own businesses, and this is like investing in my own business. You know whether you're creative or not, and while others may try to convince you domaining is different, it really isn't

btw, everyone here on NP tried to tell me the renewal fees will kill me, but guess what...they didn't because you don't have to renew a single domain. Just read Rohit's post about Domaining in 2019. He not only hand reg's most of his domains, he also drops 80% each year. My biggest mistake was regging mostly new gTLD's, and that's not to say it was wrong, I just didn't have time to hold them for a potential payoff that may or may not come I believe Rohit said he's a .com guy that specializes in mostly high volume geo (niche) domains. Speaking of niche's, I'd highly recommend to anyone hand regging domains to stick with what you know. If you're a tech guy or girl, stick with tech, and Good Luck!

 

I have to say I do not believe in hand regs and I do not do them.

Then main reason is that english language is not my mother language, so I need to stick to strong english keywords, I simply can not get very "playful", which is something what natural speakers can do. And whey you do strong english keywords, other people are doinhg this usually as well - so you can not handreg them just like that. You have to either wait that someone will drop such name, or you have to bid on it on auctions. And once I get such name, I like to renew it years in advance so I do not loose it.

So not beying able to handreg might be a good thing, after all: in new gTLDs which I do, strong keywords will make most profits in 99% of cases (and they need to go well with extension as well, of course). Most "playful" things will not sell atm.

I admire people who are creating amazing brandables in .com - many of those can be handregged, particularly when they are connected to some new trends, and I am sure some of them can even sell well. But this is not a game for me, and I guess most people here should be also critical of their ability to handreg something reasonable. You need to understand that If you handreg 100 names in one evening, the chances are, nothing will be good after all.

Imo

 

Beware...this week I crossed over to the darker side. From being a budget limited hand regger I bought some domains on the drop.

It was just as satisfying to be honest. I enjoyed the thrill of racing to get them registered before someone beat me to it. I guess my future in domain name investing will be a little of both sides of the coin...in moderation of course.

I try to keep up to date with world news and the like and I am aware of technological advances even if I don't know what they are or how to spell them.

This is how one of my hand regging adventures began. I saw an article about how classic blue interiors were set to become even more popular than they are now. I checked to see whether there were any available domain names for classic blue in dot.com or dot.blue but nothing was available. I then tried using the keywords 'sky' and a combination of varying forms of 'blue'.

Still nothing, so I was about to give up but then the clever little algo robot suggested "Sky.Builders". I loved the name immediately and hand regged it for less than $12. I also have it hyphenated in dot.com for good measure.

It also made it to the top of my guesstimated appraisal valuation top 10 and still means that 7 out of my top 10 are not dot.coms.

The appraised GD value was $3550.

I know..I know..I need to start selling a few to back up my adventures with statistical.facts.com.

Enjoy your journey.