discuss What is your minimal domain value for expired .COMs to be worth registering?

[twiki]

I'm curious (yet again).

Many of us register expired .COMs (I do). When you prepare your selection, what is the minimal domain value you aim for?

And how do you establish it?

Thanks!

 

[golan]

Define "value"?

 

[twiki]

Define "value"?

Good point. Let's say the BIN price you are expecting to sell that domain for.

 

[Joe N]

Personally, I only buy lower priced names (i.e. $20 and under) if I expect to be able to sell them for at least 50 times the purchase price.

 

[twiki]

Personally, I only buy lower priced names (i.e. $20 and under) if I expect to be able to sell them for at least 50 times the purchase price.

It makes sense like that, cause you need to make a profit. At 1% market average sales per year, you'd be in the red if you paid more.

I only pay the reg fee for my names.

When I was just starting, I also took domains that were in xxx range, but after some time I realized the math didn't really check out. Today my bottom is 1.5K, but most names are listed with BINs above 2K. I sometimes get names at 1.2K but only the kind I expect to sell quick, where there's a lot of demand in that particular niche.

I think sale velocity is paramount, and competition as well.

You can have a good name but if that niche has scarce sales you'd end up not making profit overall. Conversely less valuable names (as per $ figure) but quickly flip-able in busy niches are a good deal. I only do inbound, but I believe you need to also hone your skills at outbound to improve that % rate. (wish I could finally break into outbound as well, but don't have a process there in place yet)

Another mistake I made when starting was underestimating / ignoring the competition. In certain niches there are good sales as in volume and sales history pricing, BUT everyone and their dog has a name listed there. It's so much sales noise that it's difficult to stand out from the crowd. Yet another thing to look for.

Checked your portfolio names at Dan, interesting list BTW.

 

[Joe N]

I've read some of your other posts where you discussed selling newly regged names at lower values until you recouped your initial investment. It's an interesting tactic. I suppose that strategy focuses more on the high volume sales niches you mentioned above.

I've never really taken a stab at those hotter niches (crypto, cannabis, etc) with large amounts of registrations, as I worry that anything hand regged at this point would be of too low quality to sell for even a few hundred. Would be interested in hearing more about your results with specific names.

Checked your portfolio names at Dan, interesting list BTW.

Ha ha, thanks! "Interesting" is a diplomatic choice of words.

My portfolio is quite a mixed bag. I've never focused on a niche, as I prefer scanning the lists and investing money where the value seems good and I think there's a reasonable chance to sell.

I've done a decent amount of outbound with positive results. It's a time investment, but certainly bumps up the sales numbers if you pick the right names and target the right companies/people.

 

[twiki]

I've read some of your other posts where you discussed selling newly regged names at lower values until you recouped your initial investment. It's an interesting tactic. I suppose that strategy focuses more on the high volume sales niches you mentioned above.

I've never really taken a stab at those hotter niches (crypto, cannabis, etc) with large amounts of registrations, as I worry that anything hand regged at this point would be of too low quality to sell for even a few hundred. Would be interested in hearing more about your results with specific names.


Ha ha, thanks! "Interesting" is a diplomatic choice of words.

My portfolio is quite a mixed bag. I've never focused on a niche, as I prefer scanning the lists and investing money where the value seems good and I think there's a reasonable chance to sell.

I've done a decent amount of outbound with positive results. It's a time investment, but certainly bumps up the sales numbers if you pick the right names and target the right companies/people.

Trust me, my own portfolio is, at least in its current state, a far more "interesting" mixed bag. Have some amazing names there, but others would stir that reaction: "What were you thinking....?"

I've spent too much in reg experiments. So far it doesn't look like I'm going to be in the green, but there's still plenty of time ahead as I did that in October. The problem is, to really test a manual reg strategy you need lots of names cause otherwise the sales % doesn't allow you to truly test the theory. It makes sense in this line to sell as much as you can at market prices, say $100-$200 max, in fact $100 seems to be the sweet spot. You cover your investment from the higher % sales ratio then you have time to try selling the rest at retail and maybe renew some. But you have to start early with this, simply to make sure you've paid for the reg lot.

Anyway, it appears in the future I will only do scarse manual regs when I do find something quite interesting, or none. Sticking to my best ones.

About your portfolio - your shortest, longest names and .net are probably less valuable. But others are quite good. Pricing seems to be right which is the first thing I observe in a portfolio - tells me whether they know what they are doing or not. You definitely got it right, although here and there I might differ but you know, everybody would do that.

 

[Moneta]

20$ sounds great how many You sell for month ? @Joe Nichols

 

[Joe N]

20$ sounds great how many You sell for month ? @Joe Nichols

How many $20 names, or how many domains in general?

I sold five names in 2019 from a portfolio of about 150. Those were all inbound. If I had been more active on the outbound front then I may have been able to add a couple more.

 

[Joe N]

Trust me, my own portfolio is, at least in its current state, a far more "interesting" mixed bag. Have some amazing names there, but others would stir that reaction: "What were you thinking....?"

I've spent too much in reg experiments. So far it doesn't look like I'm going to be in the green, but there's still plenty of time ahead as I did that in October. The problem is, to really test a manual reg strategy you need lots of names cause otherwise the sales % doesn't allow you to truly test the theory. It makes sense in this line to sell as much as you can at market prices, say $100-$200 max, in fact $100 seems to be the sweet spot. You cover your investment from the higher % sales ratio then you have time to try selling the rest at retail and maybe renew some. But you have to start early with this, simply to make sure you've paid for the reg lot.

Anyway, it appears in the future I will only do scarse manual regs when I do find something quite interesting, or none. Sticking to my best ones.

About your portfolio - your shortest, longest names and .net are probably less valuable. But others are quite good. Pricing seems to be right which is the first thing I observe in a portfolio - tells me whether they know what they are doing or not. You definitely got it right, although here and there I might differ but you know, everybody would do that.

True that you would probably need to hand reg a large amount of names to really test the theory. Based on my own experience, I still don't think I'd be able to sell one in ten names at $100 in order to recoup costs. The demand for the names just doesn't seem to be there.

Additionally, I think I'd have trouble finding that many buy-worthy hand reg names in short order.

Agreed that my longer names and .net names are the more speculative ones that I own. The long ones usually have some outbound targets, and I end up dropping them after a year or two if there's no interest. I'm trying to mostly stay away from those now.

The .net names have sold surprisingly well with a small sample size. Enough to have made some money on them. I suspect there was some good luck involved, though, and I'll be letting all but the best ones drop this year.

 

[twiki]

The .net names have sold surprisingly well with a small sample size. Enough to have made some money on them. I suspect there was some good luck involved, though, and I'll be letting all but the best ones drop this year.

I've had the same with .org. For some wild reason, .orgs have brought me this year more money than .coms although priced high. Have absolutely no idea why, doesn't make much sense but it is how it is.

Edit: I'm thinking now, maybe my price for .coms was too low - and this might spook some buyers thinking it's a scam. Found no other explanation.

Edit 2: Another thought. When you look at a .net priced say $895, that looks alright. But when you look at a .com priced like that, a buyer might think it's worthless because every other premium domain is in the thousands. (they often have no clear idea what the proper value is)

Never thought at it from this angle. Guess I'm going to up my pricing for most xxx to $1000 minimum.

Edit 3: GoDaddy prices all my domains in this category (xxx) from $1050 to 1350. Well, they might know something in this case.

 

[BrandPlease]

IMO

manual reg strategy you need lots of names cause otherwise the sales

You would probably make more $ selling your list, the research has value - & the time it takes to produce the list has value.
Like Joe said, the market for "not previously" registered names isn't there.

Another option - leads to the same "visual quality" of the names - but have link juice and traffic. Expiring names with high DA/TF. An ok name with traffic id a better than ok name - no traffic at all it's just ok.

Hope that made sense