Dynadot

opinion Why I believe that 150 Million domains should be deleted!

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Hello everyone,

This is just my opinion and we can always discuss openly as a group as long as the discussion is healthy and constructive.

I have started to go indepth into the expiring names everyday. With that, I mean scanning manually more than 5,000 names, and go indepth into more than 500 of these.
When I go in-depth, I analyse various things. One of them are the domains that are taken in other extensions. This is where it gets very interesting. I see at least 50 of these names are taken in multiple other extensions (sometimes even 20 extensions), and all of this happened based on discount codes and no real usage or investment rationale.

How did I come up with that?

I have seen names, where the first registration was a for .com or a .net, and were done by a small office use or even sometimes a programmer that created his own protocol and used a URL for API calling whatever. Lets take an example to make it easier. I work on a college project and within that project I hand register the domain www.BazabizoProtocol.com. I start to use it, and I renew the domain because that project was dear to me and just want to keep it. Then the magic happens. A registrar gives away $1 registrations for a certain TLD. Lets assume that that happened in April during any given year. Then someone uses a batch crawler and finds all aged .com domains that havent been registered in that TLD (lets assume .net). He/She goes ahead and hand registers that domain for a $1. At a mass scale this happens for millions of names every year. This is not the problem.

But this is not a problem, he/she will just let it expire after a year if it doesn't sell. Correct?

No my friend. The worse part happens, when later in that year another TLD (lets assume .org) gives another $1 coupon for hand registrations. Now it becomes more tempting to register BazabizoProtocol.org as based on automated crawlers it has 2 extensions taken and 1 active website. This cycle happens then for multiple TLDs, and before the year ends, there are like 5 TLDs with BazabizoProtocal taken. Now the guy that initially registered BazabizoProtocol.net would take a quick look and find that its now taken in 5 extensions, and that he has it in a strong extension (relative to the other ones). Then he renews it. Then the cycle continues. Once a domain has 3-5 active extensions registered, it becomes a good bait for people to register the name in other TLDs with coupon codes. At least 10% of the names that have 5+ extentions are a result of this crappy cycle.

So, what is the fix?

There are 2 things to consider when you want to hand register a name. Don't do my own mistakes. I hand registered a lot of shit throughout my 7 years of domaining. I lost more than $40K of hard earned money into this (including 2 renewal cycles). Yes I did stupid mistakes, and I owe it to the community to share my mistakes.
1) If you will register a name based on other extensions, then dive deeper and look at the active businesses behind these. If they are all parked for sale, then there is nothing but a crappy cycle as I mentioned above. Same applies for Expiring auctions. I see some people bidding on names based on other extensions and they will sit on these names forever! I personally believe that Mike Mann's business has been doing that mistake for years. When you operate at scale, you have to rely on automation. However, in this business, automation could literally kill your gains or operating margin!

2) If you want to register a name based no a future trend. Make sure, you register something that really will have value over time. You will need to pay the carrying costs for some years. Don't come with intentions like "I must hand register 10 names today". Never do that. Have a plan, that embodies smart work, and let results become an eventual conclusion.

The only beneficiary from our mistakes here are the registrars. They are not doing anything unethical. They rely on historical data that shows growth following a discounted reg. promotion. Our mistakes create taht cycle. Lets not be a part of it. Lets cut the loop, and leave BazabizoProtocol.net available to register forever, even if .net registrations are $0.01!

I hope that I was able to provide clarity here.
Enjoy domaining!
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
very rightly said by you" in this business, automation could literally kill your gains or operating margin!"

Doing some manual search - looking for actual end-users using that keyword as suppose to extension in which it's reserved is really going point.

Thanks for sharing.
 
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I wish we had just stuck with the TLD's
Things were a lot simpler 20 years ago

In many respects, the registrars make a living off domainers buying odd extensions.
 
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TLDs taken is an important factor but not one investors should pay attention to for names at a low price range. .coms with many extensions taken that drop and are available for $8 are most likely worthless because of what you describe. Automation can be effective but it needs to take more factors into account, an important one being the total number of related(longer) domains registered. For example, both "smartservices" and "cscdigitalbrandservices" are registered in about 100 tlds. A fast way to recognize that "smartservices" is much better than "cscdigitalbrandservices" is to look at the number of related domains registered (either in .com or in all tlds).
 
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TLDs taken is an important factor but not one investors should pay attention to for names at a low price range. .coms with many extensions taken that drop and are available for $8 are most likely worthless because of what you describe. Automation can be effective but it needs to take more factors into account, an important one being the total number of related(longer) domains registered. For example, both "smartservices" and "cscdigitalbrandservices" are registered in about 100 tlds. A fast way to recognize that "smartservices" is much better than "cscdigitalbrandservices" is to look at the number of related domains registered (either in .com or in all tlds).
I do agree with you,
However, you have to look at active pages and not only that. Because there are many names that are also been registered based on automation for that reason. Take this name in the drop list today www.integrityH.com That was registered based on that factor as well.
I believe diving deeper pays off. Not everyone has time for it, but it does pay off! People have to invest time into that if they want to register useful names :)
 
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I wish we had just stuck with the TLD's
Things were a lot simpler 20 years ago

In many respects, the registrars make a living off domainers buying odd extensions.

It's a super easy fix. Just stop buying odd extensions. In the long run a portfolio of odd extensions will be a money loser more often than not. (There are rare exceptions.)

I have developed a habit of using search filters at marketplaces and auction houses. I filter by .COM only. It cuts down my search time by half, and prevents the temptation of buying odd extensions.
 
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Thanks for your in depth post @bazabizo which I hope will get well read.

To me the message is not to let any one factor alone be what decides whether a domain name should be registered or not. Yes, many TLDs registered might be a positive sign, but as you point out, it might not, especially if all by a few registrants and unused, or nearly unused. Similarly with search volume, advertiser stats, automated appraisals, past sales well in the past, companies with similar names, and so much more. No one thing by itself means that much.

In the expired stream it is easy to fall into the trap of bidding because something is taken in many other TLDs, or is aged, or sold 14 years ago for something, or someone or something else is bidding it up. But really none of those necessarily mean much. Sure, I can see some use things like age or appraisals or TLDs as filters, but don't stop there. There seem tons of aged names dropping daily with no real value.

Ultimately is the domain name valuable and special and unique, or nearly so, in some way is the question. Of course deciding that is the hard part.:xf.wink:.

Thanks again for kicking off the discussion with a well written opening post.

Bob

PS I agree that if there were not coupon discounts, special short term deals, and high first year discounting in long run would be better for domain investing. That said, it is hard to resist using those opportunities to save money!
 
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Take this name in the drop list today www.integrityH.com That was registered based on that factor as well.
I agree that manually looking into names is best and pays off but with hundreds or thousands of possibly valuable domains available each day it might be hard to be on top of everything, so you have to automate it to some degree. The better you automate it, the more time you have to manually check each of the prospects. Regarding integrityH.com, a couple of factors you can add to address that issue is number of related domains registered starting and ending with that phrase. In this case, a strong indicator that integrityH.com is worthless is the fact that there are no domains, in any tld, that end with "integrityH". Number of related domains registered is equal to number of related domains registered starting with the phrase, which is unlikely to result in a valuable domain.
 
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IMHO automated searching using filters simply reduces the number of names for me to go through to select the ones I want. The ones I want stand out to me as having a genuine and strong business use case. If there is no business use case there is no end use case, at least for anything worth selling. If there is no end use case there is no no case for buying in the first place.

All this talk about rankings, seo, other tlds, all the other stuff, are, to me, just words. Empty words at that.

Many thousands of domains were, at some point, useful for a specific purpose by a specific user. I have hand registered several myself, in the full knowledge they will be of no further use, therefore not worth the bother of trying to sell, once the use I put them to is no longer useful to me. "integrityH" mentioned above looks to be a similar example to my own projects from the past. There may even be more to come.

I couldn't care less what the automated valuers try to tell me. If I cannot see the business case for that domain, I ain't even spending the 1p (1c to those of you on the other side of the pond) special offer price on it. If I can, but only when I can, see that case I will begin on the rest of the somewhat tedious process, which suddenly becomes very worthwhile and far less tedious.
 
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The key inquiry is whether someone will actually buy this domain from you, rather than worrying about the actual number of other extensions registered. If you buy a non-brandable name like IntegrityH.com solely for the purpose of squatting based on the number of other extensions, then you should make sure before buying it that at least one person, either owning one of the other extensions or someone you found doing a google search, is possibly going to be frothing at the mouth to obtain the .com version. If the .com.mx (mexico) extensions are taken and stuff then that doesn't necessarily mean the person wants the .com.

You can often tell the difference between someone who is just a domainer squatting on an extension and an end user who actually wants the domain. First tell tale sign is if the domain in the other extension is listed at any marketplace, which you can tell on expireddomains. If the site isn't developed then it could be either an end user or a domainer; however, the registrar can often be a giveaway.. domainers like namesilo, epik, dynadot, sometimes namecheap, etc. If it's at godaddy and not developed then it could be either a domainer or an enduser. In that situation I think it's not definite enough to purchase the domain if you can't tell anything else about it, and if it's worthless as a brandable due to being a bad name. Another thing to check is if the different extensions have the same creation date, that would indicate that the same person registered more than one extension.

The more important factor than just the number of other extensions registered is how good the actual name is in addition to the number of other extensions taken. Sometimes if you register a good name that is only taken in one or two extensions then in 2-3 years, you will magically have other extensions taken over time because surprise, the name was actually good and the new people wish they could have the .com but they had to settle for the .net.
 
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Thanks everyone for your opinions
Learnt some interesting stuff here
Keep them coming :)
 
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Glad you're seeing something worthwhile, @bazabizo because I'm seeing lots of armchair philosophy without basis in fact, barring a couple of notable exceptions.

Hey guys, get out there and try to sell this stuff. I'm not saying it's easy but talking about sales never sold anything. And it's not that hard, either. Try digging holes or picking potatoes for a living. Sitting in front of a computer or using a smartphone is very, very, easy.

But that makes shirking off to chat about what you should be doing even easier. And doing what you should be doing isn't always as straightforward as we'd like to make out.

So do something. If you find time to come back and talk about it, great. But may I gently and respectfully suggest that if you do get the success you'll be a little bit too wrapped up in repeating the success and the quality of life that implies to be bothered too much about the talking.
 
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I didn't mean to imply that people "should" focus on an extension squatting business, I am sure you can do fine just selling brandables or traffic-based domains. Now to the point of the OP, it's possible that on a macro scale these algorithms might be able to make money by buying the domains that have a lot of extensions registered without having to research anything else about the name. If they get 120 .com domains at godaddy at closeout that each have 8-12 extensions registered, even if they are "crap" names, that's 2400 dollars to buy those, but if even one sells in a year then it could still be profitable. Maybe they have data that shows a high sell through rate for those types of domains. It is funny though if often these algorithms could be tricked into purchasing some domains that no one in their right mind would want, just because other people that came before were also tricked into buying other extensions. I do think that they could hone their algorithms a little more instead of just registering everything with 8 or more extensions, if in fact, that is what they are doing.
 
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1. Losing money when you start out is common in every business, its part of education. Those that do not give up usually end up figuring things out and recouping their investment.

2. Lots of names are registered because of someone else's reported sale. Someone reads that BashtianBooks sold for 5000 and they go register 50 names with the word bashtian in it.

3. I do not pay attention to how many other extensions a name is taken in. It is more important to see if the other extension is developed.

4. Did the domain once have an active site and is there many backlinks is more important for me.

5. Never buy a name because someone with a similar name is asking 50k for it. This is as silly is thinking that your HP printer is worth a million bucks because someone on ebay is asking a million bucks for their HP printer. Only what something sells for is relevant and only if your name is almost the same (singular / plural).

6. Better gauge than other extensions is the name itself. If you want to buy XYZDomain and you see there are 300 sites with XYZdomainNY, XYZDomainChicago that is more valuable than if there is few sites like that but XYZDomain is taken in 100 extensions.

Domaining is a style, there are many ways to make money, I just listed my way of looking at things.
 
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Thanks for your in-depth post @bazabizo. I agree with your point that you need to do little hard-smart work to get success in domaining.
 
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Today I’ve seen one of the names reaching 100+ on godaddy just based on that
No meaning
No extensions used
Such a shame
Just 1 person used automation tools
Then others who either did the same or just outbidded him as they know nothing about domaining and FOMO the bid :)
 
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