The Race to $1250 - WirelessRouters.us

Tomorrow I'll be starting a race between domain flipping and domain development to see which one will net me $1250 first. The domain in question: WirelessRouters.us.

Granted, the race is a little skewed towards flipping as the name is up for auction at Bido tomorrow with a Bido Price of $1250. Now, obviously a developed site will be much easier to flip, so if it doesn't sell tomorrow, then the race will be to see if my development, marketing and SEO skills, along with owning a great keyword domain, will result in not just a profitable minisite, but a full blown ecommerce site with a goal of earning $1250 in just it's first 90 days.

So let's set some ground rules:

The Rules of the Race

1. I would be happy with selling WirelessRouters.us at it's BidoPrice, but it's not really a "net gain" of $1250 as I have sunk costs in the name. That said, development must net $1250, not gross. However, I will not be counting my fixed hosting costs or my personal time against the gross. I think this is fair. Why? Because I think everyone would agree that a recurring revenue stream is better than a one time sale, but the sale is inherently "easier" from a labor perspective as well as capital outlay. But feel free to disagree in the comments.


2. I will not be marketing the name at $1250 once the site development begins, but I will still consider offers. They'll just need to take into consideration the work that's gone into the development. If a sale occurs at $1250 or greater prior to earning $1250 via development, then flipping "wins".


3. I will not use this blog to link directly to the site. Though honestly that would not be a major win for the site :)


4. There is essentially an inconsequential amount of type in/existing traffic so the development and marketing efforts will be entirely responsible for the success of the site.


5. Failure to reach the goal will result in public humiliation. Reaching the goal via either reselling or developing will hopefully get some much needed attention for the .US extension and product .US domains in particular.


6. Revenue from the site can be from "any means necessary", not just in sales. No, this isn't some trick to make development easier, but I want to be clear that I'll be counting all revenue sources as a part of the total earned from development.

I'd love to hear votes of encouragement, suggestions, etc... but if you think I'm doomed to failure, you can voice your opinion too. Direct the feedback to http://twitter.com/UtterDomain. Let the race begin!

Domain Name Suffixes (and Prefixes) 101 - Shop, Store, Direct, 101, 247, etc

Search through some Google and Bing results and you'll notice a few things right off the bat:

1. .COM represents a significant portion of the results
2. There are very few exact match domain names in your results (as a percentage of the results), but instead exact match Page Title and URL strings and partial match domain names make up the majority of the results.
3. A surprising number of exact match domain names are NOT ranked number 1, though they often rank on page 1.

You'll also find a growing trend: developed domains using suffixes and prefixes such as Shop, Store, Direct, Heaven, World, Blog, 101, 247 and a variety of others all rank fairly well.

Let's look at some examples. Do the following queries in Google and Bing.

Handbag - Google #1 spot is HandbagHeaven. Bing is Handbag.com
Entertainment Centers - Google and Bing #1 spot is BuyEntertainmentCenters
Purse - 3 of the top 5 spots at Google are Purse+Suffix
Rugs - Tons of suffix names (and even Rugs-Direct) in the top 10 results.
Mortgages - Mortgage101.com is in the top 3 at Google and #1 at Bing

Now, how many people shop for +Heaven, +World, Buy+, +Blog, +Shop, +Store, +101, +Pro? Very few is the answer. So does that make them worthless? Absolutely not!

Sure, things like "NFL Shop" or "Package Store" are obviously highly searched, but you can throw those outliers out for this research. Without having specific knowledge of the search engine algorithms, it's pretty clear that owning "premium" suffix and prefix versions of highly searched keywords can be quite successful if developed. But some things to watch out for:

1. Stick with .com
2. SEO and development are critical. Domain age also helps, so look for GoDaddy drop auctions and cheap aftermarket listings.
3. Resale value is going to be heavily based on traffic and revenue, not based strictly on exact match search volume.
4. There are a lot of regfee names out there if you look carefully, but these "premium" domain suffix and prefix combinations are often taken... which I think is part of the reason why Google and Bing weight them so heavily. They aren't exact match, but they appear to be given some significant weight.
5. Stick with premiums. That means don't go off and register several hundred Keyword + "246.com" domains or "Inexpensive" + Keyword.com. It's just not worth it. Numbers will likely get fewer click-throughs anyway due to lack of trust with the user, so stick with the best. Choose your prefixes carefully, too. The more irrelevant the words in front of your primary keyword are, the harder it will be to rank.

Now, I'm not going to tell you don't buy exact match domains. I love exact match domains. There are lots of advantages to having the exact match name, but if you do your research, do the necessary development and pick your prefixes and suffixes correctly, you can find some hidden gems available for registration (or for very cheap on the aftermarket). Just don't go out and buy hundreds of them in the hopes of flipping them. You'll just be flushing your money away.

Good luck!

Response to Rick - Cultivate Value in your Domains

I tried posting this comment directly to Rick Schwartz's blog post, but it said it couldn't be posted. I guess I rambled too much. In his great post he talks about trying to connect and engage the faceless type-in visitors to his many premium generic domains. I like Rick's posts and he's got a great business sense so I don't think he would disagree with this in the slightest. I'm just surprised he hasn't already taken these steps with the domains he talks about.

So here is my response to his post (with an addendum):

Maybe, just maybe... all those type in visitors are looking for a well built site with lots of useful information and content related to the subject matter. When they come to your blog instead or when they see a parked page, they go someplace else. They don't click on your links because they don't trust you. Why should they? They don't stick around because you aren't what they were looking for. People typing in egold.com will quickly realize you aren't e-gold.com, and leave.

The solution is development and partnerships. You don't even have to care about homemade products to build and manage a site where people can sell their own homemade products. Heck, you don't even have to know how to develop a site, just out source it, partner with someone, whatever it takes.

I am tempted to put up for sale signs on all my undeveloped sites, too (like others have mentioned). But to me that's admitting defeat. You're saying that the name is only really valuable/profitable in someone else's hands... if you liked the name enough to buy it, why not build it? If there's value there, cultivate it!

Now, if it's a reg fee name, and you are flipping it to the next person who happens across it and wants the name, then putting up for sale signs makes more sense. If you're a speculator in a new TLD or acquired names in bulk, then development may not make sense. But that's not the kinds of names I'm talking about here. The names Rick owns are worth tens of thousands of dollars undeveloped, if not more. That was my point, but if your cost of acquisition is a fraction of the cost of development, then I'll just make these two points:

- Understand that you are leaving money on the table by not developing the names. If that's cool with you, then best of luck to you.
- Realize that without development, the extension or term you are speculating in will be very slow to grow to it's full potential. ccTLDs are becoming hot commodities because serious business owners are using those extensions to build their sites, not because of all the great parked pages on the premium keywords in that extension.