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!

My 5 Best Domain Purchases in 2009

This is kind of a scary post to write, because I'm shamefully behind on developing my portfolio (look for a New Year's Resolution post about that soon!) and I'm sure many people will get a good chuckle out of my purchases and my lack of production with these sites. But this post is for me. To document my results for the year, my feelings at this point about what I've picked up and to hopefully start a discussion of what other people are most proud of picking up this year themselves. Without further ado, here's my top 5 list of names acquired either via "the aftermarket". I'll not plug my amazing hand registering skills here, but I may do a separate post on my best hand registered names of the year if you all are interested.

5. .IN Geo's - This is a difficult one to put on the list as it's not just one deal that I'm proud of, but the total number of high quality names I've been able to acquire at really great prices. To sum up - I've got 25 US State .in's (Colorado.in, Tennessee.in, NorthCarolina.in, etc.), all the Canadian province's (and most territories), about 60% of the US cities with over 100k population and a huge number of popular destinations like Gatlinburg, Williamsburg, Gettysburg, Hilton Head, etc. etc., about 50% of the major cities in Canada and the UK along with major destinations around the world. Over 600 names in total. My total cash outlay has been in the low five figures with over 100 of those domains acquired in the aftermarket. My favorite? Atlanta.in for less than $1k. Expect to see a lot out of our Vocav.com platform in the next year as we start to power up these sites.

4. SpaGetaway.com - This was my highest single domain purchase at the time I picked up via a GoDaddy drop auction. The search numbers aren't amazing, but it has huge development potential. Spa listings, booking services and travel accommodations means this domain will be a big earner in the years to come. Total price paid was $893.

3. BirthdayCards.info - This isn't so much a purchase as a drop catch, but as this was a recent capture, it's fresh in my mind as a great value for the money. The keyword phrase "Birthday Cards" has huge exact search volume, and the monetization options are really broad. Yes, it's a low dollar transaction in most cases, but there are subscription services, bulk orders and related services such as flowers and gifts that go perfectly with this domain. I'm really excited about building this name out. The best part? I picked this up using GoDaddy's backordering service with essential no competition. Total outlay was less than $30 for this great domain.

2. FunnyVideos.TV - Again, the most recent transactions come to mind as this was yet another new acquisition. This highly searched keyword phrase fits the extension perfectly and there's plentiful content in this category. The real question I have is monetization, but that will come with traffic. FunnyVideos.TV was purchased using my favorite auction site - Bido.com - for a whopping $111. Oh, and there are no premium renewals fees for this great keyword .TV domain.

1. TechCritics.com - This is my "Crush it" project that will be monopolizing my time in 2010. You may have heard me drop hints as to my new blog site via Twitter - well, this is it. It'll be launching very soon and I'm really excited about the possibilities of this name. The purchase agreement won't let me disclose the purchase price, but it was a fair price considering it's potential, but more than most "domain investors" would have paid. There will be more posts about TechCritics.com in the future, so stay tuned.

Honorable mention: VideoEffects.com - This is still my single most expensive single domain purchase (just under $3,000), but I knew the domain was not a name I was going to flip for big profits. I was buying it as an end user and so I see the value in this transaction as a long term investment. It may well be that this turns out to be my best purchase of the year, but it will take time to capitalize on it. VideoEffects.com was also purchased via GoDaddy's Drop Auctions.

So now, you get to decide. Which one my purchases was best?

I'd love to hear from you about your favorite purchases this year. You can post them in comments, blog about them or just tweet them to http://twitter.com/UtterDomain.

The 1K Rule - Keyword Domain Investing

A couple of weeks ago, I posted up my Two Strikes, You're Out guidelines for domain investing. In those guidelines, I touched on Keywords, but now we are going to drill into what really makes a good keyword domain. And while you are free to draw the line as far as quality of the keywords you want to invest in anywhere you want, my rule of thumb is what I like to call the 1K Rule.

The 1K Rule is this: For an exact match .COM domain to be worth my time, the keywords must have at least 1000 exact searches per month and $1 Average CPC according to the Google Adwords Keyword tool. And by exact, I mean, changing the combobox for "Match Type" to exact. Now, this rule is more like a formula than an exact figure. So, a keyword that has, say, a CPC of $5, may interest me if it gets several hundred exact searches per month. Conversely, a keyword that only has an average CPC of 25 cents will need to have several thousand exact searches to grab my attention. The formula, as it were, would look something like this:

Number of Exact Searches X Average CPC >= $1,000

And the 1K Rule doesn't just apply to exact match .COM domains. When I look at, say, call to action names like "BuyMensWatches.com", I'll look at the keyword "Mens Watches" as well as exact searches on "Buy Mens Watches". If the exact phrase [Buy Mens Watches] doesn't reach my 1K limit, then I'll need to justify the purchase by looking at the searches on "Mens Watches". I tend to value brandables and alternative extensions at no more than 10% of the exact match and sometimes significantly less. So before I would register BuyMensWatches.com, the term "Mens Watches" would need at least 10,000 exact searches at an average CPC of $1 in order to interest me. In a similar fashion, exact match .TV and .info's generally don't interest me unless the keywords reach 50,000 exacts at $1 CPC. With .info, I may occasionally register a name with fewer exacts or lower CPC, but only because the cost of registration is so low.

One factor that I don't put much weight into is the number of pages found doing a Google Search on the term (either broad searches or with quotes). You'll often hear people promote their domains using something like "There are 100 million Google search results for the phrase Breakfast Sausages. So buy BreakfastSausages.com." Domain valuation services like Estibot also seem to put considerable weight on having lots of search results. But to me, I like knowing that there's less competition for a term as it makes it easier for me to rank. So if there are 20,000 exact global searches for "Nassua Flights", but less than 100,000 results in Google for "Nassau Flights", then I feel pretty good about my chances to rank "NassuaFlights.com".

Different extensions, different call to actions (for example, I favor "Buy" something, to "Get" something) and the relevance they have with the keyword (for example, I don't like product .TV's) all factor in to determining if the domain is a strong keyword domain. Exact searches matter most, and average CPC should be considered as well, but don't put too much weight into Google Search results for the term, as it can actually be a positive when you go to develop the domain.

I hope my 1K Rule helps you make better decisions about domain investing. If you think my numbers are way off or if you have any questions, feel free to fire me a tweet at http://twitter.com/UtterDomain

Alternate Extensions Strike Back

After our poll results from earlier in the week showed that .net is favored a full 3rd of the time by domainers looking to develop keyword domains, I did some searching to find how well alternative extensions are doing in search results. Now, I don't know of a scientific way of doing this as the percentage of developed and ranked alternative extensions are a small fraction of the .com base, so the results are sure to be skewed. I decided to just check anecdotally looking at both common search phrases and "trending topics" to see how well the various alternative extensions were representin'. I only looked at first page rankings and did a random sampling of terms from various "top search query" sites. I also focused on Google but future posts will discuss rankings on other search engines.

Let's start with some good news:

Cyber Monday

• CyberMonday.net is 3rd - really second as CyberMonday.com has the first two entries.


• CyberMonday.fm is 5th below wikipedia and also below the news results. Nice result for a .fm!

Mortgage Calculator

• MortgageCalculator.org is #2, but #3 mortgage-calc.com has two entries with the same meta data but two different pages. Impressive.


• MortgageCalculator.net is next, right after news results? Pushing news results a bit much aren't we?

Science Fair Project

• All-Science-Fair-Projects.com should get a special award for being #1 in ranking and in the number of dashes!


• A couple of .org's ranking in 2nd and 3rd place and another in 6th - likely due to educational slant of the term?


• ScienceFairProject.VirtualAve.net is 5th

Santa Claus

• SantaClaus.net is 4th right after the "business listings" for Santa Slaus. Classic


• NORADSanta.org is 5th for the official NORAD tracking site.

Now the bad apples:

• Tiger Woods: none


• Tom Brokaw Accident: zip


• What does my name mean: zilch


• Currency Converter: nada

Conclusions

• Well, the first conclusion is, .org and .net are by far the most represented in search results of all the alternative extensions, but they are also the most likely alternative extensions to be developed.


• Having names like BlackFriday.info and CyberMonday.fm show up on the first page of results for major keywords shows that it's possible to rank just about anything


• Trending topics and news stories tended to favor .com


• Similarly, keyword relevance in the domain name (even if it was a subdomain) seemed to play a large role, particularly for alternative extensions.

I found this exercise quite interesting and will be following up with more posts along these lines whether you like it or not, but I'd love to hear your feedback at @UtterDomain.

Two Strikes, You're Out

I have a fairly basic thought process when it comes to domain names. It works like this: How many strikes does the name have against it? The guidelines below are what I use to determine the quality of a domain name. In most cases, failing any two of these criteria will immediately cause the name to go into the circular file (ie. the trash can).

• Extension - if it's not .COM (or for those focused on a specific country, your desired country code extension), consider this your first strike. Very simple. If the extension is not one of the top 10 extensions then this is often strike two as well. The only thing that will save it is if the extension is is somehow relevant to the keywords. For example, I own a couple of .WS names. Not many. Everything else about the name must be incredibly strong, and the extension has to fit. A great example is my Themes.ws which is clearly for Web Site Themes.


• KeyWords - There's nothing wrong with a brandable or call to action name. Okay, well, technically there is. If you are going brandable, it's a strike. If you've been paying attention then you know that going with a brandable or call to action type names means you should own the best extension, or else choose a different brand. This is not a post about how to find good keywords or how to determine how valuable or popular your keywords are, but the general rule of thumb is "Exact Match Searches" using Google's Adword Keyword Tool, and if that number is 0, then your keywords suck. But it's just a general rule :)


• Dashes and Numbers - Again, there is plenty of opportunity for dashes and certain numbers (I like 101's for example), but they must be with strong keywords and use .COM. Are you following this so far? I personally include IDN's in this list as well, but others prefer them if they are the proper IDN characters. So be it.


• Concept - If I can't immediately picture in my brain what I would build on the site, I don't want to own it. If the picture is clear to me, I should be able to make it clear to a potential buyer or, as a developer, to my audience.


• Monetization - Many people only look at the CPC figures in Google's Keyword Tool. It's helpful, but it's not the only factor I use to determine if there's a way to monetize the domain. In fact, in many cases I've bought names specifically because the CPC figures were very low. Why? Because I had other plans to monetize the name that were more lucrative then pay per click ads. If the way to profit isn't clear from the outset, it doesn't mean I won't find an opportunity to monetize it down the road, but it's a big, big strike against it.


• Length - Shorter is almost universally better. I'll only ignore this case if the keywords are incredibly popular. For example I own OuterBanksVacationRentals.us. That's a mouthful and a .US, but the keywords get as many as 100,000 exact searches over the summer months, so I forgive it it's great length.

I have a couple of rules that I also apply that are immediate disqualifiers, for example random misspellings, TM issues and general decency. For example Sharking.info was dropped this week and I had no interest in any of the varieties of Sharking topics (both with the fishing varieties and with the "de-pantsing" variety).

So let's look at some examples:

Free-Offers.info - This is a name that was just running through GoDaddy's Drop Auction site. The keywords, monetization and concept are all great, but the name suffers two strikes: It's not .com, and it has a dash. With .info, that's not always bad because .info is popular in Germany and Germany is famous for it's love of dashes, but I couldn't pull the trigger on this one. But rules are made to be broken. I recently picked up Paris-France.info when it dropped. Again, critical thinking is required when making purchases, but some names just scream out at you, and that's what happened with Paris-France.info.

GrapeJelly.TV - I just about reg'd this name for a fun project I was working on because the keywords are memorable (even though I was using it more as a brand), the concept in my head was there, the extension gave it one strike, and the monetization gave it the second. It was a fun concept, but the monetization was neither in selling or advertising grape jelly and no other scheme came to mind. If you know how you would develop and monetize GrapeJelly.TV, then by all means, register it!

LeatherBags101.com - Great Keywords, .com, Affiliate sales and advertisers would be simple enough to monetize, but its two strikes are the 101 and I just don't have a clear picture of how I would make an informational/101 type site about Leather Bags. Maybe that's a silly reason - maybe there's plenty of informational content that could be developed about leather bags, but I just didn't have the vision for it and that's enough of a reason not to plunk down $7 bucks for a registration.

These rules are my rules. I hope they are helpful but you have to find your rules and know how many strikes you are willing to live with in your domain portfolio. I'd love to hear your feedback at http://twitter.com/UtterDomain

Are Alternative Extensions Even an Alternative?

I posted this poll up a little earlier as I have couple of names I'd like to develop where I own multiple extensions but I don't own the .com. For example, if you own the .net and the .org, which one do you develop? I know, many of these decisions depend on the name itself, but it doesn't hurt to ask:

http://twtpoll.com/3fwrlt




And while it's early yet, the results so far are kind of disheartening. How have we gotten, as an "industry" so hooked on one extension. I know the arguments - Google and other search engines rank them well, type-ins and marketing dollars, unfair registration fees and premium names held back for auctions, etc. And there are valiant efforts out there by really brilliant people going against this mold. Developing on crazy new extensions. They may just be ahead of their time.

But what will it take for them to be the norm? When will the insanity of registering complete jibberish just so that you can own an affordable .com end? Is there any hope that launching any new extensions or opening up any existing ccTLDs for global use will break the .com monopoly? I honestly think that until there's really choice, end users will always look at domaining as kind of goofy.

And one last thought: If there's ever a real alternative, will the domain industry be able to keep up? Will you be there when it starts? Has it already started?

Domainer of the Week Awards - Part 3

Life. Don't talk to me about Life.
-Marvin

It's been a crazy week for me personally and a boring week in the domain world in general so you've just got 3 awards to tide you over 'til Turkey Day. Live with it.

The "There's absolutely nothing funny about it" Award

Goes to Francois Carrillo, the Frenchy bastard that does a helluva job running Domaining.com, for his newly launched BargainDomains.com. The problem is it's a perfect domain for a great service and that means that there's nothing I can say that will be all that terribly funny. Damn it. Better luck next time.

The "Welcome Back Kotter" Award

Goes to Juan Luis Pedro Philippo DeHuevos Epstein... aka Steve Morales, for finally getting his ass back to SimplyGeo.com. It's good to see him alive AND posting after his military service doing whatever the hell the Army Quartermasters Corps does.

The "Big Brass Balls" Award

Here's to you, Mr. Buyer of Whiskey.com guy, who not only took on the Castello brothers and won (well, if paying $185,000 for a domain name can be considered "winning") but now has the onerous task of actually building a competing service to Whisky.com. You've got a big hairy pair of brass ones, mister. Good luck to you.

I hope you enjoyed this abbreviated and overly sarcastic look at the week in Domaining. If you think I've gone too far or trying too hard, send your polite-ass tweets to http://twitter.com/UtterDomain. If you actually have a frickin' sense of humor, then you can check all the domain awards here.