IKE’S LIST OF DOMAINS AT AUCTION FOR Saturday, October 28th and .us experiment results

31 Replies to “IKE’S LIST OF DOMAINS AT AUCTION FOR Saturday, October 28th and .us experiment results”

1. Will have to wait for next round

   1. 61 sold .US domains out of 12,000 tells you how unlikely it is to actually sell a domain name. 🙂

      1. Yeah .. but as we discussed below .. that fact is completely offset by a 10 cent purchase price .. even at $199 he only needs to sell 1/2000 (or 6/12,000) to make money. There is a risk involved .. but it paid off in spades for him!

      2. That’s a good point. I did forget to mention that about 3000 for traffic type names for parking. I figured it was worth a shot with anything over 10 cents a profit. I mentioned in a lower comment how I picked them. Also I’m confident that many more names would have sold from $10-$99, but I’m not sure if the increase in sales volume would have made up the difference. I probably could have tried to sell them wholesale, I actually had one guy looking for .us names on Namepros, but it never panned out. Even $10 is 100X.

2. Holy smokes your accountant must hate you with an evil raging force of a million cow farts!
   .
   I think a more interesting question is:
   How did you create your list of 10,000 domains? More than anything else that seems like an extremely daunting task! Were they mostly 4L/5L, one words, multi-word but one-term, two word?
   .
   Another key point .. which I think is huge .. and not to take away from the incredibly important job that you do .. but I’m thinking most of your “real-world” job is spent on “stand-by”, waiting for emergencies. Meaning that you have the huge privileged of working on your domaining while getting paid for your real job. Again .. I don’t want to take anything away from you .. just stating a fact that might make your “process” not as attainable for the rest of us humans .. lol
   .
   I also think you need to factor in your costs in Mountain Dew .. lol
   .
   Anyhow .. congrats on all the success .. very happy for you .. and also happy to see someone do well in a crazy niche nobody would have expected .. goes to show that domaining is an industry where if someone has time and energy combined with a unique vision that they can make nice profits ..

   Also nice to hear about Princess Leia doing better .. after the last trailer for Star Wars 8 I was a little worried for her! 😉

   1. I talked about the process a little bit in a previous post. I’ll look for the link.
      And yes lol, that’s how I find the time, plus I only “work” my “real” job 2 days a week.
      –
      My point in sharing all this was partially as an experiment to see if it would work while evaluating different price points, to show that .us has some value. Also to determine if it’s a viable strategy for other extensions or if it can be repeated with ,us. What I think it comes down to, with something like this, is finding a good/great deal and and taking a calculated acceptable risk.
      –
      If I found the same deal tomorrow, maybe I’d try pricing them all at $999 for 6 months and see how many sell. The problem with trying to sift through any kind of data with any domain sales is that every one of these things is it’s own unique beast. it’ll always be trial and error, risk to reward analysis while creating a process that shifts the odds in your favor.
      –
      I’m downloading a and checking the availability of 10K .us names now. I could probably have 50K names that I’d register by noon. This play isn’t really that time consuming in the scheme of things, in fact half the names that sold I probably wouldn’t have even registered under my normal list/name searching methods. It’s all data and bulk.

3. Banfield is a good pet insurance

4. Congrats. That’s a nice way to make profits.

5. Here’s a link to 2000 .us names. All but 100 or so are available, This took 2 minutes to find, the data points that suggest some value in these names without even looking at any of them are: they all are registered in 15 other exertions and they all have very high advertiser competition.
   https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GeNKTXErxLEZyoczoRpAWA9OlBx9j6yOqKEt85-aSJE/edit?usp=sharing

   Obviously there will be trademark terms. Don’t register them.

6. wow .. some great stuff in there .. and some absolute garbage! lol
   .
   But of my few sales, I sold 2 x .co around a grand .. domains I got last year when I made the decision to get a little more serious into domaining .. and ironically both I wouldn’t pick up again today because they wouldn’t make my higher standards .. lol .. domaining can be totally illogical and confusing at times!
   .
   Did you generate that list through expireddomains.net? I still simply slug through the lists directly at GoDaddy .. thinking I might need to make the switch sooner than later .. but I’ve really gotten into my routine! I now “watch” on average about 125 domains a day (down from about 200) .. some days I buy 4-5 .. others 1 or none. I’m getting better at saying no .. plus my first year’s renewals are starting .. so funds are not what they were .. lol.

   1. I’m not saying to blindly register a whole list like that, but if they were only 10 cents each you could to save time. Again, there’s some reason they’re registered in 15 other extensions, sometimes It blows my mind that people would pay $399 for some of this stuff.

      1. oh yeah .. don’t get me wrong .. I’m not saying what you do is a bad thing .. at some point time is money .. you need to take a sample of a list like that .. say out of 100 names there are 25 good ones, 25 decent, and 50 bad ones. Then your cost is between 20-40 cents per domain depending on your standards. At 20 cents per, you might be saving $$ when you factor in your time PLUS the fact that you’ll still likely sell a couple you wouldn’t have registered AND you’ll probably get a little parking money as well. It’s really 100% dependant on price .. I did something similar when I started with $2.99 .co’s .. unfortunately I was just starting and had a couple of real life issues limiting my time so I couldn’t really maximise their visibility to get a real gauge for them.
         .
         What you said on the DSAD Sherpa show was funny .. but spot on .. when you referred to your 1 cent .xyz purchase .. lol .. something like “who cares if they are all good or not .. they’re 1 cent .. it’ll cost more in time just to go through the list” lol
         .
         It still is a bit of an art figuring out the [average quality] : [price] ratio. 10 cents sounds cheap .. but it can add up.

   2. You go directly through the spreadsheets you download from the Godaddy FTP? Just thinking about that makes me wanna throw myself down a flight of stairs.

      1. Not even .. I actually go through the actual search result pages of some custom searches I’ve saved .. it’s slow and sluggish at times .. but the upside is that I don’t have to go back and mark them “watched” .. plus I can easily download my list and sort chronologically .. enter my domains for the day into Estibot .. then put that resulting list through my macro to spit out the 3-4 fields I’m interested in plus one “search value” calculation field I created.
         .
         So I end up with a nice list of domains to track for the day with some stats. Of those names I go through them once and bold about a third that are better. Then I go through those and grade them from 0 to 4. With them being:
         .
         0) “meh .. maybe look at again and consider grabbing at $5 dollar closeout”
         1) Maybe grab at $5
         2) Grab at $5, maybe at $11
         3) Maybe low bid to $30-50 .. probable if $11 closeout
         4) Definitely bid on .. with permission to self to go a little higher
         .
         It isn’t an equal split between those domains. Out of maybe 40 per day most are “1” or “2”. Usually around three “3”. There are days when I have no “4” at all.

      2. Hmmmn .. I posted a link to my domains below .. but it says my post is “awaiting moderation” .. I’m guessing because of the link. I there something I need to do on my end to get it posted, or is it something manual you need to do on your end?

7. You can check out some of my names as I FINALLY set up my Efty site yesterday at:
   http://www.ategy.com
   .
   A fuller list is here .. although I still have to add couple hundred more names .. some adult or semi-adult .. and some I set aside for possible use. I choose the intermediate Efty account for now, so that limits me to 1500 of my 1800 domains anyways.
   http://www.ategy.com/profile/sitemap/
   .
   I’m not completely satisfied with the look of the site (Efty is very limited in that regard), so not looking for too much feedback on that yet .. but more interested on feedback of the actual names (and my pricing for those of you with more time on your hands .. lol)
   .
   A lot of the names I haven’t posted besides the adult ones are “_names”, “_domains” and “_brands” domains as I’m thinking of going to one or a few of those instead of simply “Ategy”. Will be soliciting feedback on that as well at some point .. lol.

   1. Was it easy to set up the ategy.com page? Did they have a template for it? Looks nice

      1. Yeah .. it’s all template driven … sooo easy .. but that’s prob the main issue I have .. is that it isn’t very customisable .. but depending on how many domains you have you could have a site up in no time at all. Feel free to contact me on NamePros or email if you have any more questions! 🙂

   2. Looks good, but geez man, camel case the damn things lol. 🙂

      1. Yeah .. I know .. didn’t know I could .. I’m going to try to reupload them all again .. otherwise could take me a while .. lol .. but as I said .. more curious to hear feedback on the quality of names .. and even more importantly .. my prices. Pricing is one of the hardest things for 2 word brandables I find .. can vary quite a bit.

8. Great post. Thanks for sharing.

   1. Thank you Adam

9. How did you get all the landing pages set up for all those names? is there a way to automate it at uniregistry? I thought BIN were 15%? You say … 10% using the uniregistry BIN checkout system ?

   On a side not, I’m unable to get email notifications when there is a reply to the posts on here where I make a comment?

   1. If the name is non brokered through uniregistry with the BIN checkout on their system it’s only 10%, at least I think that’s what it is.
      You can bulk edit anything in there system. I assume you’re referring to changing the banner on the top? Otherwise you can set the landing page to default, it’ll be automatic when you add your names to the market and change the nameservers. There’s a landing page edit section in the bulk tools. There’s a little button for more options that allows you to change the wording of the header inquiry link.
      –
      I’m not sure how the comments work, I’ll ask Travis. He’ll know or be able to figure it out.

      1. I emailed them again this morning about the BIN. A while back I was told it was lowered to 10%, but recently they said it’s 15% referencing their fees page
         https://uniregistry.com/market-fees-rules
         It would be nice if it was 10%. They would probably get more business. They have nice landing pages for a registrar.
         You should think about doing a post of them and their landing pages, automation you mention etc.

10. Thanks for posting the results – interesting experiment.

11. Thanks for sharing your .us experiment with “us.” Were they more brandable or two word domains? I’ve wondered what price point is best for names like these.

    1. Todd, they’re were all kinds. 4L, single words, popular terms. I don’t think there were too many made up brandables, I don’t think these would sell in .us nor do I think they have any value. I really think the brandable created types need to stay in .com. I also had a large amount, maybe 3000 domains, that were bought for parking or potential seo only.
       –
       I should have mentioned in the post, I didn’t expect these to sell unless an seo saw value in them. Basically I pulled domains that had backlinks from numerous different c-block ip addresses, were older than 2008 on the last creation date, and didn’t have a ridiculous amount of backlinks, compared to the IP diversity. I didn’t check any of them to see if they were link farmed, or turned into viagra sites, or do anything as far as anchor text goes. The idea is that if the domain falls into all of these categories it’s less likely to be completely spammed out, thus making any traffic BS.
       –
       As far as price point for any of these names, I think the little bit of data we have gives us some clues, namely “how many do you want to sell”. for example I may have made more money leaving all the prices at $999 for the whole project, or I could have made more money trying to sell them all for $99, moving more volume. The key is to find a price that’s reasonable for the buyer but also invites impulse purchases. I think I would have sold a lot less if I would have to go through a long escrow process. If I set the price too high I’ll lose impulse, If I set it too low I undersell too many names that buyers would have been comfortable paying more for without a second thought. I felt the $399 fell into that range, but maybe $299 would have worked better. It’s all about timing, ease of sale and impulse.
       –
       I recently lowered a bunch of .com’s on godaddy premium to $299 and have been selling 3 or 4 a week. I’ve lost higher sales, I know this because a few have been tentatively purchased on other platforms for higher amounts and then bought for $299 when the lower price source was found. This doesn’t bother me too much, because the amount of names selling is giving me momentum. I still have potential to sell those names for higher amounts on other platforms, it happens all the time.
       –
       So just to review the answer to your question, I’d stay away from made up brandables, and sell anything else for a reasonable price that invites impulse buys. Obviously I could have spent more time breaking the names into different price groups, based on my own appraised value, but i’m not sure if this would work better.

12. Awesome update Josh! I wish I had known, but I wouldn’t have gone as big as you did either way in reality haha

    1. Thanks Tom

13. Great job Josh!
    I still don’t understand how you made that 10k domain list… 🙂

    Can you share with us?

    Thanks.