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Domaining - abusing trends and front-running to make a quick buck (9)

12-12-2014 11:55 AM #1 jacklord (AMC Alumnus)
Domaining - abusing trends and front-running to make a quick buck

sup players,

Great to be here, I’ve been learning so much that I want to try contribute something back. It’s also a shameless and unveiled attempt to get my first thanks on the board.

I'm by no means an expert but I do dabble in domains and wanted to share some of my strats for sniping / front-running desirable domains for quick sales.

My domain portfolio is about 300 strong. Most unregistered .coms with a few private buys.

I’ve sold over 10 so far, all between $500 – low $xxxx usd. The cost of registration of all the domains combined was recouped after just 3 sales, the rest being profit and hopefully a bunch more sales to come.

Another interesting point is that sales are the area where I’ve put the least effort. I really love the brainstorming and connecting ideas aspect when trying to find hidden gems. The majority of sales I’ve had are from people checking the whois and emailing me directly.

I generally like to look for unregistered, but if you think of a name / keyword that is trending upwards or soon to be relevant to a new product / category you can try buy it privately.

Already registered – know something I don’t?

In 2008 a guy bought ebola.com for $12 500 and sold it recently for $200 000.

Think back to swine flu, and Sars. Maybe you have an idea about what the next big global talking point or sensation will be. That and be able to see it coming before most.

Think gluten free, crossfit, swag, wearable technology, cloud services, nfc. 80’s movies remakes, bitcoin, VR oculus/Morpheus, adding +forum/board, startups.

I started playing dota in 2003 and loved that shiz, I knew it would be huge back then – sadly I wasn’t into domaining yet. But with that mindset, buying dota and dota2.com would have been very cheap compared to the upside that Valve would have paid today. You could have even setup a business name / trademark if you had enough confidence.

Frontrunning – The ancillary network

Another great tactic is to keep an eye out for pending releases for a new product / service / game that is not only going to have a big web presence but an ancillary presence. You can then study the current climate and migrate it directly to the new category.

One example I exploited was MTGO (Magic the Gathering Online), a commercially oriented online game with ancillary websites that trade online. When HEX TCG was announced it immediately had a huge following. MTGO’s first serious competitor, credible developers, track record, 2 mil kickstarter backing from the public.

I thought it was reasonable to assume that those ancillary services and brands would also migrate.

I bought about 20 hex+keyword / brand domains. All of them were unregistered so about $10 each and 1 (hexcards.com) was a private purchase from a guy that was using it as a blog that hadn’t been updated in 2 years for $50.

I sold hexcards.com a few weeks later for $800 and 2 hex+brand.com sites to their respective MTGO owners for $500 each and they all contacted me directly.

Kickstarter – See what's blowing up
This is a real bomb here I reckon. Browse kickstarter, look for new products, games or services that are receiving a lot of support. From there it's easy to mix ideas, analyze existing competitor domains and clone them straight over.

You can also make use of online tools like google trends.

New Category - The bitcoin example and ripe for the startup culture

This is where I really went deep. I had an idea for a MTGO site called bitcoinbot and checked the domain, it was taken by a guy that also had loads of bitcoin+keyword/phrase domains that he was selling. I thought you fucker, what a sick idea, then spent the next week obsessing over it getting 200+ and my banking checking with me periodically to make sure my CC wasn't stolen.

I've seen quite a few of the teir1 bitcoin+keyword.com like bitcoinlaw.com go $20 000 on sites like sedo.com. Also bitcoinwallet.com was sold for $250 000.

I tried to focus on commercially oriented domains, considering factors like



You get the idea. But the beauty is this idea can be cloned to so many different things. I got a few choice litecoin domains as well, but the new coin stellar seems to be gaining some traction and could be worth speculating on.

You can go as crazy as you want, a recent example I did some searches for was moon and space, thinking of all the huge real estate and travel varients. To my surprise they were all already gone;



But that doesnt mean there wouldnt be more teir 2 and maybe teir1 .nets

EMDS - Exact Match Domains
I really love exact match domains. They still hold decent SEO ranking significance for that keyword which enhances their value. These took off around 2008 so a lot harder to find but I've found a few .net and .net.xx gems over the years.

Another benefit is that you can get away with more links with the anchor text of your keyword.



Horoscopes.net.nz really shocked me, a great example and one that I got literally this week. A single word EMD with a average monthly search volume of 30k for that one term alone. Things get even more interesting when you analyze the competition, this is something I've observed a lot when analyzing regional geo's compared to the US, the SEO competition is MUCH less competitive.

When googling "horoscopes" in google.co.nz the third result is a site with only 30 different referring domains and a moz domain authority rating of only 26. An enterprising and skilled horoscope affiliate could slap on a few directory links, get some nepotistic links, a few guest posts, local citations, regular scraped content from a freelancer and get that site ranking without too much effort. Until I got here and started studying the copy / LPs for freebies I had no idea just how bad my copy / LPs were on my samples site - yet with the power of targeted traffic my offers were still converting.

Lists lists lists

When trying to generate idea I find lists to be super helpful, the more lists the better. Think;



new extensions - keyword.xyz

I don't think .com's are going anywhere in a hurry, and .net's area great cheap alternative for front-running specs. But it's still worth being aware of the all the new extensions coming out, when analysing consider things like hows the uptake of that extension and can it still rank from an SEO perspective.

If so, there might be some sweet opportunity for premium 1 and 2 word domains.

In keeping with the concept of mixing ideas and interests when I was reading about .xyz extension I thought it was a perfect time to look for some affiliate related domains.

Here are the .xyz's I registered with an affiliate theme



selling
- whois not private
- contact page
- the price you paid is not relative to the selling price
- find speculators

I have a customer that offered me $6000 for my bitcoin domain portfolio but I turned him down. He said he would have put an ad in major hong kong business newspapers looking for a speculator that would just make a bulk purchase. I have no experience here and don't know if it's a good idea or not.

I'd be curious to hear what strats people use when selling their domains.

If anyone is interested in any of the domains I mentioned or wants to see the full list of bitcoin domains feel free to send me a PM.

I hope that helped and happy domaining.

12-12-2014 01:09 PM #2 milobanski (AMC Alumnus)

Awesome insight.

Talking popular games, have you considered league of legends and buying domains related to newly released champions?

12-12-2014 02:13 PM #3 Mr Green (Administrator)

Epic write up mate! I bought and sold domains as a hobby about 12 years ago. Hindsight is a bitch!!

If I were to get into domaining today I would invest in evergreen premium domains. Dictionary words or 3 letter .coms.

The issue with the trends angle is they all have an expiry date. If you don't sell while they are hot the value starts to dive.

12-12-2014 02:54 PM #4 mrchow (Member)

A w e s o m e write up!

what do you mean with private buys?

12-12-2014 02:55 PM #5 fishinseo ()

Not a bad idea, but be careful with registering trademark names. That can get you in some hot water.

12-12-2014 06:23 PM #6 panicore (Member)

@fishinseo

Yep, just read Manwin (pornhub, youporn e.t.c.) is going after some domainers who are using their brand names.
Stay away from trademarks and brands.

12-12-2014 08:30 PM #7 iAmAttila (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by fishinseo View Post
Not a bad idea, but be careful with registering trademark names. That can get you in some hot water.
Back when i was doing adult i regged every paysite name nastydollars has and well they informed me that all of them are trademarked and either give up all the domains or be sued.

I right away complied and for being so easy to deal with they gave me 2 pps sales per domain so 70 bux total and i paid 8.15 per domain.

So i made a couple hundred dollars being nice and complying with their legal threat

12-12-2014 09:05 PM #8 impride (Member)

Couple years ago I regged the domain pokerbet.biz and put on sedo.com hoping someone will be interested. A year passed, I got no offers, didn't renewed it and domain expired. 3 months later I got an offer on Sedo about buying this domain for $250. So i checked the domain again and it was still available for registration (the guy who made an offer hadn't even checked it). So I regged it again and sold to the guy from Sedo. Spent 18$ made 250$ That's all my experience with domaining lol .

12-13-2014 12:25 PM #9 jacklord (AMC Alumnus)

cheers guys,

@milo I'd never actually considered individual champions, I did look at popular sites and brands and applied them to new mobas like dawngate and HOTS. Good ole EA has killed dawngate already though haha

@mrgreen yeah if you have cash to invest that sounds like the smart way to do it for sure.

@mrchow just as in looking up the whois of the domain, finding out who owns it and emailing them directly, as opposed to using a third party site like sedo / flippa

re the trademarks I totally agree with you guys actually, i had been contacted by mastercard about one and just let it go - screw trying to fight that

@impride haha thats cool. Pokerbet sounds like a sweet domain too, I guess it just shows that people dont want .biz

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