I spoke with a half a dozen good buyers today and 3 of them (50%) assumed all the names in the extended auction from the recent TRAFFIC conference were on SnapNames.

For the record there are actually 2 extended auctions going RIGHT NOW.

1.  SnapNames extended auction is happening at
https://www.snapnames.com/store/extended.action?ig=124

2. Rick Latona’s auction is at www.proxibid.com/ricklatona

End dates are really soon but since I’m not getting paid to post this so anyone interested should check both sites out and understand that yes..

There are 2 SEPARATE extended auctions happening at the SAME TIME with DIFFERENT inventory.

Good luck – maybe one day people will promote these a little more after the conference ends (and not just a link on domaining.com).

Good luck to all.

©2010 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

First – GD in title does not stand for GoDaddy (you do the math) so if anyone decides to actually listen from the Arizona office lets spell it out for you.

I can text message from Florida to someone in Hong Kong – message received in about 5 seconds.

I can email a client in Tokyo and within 30 seconds get a reply.

Someone outbids us on a GoDaddy auction and the text message or email comes 5-10 minutes later – in most cases in time for the auction to be over and closed.

GoDaddy wants to sent a text message detailing an auction ends in an hour … Not sure what clock you are using but my math usually tells me someone here should run to the computer and see if the auction is ended or not since surely there is not an hour left.

We know you are a model of scale and cheap services which many times bring complications to providing any higher level of service to power users but hell, sending a text message on time is not rocket scientist.

Surely, if my 8 year old niece can do it so can you.

©2010 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Well, sadly many people prefer tweeting to sex (or any physical contact with the real world) but those guys never really could get laid anyway. So today we bring both groups a little fun – from the wild and crazy hedonism.com to tweeters.com for the geeks.

Snapnames has quite a few great domains dropping over the next little while. Some of our top picks include:

penispump.com
hedonism.com
porntv.com

tweeters.com

and not so sexy but still good names.

basementcontractors.com
driverlicense.net
localgrants.com
remortgagehome.com
xmasholiday.com

Enjoy and Happy July 4th to the Americans.

©2010 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Do any of you understand lead generation or are all your plans wrapped up around Adsense Ads?

How many of you were, are or know a mortgage broker?

The sale of this domain at Latona’s auction at the TRAFFIC convention should make all of you turn upside down and say what the hell was I thinking. I am so pissed about this sale (VERY HAPPY for the buyer) that I need to give some of you a basic 101 class in math.

$18,000 … shit, less than shit for many of you.

If you are serious about development and have an iota of how to SEO correctly and put together a lead gen site (like insurancequote.com) this domain would rocket to the top of search engines. In fact, I would be willing to even say that it would make it to the top 5 in MSN purely because homeloans.com does not even resolve and MSN favors matching keyword domains heavier than Google.

So – you have a top domain selling for one of the MAIN lead generation industries of the economy. Housing market slow or not people are still getting mortgages day after day and unless you know something I don’t mortgages will never end – People will always need them.

How about that lesson in Math?

For Domainers

$18,000

$40 revenue per lead – You need to generate 450 leads over the lifetime of this domain to breakeven. Yes, just over 1 a day for the next year then you have an annuity for life.

For End Users

Have a mortgage license?

3 mortgages. Yes, 3 freaking mortgages to break even.

SOOO many mortgage brokers specialize and close $500,000 mortgages day after day. You should net around 6k on a $500,000 mortgage as a broker (after the split and assuming 2 points which is average) – don’t like .. then make it 6 mortgages .. big fucking deal. You have an annuity for life.

If I knew this domain was in auction believe me I would have paid a lot more than $18,000 and I’m pissed I didn’t see it. Not sure if it was a late addition but man – it was not there when I looked a week ago .. or maybe it way … I just missed it.

Domainers talk about developing and talk about how much money they are making but this sale, this very sale goes to show that either (a) many have no freaking idea how to develop anything more than a mini-site with some Adsense Ads and (b) many – even auction houses (which to their credit is not always their job – the platform, the event is their job) are too lazy to contact end users and have NO IDEA how to translate the value of such a great domain to main street.

If any of you were salespeople before .. good salespeople … you could walk into an office and sell $1,000 worth of goods by selling the manager on how much benefit your product could bring in terms of savings, increased productivity and more.

Why the hell can’t we do this with domains like this?

Companies are still spending money – banks are still advertising – mortgage companies are alive believe it or not.

Are so many people caught up in the circle of selling to one another that a brick wall is formed where development is only what domainer A tells domainer B?

Do we have NO confidence in our ability to sell to end users that you have to gauge value based on what another domainer would pay?

NAMES like this are GOLD but apparently many of you have no idea what gold looks like.

Only 2 weeks ago I wrote about the case of MortgageCalculator.net where the owner SEO’s correctly and bang .. 20,000 or more visitors EVERY month. Sure, somebody commented about the back links but I had that domain for 7 years and very few back links ever existed. Most back links were formed after the site was live.

Spend $18,000 and in six months have even a quarter of that traffic coming from home loan traffic and you break even in 30 or 60 days.

Seriously, the math here is so insane. It is NOT long term math !!!

Not a 5 year plan – not a 10 year plan – maybe a 1 year plan at the MOST!

For those domainers who truly have no idea but only to listen to the industry leaders for guidance – Was it not Frank Schilling who said that homeloans.com – in his opinion – was worth maybe $3-5 million?

And the .net is worth 18k?

Jesus – I need to go confession tonight because I am cursing at everyone and for a non-practicing Catholic boy this is a BIG thing.

This sale is embarrassing for you, for the industry and more importantly for your ability to understand development. Hell, where were the mini-site SEO experts – these guys (who supposedly know SEO) had to see a value much more than 18k in this domain.

As I have said many times over …

The INDUSTRY is BIGGER and better than ALL of us.

If we can not showcase and find end users for PREMIUM domains like HomeLoans.net then we all need to go back in to our hole and rethink why the hell we are here and what we need to do to move forward.

For those who are thinking I am being negative about the industry in general I am NOT – in fact, we are more bullish on domains than ANY OTHER investment right now – but I am kicking you all for letting this go. Domains like this do not come around often and if anyone .. anyone .. disagrees with my math about how to make your money back with this domain then just close your browser and go home as I do not have the time of day to even speak with you.

There is no over analysis needed – 18k is a pittance for this name.

Shame on all of you, Shame on the auction house, Shame on me.

Have nothing else to say on this.

May the Adsense gods cut your knees off one day and then you shall realize what fools are for not learning to develop quicker.

—————————————-

P.S.  If any of you want to come back but wait its a .net … just be quiet and read a book about developing.

©2010 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

If you want a single feed for good information pertaining to names available at SnapNames then subscribe to TopDrops today.  Articles published 3-4 times a week with targeted lists, popular domains in auction and more.

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©2010 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Kudos Sahar and everybody else at BIDO.

Now, to give credit where credit is due. A couple days I wrote a post about some frustration with BIDO’s quality of domains in auction. I know Sahar a little bit but we are certainly not college roommates.  Some would have only seen the negative in the article but Sahar took it as constructive criticism explaining some of the plans for BIDO and why some of the quality problems existed (seller submissions a big factor).

Some of those who blog take an article out of context immediately and then post a retribution to the author’s comments – others have a bad day with an account rep and then publicly display the private comments (which I would immediately stop doing business with you regardless of the cost if I was the rep) but others like Sahar just try to offer an explanation and some good points about what’s in the big picture.

Maybe my comments touched a few places, maybe they never – who knows and really doesn’t matter to me since I have no grand illusions of people listening to what I write – but I do know Sahar has class so Kudos once again for getting a quality name to BIDO.

As I said in my comments, let’s just hope it’s not followed by applesaucebobbleheads.com the next day

Cheers

Alan

©2010 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

First, I do not claim to be an expert for all things domain related and, quite frankly, care even less about any kind of fame or title in this industry but when people are flogging and selling garbage with infomercial hypes of how good the name is we (the industry) take ten steps back for building street credit to people outside the industry.

Look, almost every freaking domain – no matter if its Johnnysgotahotdog.com or dressmydogorganic.com has a story about how it COULD be successful.

Problem is if you’re a domainer with very little or no good development skills then you’re only hope to make a real buck is to find an end user. Let’s face it, many of you can’t develop for shit and some of you have no other plan but to wait for the big buyer one day.  I’m really not trying to cut anyone down – today’s bad developers may just be tomorrow’s best and the lazy domainer may very well find the big fish one day – but until you have your story to tell then please stop buying crap only to try and resell the crap to the same community.

Think about Life after NameJet and BIDO?

How many of you actually have a real success story like BobbleHeads.com or AmericanFlags.com or a great confirmed sale like iReport.com or hell, any sale that was over $10,000 or more from a name you bought at auction?

When buying a domain you have to really think about how the domain will add value to your portfolio and be liquid at the same time. Try to sell a name on a forum or try to sell a name before it expires to another domainer and you will rarely get much – let it expire and whoopee – $5,000 … oh…. wait …. NameJet got the check, not you.

It’s an entirely different mentality to bid in domain auctions and those with deep pockets are either addicts or have a master plan.  Institutional buyers, corporate bulk buyers – once you have these in’s then dropping many bucks daily is no big deal but it’s the 95% of you who see a name with 50 bidders and say – shit, this has to be worth something.

WAIT – if you didn’t think the name was worth anything when it had ZERO bidders then it’s probably not worth anything more with 50 or 100 bidders.

When you secure that final bid and win the name is your idea of liquidity how much you paid for the name?

Surely, a few of the other bidders would pay close to my end price if I got stuck one day – WRONG.  Real portfolio values have nothing to do with auction prices – they are based on many elements outside of what you paid and more how much the name is worth to the end user.  In fact, end users don’t care what you paid – they will determine a value.

Kudos to Sahar and the staff at BIDO for getting back up and running but guys – you need better names.  Lets put it this way – take away my 100% non-interest in the FixedLoans.com domain – I am slowly losing interest in BIDO and you are only open a week.  Its true, a few days ago I commented on a couple domain auctions but basically gave up when I saw the 7 day list since my comments were heading towards … another bad name.

Unlike NameJet and SnapNames, BIDO has a responsibility to provide higher quality names than any of the auction houses in order to enjoy successful and continuous growth.

I’m past the point in my career where you love a company because of who is running it – the system needs to add value to my day, my money and my business.  In the case of BIDO – quality, quality, quality is all that counts.  Shitty names sell every day on ALL the auction houses for $200, $400, $600 – price points where investors gamble, not so good investors invest and what seems to be not a great deal to lose. However, to get real action (where real press and further industry street credit) is to have high quality domains.

As of this moment I will take a glance at what BIDO is auctioning but believe me its pretty low on my list of things to look at unless I see some quality names going to auction – not ones where I can register better ones as I type.  The pre-launch was great news, the launch was well – dull.  Again, I’m not criticizing Sahar or anyone at BIDO – I truly respect what they are doing but we all pat each other on the back way too much when in fact many of us are thinking – who the hell is picking out these names.  1,000’s submitted and the best you can get is some domain where you can register the .net or plural for reg fee??  I’m confused….

Moniker has faults also but the reason I’m picking out BIDO is the “One Auction One Day” theme.  Choosing 5,000 names for silent auction is surely much tougher than picking one domain a day to auction.

We all know selling a domain purchased on a drop “Life after NameJet as I will call it” can be tough but “Life after BIDO” could be great!

Think about it – 300 names auctioned a year – let’s say 20 great success stories – a wealth of good vibes ….  if we were given the names to tell that story.

Bido has everything working for it – the personal touch, the industry connection with Sahar, the support of the blogging community – its all there to make a BIDO an incredible success – so I ask, I plead…

Give us the quality names and we will build the stories to tell.

Otherwise … it’s the same old story … just one domain at a time.

———————————————

P.S.  I owe a few people phone calls .. called away on a personal matter .. be in touch soon…

©2010 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Please note ALL domains below already have multiple bidders – check them out …

cif.com
ssic.com
TieClips.com
jxk.com
FerrisWheel.com
Tuition.com
LetterOpener.com
PremiumGifts.com
CorporateEvents.com
DiscoverHawaii.com
MakeMillions.com
RentalPackages.com
CampusClassifieds.com
njnews.com
GovernmentJobs.org
GeekExpress.com
LuckyDomains.com

———————-

Enjoy and remember to sign up for the PrivateNames.com newsletter

©2010 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

One comment was “You can be honest and tell people you are promoting your own domains or just keep doing what you are doing” – this comment struck me as it really gets to me when people who are INVESTORS would rather take time and complain about something that has no relevancy. For the record I disclosed we did own some (but not all) of the names but hey, if want to think we own all of them go for it – doesn’t matter at all to me. The purpose of the article was to simply provide examples of high quality keyword names for sale at Snap vs. so many we see at NameJet that have no keyword value, no Google results and absolutely no logic as to why people would bid on them.

For new domainers, its easy to get caught up in auction fever.  A name with 60 bidders – Yahoo!! – must be worth something.  Guess what – it’s not always the case.  There is no doubt NameJet has some great names but they also sell many names that would never be registered if they were available today and mark my words, will NEVER sell on the aftermarket should the buyer want to sell – That’s right, absolutely NO resale value!  In fact, I have seen several times a buyer winning a domain on NameJet, park the page a few days later, then post the name on the forums for sale wanting to sell the name and giving a good deal (lower than the auction price) – its called cutting your losses since they know the name was a bad buy.

Lets use facts (so the naysayers who focus solely on this article being self serving can be put aside).  Most, if not all, domainers agree:

1) Domain Appraisals mean nothing / there is no valid system that can truly and accurately represent the value of domain.  Too many intangible factors exist and the number of external factors (such as the increase in end user sales) will simply stop any such system from ever developing since end users do not value in multiple of PPC earnings.  In fact, – end users determine value on domains independently based on what the name means to them so very rarely will you ever have more than just a few companies feel the name is worth the same amount (except for the obvious ones like mortgage.com, sex.com and 2-3 letter names etc).  This makes any standard for valuation practically impossible.

2) Domains with NO keyword value but DO have PPC income are now being bought and offered by many domainers using smaller multiples then seen in the past few years.  PPC is becoming less relevant as companies try to attract the end users who don’t care about the parked revenue but want a brandable name.

3) DOUBT as in to the future of domain parking for low traffic names.  Sure, it will always exist but doubt creates lower values and until an alternative outside of just two (2) main providers (Yahoo and Google) is built than some domain owners are opting to sell good names at great prices meaning names with NO keyword value are even less valuable since other good deals are available.

4) Names with KEYWORD value are consistently some of the most sought after names at live auctions and reported at DNJournal every week. It’s very common to see a wealth of data each week from sales of domains that have keyword value sold from sources which provide NO traffic data.  Hence, buyers are buying the keywords to develop, resell, brand or hold.  Traffic has become less important because development or end user sales are the future.

5) MUST REALIZE that NO private seller and many registries in todays world are not going to auction or sell a domain that earns $500 a month in revenue at a $1, $59 or $99 reserve in an auction so the name must have value to an end user (keywords / action phrases), be very warm for development or engage a buyer’s interest as a worthy investment to part of thier bigger plan.  The newbies that still have faith in big business really need to use logic here.

6) Domains with keywords have DEVELOPMENT VALUE. Take Elliot’s article on what happened after developing TropicalFish.com.  From 1 to 100 visitors a day with a little work.  Develop a keyword heavy name right and search engines will reward you.

7) MUST UNDERSTAND or have an idea about how to use the domain for development (this is also part of selling a domain to an end user – regardless if you can develop it or not you must understand how it could be developed or you wouldn’t have bought it).  Only names with keywords, product names, people names and action phrases can make sense.  HotDogs1245.com does not work and will not hold any value down the road.  If a name like this has links and some existing traffic one day it will get scrubbed from the search engine and you have nothing.

8) END USERS ARE THE GOLDEN KEY – Domainers love to sell to end users because prices are not only larger but more relative to the value domainers can see in owning a good name – plus it’s almost easier to sell the larger investment.  A company who spends $10,000 a week on radio ads can surely drop 2, 5 or 10k for a one time investment in a solid domain name.  It’s just finding those end users and making them understand the asset you are selling.  BuyDomains is doing a great job at that – the company to take this kind of model to next level will win the game.

9) End Users DO NOT care about PPC Income – All end users have their own business model for earning income so the amount of income produced by PPC ads will mean nothing to them.  They may care about traffic but most companies who pay small amounts – like 5 or 10,000 – are buying a branding tool and traffic is not so relative at such small price points.  Trying to sell a domain for $100k – sure, they probably want some traffic but small money is not really concentrated on that.  And yes, small money is still a lot to domainers.

Obviously, the rare names – such as 2 and 3 letter domains are exceptions to all this.

So what if PPC stopped tomorrow….think about it?  It’s not going away but who knows – there may be a slower period ahead until somebody puts together a viable alternative ad provider outside of the goo-hoo system.  If that’s the case then all domainers who are betting the ranch and have no idea about development or understand the proper keyword elements behind domain names are gambling.  Keywords will sell themselves as the value is obvious to the right end user.

So, circling back to the initial paragraph about why we do not promote the names we sell.  No specific reason other than we just have no interest in blogging about our names – we would simply rather write about other things and try to help put some logic into a not so logical industry then turn this blog into one big sales pitch.

If we use some of our names for comparison so be it – sometimes we use yours.  Again, ownership of undeveloped domains is 100% not relative because at the end of the day we are simply comparing domain names.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this stuff out.

©2010 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

The fact is most people buying on NameJet are domainers and a lot of the new people in this industry “follow the herd” when it comes to buying names.  I can tell you from years of experience this is not always a good decision.  Many of you will disagree with me (at least on the outside) but those of you who are investing for the future and tomorrow’s end user DO NOT care about what other domainers will pay.  Take for example, the recent auction of FixedLoans.com.  In our opinion, this is not a good domain.  Yes, it has history and was referred to as a famous domain from a not so famous book (no disrespect – but unless you sell tens thousands of copies then using the word famous is a little overrated).  Plus the amount of space this name got in the book would almost make any word famous … argh … anyway, it was just a silly comparison and a typical example of why we need to remove the “car salesman” pitches in this industry to bring more credibility.  (Another post will come on this soon)  We made our money in the mortgage industry online and I can tell you the term Fixed Loans is almost never used.  A “Fixed Rate Loan” or “Fixed Rate Mortgage” yes – but the shortened version is simply a made up expression that even with the best branding (which again, most domainers will never develop properly) the domain is too generic or confusing that people still will question – did they mean FixedRateLoans.com or FixedRateMortgage.com or FixedLoan.com – hmmm.  Bid as you will when the name goes to auction but I can’t see the ceiling on this name going any higher than it sold for back in 2006 – wait and see.

Back to NameJet.  Over the last 30 days we have seen such names which probably have no traffic and certainly have no generic value sell for prices that are driven by the number of buyers. Remember – you are an INVESTOR, not just a domainer.  The $2,000 spent on a dropped name that has no keyword value but a “possibility” of traffic might as well be a gamble.  Secure your investments on domains that have keyword value – leave the gambling for vegas.  Just because a name has 50 bidders on it does not mean its worth more if your goal is to develop or sell to an end user because guess what – almost all 50 of those people are NOT your target market and will almost never buy back what you paid for in an auction.

Just some thoughts….

Newbies …. buy names which you can develop or picture end users with.  Again, leave the gambling for Vegas.

Seeya … back to hiatus….

©2010 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.