Domain Sales; Numbers Game with Timing & Luck

You can judge very little if any significance to value based on the number or frequency of sales inquiries.

Assuming you have good keyword names it involves mostly a matter of timing and luck to get end-user offers and sales. Depends on if a business is in need of a name at a particular moment in time and somehow stumbles across your domain which would benefit from its keyword match.

You can own excellent keyword names which are niche dominating and category killer names but never get an offer over many years or possibly get occasional lowball offers (which lowballs come mostly from domainers or non-serious end-users).

When you read dnjournal.com you may think the vast majority of names had sold for far more than what they are worth. In fact, many names which sold for high amounts may look like reg fee names or domains you would not pay anything more than $100 for but they sold for $1000s.

End-user (non-domainer) sales is little more than a numbers game involving timing and luck.

Many Websurfers & Users Are Not Internet Savvy

An actual example of how many people are not very internet savvy occurred a few days ago when I asked someone (in-person) to go to a website named Example-Example.com but she typed-in ExampleHyphenExample.com and then announced the website did not work.

Quite surprisingly, she actually spelled and typed the word hyphen instead of using a (-) dash character. Even after I explained that a ‘hyphen’ was a ‘dash’ she seemed a bit confused and still did not understand it.

At another time and involving a different person (on phone) I used the word ‘dash’ meaning Example-Example.com but he typed in ExampleDashExample.com, typing-in the word ‘dash’ instead of the keyboard (-) character.

On a somewhat different subject, it’s also true even today there are lots of people who don’t really know the difference between a browser address box and a search-engine box, especially as far as actual use is concered.

I have several family members who always type the website URL including its domain extension in the Google search box, and do not use the Internet Explorer or Safari browser address window (which is of course where the URL should go). When I told them about it they were not aware they should (or even could for that matter) use the browser window.

On a side-note to our readers who run their own websites and study site visitor data, we believe URL’s typed-in the search box do not count as valuable so called Direct Navigation (a.k.a. typeins) but are considered to be (less valuable) search visitors.

We suspect most website owners (even including some experienced domainers) do not understand or realize their actual direct navigation (typein) numbers are a better percentage than their stats program indicates, something many site owners are overlooking that positive aspect with their website stats software data analysis.

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Google’s Valentine Day Domain Names

As posted about on DomainNameWire.com, Google has registered the domains GoogleValentine.com and GoogleValentine.org on Feb 8, 2011. Since only the .com and .org were mentioned we checked Whois and see they also registered GoogleValentine.net at the same time, in addition to some other Valentine’s Day domains Google registered.

Since Valentine’s Day is only 4 days away we don’t see how there could be sufficient time this year (but if not this year, maybe next year?) for Google to get geared-up in time to actually use the domains as some kind of Valentine’s Day promotion, i.e. maybe you will be able to go to Google and get an Online Valentine? (don’t bother trying to get OnlineValentine.com as it’s been registered since 1999).

Below is our Valentine’s Day wish to you…

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Overstock.com is rebranding itself as O.CO

Found this on the Overstock.com website this morning. It’s also Super Bowl Sunday, so perhaps not just a coincidence since the .CO extension domain names will be strongly marketed in today’s Super Bowl commercials, making Overstock.com’s announcement real good timing in that regard.

“Shopping at Overstock.com internationally is about to get easier with the O.co domain. Since the company acquired the O.co domain name in July 2010, Overstock.com has been simpler to access by mobile Internet users. Now, to minimize confusion and hassle while translating the word “Overstock” into other languages, Overstock.com is rebranding internationally and will be known as O.co as of Jan. 2011. This guide will address any concerns you may have about Overstock.com’s new domain.

Q. Why will Overstock.com be known as O.co internationally?

A. In July 2010, .co domain names became available for general purchase, and Overstock.com acquired the O.co domain name in order to reinforce the “O” of the Overstock brand and capture customers’ attention with a short, memorable web address. The short .co domain will also solve translation issues and allow Overstock.com to create a universal logo, brand and web domain name that will be recognizable internationally…”

Click the Overtstock.com® woman on the couch picture below to visit the new O.co® website:

Negativity by Paying Domain Broker Upfront Money

Sometimes domain name and website owners may wish to hire a domain brokerage to sell their names or websites. I can give you some good advice (gained via my personal hands-on experience) about that, including a warning about paying any upfront fees to the broker.

Keep in mind, once the domain-broker has your money a good degree of the incentive to work hard and sell your domain or website may be lost since the broker already has his/her money, regardless of the name selling or not selling.

One more potential negative occurrence is the once friendly relationship you had with the broker may quicky go away if there are any business or personal issues involved. That can easily happen as a result of the broker already having your paid in advance monies so he may decline to issue a refund if you are later unhappy with his work and perfomance.

More information about why you should never even think about paying a fee in advance to a broker (which we published over a year ago) as part of a post about the category defining premium domain names LiveApp.com plus LiveApps.com both being available for purchase, located here: About Domain Broker and Live App domains for sale .

A good article about domain brokers was recently published in Elliotsblog.com in which Elliot lists domain name brokers. I know several of the same domainers/brokers and can suggest the following domain brokers, which Elliot listed in his post:

• BigTicketDomains.com – Kevin Leto
• DifferentInvestments.com – Justin Godfrey
• DomainBroker.com – Rob Sequin
• DomainsForMedia.com – Eric Rice
• MediaOptions.com – Andrew Roesner
• NameConnect.com – John Daly

By the way, Webtrading also offers a domain brokerage service (mosty for our own websites but the brokerage service can also be used to buy domains belonging to other parties), which you can learn more about by clicking-on the image below. In addition, any comments you may have about selling domains and websites, or regarding domain brokers will be appreciated.

Domain Name News & Domain Blog Aggregator

Keep up-to-date with the latest and best domaining news & blog headlines. DomainingRoulette.com is a 24X7 Real-Time Domain Name News Feed and Blog Aggregator, offering live late-breaking domain name news from the international domain and website community.

There is no membership requirement, no account required, no login, no need for personal information, no advertising and no spams.

By visiting DomainingRoulette.com you can quickly view and read the most current headlines and blog articles. As far as we know, DomainingRoulette.com is the only domain name blog and news aggregator without any advertising on its pages. That way the visitor experience is a good one and is unblurred by distracting or confusing marketing and advertising.

Domaining Bloggers are also wanted. Please Submit Your RSS Feed now…

High Priced Domain Name Pricing Model

The concept of asking a very high price for low or moderate value domain names is used by both Marchex and Frank Schilling’s Name Administration. In the past I tried to buy a few names (which if they were my names would be asking under 1k) but Frank wanted a minimum of 8k firm or even more, and would not budge a bit or negotiate the price.

Of course, that’s their business decision and a business model they apparently are following. With that said, in view of the fact they do want to sell domains, we do not see how Marchex Inc or Frank Schilling could possibly be selling many domains since I feel their prices are even more than end-user domain values.

In addition, they make you jump through a bunch of hoops, stumbling blocks and complexities before you can even make an inquiry, making buying from NameAdmin even more unlikely vs if their pricing was more realistic or flexible.

We will appreciate any comments you have about Money Matters, which feedback we could also add to our web site as we are looking for money matters and monetary ideas to expand the web site.

Domain Inquiry Sounds Better vs Domain For Sale

There has been talk on the forum boards about the best way to place a notice on your website that your domain name is for sale. Fabulous.com does a good job combining PPC ads with a domain for sale announcement page and developed a type of hybrid between a parked page and a sales page. With that said, ‘This Domain Name is For Sale’ notice does a fairly good job of getting people to make offers, but there appears to be a better way.

That Fabulous page is a good approach but I would like it even more if the banner said “Domain Inquiry” since I believe “This Domain Name is For Sale” notice will detract from the the visitor experience and potential visits to your advertisers (at least to to a degree) since the page may have has less crediblity due to the site/domain being offered for sale. The words “Domain Inquiry” has a less obvious negative meaning to a web-surfer, imo.

Any reviews, comments or ideas you have about how to effectively and professionally sell Internet domain names or websites would be appreciated. Thank you.

Follow Me on Twitter can have Interesting Benefits

Unfortunately, I was a late-starter with twitter.com since I did not really start using it until earlier this year, and even more recently started doing more than occasional tweets.

In the past I did not fully realize the great power and potential of Twitter. Twitter is also an extremely interesting way to get some free publicity for your websites or web-pages, in addition to its main purpose which I think (but not positive) is simply talking about news events, or saying what you are doing today, or what you have done lately.

Some recently discovered hands-on marketing advice I can give you is that it’s probably best if you extracted some interesting and helpful content from your web site and posted it as a tweet, instead of simply announcing your site and posting a link to the URL.

More advice is that you post to your Facebook page a link to your Twitter account so people can start following you and also put up a graphical link to Twitter on any relevant websites you have access to, similar to the Follow-Me-on-Twitter image below.

One more thing is I ask you to please go to @webtrading or click-on the picture below to Follow-Me-on-Twitter now. Thank you!