Domain name addiction

So I just got a batch of domain names which need to renewed (.co.uk names are due for renewal every 2 years) Now I looked down the list and there was 14 names which need to be renewed in july 2009. Not too bad I thought, then I looked at the names and out of the 14 names I have only developed one of them in 2 years !!!!

domain addict

However I am not alone- after speaking to lots of other people in this industry, it appears that this is normal practice in this game !

It isn’t all doom and gloom, as good .co.uk domains will always rise in value as they become more rare to purchase for registration fee. Just take a look at Domain Prices and see how much some domain names sell for. Alan the owner of acorn domains (another fantastic resource for us doman name addicts to meet up) does a great job in keeping this site updated, and it is great for people who have investments in premium generic domains, as it shows proof of domain name sales to people who do not understand the value of domain names, and also how important they can be to a business.

Now don’t get me wrong, every domain name is not valuable but it makes me think twice when I see my domain renewals and worry that if I let them drop, the may become be valuable in the near future and I will have missed out on an opportunity.

Take tradeexperts.co.uk for example. A nice domain which is an excellent name for a website offering all the details of the best tradesmen over the UK. I had an offer late last year for £500 for the name, and I declined it. The name came up for renewal last month, and once again I paid the £6 registration fee to renew it for the next 2 years, as someone has already shown interest in the name. The name is still undeveloped and will never be developed by myself, so should I have taken the £500 ? But then I have telecommunicate.co.uk which was due for renewal 2 weeks ago, and I am going to let it drop, much to my dislike.

Don’t get me wrong I have made a VERY healthy profit from selling some domain names over the years, and only yesterday a friend of mine messaged me asking what he should do with a domain he bought. He bought it approx 6 months ago for £1,000 and he has now been offered £2,000 for the name and he hasn’t even done anything with it, and this is a growing trend as domains become rarer.

Domain name addiction is something which takes up quite a bit of my time, I have 100’s of good domain names sitting there undeveloped but I still look for more domain names to invest in. It isn’t a “bad” addiction as such, but you need to have an eye for the market (which luckily I feel I have got, after buying and selling domains for a few years from £xx to mid £xx,xxx level )

I would be interested to hear comments from other domain name addicts and what reasons they keep buying names and not developing them and just hoard them away.

15 Responses to “Domain name addiction”

pete on June 30th, 2009

* Domain Investing
Well done on the premium domains. Is the idea to monetise the ones with most potential, and hold onto others (to increase in value over time) as you may be limited by time contraints?

I don’t know much about investing in domains, but it seems you know your stuff, similar to property or stock market ‘investors’. As a domain investor, how would you value a domain (e.g. exact match keyword, market sector, age, backlinks, etc.)? Presumably this isn’t an exact science?

The flip side of this is of course, if someone holds a domain and doesn’t develop it, they are denying others the opportunity.
Richard on June 30th, 2009

Nice post Frank. Out of interest, how many domains do you currently own, roughly? I’m slowly approaching 100, but most of them aren’t really ‘domain investments’. Out of that 100, about 2/3 are developed and a couple more in progress. Oops!
max on July 5th, 2009

Im bit of a domain addict too although ive tried to cut down and only buy good domains.
KonstantinMiller on July 7th, 2009

I have been looking looking around for this kind of information. Will you post some more in future? I’ll be grateful if you will.
Richard on July 9th, 2009

Got a bit of a puzzle for you… if you knew a domain was spelt ‘wrong’, but in a survey of ~20 people, they all spelt it the ‘wrong’ way, would you buy? Google also indicates that the split is about 70/30 of people searching for the ‘wrong’ version of the name (local search ~25k exact searches/month).

Sorry it’s a bit vague!!

Rich
pete on July 9th, 2009

Hi Rich,

I would buy the main target domain, and the miss spelling, and re-direct the miss-spelling to the main domain.

Hope that makes sense.
frank on July 9th, 2009

Hi Rich

It depends on many things.

Would you build a site on the domain with a view to get traffic from the serps ?

This is a horses for courses question, and if you can answer the above question I will give you my view

Frank
wilsonf1 on July 10th, 2009

I bought a 3 word .co.uk last year for a tenner thinking “oh that sounds catchy” and it could have been used for voucher codes, discounts, money advice…. and basically i realised i didnt wanna get into all that!

sold it for £40 today so im pretty cool with that

i try to hold back from buying domains, even ones i know im going to develop – because once i have one im so impatient and just wanna get something live, but everyones advice is making sure google spiders something of value and not a holding page or half built pages…. but theres one domain im sure i can make £1000+ a year just sitting there under the worlds radar….
tom on July 12th, 2009

When you see what you believe to be a good .co.uk domain, how important is it that you take the .com (if available) and the .org.uk at the same time.

Are there any more extensions you would register to protect the value of your .co.uk domain?
Richard on July 12th, 2009

Cheers for the replies guys… It’s all purely hypothetical now as I didn’t end up buying the domain. It was donnington \ co \ uk. Of course, Donnington is a place in Telford, and a few other areas of the country, but Donington is the name of the racing circuit (1 n vs 2 n’s). As the F1 is going to end up at Donington (more than likely), I thought it might be a good typo domain.

Cheers!
frank on July 12th, 2009

@ Tom – it depends on how good the niche was and how valuable it was to me. I tend to register the .com and sometimes the .org.uk if I feel the domain is quite good in it’s own right (I done this with my previous thread with “facing bankruptcy” as I bought the .org.uk to cover myself too – if you fancy a bash at it, let me know and we can work something out )

@ Richard – yep I saw that auction and the person who bought that for £700 must need their head read, there is much better domains out there for that price. I may register a mistype for the reg fee, but wouldn’t pay £700 for a mistyped domain if I was planning on making a real go of it.
Richard on July 12th, 2009

I wonder if the person who bought the domain for £700 actually realises it’s incorrect for the name of the track? I must’ve asked a dozen people how they spell “Donnington” and they all said with 2 n’s. Food for thought!

In the end I went with a couple of donnington related ones (based on search figures for silverstone) for reg. fee! £20 instead of £700 Worth a gamble!!
Richard J McPhalrin on July 14th, 2009

Hey
Domain name addiction , great article, really well though out and very much enjoyed.

Cheers
Rob on July 17th, 2009

Great post. A lot of online marketeers will recognise this.

I recently started thinking about my domain to site ratio and made a conscious effort to get more sites live.
Predict Football on July 24th, 2009

I like to buy domain names, I’d love to know if there were any single word .co.uk’s left and available for general purchase – as I’ve never found one. I bought my surname as a .me – that’s the nearest I’ve ever come to a one word domain.
Even two word ones are becoming fairly rare now I think.