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According to this recent post by Andrew of DNW, hundreds of Whitney Houston domain names were registered following her sudden death.
325 Whitney Houston related domain names were registered in fewer than 24 hours after her death
Apparently making money off of someone’s tragedy has its history in the world of domaining. Thousands of Michael Jackson domain names were registered in 2009 after the death of the King of Pop.
Many of the new Whitney Houston domain names are already available for sale. The most notable of which are:
- WhitneyHoustonTribute.com – a 25k premium listing on GoDaddy.
- WhitneyHoustonIcon.com – same 25k.
- WhitneyHoustonDiva.org – 10k on Godaddy.
- WhitneyHoustonDiedAt48.com – $500 on eBay.
I strongly believe trying to get rich on someone’s death should be a punished crime.
As noted in the comments section of the mentioned DNW blogpost one of the names was posted on DNForum for appraisal, and the topic was later deleted by the moderators. This is the attitude that should be propagated against such scumbags that bring shame to the domaining business.
I have just come upon this article by Simon Johnson of DomainerIncome that clearly refers to my blog. Here’s an excerpt:
Many bloggers in the domain investment industry pretend they are experts. Every day we read about an “exciting journey” into the world of domaining (which is fine in itself), BUT where they step over the line is providing advice to newcomers. It’s simply “the blind leading the blind”. Most bloggers are wondering blind in the wilderness, lost, without a clue, yet they are taking it on themselves to advise newcomers. Its a recipe for disaster, because when newcomers accept their advice, the results can be financially devastating for them!
I was surprised to read the paragraph as it means that the blog got noticed somehow. I’m surprised because we do not get a lot of hits at the moment.
I pondered the matter for a while, because Simon is a very respected author.
I would like to comment the reference by saying that I perfectly realize my blindness as I have noted not once in my blog posts. I’m really sharing what I learn, and by writing about what I do I learn even more. This IS my journey. And I believe I have a right for an opinion, as long as I am honest about my knowledge of the subject.
The point I would like to make is that there is no ultimate intellectual level one can reach, which gives the person the right to express his opinion without responsibility. To put it short, all of us are learning all of the time. Some know more, some know less.
I’m not putting down this article. It does indeed make sense. And it made me think about what I write and whether I understand the responsibility of giving advices.
Thus I would like to remind you one more time, my dear subscribers, that I, myself, am a newcomer (see the first blog post) and you should take my experiences and suggestions for what they are.
Edit: I just realized that Simon’s article is exactly 1 year old. It means that nobody really noticed this blog. Heh. But it is amazing how his words could be attributed partially to my beginnings.
While researching domain names, you surely have noticed that the information provided to you by the majority of websites are in tables, be it domain registrars, evaluation tools, drop lists, or domain search websites. The tables provide an easy way for the reader to identify and sort vast amount of information on the subject. The downside is – you cannot copy the list of domains unless there is an export tool that allows you to download the table as a .csv file – the type supported by the majority of spreadsheet viewers (eg. Excel).
What to do then if you want to copy the domain names only? Well, here are the tools that can parse inputted gibberish and output a clean list of domain names that it contains:
After you have a clean list of domains, you might want to further parse them based on extension, generic keywords, dashes, digits, etc. with the following great tool:
Please leave a comment on which tool you prefer, or if you know of any other tools doing the same job.
While researching available domain names with the keyword insurance, I’ve come upon these valuable names that might eventually get high end-user offers.
| Domain name | EstiBot value | Remarks |
| cxinsurance.com | $2500 | |
| xxinsurance.com | $1800 | |
| roinsurance.com | $1500 | |
| oginsurance.com | $1200 | |
| muinsurance.com | $770 | |
| owinsurance.com | $630 | |
| vsinsurance.com | $510 | $11.73 CPC |
| fiinsurance.com | $460 | $9.45 CPC |
| vdinsurance.com | $450 | |
| zoinsurance.com | $340 | |
| boinsurance.com | $200 | $7.11 CPC |
| ooinsurance.com | $130 | |
You may want check additional evaluational data on EstiBot for any of these names.
You can bulk register these domain names on GoDaddy.
Please let me know by commenting if you think any of these domain names could go viral. Please also leave a note if you purchase any, and I will cross them over in the post with relevant comments.
I would also try to post follow up on the sales of these names, if they ever get flipped / resold.
You might consider subscribing in order to get notified about new worthy available domain lists.
During the last 10 days I have registered and put on sale the following domain names:
| Domain name | Price |
| 123-pr.com | $299 |
| 138th.com | $138 |
| abc-poems.com | $599 |
| akondownload.com | $239 |
| apcparts.com | $599 |
| bdsml.com | $299 |
| burnst.com | $599 |
| desktopmic.com | $699 |
| djdara.com | $399 |
| ebaydiscountcodes.com | $499 |
| fehotel.com | $899 |
| femdomchan.com | $89 |
| femdomlife.org | $109 |
| footballattire.com | $499 |
| footfield.com | $799 |
| ftvgirl.net | $569 |
| hitchmovie.com | $1,499 |
| hocars.com | $499 |
| iptab.com | $319 |
| livullman.com | $629 |
| menissues.com | $499 |
| minihdd.com | $899 |
| moneybringer.com | $89 |
| ncbanks.com | $2,299 |
| obama-speech.com | $699 |
| oggplay.com | $599 |
| online-make-money.com | $699 |
| pdffont.com | $499 |
| phmj.com | $399 |
| picsbdsm.com | $299 |
| sonyslr.com | $1,899 |
| steveandchris.com | $699 |
| terapa.com | $499 |
| theeagle.net | $1,899 |
| vbrun.com | $329 |
| whylyrics.com | $1,399 |
| womansocks.com | $1,699 |
To buy any of the domain names you may visit my Sedo portfolio. If the domain name you are looking for is not listed there, it probably is on GoDaddy as a premium listing.
Please feel free to leave comments on whether the prices are correctly reflecting the value of the domain names, or not.
Also please leave a note on which domain name you think will sell first.
I will be frequently posting valuable reg-fee domain names that I find or come across by chance that I recommend for purchase, and would register myself if I had a larger budget, or the necessary rights – as in the case of .us domain names.
Here’s the first bunch of .us & .info names with EstiBot evaluations:
| Domain name | EstiBot value | Remarks |
| bangalore.us | $3400 | |
| tonibraxton.us | $3100 | |
| cosco.us | $2800 | |
| englishlesson.us | $1900 | |
| hentaivideos.us | $1500 | 245K monthly exact searches |
| parttimework.info | $190 | |
| p12.us | $35 | |
You can bulk register these domain names on GoDaddy.
Please let me know by commenting if you think any of these domain names could go viral. Please also leave a note if you purchase any, and I will cross them over in the post with relevant comments.
I would also try to post follow up on the sales of these names, if they ever get flipped / resold.
You might consider subscribing in order to get notified about new available domain lists.
Everyday we learn something new.
Today, for example, reading a blog I frequent, I learned that Duck.com forwards to Google. A quick whois check tells us that it is indeed registered to Google Inc.
This fact became popular very recently even though the question has been asked for a couple of years now. Here’s a 1 year old reply by a redditor:
Yes, duck.com came as an asset in the unrelated On2 acquisition (On2 used to be known as Duck Corp). But it just sat there (pointing to this Duck Corporation history page) for a long time.
I first inquired about it on 11/4/09. After several attempts, I got back a response “from management” on 3/25/10 that they didn’t want to sell it. Understandable.
Now http://www.on2.com/ points to a Google explanation page about the On2 acquisition, yet http://duck.com/ points directly to Google search.
Google owns lots of domains that don’t point anywhere, or not to their main search page. That means there was an affirmative decision somewhere along the line to redirect that particular domain to their search product.
Link to the source.
Some speculate that Google is trying to grab attention from a search engine called DuckDuckGo. It’s either that, which is a bit unlikely in my opinion, or Google is in need of the natural type-in traffic that would come from a domain name like duck.com. But then I have a question: does Google really need duck enthusiast traffic that much?
Edit: Wait a minute! Jellyfish.com redirects to Bing? Something is definitely wrong with the Internet.
Since I am a beginner myself, I have looked around for the tools & resources that would assist in making decisions about purchase / sales. Here’s a list of websites that I use everyday and would certainly recommend to any beginning domainer:
Domain Search
FreshDrop – on sale, expired & reg-fee domain name search tool with a massive frequently updated database; completely configurable, fast and very user-friendly. Some of the features like PR and Domain Age are note available for free users.
Domize – a very interesting domain name search tool with unique capabilities. Read the FAQ and give it a try. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed frequent false positives, but Domize is still being developed.
DomainsBot – besides being a search engine, it is a highly accurate domain name suggestion tool.
Bust A Name – a very interesting search engine and suggestion tool that combines the words you input in every possible way to find an available domain name. It also features a unique brandable domain name generator, even though with occasional false positives. Give it a try.
Domain Drift – a search tool to find expired and deleted domains.
Domain Evaluation
EstiBot – an excellent domain evaluation tool on many levels. You may evaluate for free only 1 domain per day I believe. Thus I purchased a premium subscription and constantly use it. At this stage I think it hits quite close – close to the end-user prices, I have to say. It also provides a lot of necessary information about a name – amount of exact Google searches (I still can’t figure out how it gets them – Google AdWords tool doesn’t do that), availability of other extensions of the same name, and sales history of similar domain names. The only downside is that for $30 a month you get only 150 daily domain name evaluations – it might be limiting on some days. For those who can afford – there are higher-level subscriptions. I will get back to EstiBot in one of the future posts.
Epik Appraisal – completely free! Can’t beat EstiBot for obvious reasons, but I use it frequently to compare results. One thing I noticed is that it generally prices domain names 20-25% higher than EstiBot. I wonder where lies the essential difference in the algorithms of these two?
Valuate – it uses EstiBot engine to appraise domain names. I do not have a premium subscription, thus I cannot say what the difference is. I might try it some day.
Domain Sales History
An important part of domain name evaluation is the investigation of the previous sales of similar names. Two main websites that provide historical sales data for free are DN Sale Price & NameBio, the latter being my favorite due to vast configuration options.
Domain Drop Catchers
SnapNames & Pool.com are the biggest names on the drop catching scene. If you would like to order a valuable dropping domain name, forget backordering through registrars like GoDaddy – the chances are, you won’t get it. Technology and manpower in the possession of such names as SnapNames, Pool.com & BuyDomains give them an edge in catching a dropping domain name.
To be continued…
TS3BWYG78TJB
As revealed in the first blog post, on February 1st I beat three bidders in a SnapNames auction and bought the name phmj.com for $36. I was happy and smiling and cheerful when I learned after reading the relevant thread on NamePros that it doesn’t cost more than $20 without the end-user.
I was deluded in a way. EstiBot rates the name at $1,900. Epik rates it at $5,700. From what I learned later they are both end-user prices. That’s supposedly how these evaluation services work. But what made me bid on phmj.com was more than just delusion based on the $x,xxx sales data of other LLLL.com domain names, which were of course, when I think about it, more valuable in many ways than the one I chose. But I also thought about the end user. Who could be that end user who would be willing to pay me %5000 of the initial price? Let’s see:
- Listing of available majors in Philadelphia universities?
- Philadelphia Men’s Journal?
- A Philadelphia Mahjong community?
- Physicians of Minnesota Journal?
Minnesota, Philadelphia, Education – as a category; jobs, physicians, physics, mahjong – as keywords. There are possibilities, and I think I’m not completely deluded about the name, as it is likely that one day there will be an end-user for it. The name is definitely in a better category than xzkj.com or kywq.com.
The weakness of this type of domain names is that they could only be valued by the end user. Without having at least one vowel in the name, they are extremely difficult to remember. It took me a while to remember mine, honestly!
I think short domain names, even random 4-consonant ones will cost considerably more in 5-10 years. They will be much rarer than now, as more end-users grab them. But how long will it take? Let’s try to analyze.
There are 456,976 possible four letter domain names with any given TLD. Let’s focus on .com for this post. The last remaining LLLL.com domain name was hand-registered on November 2, 2007. Expiring domain names are bought instantly through domain drop lists on various websites, like SnapNames and Pool. So you won’t find any of them available for registration unless one accidentally is missed by tens of thousands domainers throughout the world monitoring these services daily.
As per on NameBio The most expensive purchase of 4-letter domain name was the purchase of Fund.com in March, 2008 for $9,999,950. Fund.com are fund market specialists who provide necessary information to investors. It is not a surprise though that one of the biggest domain name purchases in history has been done by baking & funds professionals. The purchase has supposedly elevated them to the top of the financial services sector on the internet. It is a testament of how serious they are. But what is surprising are Google DoubleClick ads on the top their webpage. I can’t believe it. Seriously. Check it out. Why would a company that can spend $10M on a domain name need such a monetization method? Mystery.
But let’s get back to my purchase of phmj.com.
It is fair to note that my little domain name has no vowels in it. Its structure is CCCC.com (C stands for consonant). Let’s see the data for top 20 sales of such domain names from NameBio:
 Top purchased CCCC.com domain names as per NameBio As you can see, the only two generic names stand at #1 & #2. They are both acronyms. DVD is an entry in every major dictionary, while BDSM is not. Not yet, maybe. But it is a major acronym that most adults are familiar with.
Regarding the rest of the top 20, I cannot recognize any of them except llll.com at # 18, which quite interestingly is the subject of this post.
What it means is that they all found their end-users. For some it took a short period of time, for most it took years.
Unfortunately that is not the case for the majority of CCCC.com domain names. The commonly shared view is that it helps to have premium letters in your name.
Most say the good letters are: S, M, D, T, F, G, H
The weak letters are: J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y, Z
All the rest of the consonants fall in-between and do not change the value of a domain name considerably.
phmj.com has 2 premium letters, one non-premium letter, and one weak letter, which is ok, I guess.
So, what’s my plan? I have parked it on Sedo and put it on sale for a considerable price. I will wait as much as I can, renewing it each year, for the end-user. In case there is no end user, I will just sell it off an auction. I am not planning to develop it, as I do not really know what direction it should go. Besides, I have other more generic domain names to develop.
Hello, everybody! Welcome to Domaining is Fun blog!
I’m launching this blog to write about my journey to the beautiful world of domaining. I will not only share with you what I do, but also my opinion on lots of things as I learn and understand them.
This blog is also a way for me to keep records of my thoughts, the steps that I take, and, most importantly, my mistakes, which I hope you will help me figure out by commenting.
My name is Najiko. I’m 26 years old and I have many years of experience creating and promoting websites, mainly in adult scene. I have been a moderately successful affiliate to many websites, and barely earned enough to pay the hosting bills. Thus I understand the difficulties of earning money online better than most. To be honest, I find myself in a slightly privileged situation since I do not have illusions about making money on the internet easily. I know it is hard. But it is challenging. Hence it is interesting.
I do not feel deluded by the possibilities of making $xxx,xxx. I know the slim chances of reaching a point where you can become a full-time domainer. I think it takes not only hard work and devotion, but also a bit of luck.
Anyway, maybe I am deluded. Let’s see together.
Even though I had interest in the business for quite a while, I got into domaining on 31th of January, 2012, 4 days before this post. On the same day I bid on a random 4-letter domain name on an auction on SnapNames. More about that in the next post.
If you are a domaining enthusiast, please subscribe, so that you can follow this journey into the deeps of this amazing world with me. If you are an experienced domainer, please be rough in you comments, and thanks for your help!
I will reveal some of the domain names that I buy & sell when I feel it is necessary to explain what my ideas are. Some might say I give out too much information, and any end-user might be able to search for it. But what the heck, I’m here to learn, and enjoy my time learning. Making a few of bucks is a side-effect. And thus I hope affiliate links will not bother you.
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