Making money by selling Domain names

Jon

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Got this email this morning from the guys who host this site

Over the last month we have seen the launch of the first few dozen of over one thousand new domain name extensions. From '.shop' to '.app' to '.uk', these domains are completely changing the way we see web addresses. There are a few myths to clear up, and a few changes that we can anticipate.

Background

ICANN, the global body that oversees domain names, last year opened applications for new domain extensions. For an application fee of $185000, anyone could apply for their own extension. ICANN received 1930 applications. Some of these were what we called 'closed', which means they will not be available to the general public: examples include .acer or .nike. However, most were 'open'. What is just starting to happen is that these 'open' TLDs are launching and becoming available to register.

At Vidahost we have already had 25 domain launches; the most popullar so far has been .photography.

Impact on domain availability

Probably the biggest impact of these new TLDs is increased choice. At the moment if you want to register a .com / .net / .co.uk domain, you may have to choose a fairly obscure domain for it to be available. Single words or catchy names are usually already taken. This has pushed the value of the domains in the secondary market high: for example vacationrentals.com sold for $35 million in 2007! Most of the new registrations we see are therefore for lengthy combinations of words such as window-cleaner-in-bath.co.uk. We would expect that to change.

Of course a .com / .co.uk domain still has a high level of user trust associated with it, and will probably remain the most valuable of domains. A study by Nominet showed that 81% of UK consumers preferred a .co.uk domain name.

Trademarks

One of the risks with the new TLDs is that another party could register your domain with a different extension, potentially confusing customers. Brand-protection is therefore driving many pre-registrations, something we also saw when the .xxx extension launched.

I do not want to overstate this risk; there is no need to go and register hundreds of domains. However, it is definitely worth browsing through what domains are coming and seeing if there is anything of value to you coming up, or any domains that could cause you problems if they were registered by a third party.

One area Dan (Vidahost domains manager) is investigating is whether .blog may rank higher for blogs in search engines than a .com -- that would make sense as 'blog' is in the URL. What could the impact be if you run a blog? Similarly, when .shop launches, what impact will that have on ecommerce searches? If a customer searches for 'jumper shop' then where would jumper.shop rank in relation to jumpers.com or jumperstore.co.uk for instance?



Some interesting points there

Domain resale market seems to be a good place to make money if you own a decent domain name


And these .blog ones - will you bloggers be buying up those as well?

Looks like the landscape could be about to change get again..
 

mnporter2001

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I think there used to be a lot of money to made on domain names, but with the release of more and more extensions I believe its less of a profitable business to get into.

Years ago if you wanted to buy a domain name you had maybe 10 choices, .com .co.uk .biz etc etc but now for each single name there is probably 100 extensions you can have.

I guess some .com and perhaps some .co.uk will become valuable but more as a one off than a business venture I think

Cheers
Mark
 

Jon

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was reading this

http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/meet-the-mann-who-registered-14962-domains-in-24-hours/


That guy clearly knows what he is doing in regards to buying domains and turning them for a big profit.

I need to get in on this...
 

Jon

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I'm a bit of a hoarder with buying domains and have even grabbed a few new ones thanks to the £1 domain offer we have going with Kloudhost at the moment which you can see on your right hand side lol.

However just owning them isn't enough. You need to either drive traffic to them before selling them or put them up on a website like Sedo and hope someone buys it.

I was just reading this on another money blog called Money Skipper

Many high-profile domain sales are confidential, however the most expensive publicly recorded domain name goes to Insurance.com, which sold for a massive $35.6 million in 2010. This is bearing in mind that a new domain name can be brought for under £5. So the potential profits are ridiculous. Fly.com became the highest selling domain name of 2017 so far, which was sold for a massive $2,890,000.

For the sake of taking a punt on domains for £1 at the moment maybe I should buy some more! (STOP IT JON!!)
 
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MoneySkipper

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Thanks for the link Jon. I'm on the same lines as you, I think I need to buy a lot more cheap domains too, especially for £1, that's a bargain! I still only have the one domain on sale, which I'm still banking on. Let's hope we can all find that one domain name that's earns us some big money, either from traffic or a sale.

Have you ever had any luck from a domain sale?
 
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Jon

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Annoying back in 1999 I was working for a local ISP and we could buy domains for 99p back then straight through NOMINET and I used to own some cracking single and double word domain names.

18 year old Jon clearly didn't care about them back then and I just bought them like they were nothing and let them lapse!

The thing that annoys me at the moment is all the domain ends they keep coming up with such as the laughable .pizza, .london etc.

football.pizza is never going to be worth as much as football.com so I don't know why they have decided to go this route!
 
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MoneySkipper

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So you could have been sitting on some gold mines back then :p, because the short names do well, however most of the good ones are probably taken now.

I knew they had some random extensions about, but not as bad as .pizza, that is laughable. How far will they end up going with them.

Well good luck on your domain selling. I'll let you know if I manage to get a million pound sale :p.
 

Kimilsung

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I'm selling my domain 'manchesterfirework.co.uk' on sedo. got it on offers, but tbh, i'd sell it for like £5 or whatever to whoever's interested.
 

Kimilsung

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also got 'yourgay.co.uk too. when you sell a domain, do you have to front the domain transfer fee or does the other guy front the fee?
 

Jon

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Godaddy has a platform for selling domains

Are you selling the domains with traffic attached as that would make them more sellable
 

David Says...

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TBH I doubt you'll be able to sell these. The bottom has fallen out of the .co.uk market with Nominet's ludicrous release of the top level .UK, and these names aren't premium enough to attract much interest.

'Manchester Fireworks' isn't really a big enough market. And 'your gay' is toxic for any company to buy, and too ungrammatical for pedants (My gay what?). Someone might want to buy it "for the bantz" but probably not.

I do miss the heady days of the domain name market. I made a few tidy £££ back then!
 

David Says...

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when you sell a domain, do you have to front the domain transfer fee or does the other guy front the fee?

Missed this first time around - Nominet charges £10+VAT (IIRC) for transferring a name to a new owner. If you go the direct route then you can elect to pay it yourself, or the new owner can pay it. When I've sold names in the past I've paid it with bigger sales (£400 upwards - it'd be churlish not to). With smaller sales it becomes a significant chunk of the price so I'd insist that the buyer pays.

Some registrars let you change owner details in their control panels for free, so you can skip the Nominet fee. I think that LCN let you do this - if you really wanted to save a tenner then you could change your registrar to LCN for free, then change the ownership. (Check that LCN still do this free - it's a while since I did this.)
 

Kimilsung

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thats the same reason i bought it from names.co.uk but i cant do anything with it cos names.co.uk charges for hosting and charge to change registrars too
 

Jon

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thats the same reason i bought it from names.co.uk but i cant do anything with it cos names.co.uk charges for hosting and charge to change registrars too

I guess that's where they get you offering the domains so cheaply

Is it the norm @David Says... to charge for moving your domain? I didn't think it was, I thought .co.uk were free and .coms you just pay to host it elsewhere you don't pay at the original domain end
 

David Says...

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Nominet charges a £10+VAT fee for changing registrars.

If you're moving several names they can all be done under the one £10 fee. Most of the bigger registrars do changes in batches so they only have to pay it once or twice a day - easy for them to absorb.

A fee of £10 per domain is rather cheeky, but ultimately they are able to charge an admin fee if they so wish.

If you had several domains that you wanted to move then you could create an account directly with Nominet's Online Services using the email address that you used for the ownership details of the domains. You could then try initiating the registrar change yourself for £10 all in. The registrar can block that in some instances, though I've not come across that myself.

.com domains are different - the norm seems to be for the transfer out to be free (as long as your account is in good standing), with the new registrar charging the equivalent of a 1 yr registration, but your domain registration is extended for 1 year at the same time.
 

Jon

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Nominet charges a £10+VAT fee for changing registrars.

If you're moving several names they can all be done under the one £10 fee. Most of the bigger registrars do changes in batches so they only have to pay it once or twice a day - easy for them to absorb.

A fee of £10 per domain is rather cheeky, but ultimately they are able to charge an admin fee if they so wish.

If you had several domains that you wanted to move then you could create an account directly with Nominet's Online Services using the email address that you used for the ownership details of the domains. You could then try initiating the registrar change yourself for £10 all in. The registrar can block that in some instances, though I've not come across that myself.

.com domains are different - the norm seems to be for the transfer out to be free (as long as your account is in good standing), with the new registrar charging the equivalent of a 1 yr registration, but your domain registration is extended for 1 year at the same time.
I worked for an ISP / Web Hosting company in the late 90s and when we wanted to buy domains or transfer them we had to simply send a PGP encrypted email to Nominet.. That was it! No company was offering buying domains ON their sites or transferring them or anything, it was all done via email!

Seems mad looking back on it lol
 

David Says...

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I worked for an ISP / Web Hosting company in the late 90s and when we wanted to buy domains or transfer them we had to simply send a PGP encrypted email to Nominet.. That was it! No company was offering buying domains ON their sites or transferring them or anything, it was all done via email!

Seems mad looking back on it lol

Nominet only retired the automaton (which received and processed PGP emails) 3 years ago! It's a shame in a way - the automaton leveled the playing field when trying to catch expiring domains.

All done via the industry-standard, XML-based EPP now. You can still register via Nominet's Online Services.
 

Jon

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Nominet only retired the automaton (which received and processed PGP emails) 3 years ago! It's a shame in a way - the automaton leveled the playing field when trying to catch expiring domains.

All done via the industry-standard, XML-based EPP now. You can still register via Nominet's Online Services.
wow! Can't believe they only got rid of it 3 years ago!

Interesting to see you think the bottom has fallen out of the market when it comes to high value domain names (ie, ones with only 1 or 2 keywords in them)
 

Jon

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Just started looking into this again over on Domainlore as I'm looking to sell a few of my domains rather than just let them die off for free

The site deals EXCLUSIVELY with .uk domain names

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some are going for just silly money regardless of traffic!
 

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