Could I even give them away?

Admin · Dec 8, 2016

Currently got someone bidding on SEDO for one of my hand reg'd .es names too, up to 1300 usd so far.

Admin · Dec 8, 2016

Done deal, $2150 for a .es, first one I've sold for decent money, finally some of the folks here on the Iberian peninsular are starting to understand the value of good keyword domains.

mat · Dec 8, 2016

admin said:
Done deal, $2150 for a .es, first one I've sold for decent money, finally some of the folks here on the Iberian peninsular are starting to understand the value of good keyword domains.

Was it an English or Spanish keyword domain name?

Admin · Dec 8, 2016

Spanish

bonusmedia · Dec 8, 2016

mat said:
I remember a time when I could hand register a .org.uk, put it on affiliates4u forum and get an influx of people message me asking for a price. A time sticks out in my mind where after a having a few drinks out in town late at night I was showing my mate "how easy it is" and said lets get back to this guy with £500. Sale done pretty much instantly, money sent over. That felt amazing at the time to turn £5 into £500 with very little effort and it happened often.

As far as I am concerned this is nothing more than people losing faith in "keyword domains". As above there was a time where people would jump at any kind of keyword domain name with more than a few thousand exact searches seemingly for the sake of it. Because "they had value". You would see time and time again that 90% of the people buying them would never go onto develop them anyway.

While it is true that keyword domain names dont have the instant overnight success in Google that they once had, they still are of significant value if you are willing to put a bit of time in. In most cases they still rank very well with NO link building but you need to put effort into the content of the site and let it sit in Google for 6 months+ to get traction.

As an example 6 months ago I bought a 3 word .org.uk for £300 which would not have sold on here for £5. Now it makes well over that a month and with a small affiliate site on it and no backlinks. Just 20 odd pages. Took a few days to make the site. Just add it to the pot with the others.

Just take advantage of the low prices if you are into building sites.

When EMDs ranked very quickly and easily, lots of people threw up banner farms, built spam links and made quick money, but that model is mostly dead now. Quite a lot of affiliates weren't able to adapt their models.

The affiliate market also changed to favour fewer, larger affiliates - it's simply more efficient for brands to focus their efforts on the channels that offer the most volume. There is certainly some cannibalization going on with cashback and voucher codes, if I was a pure content affiliate I would be questioning investing in high quality content that creates interest and helps users make buying decisions only to lose them to the biggest cashback deal.

This may be wishful thinking but I think in the long term brands will recognise that cashback and voucher codes can sometimes devalue their offerings - and that it's much better for the brand if the user perceives incentives as coming from the brand, rather than a cashback site - they're paying for them anyway!

It takes time and money to compete for any good search terms now, so from our perspective it's only worth focusing on the best. Ultimately one large site with authority and a strong position beats 10 small sites making the same revenue. I still have one page sites that make money but the best way to add value now is to build an authority brand and retain users.

A quality site on an EMD will outrank the same site on a brandable, all else being equal. Not sure about .org.uk etc but certainly for .co.uk. There are lots of benefits. Someone searching 'widgets' is going to have instant confidence that 'widgets.co.uk' has what they're looking for - the decision to click is an easier one.

At least at the premium level it's an easy decision to go with the EMD and build it into a brand. When you start getting into 3 word domains or niches that are more specific there is less authority in 'owning' the keywords, and less potential to build brand value.

Edwin · Dec 9, 2016

This industry is so unpredictable. 48 hours ago, I would have said things were as dead as the proverbial doornail. But then we sold a .co.uk, and (in a separate transaction to a different buyer) an unrelated .co.nz; the two sales together come to close to £3,000.

That kind of uncertainty is hard to deal with. Even after 20 years domaining, I still find myself doubting whether the sales will keep coming. But somehow, they do... Although not in the volume of a few years back when EMD were a core SEO strategy, admittedly.

I'm not sure what the answer is, really. I guess if one is fortunate enough to be able to get many months (or even years?) ahead on renewals then the ebb and flow of enquiries becomes much less nerve-wracking.

DaveP · Dec 12, 2016

mat said:
I remember a time when I could hand register a .org.uk, put it on affiliates4u forum and get an influx of people message me asking for a price. A time sticks out in my mind where after a having a few drinks out in town late at night I was showing my mate "how easy it is" and said lets get back to this guy with £500. Sale done pretty much instantly, money sent over. That felt amazing at the time to turn £5 into £500 with very little effort and it happened often.

Ah I remember those days. :\

Edwin · Dec 17, 2016

Here's another example of the unpredictability of our industry: we just sold a 20-letter, 3-word generic which perfectly describes a particular product for low £x,xxx.

I am pretty confident the domain would have struggled to get a single bid at the £50 opening price on DL, yet it's been bought by a company that specialises in that (high ticket) product, and a single extra sale over their entire future ownership of the domain will more than pay for it. They saw the value and didn't hesitate.

This illustrates the difference between trying to dispose of a domain name to industry insiders to a very tight deadline (DL, or Acorn For Sale post) vs waiting for the "right buyer" to present themselves. (The snag being that you will never know when the latter is about to happen, unless you are doing proactive outreach.)