Randys Domaining Blog

We will not be updating this blog until November as we are on the road in the motor home until then. All we’ll be doing is deleting the spam when we have internet access.

This is a short update about our domain buyers group. While the details are confidential, our group has located and purchased a true premium domain name. We worked hard and came together well – and agreeing on the name, negotiating a price, and making the purchase. Our next steps are researching potential end users and beginning the process of marketing the name. Stay tuned for more on this endeavor.

Well, we’re moving forward with our domain buyers group. After a LOT of back and forth about the application and registration document we are required to agree to, we finally are off and running. Domain name is set up, paypal account is set up, and a number of people have provided their funding. Our goal is to be running by the end of January. We’ll keep you posted about the progress we are making.

An aside here – spammers – we are using a great spam filter, so don’t bother. I just hit all delete all spam and Poof!

This should be interesting. A forum I belong to is setting up a domain buying club. The idea is to pool small resources into enough to purchase a premium domain. We will develop it and promote it, and sell it to an end user or at auction. This should be quite an interesting experiment. It is an exercise in trust, cooperation, and pooled expertise. I will keep people informed about how it is going.

Well, it’s Friday afternoon at happy hour time. I’m reflecting on the week. I’ve been active buying domains at auction, in fixed price sales, and in hand-registering them. I’ve been busy all week adjusting parked domains, deciding which to drop, and looking at names to drop. Not much development this week. Once again I am active in my pursuit of good key-word and dictionary word .info domains. I made a big (for me) auction purchase of a dozen domains for $39 – most of the reason was to get a couple info’s I really like – tiredealer.info, and irritating.info. I think there is development potential in each of these.

It just seems wrong to me. I like .info domains because I can still find an occasional great domain name where the king of domains – .com – is used up. When I crank the name into a tool like estibot the spread between the .com and the .info are often huge.

An example: TheTopTen.com works out to a value of $64,000, and the .info comes out at $450.  Now if you look up thetopten.com it turns out to be a parked site, owned byName Administration Inc.,  in the Cayman Islands. The contact information links to ProForma Inc – a brokerage for Name Administration. This tells me clearly that this is a Frank Schilling-owned domain.

So I ask myself – is the .com name really worth $63,550 more than the .info? I don’t think so. Starting today I am going to price my good .info names at half the .com value – minimum. After all, my investment and carrying costs are very low and eventually the right buyer will come along and make a reasonable offer.

I just registered puzzlesandgames.info – a bookend to gamesandpuzzles.info.  Neither of these names has a great estibot value – under 200 dollars. Estibot thinks the .com’s are worth 18 to 20 thousand dollars. I think that the .info has some potential here.

Okay, every now and then I get an idea and go off on a binge of domain registrations.

My latest binge was based on the notion that cityname-travel-information could be a long term winner. After hours of research I selected about 20 domains in this format. Here they are, in no special order:

SpokaneTravel.info, FreeportTravel.info, GreenvilleTravel.info, OklahomaCityTravel.info, CharlotteTravel.info, MunichTravel.info, KansasCityTravel.info, MazatlanTravel.info, AcapulcoTravel.info, SavannahTravel.info, ScottsdaleTravel.info, JacksonvilleTravel.info, TampaTravel.info, RaleighTravel.info, LouisvilleTravel.info, RapidCityTravel.info, RenoTravel.info, CharlestonTravel.info, MobileTravel.info, and McAllenTravel.info.

I have plans to develop a few of these, and cash park a majority of them.

On June 5th, the bido.com web site had a nice sale for technicians.info – $775.00. Being a fan of .info domains I was pleased to see this sale.

The live auction is complete. There were a couple of .info domains that did well.

Sports.info for $9,000 and laptopcomputers.info for $4,000.

ad.com was the big winner at $1,400,000 – the next highest price was recorded at $45,000 for BottledWater.com.

See the results here.