I was scanning through domain sales (I like to do that) when I noticed the other day, someone took advantage of some deals on Afternic. I’ve listed them below:

The following list of domains were purchased for $99 each on Afternic:

lwhy.com
sc0.com
qa0.com
roqq.com
lu0.com
gb0.com
madk.com
uour.com
fi0.com
hiph.com

Several of these names are CCC.com’s with values well over $250 and these LLLL.com’s are clearly worth more than that as well. I definetly wish I coulve jumped on the uour.com and hiph.com (not to mention the ccc.coms).

Moral of the story? Sometimes it pays to dig around some of the larger auction houses….

Justin

I posted this story at NamePros:

http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?p=2487345#post2487345 

With the domain market continuing to heat up, there is only one type of domain name on resellers minds right now. LLLL.coms. They are absolutely flooding the forums and marketplaces, and people are buying and selling them like they are going out of style. There are suggestions and hopes that premium LLLL.com’s will reach a min wholesale value of $1k by the end of the year. But, is that realistic?

My gut feeling is…. unlikely. I think although the LLLL.com market has value, right now were seeing a drastic inflation in prices, as people clammer to invest and hold. The problem is not in the higher quality LLLL.com’s but in the lower quality ones. The ones which will always be dropping, and are so difficult to find end-users for. Several of my colleagues have made substantial profits in this sector (including myself). However I do want to warn people, that right now we are seeing heavy inflation thanks to resellers and investors, not actual demand from end-users.

If you are planning on investing in this type of domain name, understand the risks. I personally only recommend buying premiums at this point in time.

Justin

In the world of Domaining, an offer is never as good as you want it to be. You always want to sell the domain for as much money as is humanely possible, but almost always thats just not going to happen. For example, when you’ve held a domain name for a while and someone presents a very fair offer, you have to really sit down and evaluate the offer. Is it a good price? Is it fair? You need to remove those “attachment” emotions from the domain name.

If your selling at a forum, and you know its going to be sold to another reseller, you must consider that person is anticipating the name rising in value in the future.  Your within your right to continue to hold and seek out a profit, but sometimes a nice gain is a nice gain and money can be invested in different ways. (Im guilty of this!!!!) So alas, I think its time to say goodbye to one of my favorite gems!

Justin

I’ll tell you one of the reasons I love parked.com so much. MONEY. Today on a random 4 Letter .com - my revenue on 1 click was $18.92. How can you not love that? That is my highest click to date. Now, there is a chance that number could go down or up based on tomorrows final stat results, but for right now im soaking in the sun hoping that numbers stays up or goes higher. I have opted for the time being to place a Parked.com background on NameBio.com but if your not yet parking with them, I recommend giving them a try here: Parked.com

Some of you may notice that the NameBio blog is no longer looking like a stand alone. Well, I am happy to say that thanks to the expert hands at WordpressExperts.com, the NameBio.com blog is now seamlessly integrated into the main site. Im quite happy with the job that they have done and will definetly come to them on the rest of my wordpress needs. Thanks guys!

Justin

Although LLLL.coms have steadily risen in price, since the last few thousand were registered. I dont think anyone expected the market to careen out of control so quickly.  From what I can tell on forums, aftermarkets, and even ebay it seems the bare minimum for ANY LLLL.com is quickly rising to around $15-16 and even people are pushing that envelope. Having seen that CVCV.com craze last year, I made an effort to try to acquire pronounceable LLLL.com’s and premium lettered ones. I have decided at this time, to liquidate this portfolio of about 27 domain names. I will post the lot for sale on DNF and my plan is to switch out these 27 domain names for 1-2 LLL.com or Premium Keyword Domain.

For more information about LLLL.com domains - a fantastic blog/resource is 4LetterNoob - this is a blog from a NamePros Moderator, and someone very familiar with the LLLL.com market.

On a side note, there is another new domain blog called DotWeekly.com - I think this one is worth checking out.

Out of the nearly 200 domains on the auction block - only 16 were sold during the auction. (2 have bids post auction). The auction didnt start off right, as it ran through the first dozen domain names 3 times (apparently, some kind of server lag issue).  With about 300 bidders, 1 bidder one most of the domain names. It seems that there was a fan of “real estate” and “loan” related keywords as those represented the most of the domains. One domain garnished quite a bit of attention as a bidding war ensued for BuilderLoans.com - which drove it from $1k starting price to $8k. The Seller, Jamie Zoch was surprised with the results. He expected a bidding war, just not on that domain. Another one of his submitted: GenuineGold.com which also was listed with a starting price of 1k but recieved not a single bid.

Lessons learned from the auction? Time to be pickier with the quality of the domain names and the starting prices. And if you dont market directly to end-users, your not going to sell domain names at these prices. Out of the 5 domains we submitted, none of them recieved any bids. I must say I wasnt that surprised. DomainTools now has 60 days from Jan 3 to either sell the domain names for 10% less than auction reserves as per the contract. Although I doubt they will sell any, we will wait and see.

I will go ahead on the record and let those of you reading this blog know that very shortly, NameBio using the brand ClickItOut, will begin holding bi weekly (and eventually weekly) domain auctions. Stay tuned for more info!

Justin

DomainTools long awaited and postponed auction is finally ending today. Despite quite a bit of controversy we have tried to document the ups and downs of the auction and its process. In a last ditch effort to attract more bidders, DomainTools has procured bright yellow flashing banners on the major forums (NamePros.com and DNF.com) and frankly you just cant miss them. The question though is will this last attempt to bring in buyers actually work? We are about 2 and 1/2 hours away from the auction with only 3 of the almost 200 domains names with bids on them. I will update during the auction and after.

A popular website 3Character.com updates a monthly price guide for domain names with 3 characters. Recently it was called into question on the NamePros forum. Obviously the site cant be perfect, but it isn’t the first time I’ve disagreed with its valuation. The site is very useful and I believe is fairly close to accurate in most cases. Many in the industry, especially new comers use this tool like its the bible of pricing guides.

To be specific I think the wholesale price of a 3 letter .com (a domain with 3 letters in a row, no hyphens or numbers) is worth a bit more than the stated $6,400 minimum pricing and I believe the LLL.com market is ripe for major gain. Fewer and fewer of this type of domain name is available for sale. Recently I recieved a very high x,xxx offer on what would be considered a poor quality LLL.com (a domain with poor lettering, typically consists of letters; q, z, x, ect).

I believe by mid 2008 - the Min wholesale price of a 3 Letter .com will be about $10-11,000 .

Its barely been a few days since Oversee.net acquired Moniker (at whats rumored to be a multi million dollar deal). My predictions had been that the acquisition will bennefit Oversee much more than Moniker. Thus far, that seems to be holding up as Skenzo announced today they would drop Traffic Club as a provider. What does this mean? Traffic Club will have lost one of its most profitable partners in the monetization business, and Traffic Club users will more than likely see a decline in parking revenue.