I have a question.

You mentioned that in order to flip a domain you need to know the buyers. Of course, you always need to know who you're selling to. My question is: for any new people that want to get into the domain game, how do they find out who the buyers are? Who are the top 20 people in the domain game that would entertain sales pitches?

I don't have the time or resources to flip domains, nor do I have the interest, but I am looking for gems in a few niches and this thread has really given me some great ideas as to how to snatch those. So thanks!

There are more buyers than just me? :1orglaugh

Okay, I guess I can't hold back on this, so here you go:

1. Dombuyer
2. Mickey Mouse
3. Slavik
4. George Foreman
5. AVM
6. Dombuyer
7. NetTuner
8. Chris Chena
9. Vertical Axis
10. Dombuyer

Nice post Dombuyer!

now stop sending me those generic emails about my domains! LOL! :thumbsup

Of course, anyone who follows the above advice is likely selling to DomBuyer cheap (thus one of the motivations for the posts, as you're doing all the work finding the gems for him). :) The way to get the best price isn't to flip it fast.

Also, if you actually try the above, factor in the value of your time. It might take 500 emails/calls to domain owners to get one deal done. If it was so easy, DomBuyer would just hire staff. :) But, it's time consuming (I know first-hand), so when you end up calculating your hourly wage, that job at McDonald's starts looking good.

You're also competing against automated bots (anyone who owns domains knows they get MANY emails per month with lowball offers, because folks are scripting the Overture tool and matching it up against the WHOIS database). Those bots can search for names faster than you can.

Conclusion: All the "easy" money has already been made, years ago. The business is fairly mature now, and the returns on investment are approaching "normal" returns of other businesses. Except when buying from newbies (like folks in "awe" of the post!). :)

Hint to the newbies -- note the word "noobs" appears in the first sentence of the first post. :1orglaugh

:1orglaugh I wondered how long it would take before you realized that.

nice post...

maybe you should also start a "Domain Pawn" service like Latona. Definitely room for another player. :winkwink:

This business is as much about psychology as numbers
 

The weather is horrible where I am, and the coffee's free, so here goes:

This business is filled with geeks. If you want to compete with the geeks, you'd better be glued to those numbers all day long, because that's what the big players do.

My partner is a geek. I let him geek.

Me, I'm more interested in the role that relationships and psychology play. This is the vastly underdeveloped part of the game.

You can overoffer on some names and you still won't get a reply.

Why?

Because domain owners are used to the bullshit, to the guy who throws out a number, gets a reply, and disappears.

No owner wants to commit to a price, but parse the offers and decide on his own to sell.

If you contact a domain owner, you must inspire confidence. The pitch is everything, as you're wedged between the spam folder (self-deleting..lol) and the 300 other offers this guy gets every week.

Personalize it to the nth degree. And that doesn't mean:

"Dear ___________________ "

Lol.

Tell the owner that you know about the name, you know about the guy's site, and you know that domain is worth at least 50% more than you are offering.

On top domains, not the ones at the bottom of Overture, never offer less than 50% of what the domain is actually worth to you, and frequently offer close to 100% of what it's worth.

You'd be amazed how often you have a sale.

Domain owners don't want to be insulted, first and foremost. That most people know, but few fail to consider is that if you insult someone one time, you rarely get in the door on any other domain that guy owns.

You're in the wanker pile. Don't want to be there.

Do everything you can to inspire confidence and ease.

And the way to do that is actually to be trustworthy, friendly and brief. If you make a commitment, follow through.

I'm not a fan of DomainKing for a lot of reasons, but the one thing I learned from him, the hard way, was that rep is easily destroyed but not easily built. Treat your rep with care.

If you email a domain owner and he knows your names before you email, you're in for a better ride. Tell him the names you bought and the range you paid. This is very important in deciding whether you'll even get a reply.

In the case of this thread, even one bought domain, no matter how small, with a whois that looks credible, inspires confidence. Make sure your phone number works.

Whatever you do, don't point them to the dnjournal sale you just closed. While tempting, it reminds them how much their name is worth! :1orglaugh

sweet. Excelent informative post. I've always wondered how domain pedlers go about doing what they do. Very insightful stuff. Thanks! :)

:1orglaugh

When I first saw DomBuyer starting all the PIX threads, I thought someone stole his GFY acct... however, after reading this thread, I'm sure of it. LOL.

What about my awesome microsoftsearch.net domain?

I absolutely disagree with you George.

1. There has never been a more profitable time to buy a grand name and flip it for a multiple. There is a greased machine of buyers like you and me within instant reach for a noob who's risking his $500 or $1000 to find a buyer on an option before he's even put down his dough.

Why? Because you and I are not wasting our time at the bottom, but working mostly the middle. Years ago, before PPC changed everything and increased the value of almost every name, there was no such structure or opportunity.

In a hot market, shit names become okay names, and that's what we're in now.

2. Yes, the MOST money is not to be made in flipping to me, but I thought I made that pretty clear when noting that people like me are happy to pay upfront $300 to get more money over time.

Thing is, not everybody has that interest or business plan. Most people here, not in the domain biz, would be thrilled to make a three to five x multiple in a week or two, no?

3. You're right about the bot pitches. See my post above (posted before you posted). You have to customize your pitch.

4. You say: "the returns on investment are approaching "normal" returns of other businesses" Huh? You're kidding right?

I sat down recently and check about 25% of the names I've bought in the last year or two. I suspect that a $500k investment has turned into $7 or $8 million, and I don't mean by DK's standards ;)

George, I know it's hard for you to appreciate my sincerity given our history, but I really believe that there is money to be made in this game that dwarfs other forms of work common to people around here.

I am good at what I do, granted, and so are you, but I think that there are very motivated people here who are very speculative and hungry for knowledge who could learn very quickly and make really good money.

Believe me, I ain't selling the snake oil. I really believe it.

I have a friend who's been piling his day job money into domains that I grab but don't work for me, and while I don't really like the responsibility of that, this guy's my new best friend. His wife even called me one day to say I helped pay for the baby's bedroom reno.

There are risks, but under the model above, the risks are minimal. Most people have a grand to lose. If they don't they shouldn't get it. But then I don't have to say that as it's GFY :1orglaugh

How can you get ripped by escrow.com ?

I also want to state categorically, I ain't interested in investing anyone's money in domains. I've already has some people message me, and I ain't interested.

My only selfish interest here is in buying more names.

:pimp

seems like a good post, time to read it all !

Dombuyer, you dont have to answer this, but I am curious, why dont you like DomainKing? Or what has turned you off about him?

If you're still hanging around, dombuyer, put up a few notes about .nets

WOW. :Oh crap

... but maybe I just read it wrong.

Which PPC sponsor do you guys use? or recommend?

stop wasting our bandwidth

How can you get ripped off by escrow.com?

DomBuyer: I know you're reputable, and we're at the mutual respect stage now (it helps to have common enemies, hehe ;) ). I just don't think it's as easy, even for the bottom-feeders, once they factor in their time.

I agree with you that most of the top guys aren't spending as much effort on the sub-$1,000 names at the moment, and that's probably for a good reason (I've been focusing more on the $10K++ names myself, as you'll see when I post my new "baby" next week ;) ). It's soooo much work going through those names at the very bottom, that you have to value your time fairly low to go for them (unless you have it very automated, say like NameAdmin/15x/Franky or even BuyDomains on domain drops).

Of every 100 newbies who tries the above, probably 98 will get nowhere.....but maybe a couple will find success. Revisit this thread in a year, and we can see. There are some smart folks here on GFY, and some raw talent that is undercapitalized too. Of every 100 ICQs you got, how many are now on your ignore list? :) hehe

That's pretty much true for any method of making money. I could show any number of my friends EXACTLY what I do daily to make money, not one of them would do a thing with the knowledge.

I've never met him, so I don't really know him, and all of us in the biz know what that means. I'm sure he's quite a nice guy and lots of people really love the guy.

He is definitely a trailblazer and loved and hated in equal parts. I admire his balls for having invested so heavily before anyone else was in the room, but some years ago I spent lots of energy ridiculing his ego and megalomania when such things mattered to me. Now I don't bother and much of what he preached has now sunk in without me bothering to care about his personality defects.

Rick is Rick. There's something about him, despite having made his mark and lots of cash, that needs to constantly remind the world that the domain world revolves around him, when in fact, it doesn't. This busines is actually very decentralized, with lots of people all over the world who might never meet, doing very well.

When I was thrown off his board, there were just a few other nuts and refugees. Now, it's like the Fortune 500. George can share a chuckle with me on this.

It used to be like the Wild West, with all the blood fests and battles that you'd expect from the Wild West. Today, it's much more mature, as George noted, and battles are rare.

My battling days are over. I have a large family, lots of real-world relationships, filled with problems, tragedy and all the ache of modern life.

Fake drama works, but eventually it wears thin.

very nice guide, bookmarked :thumbsup

Brisk: For PPCs, there are several to go with:

1. DomainSponsor -- good for general traffic

2. Fabulous -- good for casinos and adult

3. Others that are "invite only", e.g. Hitfarm, where you need higher traffic to get in (email for info if you're big)

4. Others like Sedo.com, Afternic.com, DomainHop.com, Moniker, NameWinner, Goldkey.com and others are starting to do it too (a sign the industry is getting saturated).

I wrote a long thread about this some years ago. Let me see if I can dig it up.

You are truly one of the few good guys in the domain biz, and I like your mentality, and your honesty - You say it like it is!

Another thing while I'm in ass-smooching mode:

GeorgeK and I have had legendary battles, and many differences over the years, but since he's new to this board and you guys might not know him, George probably knows about ten times more about domains than I ever will. He's really, really smart. So pick his brain via icq and leave me alone..heh..

lol Well, if you're a hot gal (or have a hot sister), you can ICQ me.....otherwise, DomBuyer's your man! :1orglaugh

You do tons with a search page like kitty.com do you asign a gross value to click in your head when it is a non- commercial term like that? 500 type-ins a day is worth x?

This very generous thread comes from a man who has made TONS OF MONEY in the domain business mind you...

I concur this is the most valuable thread any of you will prolly read in a lifetime.

Thank the man... =)

I eagerly await this thread dying out ;)

This is the one area I won't talk about as it's very competitive and the walls have ears.

The one thing I will say is that everything is situational: Depends on your business plan, your deal with advertisers, the diversity of your portfolio and traffic.

Again, there is no template formula for valuing a name. In the case of kitty.com, we knew in advance that however the ppc page was displayed, whether targeted or not, the traffic was a bargain either way, and we always have the asset, which could be a terrific brand.

Actually, now that I think about it, the seller of kitty allowed us to pretest, because I remember how screetchy she was about email hijacking...lol

So, what I said above is wrong: we pretested and were happy with it. Now I remember that we offered her $20k on our second offer, and settled just north of that, so she did very well.

I showed you some of my domains. And Ihave some otehrs. I was going to sell the stuff off but it occurs to me that where can i get this type of return and I do not need the money. Is buying with a 2 year payback on actual income still possible? People have said 3 years is more common now. This is different then the start of thread in that i would be looking at a known commodity.

Dom - George, good posts from both of you :)

There is always a gem to be found in any thread.

Domain names are real estate - pure and simple.

Btw, what are the risks using Escrow.com?

I don't buy anything more than two years rev these days. Too risky. More often than not it's a year... :2 cents:

Yes, good stuff.

great thread.... thnx DomBuyer :thumbsup

quick question....

37754 searches for "people relationship dating"

is that domain good? i picked it up a few months ago... :winkwink:

peoplerelationshipdating.com haven't done anything with it yet..

good post man, you just gave me a few ideas