88,160 UK domains for sale

[Nigel]

Thanks Edwin for your very helpful input

As you said the 1% sales figure across the portfolio is conservative. I know we've all got slightly different portfolios and Nokta hoovered up a large slice of the .uk market some years ago. They've got a very large number of the best domains but they've also regged a few lesser ones which some of us might not have regged. However, all in all, I would expect that they are still making a healthy profit from parking earnings alone. Two years ago (when parking earnings were way higher than today's) they would have been making a packet.

From our own experience I would expect that they are actually selling between 2 to 3% of their domains but it depends on pricing. They seem to be pricing some domains right up but on others there seems to be quite a few bargains if you can be bothered to trawl.

 

[Skinner]

Their Recaptcha thing doesn't seem to want to work for me, so I can't even search the site heh. Anyone else having problems with it ?

 

[dashu1]

Well I've just negotiated with them & bought one off them - I know most people will hate it because it's hyphenated, but I've bought it for ranking purposes & think the price wasn't too bad.

I got them down by 40% on their starting point.

It was : search-engine-optimisation.com


What do you think?

 

[retired_member34]

I bought one of their fixed price domains, flightsfrom<uktown>.co.uk, 22K phrase local match, for less than $250. Not a bad price I thought.

Then enquired on a <uktown>hotels.co.uk, 49K phrase local match, $24K. Ouch!

 

[retired_member26]

At $10 per 2 year period, you could buy 2,500 domains for that $25,000...

No, you can not buy. More correctly you can register names, which are 90 percent worth crap with that unit price! or try to catch in this environment?

You are still missing the point: They caught or registered mediocre names since 2005 but now it is impossible to register mediocre names so the cycle is broken now.

 

[Edwin]

You have to dig, but there's still a lot available. I registered 50 domains from scratch yesterday. Perhaps my quality threshold is now too low - that's perhaps why I was able to find them - but I believe they'll fit the "1% sales over 2 years over time, or better" that was discussed earlier in this thread.

For the sake of the example, here's what I registered...
antiqueteaset/co/uk
antiqueteasets/co/uk
beltconveyor/co/uk
bonechinateaset/co/uk
bonechinateasets/co/uk
chinateaset/co/uk
chinateasets/co/uk
cinemaspeaker/co/uk
cinemaspeakers/co/uk
conveyortoaster/co/uk
conveyortoasters/co/uk
cursivefont/co/uk
cursivefonts/co/uk
digitalpresses/co/uk
documentfolder/co/uk
documentfolders/co/uk
documentholders/co/uk
documentwallet/co/uk
documentwallets/co/uk
employeehandbooks/co/uk
gothicfont/co/uk
homecinemachair/co/uk
homecinemachairs/co/uk
homecinemaequipment/co/uk
homecinemaroom/co/uk
homecinemarooms/co/uk
homelibraries/co/uk
homelibraryfurniture/co/uk
imagesetter/co/uk
industrialkitchen/co/uk
invitationtotender/co/uk
japaneseteaset/co/uk
japaneseteasets/co/uk
letterpresses/co/uk
moneydetectors/co/uk
nonstickpans/co/uk
pedicurechair/co/uk
pedicurechairs/co/uk
personalizedtshirt/co/uk
platesetter/co/uk
platesetters/co/uk
silverteaset/co/uk
silverteasets/co/uk
softwaretranslation/co/uk
tenderopportunity/co/uk
translationwork/co/uk
typewriterfont/co/uk
typewriterfonts/co/uk
wirelesshomecinemasystem/co/uk
wirelesshomecinemasystems/co/uk

Remember, to sell that theoretical 1% I don't have to care about the other 49 domains (over 2 years) that DON'T sell. There only has to be 1 name in there that's "good enough" in the eyes of the market, as long as all of them have commercial merit to someone. I also don't need to guess WHICH name will be the one that sells, I only need to make sure that I can see some good reason that each name would appeal to a potential buyer within the niche that the name covers.

A lot of the above are high value, low search names which they are still the BEST match for a niche (i.e. the niche itself never attracts large search volumes). For example homelibraryfurniture/co/uk - not many people have real home libraries (= low searches), but it can cost many tens of thousands of pounds to outfit one home library with custom fitted furniture and there are various companies that do nothing else.

Even using nothing but the 1,000 lookups per day of the regular Whois, it's probably possible to find 10-20 names a day to register so long as you're willing to spend some time with the Google keyword tool feeding it good "seed" website URLs from which it will generate its suggestions (tip: pasting a specific Yahoo category URL is a great way to seed a whole bunch of related keywords around the topic covered by that category; same with DMOZ)

 

[retired_member25]

Just to update on this:

They don't accept Paypal for UK customers, you have to be an US for that. However, payment on VISA was fine, although a bit of a fiddle sending indentity proof to Escrow - although to their credit the payment was authorised within 12 hours.

Nokta pay the escrow fee, buyers pay the nominet fee. All together very efficient.

 

[dashu1]

Just to update on this:

They don't accept Paypal for UK customers, you have to be an US for that. However, payment on VISA was fine, although a bit of a fiddle sending indentity proof to Escrow - although to their credit the payment was authorised within 12 hours.

Nokta pay the escrow fee, buyers pay the nominet fee. All together very efficient.

I've found it to be pain free and efficient process too. I thought I got quite a bargain too

 

[developdomains]

firstly thanks to Admin for posting this up. They had a few names I'd been after for ages and managed to get them, paid and transferred within 24 hours

sweet!

 

[Admin]

I'm glad it helped a few of you get some names and raised a good thread on AD.

Admin

 

[SF]

I enquired today, I have bought from nokta in the past, I saw a non plural name i liked priced at $300 and the plural had no price so i emailed nokta and he said $39,000 the name was good but not that good!

Some deals to be had but some not so good..

 

[Admin]

That's what I always tell my g/f, if you have to ask the price you can't afford it!

 

[RampageJackson]

Well I've just negotiated with them & bought one off them - I know most people will hate it because it's hyphenated, but I've bought it for ranking purposes & think the price wasn't too bad.

I got them down by 40% on their starting point.

It was : search-engine-optimisation.com


What do you think?

Its hard to say since you never mentioned how much you paid for it, but I just think its a low quality domain.

Its hard to build a brand around something with dashes in it. (On phone with client: "Yes, that search dash engine dash optimisation dot com", doesn't sound too good does it?) A portion of the money you spend on branding is going to be wasted because you are sending people who can't remember your domain to searchengineoptimisation.com and searchengineoptimisation.co.uk - both are parked pages full of adverts for your competitors.

You're not going to get any exact match bonus from Google because of those dashes.

If you rank that domain top 10 (and keep it there) in Google in the next 6 months from today (for search engine optimisation), I'll eat my hat.

If you think I am wrong about dashes being crap for branding and seo in general, then why are 19 of the top 20 for that search term all using non-dash domain names?

Any seo person should be advising their clients to avoid using dashes if possible - this is going to look extremely stupid coming from a company with dashes in their own name.

 

[Skinner]

There is an Advert on TV at the moment thats trying to a We Buy Any Car .com song, only there domain is Sellcar-UK and they actual sing Sellcar Dash UK Dot Com. I keep meaning to look what is available around their name if its a choice or they was forced.

They are Advertising on primetime TV which 1 advert must cost more than sellcar.co.uk or sellcaruk.com would cost ?

 

[RampageJackson]

Its amazing a company could be so stupid, when sellcaruk.com lands on someone elses parked page!

 

[dashu1]

Its hard to say since you never mentioned how much you paid for it, but I just think its a low quality domain.

Its hard to build a brand around something with dashes in it. (On phone with client: "Yes, that search dash engine dash optimisation dot com", doesn't sound too good does it?) A portion of the money you spend on branding is going to be wasted because you are sending people who can't remember your domain to searchengineoptimisation.com and searchengineoptimisation.co.uk - both are parked pages full of adverts for your competitors.

You're not going to get any exact match bonus from Google because of those dashes.

If you rank that domain top 10 (and keep it there) in Google in the next 6 months from today (for search engine optimisation), I'll eat my hat.

If you think I am wrong about dashes being crap for branding and seo in general, then why are 19 of the top 20 for that search term all using non-dash domain names?

Any seo person should be advising their clients to avoid using dashes if possible - this is going to look extremely stupid coming from a company with dashes in their own name.

Like I said I bought it for ranking, and yes, it will rank easier for having the search term in the domain, hyphens or not.

The domain isn't going to be used to host our business on, it's going to be used much more creatively than that.

There is no seo reason to not use hyphenated domains, for branding maybe, but I'm not looking to build a brand on it.

Keep watching the top 10 & get the salt & pepper ready for your hat.

 

[RampageJackson]

There is no seo reason to not use hyphenated domains, for branding maybe, but I'm not looking to build a brand on it.

Keep watching the top 10 & get the salt & pepper ready for your hat.

The bolded comment just shows me you have no clue what you are doing, I think its safe to say salt and pepper won't be required

 

[dashu1]

Jackson,
it's refreshing that you speak your mind in such a straightforward manner, but in this case what's in your mind is complete and total nonsense.

Frankly, you're talking through your a*se.

 

[RampageJackson]

No need to get upset because you bought a rotten domain, we've all bought a lemon at least once.

You are going to rank for "search engine optimisation" but you don't understand exact match domains and hyphens, I see this being a fruitless exercise for you.

So come on, while you're asking everyone their opinion of the domain why don't you say what you paid for it? Its the only true way you can get legit feedback, even stinky domains have a value after all.

Or was this just another case of "tell me how great I am" rather than "give me an honest appraisal of something". I see a lot of cases of that every day on every webmaster forum...

 

[rob]

Perhaps start a new thread then can be updated with progress on the ranking / hat eating ?