Wanted: Domain .co.uk names required.

[diablo]

jrowlinson, what you say re domains not mattering is true - in some cases.

edwin's example of maps.co.uk shows that it can matter in other cases.

Did you really let "books.co.uk, flowers.co.uk, wine.co.uk and many others like this" lapse because you only saw one way forward?

There are countless ways to skin a cat.

 

[grandin]

price is in the price

the price is in the price...domainers are not fools.

The fact your are trying to push down the price clearly shows they have something you want but your business plan doesn't allow you to pay the price required.

On the same note...you may find that your bricks and mortar property portfolio is overvalued by 20%....what you think may one day turn out to be wrong. An opinion is an opinion.

Say what you do

To be critic your travel site looks good but why would anyone go to it. Surely they would go to a holiday site and look at the travel tips page within that site as part of contracting with the company supplying their holiday.

Lee

 

[Brassneck]

the price is in the price...domainers are not fools.

/QUOTE]

Actually Lee - I'm a domainer and I also don't think I'm a fool . However there are plenty of names I would sell in the range of £50-£200 which others might try to shift with 4-figure prices. At the end of the day, for me, consistent turnover is more important than the odd big sale. Obviously it's different for others.

If I were to sell up all my names tomorrow I doubt if I would get more than one-third of the 'value' of my portfolio as the only people who are going to by in quantity are other domainers.

Stephen.

 

[olebean]

John

You appear to be insulting the intellegence of domain owners..... Doing a bit of "digging" shows that business intellegence is an acumen you most probably have I do not believe you are naive

As for strategy, well its the old strategy of buy cheap and sell with percieved added value.....

With the historical earnings of the company I am surprised you are engaged in "small fry" domains...

 

[grandin]

generic

brassneck i can understand....your asking price for thebull.org.uk is $1000. I can understand you selling such names for couple of hundred but I am sure these arent the names being talked about

Lee

 

[Brassneck]

brassneck i can understand....your asking price for thebull.org.uk is $1000. I can understand you selling such names for couple of hundred but I am sure these arent the names being talked about

Lee

Well if you looked deeper at all my names they are nearly all listed on Sedo at $1000 - that's really irrelevant though since most bids come in much lower but at least it something to work with. Admittedly the one you picked out is hardly likely to sell, although it does a respectable few quid in parking revenue each month.

 

[jrowlinson]

Ermmm....

I am only here on this board to buy names with history, I repeat only names with history and I have a few vendors with whom I am working.

I understand well the value of SEO and fools (the buyers) get scammed all the time by SEOers taking about keyword density blah blah. The same is true for a domain names - in general it's the users who pay too high a price through lack of understanding.

You quote Edwin and maps. He gets 100 type ins. SafeTravel gets around 800 hits per day, safekids 2500, growingkids (£5 123-reg domain) 1200 and on and on. I get a great of traffic through good content. I pay for content and link building. That's where the real value is. 90% of our traffic is from google, msn and yahoo. The rest is from links.

If you went to google and typed in say 'apartments prestwich' you'd get PtS property at #1, try 'child safety uk' and safekids is #10 - even though the site is 6 months old. Safetravel does well from say 'drink driving limit europe' and many other terms. When people come to our pages, of which we now have 3000 (or 2 million words) they get the information they want and not a stack of adverts. I can't believe that's the case when they enter maps.co.uk into the address bar!

Google (and the web) wants quality to rise. They dislike landing pages full of adverts and in fact, as I recall, they are saying that it is against the terms of service to put adsense on a page that's stuffed with ads. I believe this is correct.

The way forward has to be content and links - it's the only way. I believe that paying for a one word URL is a waste of money - oh and by the way I could buy hundreds of very expensive (£six figure) domains if I wanted to and felt that there was any value in it - but (to me at least) there isn't. I am spending my money on authors and now film crews for video content.

I think anyone looking for web traffic should buy a half decent name (without hyphens), get some great content written (50 pages of say 600 words) and embark on a link building program aiming at reference sites (of which there are many). Save the money on the name and put the cash into something solid.

That's just my opinion (obviously).

 

[olebean]

Possibly one of the quickest ways to haemorrhage finance, not bad for a company that has no strategy..

 

[tifosi]

I am only here on this board to buy names with history, I repeat only names with history and I have a few vendors with whom I am working.

You quote Edwin and maps. He gets 100 type ins. SafeTravel gets around 800 hits per day, safekids 2500, growingkids (£5 123-reg domain) 1200 and on and on. I get a great of traffic through good content. I pay for content and link building. That's where the real value is. 90% of our traffic is from google, msn and yahoo. The rest is from links.

The way forward has to be content and links - it's the only way. I believe that paying for a one word URL is a waste of money - oh and by the way I could buy hundreds of very expensive (£six figure) domains if I wanted to and felt that there was any value in it - but (to me at least) there isn't. I am spending my money on authors and now film crews for video content.

I think anyone looking for web traffic should buy a half decent name (without hyphens), get some great content written (50 pages of say 600 words) and embark on a link building program aiming at reference sites (of which there are many). Save the money on the name and put the cash into something solid.

That's just my opinion (obviously).

You're missing a few points, or hiding naievity well...

The thing is, if you're wanting to buy a domain name that has history and to a large degree consistent traffic in the order of the figures quoted above then you're invariably not buying a domain name, you're buying a website.

Parked or vacant domains generally have no more than 10% of the hit ratio of developed and promoted sites. It may have been higher before, but click atrophy happens. These domains are usually generic enough common word or phrases that they will have a certain anount of type in traffic, and will sometimes appear on googles 1st few pages (or even top 10) on targetted searches precisely because of this, not because the domainer has promoted them in any way other than through companies like sedo/namedrive, or a few signature links, or affiliate banners. They serve the adverts that you're paying $$$ for in promoting the traffic to your developed domains. Money makes the world go round, n'all that.

Many well recognised terms eg. dreamhome.co.uk which is one of mine have no history as shown on wayback (and how accurate is this!) but receives moderate (xx-xxx hits per month). It certainl doesn't mean it's worth the same as a non-generic domain receiving traffic from whatever source.

The point I'm labouring at is that domains should be looked at at this stage in terms of their potential. A recognised phrase as domain url will increase the potential of a developed domain. e.g recycle which I think has far more potential than a similar genre domain name.

Thats what sets the base price for negotiation. Demanding traffic/history domains means you may be missing out on some good names.

S

 

[diablo]

type-ins and hits aren't quite the same thing. and how much traffic does "child safety uk" actually deliver? because this is really all about traffic.

 

[Nigel]

Hi Jrowlinson

I think you've got a good plan that will work for you and I don't blame you for not wanting to pay much for your domains. But you were critical of large portfolio owners who weren't interested in your 10 domains for £4000 offer and all we've tried to do is explain why there is much demand for generic domains that already receive traffic without any work and why those portfolio holders should hold out for more realistic offers.

But the value of a good generic domain goes beyond the existing traffic - that's why LloydsTSB forsook their brand to invest £1m in insurance.co.uk and why my sons football shirts are emblazoned with loans.co.uk. Edwins name maps.co.uk gets type in traffic because its such a great name. If it was purchased by a map retailer and found its way to the first page of google it would inevitably attract far more clicks than another domain on the same page that had had a lot of SEO work but was not as good a domain name i.e. greatmaps.co.uk (yes it's available). The public are quite astute and they know a quality domain. So maps.co.uk gets my click whilst I'll leave greatmaps.co.uk this time.

 

[static]

Edwin,

You're forgetting that the user has to find the website in the first place and in general it's done through a search engine (probably google). So WoodenWidget, WidgetsFromWood, WoodWidgets, TimberWidgets does not really matter that much unless you are building a big brand around them (like pepsi etc).

I used to own books.co.uk, flowers.co.uk, wine.co.uk and many others like this and let them lapse - mainly because I was doing other stuff. If I had them now they wouldn't help me in what I am doing. Though I am sure I missed a few quid in not keeping them on.

If anyone has any domains with OK names (but not great ones) and history and possibly even some Google PageRank (1 or 2) then I will buy them if we can build a site (please PM me). We have an editor, 6 sub eds, 3 film crew and around 300 freelance writers. That's how we are adding our value - though at the moment we have no real business plan for making money.

To be clear, you actually owned books.co.uk, flowers.co.uk and wine.co.uk.....and you chose not to renew the registrations? Truly?

The reason I ask is because flowers.co.uk and wine.co.uk were formally pre Nom registrations and books.co.uk was registered on 22nd August 1996. So at what stage were you previously the registrant of these names to then allow them to lapse? Just my curiosity.

 

[olebean]

Hi Jrowlinson

I think you've got a good plan that will work for you and I don't blame you for not wanting to pay much for your domains. But you were critical of large portfolio owners who weren't interested in your 10 domains for £4000 offer and all we've tried to do is explain why there is much demand for generic domains that already receive traffic without any work and why those portfolio holders should hold out for more realistic offers.

But the value of a good generic domain goes beyond the existing traffic - that's why LloydsTSB forsook their brand to invest £1m in insurance.co.uk and why my sons football shirts are emblazoned with loans.co.uk. Edwins name maps.co.uk gets type in traffic because its such a great name. If it was purchased by a map retailer and found its way to the first page of google it would inevitably attract far more clicks than another domain on the same page that had had a lot of SEO work but was not as good a domain name i.e. greatmaps.co.uk (yes it's available). The public are quite astute and they know a quality domain. So maps.co.uk gets my click whilst I'll leave greatmaps.co.uk this time.

I agree (other than the good plan)

Added to what Nigel suggests..

Links will be King for you because hardly anybody searches for those words ie "safe travel"... so I doubt very much that a lot of you direct traffic comes from search engines, equally your suggestion that SEO isn't good shows a lack of knowledge/ pretence...... SEO rarely out performs a page rank generic...

In the end it comes back to either you want to trade with people that know the business or not... Pay the price or don't pay the price

 

[bluestig]

Traffic

Some of you guys need to start thinking outside of the box!

All types of people are on the market for Domains nowadays and not all of them will want to follow the old rules for domain values.

Traffic can be generated for any site, history cannot, if a domain name relates well to the subject matter it is possibly more valuable to that person than a domain with traffic that is not a catchy relevant name.

Relying on Traffic could result in some domainers becoming gridlocked!

Sell a relevant domain for a reasonable price.

Bluestig

 

[Edwin]

I think of a solid generic as the foundation of a house.

Take my maps.co.uk domain again as an example ("your" books.co.uk or wine.co.uk would work identically). If I were to build a site on it, then the first day it would get 500 visitors. The second day it would get NO LESS THAN 500 visitors, and the same would be true every day after that until domains go out of fashion (and that's a totally separate argument!)

On the other hand, if there's a great site there with useful content or a valuable service, then some of those 500 people will come back again in future.

Now remember, it's very rarely going to be the same folks typing in the domain "just to see what's there" i.e. it's 500 NEW visitors a day that owning the generic brings me.

So if just 1 in 10 visitors is persuaded to make maps.co.uk (the useful site) a regular destination they come back to at least once a month when they're after map-related info (maps are one of the most popular things to look for online) then something almost magical happens...

Day 1 the domain has 500 new visitors
Day 30 the domain has 500 new visitors + 10% of the last 15,000 (500 * 30) visitors i.e. 1,500 visitors, for a total of 2,000 visitors
Day 60 the domain has 500 new visitors, 1,500 regular return visitors + 10% of the last 15,000 (500 * 30) visitors i.e. 1,500 visitors, for a total of 3,500 visitors
Day 180, the domain has 9,500 visitors
Day 360, the domain has 18,500 visitors
(ALL FIGURES ABOVE ARE DAILY UNIQUE VISITORS, AND ARE AVERAGES DERIVED FROM THE ASSUMPTIONS)

So a year after launching a "genuinely useful site" on maps.co.uk, the site is getting over half a million uniques a month! And that doesn't even take into account ANY incidental incoming links picked up over the year or consequent search engine traffic, ANY friend-tell-a-friend referrals, ANY press coverage etc. That's purely the result of the typein traffic multiplying as the visitors find a useful site at the domain they tried on a whim.

Here's the beautiful part: the ONLY cost was the development of the "genuinely useful site" - there was no need to spend time or money on SEO, link building, buying traffic, placing ads, or any one of the hundreds of other things that a site without natural traffic has to do.

Yes, the development cost might be high - but it's independent of the domain name itself so it would be the same whether on not you're building on a generic.

Of course, if you wanted to, you could ADD SEO, link building and some initial ads and grow the site that much faster still - what I am trying to explain is that you have a CHOICE with a strong generic that you never would have had without the domain name.

 

[jrowlinson]

Right...

Bluestig and some others are correct. A business is about conducting a trade. A good business adds value and doesn't leave the customer feeling screwed.

The domain 'traders' I am dealing with seem to be a pretty OK bunch making money (mainly 'on the side') for buying and SELLING names ('a trade'). This is good for all and I am happy at dealing. I will continue to buy many hundreds hopefully.

Ah, then we have people like Mr Domain Hoarder who has around 2000 domains and no doubt will have 2000 domains in one year, five years and probably ten years. He may even have more because he thinks they are so valuable.

Problem with Mr Domain Hoarder is that his potential client has to look through a great big long list (that's hard to get hold of in the first place) to try and buy a domain like 'sillydogs' or something similar only to be told it's worth £1800.

Google sees these domains parked at places where the only revenue stream is from PPC. Google doesn't like this (quite rightly) so it devalues the eCPM from say $20 to maybe $5 as it knows it's advertisers wouldn't be happy. Click revenue drops. In the end Google cancels the account because it breaches terms of service then the click revenue from google goes. There is a move to second tier PPC networks but they don't do contextual and all of a sudden it's conting £15k a year to hold 2000 domains.

We shall see but Google is changing the game and good content gets clicks (it just does) and it also gets higher eCPM's. That's what Google and it's advertisers wants and that's (no doubt) what they will get.

I think that Google is devaluing the value of a domain in many ways. You can get traffic by doing the right things and one of those isn't spending silly money on domains!

Long live the domain 'trader' - they are a decent bunch and add some value to my business.

 

[Edwin]

Gosh, the fact that I turned down your £4,000 offer is REALLY making you bitter, isn't it?

 

[retired_member6]

Bluestig and some others are correct. A business is about conducting a trade. A good business adds value and doesn't leave the customer feeling screwed.

The domain 'traders' I am dealing with seem to be a pretty OK bunch making money (mainly 'on the side') for buying and SELLING names ('a trade'). This is good for all and I am happy at dealing. I will continue to buy many hundreds hopefully.

Ah, then we have people like Mr Domain Hoarder who has around 2000 domains and no doubt will have 2000 domains in one year, five years and probably ten years. He may even have more because he thinks they are so valuable.

Problem with Mr Domain Hoarder is that his potential client has to look through a great big long list (that's hard to get hold of in the first place) to try and buy a domain like 'sillydogs' or something similar only to be told it's worth £1800.

Google sees these domains parked at places where the only revenue stream is from PPC. Google doesn't like this (quite rightly) so it devalues the eCPM from say $20 to maybe $5 as it knows it's advertisers wouldn't be happy. Click revenue drops. In the end Google cancels the account because it breaches terms of service then the click revenue from google goes. There is a move to second tier PPC networks but they don't do contextual and all of a sudden it's conting £15k a year to hold 2000 domains.

We shall see but Google is changing the game and good content gets clicks (it just does) and it also gets higher eCPM's. That's what Google and it's advertisers wants and that's (no doubt) what they will get.

I think that Google is devaluing the value of a domain in many ways. You can get traffic by doing the right things and one of those isn't spending silly money on domains!

Long live the domain 'trader' - they are a decent bunch and add some value to my business.

J, some domainers see value in their domains and make their own prices. I have been quoted one amount for a domain and think it reasonable, however quoted another amount on another domain and think it over the top. I may or may not buy both but will hope to buy one. I actually hope never have to buy a domain off any reseller.

I sold domains two months ago for £10 that this month I wouldn't sell for under £150 and the buyers that bought them know that. Most on here when buying domains are going to hold out for the lowest they can get until you're begging for a sale - which is why I don't bother anymore - some give good offers and I know who they are so sell to them.

But once some domainers get a domain, they put their price on, they may never sell it but that's their price but if they sell enough others then that price will remain. Once these top level domainers sell their domains, there aren't any more to sell in their eyes, they don't want to work again so why should they sell their assets until they're out of work?

No, you sell what you have to, give yourself the occasional bonus and look to retirement. The domain trader is the one that often needs to sell to tick over or the one that gets his asking price. A top domainer could sell crap domains for £500 because tha's their price compared to their high, so a domain trader will obviously sell at a lot less - their crap but their better ones, well they can commaned as much as a top domainer.

Top level domainers have less needs and mood swings than your average seller. That's the easiest way of putting it. Christ, some don't even put their domains open for sale and just park them for a decade. They don't need the likes of you and I knocking.

 

[jrowlinson]

Edwin, What makes you think you were in the league of 'Mr Domain Hoarder'? He had 2000 domains - you only have 1700! You need to get over that magic 2000 figure to be in the BIG league.

 

[Edwin]

Edwin, What makes you think you were in the league of 'Mr Domain Hoarder'? He had 2000 domains - you only have 1700! You need to get over that magic 2000 figure to be in the BIG league.

Hmmm, don't my other 3,500 non-.co.uk count, then?