Legitimate sales strategy?

[geniejjc]

I've recently started selling domains.

My only experience prior to .uk drop was I sold a bunch of tax terms to an accountancy firm a few years back - about ten domains for £1800.

I marketed them, held them for 2 years and the transfer was real pain.

I've always had one eye on the drop but when I dug into it a month before realised I wasnt equipped to do much.

However since the drop Ive bought about 30 domains - sold 6 for around 500 quid.

The rest almost certainly rubbish but I can wear that - I'm learning and its a marketing cost.

Going forward I'm happy buying at 7 quid and selling for £50 with the odd worldy.

I really dont want to develop sites - but I could outsource that.

Domainlore is a great sales platform and selling to Tag holders is a breeze and they pay immediately.

Im happy letting them develop the opportunity further - which is really how my other businesses work.

I may develop out the odd site that compliments my finance and insolvency businesses.

But I see domains as stock until its sold and whilst it may appreciate in value, it may not and incurr further cost and its also dead money.

My question is this is quick flipping a waste of time or a legitimate strategy?

Be interested in peoples thoughts and insights.

 

[RobM]

Are you catching domains or just hand registering and selling them?

 

[geniejjc]

Hand reg and selling at the mo.

JC

 

[RobM]

Then I don't think it's sustainable. There are daily demands for domains that you won't ever be able to hand reg. There is a constant demand for stats domains and that business model as shown by the tags catching for ukbackorder clients - ie guaranteed sales. It is going to be very hard to not only think of, and find, domains to hand register but then the work involved in pushing them and trying to sell them will likely outweigh the time spent. You need your own tag to have any kind of business in selling constantly at low end. However if you can sell high end for once per year to cover the entire wages you would have earned in a year then no tag is necessary - however the chances of finding a domain to hand register where you can do this is virtually zero. Another model is buying at auction and selling to enduser - this involves more outlay but you can at least get hold of better domains. Really though if you are serious about high volume sales you need to get your own tag - not only so you can participate in catches but also because you can benefit from cheaper registrations and far more control over your domains.

 

[geniejjc]

Thanks for that insight. I do have another option as I deal with insolvency practitioners on a daily basis and broker assets sales - would be to buy domains direct from the assets of insolvent companies.

But they would be a couple a year at most - main issue is who owns the domain a good majority are still either personally registered or reged in the name of a website company who runs the site - which means it doesnt make up the companys assets.

In my head regarding the hand reg it would have to be brand new terms going forward - so for example I picked up greenfinance.uk as a newish term and sold it on domainlore for £150.

 

[geniejjc]

Not a shortcut - just a realistic revenue stream from the amount of effort I can afford to put in at this stage.

It wont be my main business - i broker business finance and get hands on in corporate insolvency with struggling businesses for the last ten years.

Thats always going to be 80% of my time.

I like to have multiple income streams and mix it up - for example I write sales copy on people per hour - I was probably clearing about 5-6k a year on that a few years back - now im selective, 1 job a week and its more like 2-3.

I also find you meet people who then use my other services.

I'm can see that I'm limited to probably 2/3 sales a week on Domainlore and at most across a week probably half a day of time.

 

[WalkinDude]

Why hand reg, sell low end with £50 profits when with what sounds like your financial position you could get a top class domain [and now would be the time cos there's a plethora about so that's beneficial to buyers], develop it and sell it as a genuine business for mega bucks. There's domains available right now that are as close to dead certs for development as I can recall seeing.

I hand reg and it finances itself but does barely anymore than that. It does also get me the domains I wish to develop. So often feels like oh no this i must develop thus it's not for sale or oh no this I don't want to develop and more often than not neither does anyone else. To me if someone is only willing to pay £100 for a domain chances are they want to flip it. If they are willing to pay 5k for a domain there's a higher chance they wish to develop it. I just like domaining. But i've moved on to developing cos I feel I have the domains now.

I'm mulling over becoming a Tag as well but since I don't see my long term future as flipping domains I'm wondering what the point would be. There's not much cost saving as I no longer want huge portfolio of domains. Simple reality is one superstar domain is worth a 1000 speculative ones. So the purpose would be to get high value domain names maybe a couple a year, dropping but if there's a bunch of guys teched up, years of experience in drop catching, what would my odds be?

If you hire a dropcatcher and more than one person is after that domain it goes to auction anyway.

So is not the easiest overall strategy just to buy off the auction? or in here? yeah you might pay 500quid or 5k for something top draw but all the works been done to deliver it to you.

 

[geniejjc]

Like you I enjoy domaining.

I'm not savvy enough yet (and might never be) to distinguish between a top class and a duffer.

With my lack of knowledge I could easily turn a 5k domain into a drop.

The business angle is interesting - thats something i do have experience of brokering business sales.

But I also know the effort involved for speculative reward.

And I dont like money tied up.

In my head Domainlore has an active market of buyers and I can see the route to them - id like to be the guy selling at 500-5k there - if thats on dropped domains then Ill have to look at that and a tag.

 

[Murray]

so for example I picked up greenfinance.uk as a newish term and sold it on domainlore for £150.

Was that on a droplist or part of the uk RoR release?

I think with the uk release there's been a chance of hand registering some interesting names, but that's probably dwindled to almost nothing now as things have been hoovered up over the past couple months

I don't see many domains worth chasing, I wouldn't advise anyone new to bother getting into catching and hand registering is even harder so

 

[WalkinDude]

Was that on a droplist or part of the uk RoR release?

I think with the uk release there's been a chance of hand registering some interesting names, but that's probably dwindled to almost nothing now as things have been hoovered up over the past couple months

I don't see many domains worth chasing, I wouldn't advise anyone new to bother getting into catching and hand registering is even harder so

You can hand reg if your willing to do the work. I sometimes take a year now to hand reg a domain mulling it over. It's a rule now. Spontaneous regging is a no no. A lot of research, and reasoning done even though the reg is ~fiver. Even then if it's a hand reg it's likely a dotcom in my case. Yet cost of that time is same as picking up a domain on an auction for xxx/xxxx likely. Cost of being a drop catcher is what it is [i don't know]. What are we saying here = There's no free lunch in domaining now. Those days barring odd miracle are over. The cost is always the same whichever route you go which is a sign of a mature industry evolved beyond it's wild west start.

Between here and about half a dozen other auction sites, uk domaining centres they've got us nicely covered or at least I'm happy with the service.

If you haven't read the .uk launch posts and threads in here [5/6 years ago] that nearly melted this place down and you're a new domainer I urge you to do so at the earliest. That's when the top domainers, [millionaires etc guys you wanna be], had something to say when at all other times getting these guys to talk is like pulling water out of rock.

 

[geniejjc]

Hand reg with Crazy during ROR.

I worked out quickly that was my only chance to be part of it after someone mentioned it on here.

The rest i`ve sold have been hand reg'd mainly afterwards.

 

[geniejjc]

Thanks for all the good stuff on here already - this is absolutely gold.

 

[stitchbob]

Cost of being a drop catcher is what it is [i don't know].

Owning your own tag will set you back £120 a year, plus a £480 initial fee. If you ignore the initial fee and assume a third party will charge you £10/domain, having your own tag becomes cheaper if you're buying more than 20 domains a year. I'm accounting for the sign up fee over 4 years for simplicity, so my breakeven for the first 4 years is 40 domains. I currently own about 120 and I usually register 4-5 a week at least, so it's a no brainer for me.

 

[Murray]

But within 1 month I'd made that money back several times over.

With the .uk release?

 

[WalkinDude]

Owning your own tag will set you back £120 a year, plus a £480 initial fee. If you ignore the initial fee and assume a third party will charge you £10/domain, having your own tag becomes cheaper if you're buying more than 20 domains a year. I'm accounting for the sign up fee over 4 years for simplicity, so my breakeven for the first 4 years is 40 domains. I currently own about 120 and I usually register 4-5 a week at least, so it's a no brainer for me.

Well when you put it like that.

 

[newguy]

I think there's a danger in registering a load of old tat if you're hand regging. Then again, some people do seem to be rather good at it and/or approaching potential end users. I've barely ever got a reply from anyone I approach though. Best to wait and see who is interested enough to reach out. Horses for courses and all that though!

 

[newguy]

I've been hand registering some stuff from RoR, even now. And it's earning good money. So I think there's a lot to be said for speculative registrations by hand, but the problem as you mention, is approaching end users. I find the best way to tackle this is with cold calling using a team of trained salespeople, or at very least - yourself.

Oh yes, I mean there was a thread of old on here where someone seemed to have tremendously success in hand regging names and approaching business. So I'm not saying it's some kind of madcap thing to do, just that depending on the approach and named regged it can be a good or very bad idea!

I did pick up 10 or 20 hand reg .uk domains, that I'm sure must be worth more than I paid. I'm not sure that I have the get up and go to do the hard sell on them though. I just wait

 

[stitchbob]

Getting into domains can really be as much luck as art. I got into it in part because of the ROR release, but a big deciding factor was the first co.uk I hand regged while looking into the industry. That domain sold immediately for £300. If that one hadn't sold so easily or for so much, I'd probably never have bothered getting a TAG.

 

[Siusaidh]

One of my biggest frustrations is that when I discovered computers (I was a late starter) in about 1997 there were still quite a lot of pretty decent .com's you could hand reg. I picked up a few, because they interested me and I thought I could use them myself, but at that point I had no idea there was money to be made from domains.

If I could time travel back to the mid 1990s...

I think the recent .uk ROR was a specific case where it was possible to hand reg some reasonable names. Yes, most of the ones I really wanted I got through a selection of drop catching routes. But there was especially a few days' window when Crazy would let you pick out domains that people were waiting for general release to the public the next Monday, and I got a few nice ones through them.

The other thing I love, from a hand-regging point of view is the unscheduled 'drops' when people decide to delete their registrations through Nominet. These don't get flagged up long in advance like most 92-day drops, and they suddenly appear. Those can be such a delight.

There are also sometimes names that have been suspended for over a year and three times I have phoned up Nominet and said 'Why aren't they released?' and they've said they'll check it out and get back to me, and then I've been told 'If you remain alert, these will probably drop sometime in the next 24-48 hours' and they did.

I have my eyes on a few like that this month - really nice ones, abandoned in suspension land.

I agree that scripts is the best approach, obviously, but there are opportunities for hand reggers if they stay alert and do their homework. I financed my way through my nurse training through the sale of hand-regged domain names, quite a few sold to people here.

 

[Aaron Clifford]

Hand registrations died about 8 years ago.

You can still make money from drop catching, however you can end up in the "hand registration" area of the drops and make nothing. Really depends on how much you want to make, I use it to supplement a full time salary, takes up about an hour of my time a week and gives me an extra bit of bunce every week.