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Domain Magnate

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Ever sold/bought a domain on sedo? Then you probably know what I mean.

To complete a deal it takes weeks and many many emails. Sedo brokers just don’t care, they delay deals, make people worry and angry and don’t give a shit.

It’s been 5 days since my ataz.com auction ended, I sent 3 emails to the broker who was responsible for completing the deal and no reply yet… hopefully I get my money by the end of the year.
Sedo, seriously, hire more brokers, or fire some.. The long delays are killing many sales.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I have Ataz.com at sedo auction now.

Currently bidding is at just $553 and less than a day to go.

ATAZ.com - Excellent VCVC.com domain, pronounceable and easy to remember. Can be branded for any type of site - One of the few LLLL domains that start with ‘A’ and end with ‘Z’ - Also means “at az” - at Arizona and can be used for a state portal. AZ.com sold for $500,000! - Receives ~100 visitors per month, pure type in traffic

So if you’re investing in some nice LLLL’s this is the one to look out for

I’ve been asked several times on various domainer forums  and by friends looking to invest in domains about my take on .mobis.

So, short answer: NO

And now the longer and boring one..

First of all I currently have no .mobi domains, also no .tv and other exotic tlds. My inventory includes primarily .com’s and a few .net, .org and .info domains. Also some .ca and .co.uk names and that’s all. With all my domain investments I always try to stick to the safe and conservative way.

As for .mobi specifically right now I wouldn’t recommend buying those. Yes, you could make good money if you jumped on the .mobi bandwagon at the beginning and registered a ton. But at some point prices simply stopped going up and now they even seem to be going down.

For example check out the 3char guide - in the last month LLL.mobi lost $35, which is 17.5%.. which is HUGE during one month. People are trying to rid of them and I believe soon we might see large .mobi drops.

If we wait long enough, probably 3-5 years .mobi may become a success when mobile devices adopt it, but then again why would they need .mobi? .com is good enough for mobile sites. So this is speculation and rather high risk.

If I had to give one piece of advice on investing in domain names what would it be?

Go with .com!

Go grab yourself an LLLL.com if you haven’t yet, because as of now there are only about 300 of them left unregistered. Yes that’s right just 300 out of about half a million.

Check out this thread on NP for more recent info.

I currently have just about 122 4 letter domains, but they are all top quality

From next year I expect LLLL.com’s to have a minimum value near $15-30

I’ve been buying good LLLL.com domains lately and even registered some, so I gathered a small portfolio of 101 names. Check it out at 4 Letter Domains

I’ve set all the prices to $1000 to save myself the time waste of trying to assign a price tag to each - they are constantly going up in value, so it’s pointless anyway.

But while for most of these $1000 would be pretty good, there are also a few that are worth more

As of today there are about 6500 LLLL.com domains left unregistered, so while the number is going down quickly and it’s predicted that the 4 letter domain will be gone within a few weeks to 1-2 months, all the domainers are keeping those expecting the prices to raise once no more LLLL’s are available.

The growth rate in prices for CVCV.com domains has been incredibly high during the last months. You could have easily made 500% in less than half a year in cvcv.com’s and I expect it to continue to go up and good 4 letter domains already sell at prices close to bad LLL’s

If you want to reg some LLLL.com - go get them here while you still can!

I was recently quite surprised to find out that  I won the appraisal contest at DomainState

Apparently my picks were the closest to the final prices, compared to other 35 participants. It’s a big honor because DomainState is one of the leading forums for domain professionals and most of the people competing were much more experienced domainers than me

Here are my picks compared to the final results as posted in the forum by snoopy:
name/selling price/pick

poker.mobi $150,000 $150,000
investment.com $900,000 $850,000
cysticfibrosis.org $17,000 $15,000
golfclubs.net $30,000 $10,000
promotion.com $170,000 $200,000
lotto.info $12,500 $10,000
computer.com $2,200,000 $3,000,000
corgis.com $10,000 $6,000
luxuryyacht.com $22,000 $30,000
sportinggoods.com $450,000 $250,000
rapvideos.com $70,000 $2,000
software.info $8,500 $15,000
races.com $75,000 $150,000
table.com $260,000 $250,000
employmentreferences.com $2,500 $2,000

Here is something funny on my blog for a change

A domain registry with high moral value: .to
Go to http://www.tonic.to/newname.htm?829A8FG9;;; and try to check some curse words, like ‘fuck’ and here’s the message you get

You filthy-minded little pervert!
The Kingdom of Tonga admonishes you. Now go back and think of another name that you wouldn’t be embarrassed to say to your mother.

That doesn’t apply to all curse words though for example if you try ‘bitch’ you get the regular not available message:

So sorry, that one’s taken.
Click here to send an email to the owner.

My favorite domain Forums are DNF and DomainState, since these two are more professional and the places where most serious domainers discuss business and stuff. DigitialPoint is also great.
NamePros is less professional and more suitable for beginning domainers, as well as DNscoop.

If you’re into IDN domains, check out IDNforums
For .uk domains go to AcornDomains - a very friendly place.

Surely there are many others, but these should be more than enough for selling and buying domains

NewYork.info is a fascinating example of how domaining works.

This is one of the best domains there can be with the .info extension and that makes it a perfect investment!

Lets see the sales history:

NewYork.info $70,000 Jul 07 PvtSale
NewYork.info $46,392 Sep 06 Moniker/DomainSystems
NewYork.info $28,086 Jan 04 Sedo

Every single time when this domain was resold it seemed like a huge amount of money and not a very good deal for the buyer, but short time after that it became clear that the domain is a winner.

Last time the domain was resold a month ago and it was the highest .info sale ever, beating it’s own record from a year earlier! When the seller listed the domain for sale in DNForum.com highest offers he received were in the $x,xxx range. No one believed that he would be able to resell the domain for a profit, but he did and that was a nice profit too - 50% in less than a year!
Right now if you go to NewYork.info … well it doesn’t really look like a 6 figures worth domain should so lets hope it will get developed into something useful.
What’s next? I can see this domain to be worth $150+ in a year easily!

What does that all mean? Just one thing: buy premium domain and you can’t go wrong. However high the current price might seem, it will go up..