Opinioneer

I might have mentioned it before, but I have never bought a domain with the purpose to resell it. I always register domains that, in my opinion, would make cool domains for running a relevant business. I also have some real estate domains, and some that would make cool brands.

However, I’ve never had a domain strategy. It was registering domains I wanted to use or that I thought I might want to use in the future. But now that I have started viewing my 250 or so domains from a different point of view, I am wondering whether I need to have a different strategy.

Perhaps some domains that make for cool brands don’t have any revenue potential. Perhaps domains I like don’t get searched much. Should I start registering domains with the sole criteria of whether they would have type in traffic or would be easy generics?

I am thinking I might have to try that a little bit.

It appears that when I don’t have time to read other blogs for a few days, I run out of topics to write about. I guess that’s normal. So here is a thought I’ve had for quite a bit of time, which I am guessing others have discussed as well:

Is the value of a registered domain, the same as an unregistered one? What do I mean by that? Years ago I had a mini publishing empire, that included about 10 vertical b2b channels, each with its own domain name. At some point I sold a good chunk of the business and shut down the rest, including letting some domains expire.

Last week I realized that some of those domains had been picked up by domain parkers while others were still available. In my opinion, some of the available ones where more valuable than the ones that had been re-registered by others. In any case, I re-registered some of the available names myself.

And that was when I started wondering again; why had nobody registered those names? Were the names that had been re-registered more valuable? Now that I was registering a name, would that make it more desirable by others simply because it was a registered name?

We tend to want what others have, and that in itself might give something value that otherwise would not be there. The mere idea that a domain is registered and that somebody else finds value in it, assuming it is a reasonably useful name, is enough to make some people desire it and find value in it too.

A few days ago I decided to park some domains with Sedo, 48 domains to be precise. These were domains that were just sitting there idle, undeveloped, pointing to one “brochure” page that I had. Not sure why but I never thought about parking them with anybody, probably because I always intended on developing them. Of course I never found the time to do so, so they ended up sitting there, unproductive.

Anyway, a few days ago I noticed that my earnings from a few other domains had dropped, which is normal since I haven’t spent a minute with them in a year, and at the same time I had to register a few more domains for a project that I needed, so the”aha” moment came that I wouldn’t be developing those 48 idle domains any time soon, so I better park them somewhere and see how they do.

It looks like all of them get hits almost daily. A good chunk gets a few hits a day and a few of them get 30-40 hits/day. However, the click through is not that great except for one or two, and even then, the earnings are very small. That means that I need to add some more keywords into the Sedo database to attract more relevant traffic.

Although I am not sure what the right keywords are for domains such as amazingproperties.com and upscaleestates.com. As far as the few domains that actually get 30-40 visits per day, it seems I’d do much better developing them, even a little bit. If only there was time! Let’s revisit this in a week or so.