When buying a domain name intended for development, you should determine the “burndown value” of the domain name. In the general sense, the “burndown value” is what the name is be worth once the previously developed website was/is removed. Although a developed website generally increases the burndown value, there are some instances where the burndown value may be affected by the website that existed before, or what the previous owner did with the domain name.
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DCA Ambassador of the Year award winners David and Michael Castello have quietly launched one of their company’s flagship domain names, Manicure.com. Although Manicure.com is still in its embryonic stage, the Castello Brothers are willing to peel back the curtains and allow domain investors and developers the rare opportunity to see the final stages of development of this great generic domain name. Once completed, Manicure.com will feature manicure tips, product information and much more.

The full and celebrated launch of Manicure.com is expected to be in about a month, but we will have an inside look at the final steps to developing this generic domain name into a fully functioning, multi-purpose website. David is willing to share daily updates with readers as the website continues to grow, creating a reference tool for other developers who may be facing the same struggles. I think this is a great opportunity for anyone who is going down the path of development and wants to see how the professionals do it.

Feel free to post comments or questions, and I am sure David or Michael will be happy to address them.

As you know, I love to speculate on domain names. When I find a great keyword domain name that is unregistered, I generally register it or email it the idea to someone who might have an interest in that particular vertical. Lately, I’ve been slowly trimming down my domain portfolio, as I know it will be impossible to develop everything.

I’ve put many names up for sale in the $25 - $250 range, and I’ve seen moderate success. However, I am going to take it to the next step and give away some average names from my portfolio. While I don’t consider them to be gems, when I initially registered them I believed (or still believe) that the keywords were/are strong. Many of the names may be ripe for development, although they don’t receive much traffic now. Anyway, I will be giving away some of my domain names periodically throughout the next few weeks.

The first person to post “I’ll take it” gets the name. The only caveat is that the name must be pushed to another Moniker account. I don’t want to take too much time worrying about the EPP/authorization codes for a transfer to another registrar.

And the first domain name I am giving away for FREE is…

DelawareStockbroker.com

From one of my readers:

“Elliot, whats your take on MatchMaker.org (made up name) and how badly the lack of .com will affect it? I am already established idea of what i want to do with that, it will be similar to your model of lowell, giving them basic [listings] for free but frills and reviews of business will come with price tag.

Basic premise of concept: Break down matchmakers by state, and maybe cities as sub category of states? I am thinking of putting everyone in for free with basic contact info (email) and just a name of company, and then notifying them that their page is up and about extra features they can get. So everyone gets a free page but after that comes extra features. While they can pay for frills of being reviewed, to add link to site, add write up about them self and what they do, background check. (due to .org directory, in public eyes reviews will seem more credible, even more then if it was .com or another category)

Whats your thoughts on monetization of it? How lack of .com will affect it or other extension affecting it?”

Depending on the industry you are in, owning the .org can sometimes be better than the .com. In the dating industry, I think the .com is much better and holds more credence, as people know it to be a for-profit industry. However, if you would form an organization of “matchmakers,” the .org wouldn’t necessarily be bad, but I think you would have to offer more than just a directory. You might have to sponsor events or offer tools to the match makers who would want to join the organization.

In terms of branding, I discussed something similar when the USPS nationally branded a .org and didn’t own the .com. People have short memories, and many will automatically assume it’s the .com - or they won’t even realize the .com and .org are different, so they just went to the .com. The USPS eventually bought the .com, but they probably got lucky because the name wasn’t what I would consider a premium generic name. I am sure they paid much more when the bought it after the fact, but the premium was only because they needed it due to traffic loss, and not name value.

With your example, the .com would already be considered a premium generic dating name (I know the actual name but refrained by request). Because of this, the .com already has inherent value, so if you brand the .org and lose traffic to the .com, it will only serve to increase the value of the already valuable .com. If you plan to grow the business and significantly fund it, I would advise buying the .com. If you plan to run it like an organization of “match makers,” where you are providing a valuable service, you may be ok with the .org, but you will still end up losing traffic to the .com.

The more you brand the .org, the more traffic you are probably sending to the .com, thus increasing the price to acquire it. My best advice would be to speak with the owner of the .com (knowing that its a parked page), and see if you can buy that. It will help you brand your business now, and will save you lots of money down the road. If he is unwilling to sell, I would also recommend making a lease to own offer, so you can hedge your bets if you decide to exit the business or rebrand. You will pay more, but at least the price of the .com won’t increase due to your branding efforts.

In your industry, there will always be “burn down value” for the .com, and much less for the .org. It can only enhance the value of your business if you have the .com, and it will prove that you own the market.

Courtesy of MobiEnthusiast.mobi, Elliot’s Blog is now available to read on your mobile phone. Although my blog is available on most mobile web browsers simply by typing http://www.elliotsblog.com, following this link from your mobile browser may make it a more pleasant experience.

Just remember, don’t surf and drive!

According to a post on CircleID this afternoon, the ICANN Board of Directors held a vote to impose the non-refundable $.20 fee on ALL domain names registered from the moment of registration. The unanimous vote which took place on January 23 was noted in sections 5 and 6 of the ICANN meeting minutes, which were recently distributed. According to the notes,

“the Board resolves (2008.01.04) to encourage ICANN’s budgetary process to include fees for all domains added, including domains added during the AGP, and encourages community discussion involved in developing the ICANN budget, subject to both Board approval and registrar approval of this fee.” - Preliminary Report for the Special Meeting of the ICANN Board of Directors

By charging a fee on all registrations, people will be much less likely to buy large amounts of domain names with the intention of dropping the unprofitable names. This should close the loophole that was created to protect people who registered a domain name in error. In exploiting this loophole, some people were buying thousands of domain names (and more), keeping them for under the 5 day grace period to test the traffic, and dropping the names that didn’t receive traffic. This led some companies to register and monetize trademark domain names and quickly drop them to avoid being detected.

Dell recently filed a lawsuit against companies they believe engaged in this act, and the case is still pending.

TreatmentCenters.com is a great example of a company buying the domain name they needed and building it into a million dollar website. TreatmentCenters.com was sold for $100,000 by Afternic/BuyDomains as reported in DNJournal. This domain name informs visitors about exactly what they will find when they type it in to their browser, and it doesn’t disappoint upon arrival. For this business model, there probably aren’t any better domain names out there.

Using a directory model, TreatmentCenters.com provides paid and unpaid listings for various health and mental treatment centers and counselors throughout the country. Visitors can search by condition, by state or by provider name to find what they need. When a website like this is able to provide names, addresses, contact information, and data on the topic of interest to the searcher, it builds stickiness, and the searcher will probably return. This provides a positive experience for the visitor, and it also provides an ROI for the advertiser.

Kudos to the people behind TreatmentCenters.com! This is an aesthetically pleasing, well-functioning website, and it looks like a million bucks! I hope to emulate it with some of my entries down the road - including Lowell.com.

Domain appraisals can vary by huge amounts depending on where they are done. Whether using a professional service like Moniker or Sedo, or asking for a free appraisal on a domain forum, the amount of the various appraisals can vary by tens of thousands of dollars and huge percentages. People often wonder if appraisals are motivated by outside factors - either by people wanting to buy a domain name, so the appraisal is much less than they sincerely believe, or they want to sell someone a domain name by convincing them the name is worth much more than name would actually fetch.

For the sake of curiosity, I would like to know how much deviation there is when domain investors look at one name and place a value on it. I am reaching out to you to give me an appraisal on my DebtCollectors.com domain name. I don’t plan to publish the appraisals (or post the names of the appraisers), but I will give the average and the outliers. I know how much I paid for it recently, and I have an idea about how much it would sell for if I would put it in auction.

I know there are various factors that can play into a domain’s sales price, including the buyer, the seller, the market conditions and the venue, but I am looking for a single dollar figure. Not only do I want to test my own ability to value a name, but I want to see what others think in an unbiased venue.

I dont register many new domain names. I prefer to focus on strategic aftermarket acquisitions when I buy, as I believe the payoff can be greater. However, just like almost every other domain investor, I like to register new domain names every once in a while. Hunting for domain names is fun, and it feels great to find a gem in the rough - although one person’s gem may be someone else’s waste. I think everyone would agree that a gem of a new registration is a name that earns its annual registration fee and more, without any marketing effort.

In March, after doing some keyword research related to the outdoors and hunting, I registered MountedHeads.com (no link to avoid violating TOS). Although the Overture wasn’t strong, I felt the name was unique and in an interesting niche. Of course, “mounted heads” is related to taxonomy, where hunters pay to have their animal heads mounted. There are currently over 18,000 Google results for the term, “mounted heads,” and although it isn’t typical that a parked page is ranked so high, this one ranks #5 out of 18,000.

From the time I bought the name, I have had it parked on Fabulous. Between March and September, I received almost no visitors at all. I started receiving traffic in October, and I have been averaging about 20-25 visits per month, not too bad for a newly registered domain name. The name is also seeing a 40% CTR and rising, now that I made some minor keyword adjustments and used the Fabulous+ program to customize the layout based on landing page testing.

The name has made more than twice the registration fee, and it has earned 9o% of that revenue since it started receiving more traffic in October. While this wouldn’t be considered a great name for the biggest portfolios, it’s a gem of a new registration. Based on just a 10 year revenue multiple (using $4/month), this is close to a $500 domain name. Not bad for paying $6.95 for it less than a year ago.

Travel planning company Vacations To Go employs one of the finest domain strategies I have seen. The company owns some fantastic niche travel domain names, allowing them to avoid paying high pay per click costs. While they seem to avoid the very expensive one word generic domain names (like Cruises.com), they do own a ton of great second tier travel domain names that probably receive some traffic. Just a few of the highly targeted domain names owned by Vacations To Go include:

AcapulcoCruises.com
AthensTours.com
LowCostCruise.com
LowPriceCruises.com
MexicanCruises.com
ItalyCruise.com

Showing their vast domain knowledge, Vacations To Go even owns some fantastic typo domain names, including:

BahamasCrusie.com
CheapCruies.com
Norweigan.com

The smartest thing about this strategy is that instead of paying $.50 - $10.00+ per visitor’s click on Yahoo or Google, they own all visitors to their domain names, and only pay around $7/year for each domain name. All of their names are forwarded to their main site, with a subfolder tracking how the visitor reached the main page. If a customer books just one cruise or vacation after landing on a domain name, they’ve almost certainly paid off the domain name for life (and then some).

One major issue I see is that many of the domain names owned by Vacations To Go don’t seem to be listed in Google. As you can see in the screenshot below, MexicanCruises.com isn’t listed in Google when the exact domain name is entered into the search bar. This isn’t good, as it means if a customer tries to directly navigate to the site using Google instead of the internet browser bar, they won’t even see the domain name. On some of the names where this is an issue, Vacations To Go attempts to alleviate this by buying the keyword of the domain name, but that is costing them money.

There are many reasons why Google could have removed the names, but it may have had nothing to do with anything Vacations To Go did. To rectify this, I would suggest that someone from Vacations To Go enters all of their domain names into Google, and take note of the names that do not show up in the results. They should then request reconsideration from Google. By doing this, Vacations To Go will have their domain names put back into Google, saving them from having to pay per click every time a consumer types the domain name as a search.

On other domain names, such as MexicoCruises.com, the domain name is listed in Google at the top. If a visitor accidentally types this domain name into Google instead of their navigation bar, they will see it as the top natural result, and they may click on this listing rather than on the paid search listing. Vacations To Go has protected itself by paying for Adwords keywords, which is another smart move.

Vacations To Go certainly has one of the best domain strategies I’ve seen. Not only are they building value for their brand, they are also building value for each of the domain names they own. If they were to ever sell the company, they could provide a traffic, click through and ROI for each domain asset they own, adding tremendous value to their portfolio. I give high praise to Alan Fox and his team at Vacations To Go.