Is Dark Blue Sea Dropping Domains?
Uncategorized October 10th, 2008
I am not an active bidder on Namejet at all. In fact, I’ve probably backordered less than 15 domain names there it total - with about 10 in the last few weeks alone. One day a couple of weeks ago, I decided to use “Lowell” as a keyword to see if there were any pending drops happening that might help bolster my Lowell.com network.
Lo and behold, I saw LowellRealEstateAgents.com dropping. I had previously picked up the .net for registration fee, but Domain Active (a subsidiary of Dark Blue Sea, parent of Fabulous) was selling the .com for more than I was willing to pay. Since the difference in their price and my expectation was so far apart, I didn’t even inquire about it. Surprisingly, I placed a backorder and was able to acquire it for just $69 as the only bidder.
A couple of days ago, I was doing some Namejet searching and I came across CheapEntertaining.com. While it’s not a cream of the crop name, I think it is fairly strong - especially in light of the tough economic times. I was the only person who backordered the name, and I was able to acquire it for $69. I did a bit of research, and I found that this too looks like it was owned by Domain Active.
Clearly the name wasn’t making much money as a parked domain name, otherwise they wouldn’t have dropped it. However, I think this is a pretty good name for just $69. Now is a great time to keep your eyes on the dropped lists. Some scanning programs may not pick up on the good names that don’t look like they’d have strong revenue stats. IMO, it sometimes takes a gut instinct to see a good domain name.
October 10th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Such a small percentage of DBS’ domain names are profitable that I guess they can’t wait for them to sell through and are letting them drop. Have you asked them about this?
Granted, they do make some money on the sale at NameJet.
***UPDATED BY ELLIOT***
I didn’t ask them about it. I am sure that’s the case. Sometimes it makes sense to drop what you can’t use that isn’t profitable. It’s good to go through the drop lists though. Guess I’ve been missing the party for 5 years
October 10th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
This sounds to me like they are getting a little desperate. I guess they had to have a fire sale on some domains and this is what this whole talk has been lately about looking into selling through NameJet, when really they just need to unload a bunch of domains to make the company more profitable and keep the share price above .25 cents….. maybe even they are worried about getting delisted from the Australian Security Exchange.
I’ve always felt they hold a large amount of fair to close-to-poor domains and am not surprised they are letting some go. It’s too expensive to keep holding on to non-performing assets….. especially with what is happening now around the world.
If they had been receiving a “domainer’ share” of the pie all along they could not have held onto many of those domains and now with lower payouts and higher reg fees….. they are thinking “who needs ‘em?”.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I am pretty sure you will be seeing many names drop within the next 12 months. Like Elliot described revenue is getting hard to get. Specially PPC company’s will see a large downfall.
Many domainer’s including me are pulling names away from Broker and PPC company’s. If you have a few 100 or 1000 Domains your better off when you forward them to one of your developed pages, specially if your getting ready to develop the names anyway. They will already be in the search engine index if you’re lucky.
It’s over with sitting around being lazy. It’s either spitting in your hands and start developing, marketing and selling direct ads or cleaning out your portfolio. So if you have 200 , 300, or 800 thousand names I would say your in trouble.
Take Frank Shilling, I mean this guy is a genius and he has my up most respect just like Kevin Ham. Think about what these PPC cuts means to them. Frank makes about 20 million per year. Now, when we are all feeling a 50 % and more cut. That’s a quick 10 million for Frank. This is hitting all of us and we all need to rethink what we have been relying on. Domainer’s need to start working together building and networking. Search engines only have power if they are in control and they are in control.
If we the domainer’s could build a marketing community where everyone would pay a certain fee for each domain they list in the community and then receive 100 % of the click revenue on your site then this would work global in all country’s and languages.
The “GLOBAL DOMAINER GROUP”
All PPC Company’s are recognizing, that if they want to stay in business, they must do more then just provide a brokerage platform and a little escrow service.
Many are going over there portfolio and cleaning them out also trying to figure out new ways in making revenue. Times are rough, but this also means opportunity.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:29 am
You can pick up very strong names on the drops. I’ve recently reg’d PreMedCollege,com, LoungeSingers,com, BirthdayRental,com, UnlistedProperty,com, etc… many more all on the drop.
I would not have paid $69 for either of those names (sorry!). (LowellRealEstate.com, _maybe_ if I were you in the niche). CheapEntertaining.com is stretching it for me also, I likely wouldn’t pay reg fee for that if it dropped.
The last name I backordered was with Pool and for $60, I got Mocktails,com, a one word dot com, targeted + type-ins, an inquiry within a couple days of my purchase.
I’ve got a large database if you’d like to go drop-diving… let me know
October 11th, 2008 at 3:28 am
Hi guys,
We announced a partnership with NameJet back in August, whereby the would sell our own expiring inventory. You can read the Press Release here:
http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=125679&Itemid=34
At this stage we are still testing the system selling only Domain Active domains. However, it’s quite possible that we will be making this available to third parties, as an opt-in program.
Let me know if there’s any other questions.
Cheers,
Mike Robertson
Business Development Manager
Fabulous.com
October 11th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Interesting find.
Maybe they are running them through namejet like snapnames’ private owner’s list? Where the domains expiring?
Maybe DBS is getting half the sale price or more and it’s just a sales decision based on a business model?
October 11th, 2008 at 9:18 am
To Johnny (real friendly-like):
As someone who built a successful system of pushing expiring domains from top 10 registrars into online domain auctions, I can tell you that from my gut instinct, DBS (Dark Blue Sea) isn’t “desperate” to sell their domains. Hell, Elliot paid $69 for a domain that DBS only has about $12 -$18 invested into, if that. They’re making a nice $50 profit, especially since more buyers are buying at $69 even as the only bidders, but there are bid wars going on for domains you don’t know about.
I have 500 domains, killer keyword generics, that I would sell for $69 each, but only in a bulk purchase. ALthough I’d be selling them at 1/10 their value, I’d make myself a 500% profit on most the sales. Profit is king, still, in the domain game. Is my time and labor worth trying to find the “right buyer” or continuing to renew domains that aren’t in my strategic domain portfolio?
Well, that’s only a question I, or each domainer, can answer. In my case, I have so many other money making sources in my domain business that spending time trying to squeeze out the most money from a domain sale isn’t worth it to me. One of the biggest reasons I have for that attitude is that I will make a profit on those domains even at cheap pricing in bulk, and that my other projects make me more money than tiddly-winking with each and every domain name I want to sell.
I like Duane’s idea of a “Global Domainer Group” — but trust me, it’s not easy being a PS, so who’s going to run it and who provides the oversight? Lehman Brothers? AIG? GW Bush?
There will be a lot of domains dropping for cheap in the coming year because a lot of “ND”s (non-domainers) will be saying “i don’t have the money to renew these 20 domains, and what are they doing for me anyway?”. Plus, there will be a lot of closet and garage cleaning by legit domainers who are focusing on niche category control, and don’t want to get bogged down or diverted from their focus with other nice keyword generic domains they’ve collected over the years… It will happen, so it’s a “buyer’s market” for domains — but only to a point.
Why? On the other hand, a lot of good generics will GET LOCKED DOWN, because they will be identified as maturing domains or domains that are “bloodlines” for some companies who need to control these domains online. A “domain bloodline” is a domain name that defines a prodserv so clearly that the manufacturer/distributor/retailer needs the domain name to keep the “body” of their prodserv alive online. Those domains will increase in value, and very fast.
October 11th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I picked up LinkListe.com pretty cheap from Namejet. Estibot batch legacy gives it $37K value. I am looking for $1K.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Everyday I find good quality domains, at Namejet.com and Snapnames.com, using the tools4domain.com technology albeit the quality of dropping domains is diminishing and as a domain investor you need to be diligent in sticking to your over investment strategy. I’ve seen that just parking your domains is only one small part of making money with your domains.
Joe
October 11th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Domainers are recognizing they’ve got to start developing their domain portfolios now and that the easy money isn’t going to be continuing on parked pages. So many guys who bought thousands of domains are recognizing they’re only going to be able to afford to develop a portion of the domains they’ve acquired and that’s why you’re seeing more drops now than prior years. Not because they have to, it just makes sense to weed out the ones that won’t be good for development going forward.
October 12th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Steve, wishing you the best selling your digital name and purchasing additional digital names; in my humble opinion, don’t waste your time with valuation services for digital real estate-it’s useless/baseless and can’t put a “true” value on digital assets. Case and point look at your example. Know your target market, have a plan/vision and be patient. Digital assets appreciate every second, every day, every week, every month and every year!
scott
http://www.401.me