Shane has a good compilation of Domaining quotes here and I don’t have a lot to add, but I thought it would be fun to look at other quotes and relate them to domains.

These will all be short and I’ll include the original quote and attribution if I can find it.  This may just end up being a fun Twitter exercise so make sure you follow @DomainNitro.

Only a couple of rules – I’ll try to come up with a good one, you decide if you like it.  If you don’t, try to come up with a better one based on the original quote provided and put it in the comments.  I’ll let others decide which is best if it isn’t obvious I promise to be impartial…

Domain Name Quote:

Original Quote – “Your greatness is measured by your horizons.” – Michelangelo

Domaining Quote

• Option 1 – “Your domains are measured by your sales” – DomainNitro.com
• Option 2 – “Your domains are measured by their length” – DomainNitro.com
• Option 3 – “Your domaining greatness is measured by your 3 F’s – Flips, Frequency, Financials” – DomainNitro.com

Which one gets your vote?  Can you do better?  Put it in the comments below!

Have you also heard about James Robertson?  Did his story remind you of anyone you knew?  Well, whether you have heard of James or not is irrelevant.  Lessons we can all learn from him are what is important. (I’ll give you some context later, but the image is a hint)

NY to Los Angeles to Orlando

Think of the most successful person you know and keep that thought in your head while you read this and let me know what you think at the end…

What James Robertson can teach you about success

The life lessons/success story of James Robertson(your person’s name here) come down to the answer to this question:

Aside from the obvious money aspect, what separates a hobbyist from a professional?

Seems like a simple question, but lately I’ve been thinking more about why I treat domains and this industry like a hobby compared to two types of other people:

1. Most people who just go away quickly because they were looking for an overnight success or million dollar flip
2. Others who I’ve watched who have progressed to “Guru” or very successful levels from seemingly nothing

To give you some context, I started hobby buying domains back in 2010 and I am still at that level even though I follow the industry to some degree and love learning about it… not a success by any measure – what some domainers would call a hobbyist… what I would normally call something much worse

Two Success Factors for Domain Name Investing

There are two main factors that I realize have made all the difference – execution and consistency.  I’m going to use a couple of examples of successful domainers to prove this point.

The two are Morgan Linton and Shane Cultra.

Morgan is a very successful domainer, but has branched into so many areas it is mind boggling… Domains, development, software, fashion, startups, etc.  I don’t know how he does it and I don’t think it is a reasonable path for most people to get started so if you want to learn more about Morgan and his story, please visit his blog at MorganLinton.com

Shane, aka Domain Shane, is a living case study on either successful domaining or making money on the internet part time – take your pick.

• He works two hours a day on domains.
• He does this seven days a week – that is still only 14 hours a week… not unreasonable by any standard
• Analyzes auctions and domains that are dropping and publishes a blog post every day on his tips/picks
• He has missed maybe a couple days in 5 years (since 2009).
  • Just for easy math, lets say that is 10 days missed out of  5 years – I doubt it is even that much.
  • 5 years x 365 days = 1825 days
  • 1815/1825 = 99.45%
  • in other words, he shows up every day!
• He recognizes trends in the market and even shares them openly. When I first started reading his blog he was touting 5L brandables and short domains. More recently he has been recommending Chinese markets including Numerics which have all dramatically risen in value.  (side note – if I had taken his off hand stock mentions on Apple, my stock portfolio would have an extra zero on it right now, but he doesn’t technically offer stock tips)
• He is now a regular on Domain Sherpa which is probably the best podcast on domains you can listen to for learning about what makes domains valuable and getting expert opinions for free.
• Oh yeah, he also runs a huge nursery business, appears on gardening shows, speaks, was a successful finance blogger and investor, has a family, runs marathons at a faster pace than you can run to the kitchen, plows snow for yet another business, saves kittens and kisses babies.

So what does Shane have in common with James Robertson?

James is the guy who walked 21 miles to/from work each day for 10 years.

In Detroit. 

And never missed a day. 

Consistency

He was there rain or shine, snow or heat.  I can’t get my people to show up when snow is even in the forecast, but then again, I live in Alabama and snow is just short of Armageddon here

In other words, James is consistent.  He just shows up and is dedicated to being there… On time… and working hard when he gets there so he also executes well.

We can get in a discussion about his poor execution because a man that dedicated should be easily employed by someone a lot closer because most businesses can’t find people who will regularly show up.  But for the sake of this discussion he was doing what he knew to do which is just show up consistently and it worked for his needs.

Shane’s motto is “Outsmarting the dumb, Outworking the smart” and he does that every day.

Recently James got a lot of attention on social media and the news and received over $300,000 in donations and a brand new car.

Shane was recently added to the DomainSherpa.com panel and has been building up his domain business.  I guarantee you he’ll make more than James will with that 300k donation.  Shane built his domain empire with money from his blog, reinvesting, etc

So basically, I think Shane has shown that you can be successful if you start out with a goal/plan/idea, work at it consistently for years, and execute well.  You can’t leave one of those factors out though or you will just end up quitting or treating it like a hobby… so says the pot/kettle/mirror…

So, who did you have in mind as your most successful person you know?  Did they have the same consistency and execution?  Let me know what you think in the comments especially if you have examples or different opinions.

More of a side note, but here are James Robertson’s commute miles in relation to the World Trade Center

World Trade Center to Eastchester

Every day: World Trade Center past Central Park, Harlem, Yankee Stadium, Bronx Zoo, Mt. Vernon and all the way to Eastchester.

Every week: World Trade Center to East Hampton, NY.

Every month: World Trade Center to Cleveland, OH.

Every year: World Trade Center to Orlando… via LOS ANGELES!!! Image is at the top

Most people won’t walk that far in their lives… if they can help it and they always can…

Today, I was looking at slang words and had a bunch of them in the bulk checker at GoDaddy and for a brief instant I thought I hit the lottery!

Bulk Domain Zombie!

I saw that in addition to a few others I checked, Zombie.com and Zombify.com were available…

Godaddy Zombie.com error!

Only briefly did I think that was possible, but just in case, I immediately went to checkout and when I tried to pay it kicked them out saying they were unavailable “error”.

UGHHH!  But I didn’t really believe it anyway, but it sure would be fun to find a nugget like that… pure gold!

On a side note, I didn’t register Traying.com – would make a fun video site – google it or search youtube… it really is a thing…  If you register it please let me know – wouldn’t mind seeing what you do with it.

Slang and trends

As I mentioned above, I am looking into slang, trends, events, etc to try to find some hidden nuggets I can hand register… it is a time consuming process so I may have to start looking back at some of the new GTLD’s coming online or some of the ones from last year where people let them drop… should be a good market.  What do you think?

Today’s first interesting domain name is:

Indeed.com

Brandable Domain Name

I had the TV on while I was cooking last night… or opening up the takeout, however you want to say it and I noticed this ad for a job site called Indeed.com.

Jobs/employment/recruitment type sites have always been popular on the internet and you used to see a lot of them advertising like crazy all over the place back when the bubble was in full swing and everyone was trying to get their site attention and job placement ads.

Over time those sites consolidated or went out of business, but it is still a huge market for domain names, city names, location specific or niche job specific sites so I was surprised to see Indeed.com advertising on primetime tv with a brandable domain.  In my recent discussion on brandables for domain names I focus more on the positives associated to them, but this warrants a bit more discussion.

I see where they are going with Indeed because it is a simple search interface that you could easily glance at and mistake for Google’s interface. Clean and simple which I like.

There are two main points I want to get across and I want you to think about how you use domains in real life.

Point 1 is that domains need to be easily remembered for ads like the one above to be effective as well as recognizable to people when they go to search for it online after they’ve seen the ad – or the name has to be so obvious that it catches your attention and you easily associate it to what you are looking for…

If you asked me to name the top job sites on the internet, Indeed wouldn’t have come to mind even though their site says

As the world’s #1 job site, with over 140 million unique visitors every month from over 50 different countries, Indeed has become the catalyst for putting the world to work.

140 Million uniques is a lot of traffic for any site!

In this example, I know I have seen Indeed.com ads before, but since I wasn’t looking for a job I didn’t remember the name. Even if I did, it would be easy to forget because my brain doesn’t associate that word to jobs in any context.

If I went to search for a job and I saw two listings on the top results of Google – one with the Indeed.com domain name and one with any of the following domains(Jobs.com, Nashville.com/jobs, GeekJobs, whateverJobs.com) I would click the other domain 99% of the time because it makes sense and is in context.

Point 2 is that they probably spent a good bit on this ad and other ads.  They probably spend well into the 7 figures advertising to get those 140 Million visitors and the associated businesses to post jobs on their site.  I don’t know that they don’t have additional domains, but using a brandable that is not easily related to what you do makes you spend a lot of money advertising to get people to associate your name to an industry.  Very tough and expensive to do.

Domain Name Pros:

• One word dictionary Domain
• Short
• 6 letters
• Pronouncable
• Common

Domain Name Cons:

• Brand doesn’t easily associate to job market
• It isn’t that memorable to me because it isn’t a catchy word or a word that is used in most people’s daily vocabulary
• It takes a lot of additional effort, advertising, and money to get customers and for people not looking for that at the time they see the ad they won’t remember or associate it when they do start looking.

Today’s Second interesting domain name is:

Well, this time it isn’t even a *domain*, but it is related to this domain because it is a great discussion on one word .com’s and the use of great domains in business and how they can help.

Michael Cyger over at DomainSherpa.com has an interview up that discusses this exact issue so go check it out, subscribe to his podcast or at least listen to this one and decide for yourself.

As with each of these daily posts, you can comment below with ONE domain name you have for sale – must give the exact name, own it yourself, prefer pricing BIN.  And today I would like any one word or brandable Domains you have, but any good domain is fine if that isn’t your thing.

Let me know what you think!

Today’s first interesting domain name is:

Woot.com

4L Domain Names

I recently moved and I got some boxes from friends and one of those boxes is this picture and corresponding Domain Name.  IMO it is a very cool domain for a lot more reasons than the product domain discussion.

You may have heard of Woot.com.  They’ve been around on the internet selling stuff since 2004.  Were you even using the internet to buy stuff in 2004?  Probably not.

Woot has an interesting background with a cool business model you can check out on their wikipedia entry – it really is interesting if you have a few minutes to check it out.

Let’s get right to the point with this great domain.

Sometimes you can’t tell if a domain is great or not when you first see it… not in this case because it is excellent in so many ways.

Brandable Domains

This is one of the first type of domains people end up buying for investment.  Brandable domains such as Amazon or Google are perfect examples. Brandables might be words used in a different context or they may just be made up words. Most people can’t afford short one word .com’s so they run across made up words that sound cool to them.

Be very careful buying the made up version of brandables.  Trust me, they are VERY hard to sell and you will very likely never sell them.

In Woot’s case, the word had been around especially on the internet in gaming and used in forums extensively before it became their brand.

It is used as a term of excitement or happiness and is popular with gamers and long time internet users… exactly the type of people who buy stuff online early on the internet.

In addition to the positive connotations of the word, it is short.  4 Letter words, on the internet at least, are gold!  Short is easier to remember and is easy to brand.

The word also just looks good with the double o and the way it flows and sounds.  Easy to spell and even better, hard to misspell.

Tough to beat that.

I can’t give a value, but if you look at the history of sales and come up with any 4 letter word that sounds good it will probably have sold for a decent amount or hasn’t ever been resold. Similar words pop into my mind like loot, boot, zoot, wood, wool, gold, love, hair, etc. If you look those up my guess is they are high 5 figure minimum with some easily reaching 7 figures (think gold here).

One thing about brandables that I won’t dwell on any more is the fact someone has to be looking for the exact name or making up words and really love yours if it happens to be a made up word. Given the number of possibilities and the fact they can just make up another word makes these a rare sell.

You will fall in love with one or more and keep them. Fine. Just make sure it is a small percentage of your overall portfolio unless you have money to burn or you can buy 4 letter, pronouncable .com’s. Those never go out of style and the demand is always high.

Just to recap…

Domain Name Pros:

• One word Domain
• Short
• 4 letters
• Pronouncable
• Common
• Positive connotations
• Passes the radio test

Domain Name Cons:

• Some people may not have heard the word.

Side note on this domain – Woot was sold to Amazon in 2010. And unlike some other acquisitions Amazon didn’t fold them into their brand. It is still up and running.

Today’s Second interesting domain name is:

Well, this *domain* is related to this domain because it is 4 letters and will let you see the difference between 4 letter domains in general.

Domain Shane usually includes at least one 4 letter domain in his list a week and quite often one or more per day.  Today’s list is the perfect example.

The domain list includes Qace.com, GPPU.com, MLVC.com, and VHLC.com.  This gives you a broad array of this type of domain investment.

I didn’t check all of them, but in my opinion Qace is the best of these from a pronouncable standpoint because you can actually say it. Not great because it starts with a Q which makes it a little harder to say. What is important is that it sold for low 4 figures.

When it comes to 4L .com’s what is important to keep in mind is that these come up for sale all the time and many are for sale from domainers, but ALL of them are taken – ALL 456,976 of them if you are only counting the 26 regular letters of the alphabet.  26x26x26x26 is almost half a million of these and they sell routinely on forums and drops/auctions for low teens to low hundreds.

4 Letter Domains sales prices

What makes some worth low thousands to many, many thousands? Here is a list of recent sales from DNSalePrice.com – you should be able to look at the list and see what made them sell for way more than the average 4L in most cases.

There are some rules about premium letters, premium combinations of letters, etc but I’ll save that for another day.

I hope you like this type of discussion on domain values and thinking through some of this because to really be good at reselling domains you need to understand the market and what has liquidity, what is a long term investment, etc… It takes a lot of time and experience… I’m not quite there yet, but I’m trying to learn.

As with each of these daily posts, you can comment below with ONE domain name you have for sale – must give the exact name, own it yourself, prefer pricing BIN.  And today I would like any 4 letter or brandable Domains you have, but any good domain is fine if that isn’t your thing.

Let me know what you think!

Today’s first interesting domain name is:

SafetyGloves.com

Exact Match domain

Ok, so SafetyGloves isn’t as cool as yesterday’s interesting domain name, but for the people selling Safety Gloves it couldn’t be any better.

Why should you care about this if you are a domainer or website creator using domains? Easy.

Exact Match Domains

This is one of the first terms most people in domains learn – exact match domains or EMD’s.

The exact match comes from how people browse the internet.

You have some people who type into the url exactly what they are looking for and if you are looking for Safety Gloves you would hit this site first.

Most people will use a search engine like google, but they will search for the exact term “safety gloves” and even though Google has put less emphasis on their rankings search results for EMD’s, it still plays an important factor.

You might say the site and domain… Fit like a glove.  Pardon the pun, it made me smile when I thought about it so I had to include it.

Most people will never use this style of gloves, For companies in more hazardous conditions these gloves are critical for doing their jobs safely and for employee protection and long term health so it really is in their best interest.

As you can see from the picture, it is also a great thing to have for advertising because I clicked on this when searching because I just knew it would have what I was looking for at the time.

If you use the Keyword Planner tool from Google, you will see the following for the exact search “Safety Gloves”.  We will dicsuss the details of what this all means in another article or another day’s post, but it is fairly easy to figure it out.

Exact Match keyword stats

Domain Name Pros:

• Exact Match Domain
• 1300 Exact Searches
• It is a common two word phrase
• Fairly easy to spell
• Attractive to people in search results

Domain Name Cons:

• Again, not much on the downside of this one.
• It is plural and sometimes you want the singular, but in this case you almost always say, and search, the plural gloves, not glove.

Side note on this domain – it is owned by a parent company HexArmor who sells other types of specialty safety gloves and both sites are done very well so if you are looking for a way as a business to increase your presence this is a great example of how to do it without diluting your brand!

Today’s Second interesting domain name is:

Well, it isn’t a name this time. It is actually a list of names that have been bought and sold for very nice profits recently.

Shane does a great job with his daily drop and auction list, but these are very interesting to see what other people are able to buy and sell in a fairly quick flip.

Check it out here.

For each of these daily posts, you can comment below with ONE domain name you have for sale – must give the exact name, own it yourself, prefer pricing BIN.  And today I would like any Exact Match Domains you have, but any good domain is fine if that isn’t your thing.

Let me know what you think!

So what is an IDN?

Well, if you are native non-English speaking or are a domain investor you might know that “IDN” is usually referred to in the context of Internationalized Domain Names. Basically web addresses with non-standard ASCII keyboard characters for us English only web surfers.

It really doesn’t matter, because my IDN’s are “Interesting Domain Names” of the day.

My site, my rules.

These names will be one of two types:

1. Names that I see on TV, adverts on roadways/vehicles/tv/radio, or on actual businesses.
2. Names that I see for sale or on the drop lists or sales lists I receive

They will usually be good which is why I noticed them, but occasionally I will notice one because it is horrendously bad.  I will try to offer commentary on why they are good or bad just to get them out of my head and start consolidating notes on why Domain Names are good or not – thus why they have value.

Domain Name of the Day

Today’s first interesting domain name is:

Interesting Domain Name: Enterprise.com

Enterprise.com

Most everyone in the U.S. will recognize Enterprise as the company who rents cars with a unique twist – “We’ll pick you up!”

We use Enterprise for our corporate car rentals and I saw this Commercial Truck rental sporting the same brand.

Domain Name Pros:

• Aside from being the exact match for their corporate brand, the word Enterprise sparks all kinds of positive connotations in English.
  • it means a company in one definition
  • it means a project in another definition
  • and another it means taking action in difficult projects
• It is a common one word dictionary domain name. Huge plus.
• 10 letters – not bad
• Fairly easy to spell
• Very common

Domain Name Cons:

• Not much to talk about here – maybe could be misspelled with a z giving Enterprize dot com
  • Side note – I went to that site and it redirects to Enterprize dot in which is weird, but they also had ads on the side and the one I saw was for National Car Rental – they better be careful or they will be getting a UDRP to take that domain name…

Today’s Second interesting domain name is:

TheVortex.com from Domain Shane’s daily list here.

Why is it interesting? I won’t go into a whole list of pros and cons, but aside from being a decent name (remove the “The” and it is easily a 5 figure domain) it is also a restaurant in Atlanta with killer burgers.

Oh, it also has around 18 million matches on Google search so it should be flippable based on the current $444 price.

I may get in on this one because it would definitely be an upgrade for the restaurant/bar in Atlanta which is currently using thevortexbarandgrill.com

If you plan to bid on it, please go to Shane’s link above – I think he might get a commission, but even if he doesn’t he gets some ad love and traffic and he spends a lot of time coming up with these so check him out if you don’t regularly…

That is it for today.  I hope you like these posts.

For each of these daily posts, you can comment below with ONE domain name you have for sale – must give the exact name, own it yourself, prefer pricing BIN.

Let me know what you think!

In the meantime, I stopped buying until I can prove this method out by selling some and I also figure I can pick up more great names in the upcoming extensions being released soon as well as even better names that get dropped when those big renewal fees come rolling around soon!

So what have I been up to?

Personal development.

No, not the losing weight, improving memory, learning a new language, or ying/yang type personal development.  I am talking about website development.

I remember now what drew me to the web way back in the day – it was an adventure, new, and exciting.

I am feeling that again with sites and the new extensions as well as some of the old .com’s I’ve been stashing away over the years. I sold a couple, built on a couple and have been trying to have more fun with it than I was last year and early this year. It is working.

I have a few in negotiations right now.  I have a couple of sites I’m developing that I love. I am going to try to actively sell a few I don’t plan to develop any more. Life is good.

WordPress is amazing

In case you were wondering what I used for sites I personally develop, there is only one answer. WordPress. It was good before. It is great now. It is improving all the time and it is so easy to develop with that just about anyone can do it with just a few minutes of coaching or quick google searches.

No reason not to develop some of your sites out. If you don’t want to bother with it and you have a great name you want to partner up with let me know – I am pretty jammed, but for the right name or right price I will consider it.

So anyway, I am posting again – probably short articles – so let me know what you want to hear about or if there is anything you want to know about in domains or sites.

Comment below or hit me up on Twitter or E-mail Me today!.

How are you approaching the tidal wave of new GTLDs?

Are you watching from the sideline to see how it plays out?  Do you think they are a Gold Mine or a river full of Fool’s Gold?

Are you buying all you can get?  Or would you not buy one of those domains for any amount of money?

My approach – mimicking the King (the Domain King)

Personally, I am being very selective and buying only what I can on general availability release.  There are a couple I might be tempted to purchase in the pre-registration phases, but at least I have some time to see how these early releases pan out.

If I end up selling a few of the ones I’ve picked up, I will probably roll that money back into a larger pre-reg name in one of the early phases.

Mining for domain diamonds in the rough

So far, I think I picked up some real gems even though “.diamonds” hasn’t released yet.  I grabbed:

Missed an opportunity?

Today, I was in a meeting so I couldn’t catch the very beginning of general availability for the ones that opened for hand registration(.Technology, .Today, .Land, .Kitchen, .Construction, etc) so I didn’t get the top of my lists.  Oh well, there are literally HUNDREDS of opportunities coming this year!

Here are some that I found that as of noon on Wednesday are still available to register – note that some of these are premium registrations so they are more than the regular $24, 39, 49, x9 initial fee… probably still worth it though so I hope you are able to grab a couple based on your own plan for these new GTLDs:

Currently available to hand register:

.Technology domains

.Construction domains

• Site

.Kitchen domains

• Outdoors
• MakeOver
• Counters
• CookBooks

.Land domains

• Purchasing

Actually, out of these, I really still like Touch.Technology, Trademark.Technology, Site.Construction, and Purchasing.Land.  May have to check back on those…

Let me know what you picked up recently or what you think of the ones I grabbed or listed here for availability.  Would love to know your thoughts.

Riding home on a gator after the snowpocalypse.

Survived the Snowpocalypse here in the South… Got home late, but safe and sound.  Can’t sleep so I thought I would get a few random domain name thoughts out of my head to see if that helps…

1. Domain Shane isn’t human.  He says he has a full time “real business”, a kid/family, runs ridiculous distances, scans/invests in the stock market, etc.  AND he has a great domain business that he works on only 2 hours a day including blogging, scanning lists of domains like the “secrets” one on this list that is still pissing me off that I missed…  I don’t buy it.  I have to get to Namescon next year and get his secrets after the tables and drinks kick in… Oh yeah.
2. Secrets on Flippa.  That portfolio of names Shane mentioned that was on Flippa.com closed at $1150.  $1150 for 50 names is what, $23 each and even if they are renewing soon that puts your average price around $30 each.  These include Secrets, Cornelius, Gracie, Kyra, Camille and others that I think you could flip for at least a couple hundred each… some more, some less.  Someone got a deal.  Wasn’t me.  Wish it was.  The point is I really need to pay more attention to Flippa domains.  Looks like some great deals going on there.
3. Anyone else Jonesing for the Domain Sherpa review this week?  The one where the Sherpas share their latest hand reg, drop, or purchases?  I am.  Not that I know what Jonesing means, because I don’t live in Colorado or Washington like Michael…
4. New gtld launch yawn.  I thought I would be a lot more excited about the new gtld launches, but I’m not.  Weird because I think there will be some real opportunities.  I think the problem is I’m looking at the overall market and where I need to really look is some very specific gtlds that I think will thrive… I only think a couple will, but for those few it could be a very nice run.  Kinda like looking at the entire stock market like an index vs a smaller vertical or niche – Market vs Computer Hardware vs Apple… much more interesting the deeper you go and I hope more profitable.  I will do another post when/if I buy in those.
5. Snowpocalypse.  It sucked.  I am addicted to names I guess since I checked the domain availability.  Sitting still in traffic for a long time.  It was taken – 7 years ago.  I wanted to grab it and build it out really quick with some pics, but I went to the domain and I couldn’t even stay on the site to see if it is for sale because the snow effect they have on there was killing my tired brain.  Probably a good thing since I am not all that excited about building out that type domain although most of it would be user generated content…
6. Numerics and random 3 character domains.  I still don’t get them or how to price them to buy at value even though Shane and others have provided plenty of insight.  Random stuff like 7wz or m58 or 9240 – I can’t see the business model especially at the prices they are going for on the wholesale market so maybe I need to only think about it based on what they are saying… they are reselling at good prices on 4.cn and other venues.  Not for me, but I am definitely going to watch for trends.  Morgan and Shane are pretty good at catching these trends early and helping guide the market in the right direction so maybe I’ll play along and try to catch the next wave before it is already crashing.
7. More, and better, offers on my domains.  Haven’t sold a domain this month and it is quickly coming to an end, but I have been a little more busy at my real job, a lot more firm on pricing, and tougher on offers.  Seems to be working because I have gotten some decent offers, counters, counter offers and one looks like it might go thru for a decent 4 figure sale this week.  Happy with my direction anyway.

2014 is going to be great, snowpocalypse or not.  Now for some sleep.  Luckily the gym is closed so no 3am wakeup – sleeping in until 6 will be good for my soul