discussion Domaining Journey

[Jojomon]

Hi all! I've been interested in domaining probably since I caught wind of the internet 20 years ago but haven't muscled the will to take the dive until now. I've worked with multiple startups and agencies to help grow and monetize brands and have a background in web asset analysis and planning based on my experience. I'm looking to make a major career shift from consulting into domaining & building web properties.

I figured it would be fun to track my progress and my learnings as I get my feet involved. Plus when I spend time writing and document, I tend to stick with things much longer.

That said. I want to take a methodical approach to buy domains and web assets. Eventually, I want to focus on ideation and lead teams to build apps (or tools that make my life easier lol) while being financially independent. Plus, I habitually come up with ideas/concepts that ultimately get used by colleagues so I figure I can best use that energy in the world of domaining.

Strats (three tiers)
1. Buy brandable names - this will probably equate to 100 domains over time (~$1K) in which I'll develop brands and concepts to further build upon depending on the owner. I will use my site + domain marketplaces to test this and see how well it does. This is part of a bigger plan assuming I get a decent ROI.
2. Buy effective keyword match domains and park them - I will have analytics set up to track source traffic. I already have a couple of plans/concepts I aim to push out for this strat that I think will generate revenue. This also includes current sites that are generating revenue.
3. Develop select domains to sell as turnkey startups and/or keep them for my portfolio

Right now I'm using Afternic to sell/park my domains, but as I continue to dig I will likely use Epik as they appear to have good LPs and offer their own marketplace. This saves me the time and energy making my own ecommerce site. I may circle back to this at a later date, but.

Anyways, I'll use this thread as my journal of learnings, findings, etc.

Expected Spend/Investment to start - $2,500. This may be much more if I work with a team to develop a site/product, but for the sake of domaining and domain purchasing, I'm going to keep this amount.

Goal: to make $1500/month domaining this year. It may sound a bit of a stretch, but I am hopeful. Looking forward to being on the boards more!

 

[silentg]

Welcome aboard @Jojomon

 

[Jojomon]

Thanks @silentg!

WARNING: WALL OF TEXT

Background (Con't)​

A bit of a background, I used to (and still do) vet websites and estimate potential/revenue for web properties. On top of that, I concoct revenue building/growth roadmaps for companies interested in acquisitions. The biggest difference between that and what I'm doing here is that I am not a company with deep pockets and resources to scale.

Monetization (Top level)​

Because of that, my only practical play right now is to get my feet wet and do research on capitalizing on +ROI domains that are overlooked or have strong potential based on a variety of factors. We won't know the results until months/years from now, but I do think I can find good value sites based on my research and (hopefully) sound logic. I'll do my best to explain my thought process and I'll discuss key plays sites that pique my interests.

Domain Purchases​

June Domains Purchased: 5 ​

-- 2 Domains Are To Flip into Brandable sites
-- 1 Domain is used for an app I intend to build
-- 1 Domain is for a personal blog (figure to mention it since there may be a point where it may be monetized)
-- 1 Domain is meant to be a hub for my domain portfolio
-- $56 spent

July Domains Purchased (To Date) - 35​

I apologize for the long-windedness ahead of time. I'll do my best to highlight some favorites, I won't go over all 35. I made most of the purchases today.

Notable Purchases: Favorites
Moxtrot.com [Brandable] - I already have 3 industries lined up for a potential fit, the name IMO is sleek. This is will probably be a flagship domain I build with branding and gives me the warm and fuzzies just thinking about it.
Storkbrand.com [Park & Resell] - I may work on logos/branding. This one is different play and I'm working on the assumption that a similar website that is deemed "premium" and sells for over $10K is overpriced. It hasn't sold and that's better for me. I plan to have actual assets & a significantly lower price, leaving users who may be interested in the other site to snap-buy this site. Of course, that's just me talking out loud, who knows lol.
Plumbers.Boston [Park & Resell] - Currently the only non-dot-com site I purchased (for $14 wtf). I'd be surprised is this got any direct traffic (possible with mobile typos now that I think about it). I will die before this I let go of this site. If I have time I may develop it into a lead gen site but highly unlikely right now. Going to park this, other city TLDs are selling for significantly more.

There are several other "brandable" category sites I purchased but I don't want this post to be a novel lol. Moving on.

Methodologies
You can kind of tell based on the domains purchased that I like to place many feelers and test a variety of ways to monetize. I'll do my best to label them accordingly as I will likely refer back to these in other posts. This month I focused my efforts on 5-letter .com domains. My pockets aren't deep enough for 4-letter .com's, I imported a slew of 5-letter domains that had been expired since the dawn of time and asked myself "does anything immediately pop out".

Self-Tip: Whenever I vet / research any property or digital audit, I wander without an agenda and note anything striking to me. In this case, I scoured the oldest domains first (several hundred) and began cataloging any domain that felt like it either 1) made sense to me or 2) immediately reminded me of anything, if it took more than a second I would skip it.

After hours of manually scouting, it made more sense to get keyword estimates on tens of thousands of other domains as a quick way to identify potential "Typo" domain candidates. Alternatively, this would create a shortlist of domains that I can rank or rate manually as I continue to vet.

5-Letter Domain Vetting
Version 1 Vetting - 90 Domains - I researched domains, SERP results, correct spellings, phonetics, etc. and determined ranks. Ranks are based on my insights and research (I will discuss this at a further date, assuming I have some semblance of success lol).

The 90 domains were culled to 32 (33 technically, I'll explain later). All 90 sites were given grades in relation to its overall potential, readability, and trending qualities (i.e.. high search volume, use in day-to-day language, etc.) All had notes and potential uses (if any). All domains with a B+ or higher I purchased.

Notable Purchases: 5-Letter Domains
phmix.com [Brandable Hybrid] - HIGH Potential. Brandable (PHMix - as a potential way site for soil testing, water testing, or other outdoor testing kits). Alternatively, this acronym generates some traffic out of the gate. High potential if I can get something off the ground, but at worst I think this is a parking domain.
pnuch.com [Typo] - punch.com typo (that is also for sale, lol). Good search volume for 'punch', mainly used as a baseline to see how much this typo domain generates.
rbeak.com [Typo] - common typo for break.com (fun fact, they no longer exist), while a typo...this appears to be a very common one. "RBeak" could be something (ex: ravenbeak) but it's branding power could have a solid upside down the road.

The One That Got Away
anutd.com - this was my first search on the shortlist that prompted a search volume in the hundred of thousand IIRC. Turns out it's a typo for the Manchester United site. It appeared on my list and appeared to be available on July 8 and was gone when went to buy it today. This was easily my best find but I slept on it too long. Live and learn.

Breakdown Of My 5-Letter Domain Purchases​

I still have much more to do. But I wanted to try a mixed approached to start. All in all, of the 5-letter domains I purchased:

- 20 of 32 are misspellings or typos on popular brands/terms
- 10 of 32 are IMO brandable and I'll start working on branding
- 2 of 32 are exact match keywords mentions with volume on the web. I anticipate these two will likely generate traffic right away or will yield a reasonable resell price.

Currently Spent: $352.66

PS: I'll go back to fix grammar/spelling, I don't know how long I've been writing but my brain is drained.

 

[Siful Moni]

I have plan to build a 5 letter brandable domain portfolio approx 100 names by this year. But I am not in the way currently. But looking forward to get some potential names which are pronounceable and brandable

 

[Jojomon]

I'm spending a lot of time researching, hoping to get things right.

Updates​

Domain Marketplace Software​

I already had a plan to sell my brandable domains in all market places (possibly a separate site for non-brandables) so finding a good out of the box solution that looks nice with user-friendly features was a journey lol. I ultimately decided to go with Efty over domain market pro, Efty simply looked much better in nearly every aspect. I uploaded my brandables to Efty. domain that isn't brandable or is meant to be resold will be included here.

Typo Sites - Parked Domains​

Right now I'm using Bodis & Epik.com as my primary sites to park domains to gather ad revenue. If there are other parked domain sites that are good to drive revenue, let me know. My biggest thing with typo sites is that based on the research I should be getting views on the site, and hopefully clicks? Let's look.

30 of my 32 typo sites have driven at least 1 view since parking this week (WOWOWOW). However, zero clicks. So maybe I should slow my role lol. The other two sizes haven't driven a view. Without a click, I don't know how much I am getting paid, so I have no estimates yet. It looks like the epik data is a bit slow.

Marketplaces​

I'm still wrapping my head around all the marketplaces I need to hop on. Is there a way for me to connect all marketplaces based on my portfolio? Anyways. Here are the marketplaces I'm planning to sell my domains on. I am currently getting them up on Epik & Afternic, soon to be other sites.

Epik
Afternic
Sedo
Dan
Uniregistry
DomainAgents
NameSilo
Squadhelp - Test on brandables
BrandBucket - Test on brandables

Did i miss any? Is this too much?

 

[WarpedMind]

This thread is great! Thanks @Jojomon for sharing so much helpful insight!

 

[Biggie]

Hi

i can appreciate you detailing your journey
but,
to see you stumble down this road carrying the load you have now.....and not say anything, just wouldn't be right.

1.you don't need to spend money on etsy.
there are too many FREE resources
2. those typos are not really typos
coronavuris.com is a typo, i dropped it so maybe you can reg it

1,158

7

2.99%

$0.12

$1.25

$1.45

3. those 5 letters are not really brandable
4. domains are not sites, until you develop them

the best name you've posted is "plumbers.boston
and i don't like that one either, because it should be "boston.plumbers" if anything.

the amount spent so far, isn't that much. so best to try and recoup some, by selling off a few names if possible.
then regroup and try to enhance quality.

Good Luck!

imo....

 

[amplify]

I'll be following your journey.

These are two domains that I would drop.

pnuch.com [Typo] - punch.com typo (that is also for sale, lol). Good search volume for 'punch', mainly used as a baseline to see how much this typo domain generates.
rbeak.com [Typo] - common typo for break.com (fun fact, they no longer exist), while a typo...this appears to be a very common one. "RBeak" could be something (ex: ravenbeak) but it's branding power could have a solid upside down the road.

As you said, Break is no longer around and therefore really isn't a typo. Break.com is likely to see traffic due to the links it may have accumulated, but it's doubtful that rbeak will get traffic. Even if it does, how are you going to monetize traffic that wants humor; Amazon joke books?

Punch is also for sale. Until Punch is acquired by a company that wants to secure their typos, this is worth nothing. Even if Punch would come along, how much do you think they would want their typo for? How long would you have to keep it at renewal for this date?

30 of my 32 typo sites have driven at least 1 view since parking this week (WOWOWOW). However, zero clicks. So maybe I should slow my role lol.

Yes. You should identify names/strings that would actually get type-in traffic that is valuable. Further, you might want to stay within a niche. Keyword Planner will help you with search volume, competitiveness, and average CPC. When I was in it for type-in traffic for parking, I would want 1000-10000 searches, medium/high competitive, and creeping up on a dollar CPC. Anything lower than that, I found to not be worth it as it couldn't make reg fee per year.

You really need to focus. You're spread all over the place.

Do you want to have a brandable portfolio? Do you want to have typos? Do you want to have 5 letter names? Do you want to make money from parking?

Focus and get good in one area and then expand from there. From what I can see, you're going to exhaust yourself, both mentally and financially, if you don't come to an understanding of what you're doing.

 

[Manisha Pakhrin]

Hi,

Thanks for sharing your detailed journey. Appreciated!!

 

[markdomain]

Thanks @silentg!

WARNING: WALL OF TEXT

Background (Con't)​

A bit of a background, I used to (and still do) vet websites and estimate potential/revenue for web properties. On top of that, I concoct revenue building/growth roadmaps for companies interested in acquisitions. The biggest difference between that and what I'm doing here is that I am not a company with deep pockets and resources to scale.

Monetization (Top level)​

Because of that, my only practical play right now is to get my feet wet and do research on capitalizing on +ROI domains that are overlooked or have strong potential based on a variety of factors. We won't know the results until months/years from now, but I do think I can find good value sites based on my research and (hopefully) sound logic. I'll do my best to explain my thought process and I'll discuss key plays sites that pique my interests.

Domain Purchases​

June Domains Purchased: 5 ​

-- 2 Domains Are To Flip into Brandable sites
-- 1 Domain is used for an app I intend to build
-- 1 Domain is for a personal blog (figure to mention it since there may be a point where it may be monetized)
-- 1 Domain is meant to be a hub for my domain portfolio
-- $56 spent

July Domains Purchased (To Date) - 35​

I apologize for the long-windedness ahead of time. I'll do my best to highlight some favorites, I won't go over all 35. I made most of the purchases today.

Notable Purchases: Favorites
Moxtrot.com [Brandable] - I already have 3 industries lined up for a potential fit, the name IMO is sleek. This is will probably be a flagship domain I build with branding and gives me the warm and fuzzies just thinking about it.
Storkbrand.com [Park & Resell] - I may work on logos/branding. This one is different play and I'm working on the assumption that a similar website that is deemed "premium" and sells for over $10K is overpriced. It hasn't sold and that's better for me. I plan to have actual assets & a significantly lower price, leaving users who may be interested in the other site to snap-buy this site. Of course, that's just me talking out loud, who knows lol.
Plumbers.Boston [Park & Resell] - Currently the only non-dot-com site I purchased (for $14 wtf). I'd be surprised is this got any direct traffic (possible with mobile typos now that I think about it). I will die before this I let go of this site. If I have time I may develop it into a lead gen site but highly unlikely right now. Going to park this, other city TLDs are selling for significantly more.

There are several other "brandable" category sites I purchased but I don't want this post to be a novel lol. Moving on.

Methodologies
You can kind of tell based on the domains purchased that I like to place many feelers and test a variety of ways to monetize. I'll do my best to label them accordingly as I will likely refer back to these in other posts. This month I focused my efforts on 5-letter .com domains. My pockets aren't deep enough for 4-letter .com's, I imported a slew of 5-letter domains that had been expired since the dawn of time and asked myself "does anything immediately pop out".

Self-Tip: Whenever I vet / research any property or digital audit, I wander without an agenda and note anything striking to me. In this case, I scoured the oldest domains first (several hundred) and began cataloging any domain that felt like it either 1) made sense to me or 2) immediately reminded me of anything, if it took more than a second I would skip it.

After hours of manually scouting, it made more sense to get keyword estimates on tens of thousands of other domains as a quick way to identify potential "Typo" domain candidates. Alternatively, this would create a shortlist of domains that I can rank or rate manually as I continue to vet.

5-Letter Domain Vetting
Version 1 Vetting - 90 Domains - I researched domains, SERP results, correct spellings, phonetics, etc. and determined ranks. Ranks are based on my insights and research (I will discuss this at a further date, assuming I have some semblance of success lol).

The 90 domains were culled to 32 (33 technically, I'll explain later). All 90 sites were given grades in relation to its overall potential, readability, and trending qualities (i.e.. high search volume, use in day-to-day language, etc.) All had notes and potential uses (if any). All domains with a B+ or higher I purchased.

Notable Purchases: 5-Letter Domains
phmix.com [Brandable Hybrid] - HIGH Potential. Brandable (PHMix - as a potential way site for soil testing, water testing, or other outdoor testing kits). Alternatively, this acronym generates some traffic out of the gate. High potential if I can get something off the ground, but at worst I think this is a parking domain.
pnuch.com [Typo] - punch.com typo (that is also for sale, lol). Good search volume for 'punch', mainly used as a baseline to see how much this typo domain generates.
rbeak.com [Typo] - common typo for break.com (fun fact, they no longer exist), while a typo...this appears to be a very common one. "RBeak" could be something (ex: ravenbeak) but it's branding power could have a solid upside down the road.

The One That Got Away
anutd.com - this was my first search on the shortlist that prompted a search volume in the hundred of thousand IIRC. Turns out it's a typo for the Manchester United site. It appeared on my list and appeared to be available on July 8 and was gone when went to buy it today. This was easily my best find but I slept on it too long. Live and learn.

Breakdown Of My 5-Letter Domain Purchases​

I still have much more to do. But I wanted to try a mixed approached to start. All in all, of the 5-letter domains I purchased:

- 20 of 32 are misspellings or typos on popular brands/terms
- 10 of 32 are IMO brandable and I'll start working on branding
- 2 of 32 are exact match keywords mentions with volume on the web. I anticipate these two will likely generate traffic right away or will yield a reasonable resell price.

Currently Spent: $352.66

PS: I'll go back to fix grammar/spelling, I don't know how long I've been writing but my brain is drained.

Woah, you have an impressive background here, I feel so insecure (LOL) I guess my journey is like an infant and I need to do a looot of reading before becoming like you.

 

[accurate]

You build veteran websites?

Background (Con't)
A bit of a background, I used to (and still do) vet websites and estimate potential/revenue for web properties. On top of that, I concoct revenue building/growth roadmaps for companies interested in acquisitions. The biggest difference between that and what I'm doing here is that I am not a company with deep pockets and resources to scale.