Newbie with over 200 domains that I've never done a thing with :-(

[farns]

Good morning!

My name is Farns, and I am a domain hoarder.

Over the past DECADE, I have bought and stockpiled domains to fit various little biz ideas that I've had, and never developed more than about 4 of them. I need to get serious about a plan - either dump them or figure out a way to monetize them, because the ridiculous amount of money I've spent on them over the years is killing me. Yet I feel I can't dump them, because there has GOT to be a way to recover my expenses. I tried domain parking through a company recommended here in this forum a couple years ago. I just checked, I've made $1.90 in the past 13 months with 6 names I popped over there as a test.

I'm looking today at other options, I see SEDO, Voodoo, and some others... and I see some DIY software called DomainZaar that sounds pretty interesting. I'm going to search these forums to see if anything good or bad has been posted about those or other options.

I've been a member here for ages, and I've never really taken the time to digest all the information that I see is here. I'm wondering if somebody might be willing to give me the Reader's Digest version of what some good options are, maybe hold my hand a little bit to get me started, or talk me into just selling the lot and getting out from under it.

Anyway, I look forward to taking a more active role here, and learning what I can.

So that's me in a nutshell, anxious to meet you guys!

Farns

 

[advermain]

Provide a list of your domains.

Try DomainNameSales.com for parking and sales.

 

[Biggie]

Hi Farns!

that was a good introduction

best advice I can offer....


read, all the domains and all the domains for sale threads

view what domains buyers have been looking for and view what domains have been selling....along with "the prices they sold for" as well as the "buyers budgets" for names they are looking for.

read the "domains with traffic" section to understand which parking service "sellers" are using, as they offer these type of domains for sale.

there is a lot of info here on DNF, but you have to know how to dissect it and separate the facts from fiction.


cuz propaganda floats a lot of boats in this game


Good Luck!

imo....

 

[ninjadomain]

Welcome, Farns!

 

[farns]

Hi there, thanks for the replies. I actually spent a few days getting sucked into some of the domain college threads. Very interesting stuff. I'm not really in a hurry to dump domains, I think a lot of them would work well for affiliate revenue and so forth, and so I'm just trying to figure out how to distill my list down into groups or chunks I can deal with.

I did learn that I have a bunch that will have TM problems :-( I got called out on one of them a few months ago, and took the site down before anything happened, like a Cease and Desist... It was with people that I had no intention of pissing off, and I was using it in a way that benefited both them and I. But they still didn't like it. I offered for them to buy it for a measly sum, and they refused. So I don't really know what I should do at this point with that one. But I learned alot about the TM stuff, and I need to get those out of my portfolio.

I think perhaps I got ahead of myself though digging into the college forums. I need to spend some time on the elementary school ones LOL.

So I haven't replied for a few days, but I've been here reading as much as I can in the time that I've got. Does make me think there's a chance to make a couple pennies here and there though LOL.

Farns

 

[chipmeade]

Step One: Dump the TM names
Step Two: Pick your favorites, set those aside for further thought.
Step Three: Apply some criteria to your names. Use things such as Length, Number of words, Hyphens, Numbers, Product Specific, Geo, Dictionary Words, Fun/Brandables
Step Four: Evaluate your own names based on the criteria. Assign them with your "personal strength" index. Don't worry, you can't make a mistake, this is all your opinion up until this point.
Step Five: Select a small handful of names from a few categories, post them in the appraise section and see what type of responses and feedback you get. Compare their notes with your own. This exercise should sharpen your ability to evaluate your own names. Remember, everyone has an opinion and they vary wildly...this is still an exercise.
Step Six: Reevaluate your names after digesting the feedback. (This is something you will constantly have to do, even seasoned experts have to do this on a regular basis)
Step Seven: Submit a list of your best names to a few parking companies to get an account. I suggest Voodoo, Fabulous but there are a ton out there..read up on peoples favorites in the forum section.
Step Eight: Pick one or two parking companies that have accepted your domains and park them (and any others you aren't going to develop) and check your revenue weekly.
Step Nine: Take another look at your favorites and determine you best course of action--Develop them, Park Them, Sell Them, Keep them private These you will likely not drop, even if most don't think they have value because remember, they are your favorites. We all have names like this and one of the benefits of being a domainer (or domain hoarder) is we know how to keep domains for years without having to spend hundreds of dollars. Consider this a perk.
Step Ten: Take a look at some the names that are either generating traffic or revenue and offer them for sale to domainers here on DNF or call end-users directly and try to sell it to them.
Step Eleven: Go Back to Step One and Repeat.

Good Luck.

 

[Theo]

So you joined DNF a decade ago making 3 posts, spent the past 10 years hoarding domains, and now reality bites
Curious, what did you do in the interim? DNForum is active 24/7 so why the big gap in getting back here?

 

[farns]

I got into this game actually about 15-16 years ago.
I was a reseller for an e-comm package called ShopSite. I would find wholesale sources for products, buy a domain to match, build a store, and sell it as a turn key operation. Made some pretty good money with that, until the e-comm bubble burst. But what started all of this, was I'd get a great source, and then buy 10 names that fit it, and start selling storefronts. I was a hosting provider to go with it, and back then, it was pretty easy to make it look like you knew what you were doing. There were no tools to empower the layman to build his own store, setup his own hosting, etc. Then things like cPanel and other GUIs changed all that.

I still hold some of those original domains, they are 12-13 years old I think.

I do not recall what triggered me joining this forum 10 years ago, part of me is still in shock that it has been that long. I've had 4 kids since then, and wonder where the time went.

I got in "clean up" mode several years ago, and dumped about 70 names on ebay. Started them at $20 and a lot of them went for that. a few got bid up, but not many.

Every time I have gotten a "great idea", I hurry and go reg all the domains I can think of to go with it. I'm sure there's a mental disorder associated with this, LOL. For example, as a hot wings aficionado, I thought it would be great to do a blog about all the wing joints in town, do reviews, blah blah blah. So I go and buy WingLovers.com, WingResponsibly.com, LoveTheWings.com, and 2 or 3 others that aren't coming to mind right now. All my domains are just parked on a little server I have, and and they run an ad for my family photo scanning business.

So my names cover topics that I am personally very interested/experienced/knowledgeable in. Paintball, hot sauces, scouting, electronics and accessories, and so forth.

I have seen people here very protective about sharing what their domains are. Why is that? I see people XXXXX them out all the time when talking about them.

Also, a part of the problem is every now and again, somebody will track me down, and offer to buy a name. I make a few hundred dollars, and that "keeps me in the game" I think. I have already read a ton here and learned what I should be doing differently to that end, so I will work on implementing those changes ASAP.

In the big picture, I think I have some names that probably good for monetizing. Whether this be through affiliate action, or other ventures. I had a grand plan years ago to develop, say the paintball sites, and using linkshare (I think that's the name?) or commission junction, selling specific products that I personally recommend as I have used them, to create revenue that way.

Several, were geared around e-greeting cards, which were huge 15 years ago, we sold many sites with a simple e-card script on them. So now I have names like ChicagoGreetings.com, WashingtonGreetings.com, etc... I don't know that the internet really cares about e-cards anymore, and I don't know that I'm clever enough to turn these into printed greeting card sites, cuz there's a billion of those now. Another off-shoot of this which I think could land me in some trademark trouble.... is we built one called StudentGreetings.com, which was going to be a hub for college campuses - send e-cards to your homesick student, students send e-cards to mom and dad asking for more money, etc... UCLAGreetings.com, ASUGreetings.com, and the like. We never developed them, so the colleges have never said anything, but I have a friend here in Utah who did something with BYU in the domain, and got a letter pretty quickly.

So each of those names have cost me over $100 in renewals, and like you said, reality bites. I hate to have an asset be a loser. Even though, one time I sold a name for $1000, that would have covered the loss on a bunch of these, I never let them go :-(

I appreciate chipmeade's list of steps there to work through. I am going to print that off and start organizing these. I will cross check them all with trademarks, and make sure there aren't offending names that I haven't considered. Perhaps there's already a food chain somewhere called WingLovers. I don't know. Never knew about the TM stuff, and I should have been aware. It wasn't until my first email from a legal department that I even considered it.

Incidentally, I have, twice now done what I am doing here with the TurboScans ad on my little homemade "parking lot" as I call it, pushed two different sites I owned to #1 on Google for several search terms because of having 200+ links to it. At least I think that was the catalyst, the sites were absolutely nothing special, nothing unique, but I'm just guessing there. I'm not an SEO guy.

Anyway, I'm gonna get started on a list. Separating them out as chipmeade suggested. I'd really appreciate continuing this discussion. If there's some worth selling, I'm sure I could get on board with that. I am trying to buy a home this fall, and that 3.5% downpayment could possibly come from these domains, LOL.

Thanks,

Farns

 

[farns]

Ug. So I pulled up my spreadsheet that I started (recently, or so I thought.... turns out it's been almost exactly ONE YEAR since I last visited this... I'm a dork!) to manage all of this.

The first 10 names on the list, are all 12 years old. I was going them all, updating the registration information, etc. And then I was trying to prioritize them in order of what's coming up for renewal next, so I could deal with them in that order. Dumping, selling, or whatever before the next renewal.

These all just renewed again 3 weeks ago.

2WayRadioGear.com
2WayRadioShop.com
AmysAudio.com
BlockWatchPro.com
CellAccy.com
FamilyRadioGear.com
HappyCellPhones.com
PortableMusicGear.com
StylishPhones.com
WirelessAccy.com

I used to have wholesale sources for great products on all of these... But never did any thing with them. And I think to myself... if all I had was one or two pages of relevant content on them, they could have been properly indexed by the engines and maybe developed some organic page rank in all this time, right?

I also forgot to mention, the server that these are parked on, gets on average about 1200 unique visitors per day. I'm sure most of that's bots and spiders or whatever, I don't really know how to read the urchin stats to see if there's anything useful there or not.

Farns

 

[Theo]

Farns, I wasn't trying to be harsh on you, was just curious.

Unfortunately, the best name in that list IMO is StylishPhones.com - and the rest don't hold much value.

 

[farns]

It's ok Theo, I wasn't taking anything as harsh. Trust me, I've beat myself up over this more than enough.

So I was curious about one of the really nice names I have, which was a very specific product name.com. I was using it to help me sell said product, not in any kind of malicious way. That's the company that sent me the email from legal asking about my intentions. They said that as of July 1 of this year, they were going to start enforcing trademark infractions. The site wasn't really making me any money, but of course was a Google #1 search result because the domain name WAS the key word, the product name, etc.

I just search the TM database and found that they TM'd it in 2008, but it "died" in early 2009. I guess that means they didn't renew it or something? Then they re-TM'd it several months later. I missed it by TWO months. I bought the domain a mere two months after they had trademarked it for the 2nd time. I am curious, if I had happened to snag it in between that lapsed period, could I have had claim to the domain? I have much to learn about this, and not really looking to do anything this one. I even offered it to them for a few hundred bucks, not in the spirit of cybersquatting, just trying to make a win-win. Now that I've pulled it offline, I'm sure any Google Juice it had will vanish quickly.

 

[hqdn]

Hi farns - great intro. I think I'm in the same exact boat with you

 

[domainoid]

Very nice discussions by Farns


-I wish you the best of luck

 

[hugegrowth]

If I were you I'd open an account at DomainNameSales.com, add all your domains in there and switch the dns to their servers for parking. You will see which domains get traffic and have all your names on a sales platform. It is a good place to set aside your domains while you decide what to do, because you'll get stats on them and maybe even make some sales.

 

[PKumar]

10 out of 200, you have put here to show as your best domain names according to you..

What about those 190 domain names, I think, they don't have any value..

If you were using any parking service then you may have any idea of traffic your domain names get, according to your parking revenue you are earning zero.

So it is better to look for any way to sell all the domain names in bulk in any auction site, or list one by one if you have time on eBay or other auction websites..

 

[accurate]

My advice Farns is that you really need to be hard on yourself and decide which domains you have time to develop, what domains you can potentially sell, and which ones you need to drop.

It sounds like you have skills, knowledge, and experience far above most newcomers on this board to figure this out. You probably could take marginal domains and still make money with them.

 

[Domainx09]

Your product domains are now great for product review blogs.

I would drop amysaudio and the accy domains, no value in my opinion.

I think most domainers have left many of their domains parked for years, because we are too lazy to develop them.

 

[DomainsInc]

the most simple way to look at it is, if your domains have not received purchase inquiries over the years they are probably not good.