Each week I write at least one post about which end users bought domain names over the past week.
What do end users do with these domain names they buy on the aftermarket?
I was curious, so I went back to one of the weekly end user reports I published about six months ago. The report included 22 sales ranging from $1,000 to $25,000.
Six months later, here’s a breakdown of how the buyers are using the sites:
- 4 of 22 are used as the domain name for a website
- 8 of 22 forward to another website
- 10 of 22 haven’t used the domain names at all. The domains either don’t resolve or are still go to a registrar parking page.
I’m not very surprised by the results. It amazes me when big companies buy (or get via UDRP) domain names that they don’t bother to even forward. Still, I thought smaller businesses would be more apt to put domain names they spend a couple grand on to good use.
Here are the details on the 22 sales from the original report, how much was paid, who bought them and how they’re being used now.
Used for a website
GoodNeighbors.com $25,000 – State Farm, whose slogan is “Like a Good Neighbor…”. It created a new site at the domain name that features stories about emergencies, communities, and heroes.
CPSPayments.com $1,010 – CPStx, a credit card processing company.
UtahSurgical.com $2,400 – Southwest Surgical Associates in Utah uses the domain for its multi-location surgery company.
AegisInsurance.com $7,500 – Aegis Security Insurance Company uses this domain for its main business website.
Forwarded
OneWaySolutions.com $1,500 – Plastic pallet manufacturer Oneway Solutions forwards the domain to is original Oneway-Solutions.com for its website. It makes sense not to change the company’s domain name completely. Having the non-hyphenated version helps protect the company.
DIYtax.com $4,088 – Liberty Tax Service forwards this domain to its site FreeTax.com. Based on the URL, it is tracking referrals from the domain. The FreeTax.com site is branded as DIYtax.
Cord-Blood.com $4,388 – Americord Registry, a cordblood banking service, forwards the domain to CordAdvantage.com
NIAM.com $2,000 – National Institute of Ayurvedic Medicine forwards the domain to NIAM.se.
IndianaChevy.com $2,500 – Mike Anderson Chevrolet forwards this domain to the (much) longer mikeandersonchevymerrillville.com.
Asken.com $2,300 – Asken Properties in Lubbock, Texas uses this domain name to frame its existing website at AskenProperties.com.
LingoLand.com $2,500 – Language-focused travel company LinguLand forwards the domain name to Linguland.com.
TATAsolar.com $4,750 – Indian conglomerate Tata and its Tata Power Solar Systems Ltd company forwards the domain to TataPowerSolar.com. (TataSolarPower.com is parked.)
Error/parked
MyanmarTechnology.com $1,699 – The owner of Global Myanmar bought this domain
LocalContent.com $15,088 – California company Local Content Inc. paid big bucks for this domain, but it still doesn’t resolve six months later.
GoGreenPharmacy.com $1,888 – Trinity Medical Pharmacy in New Porty Richey, Florida.
AskMedia.com $1,600 – Was this just a defensive purchase by media company Ask.com?
ElectricalWholesaleSupply.com $1,488 – Electrical Wholesale Supply in Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Weba.us $1,000 – weba Werkzeugbau Betriebs GmbH, which has the domain name Weba.at, hasn’t even bothered forwarding the domain name.
AuctionPartners.com $1,500 – Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago.
EnergyIQ.org $1,596 – American Petroleum Institute.
GameStocks.com $2,500 – the owner of MyGameStocks.com bought this domain before launching his site. He still hasn’t launched the site.
SeismicSurveys.com $1,200 – Seismic Surveys Inc.
couponpages says
In my experience, some of the reasons could be:
1. “That’s a great idea, let me grab the domain before anyone builds it” I’ve seen quite a bit of this, including myself. If I come up with a great name in the middle of the night, but have no time to make plans to build anything, I just register it, and hope to eventually find the time to develop it. I’ve seen non developers do this too, but in their case, they perpetually pitch the idea to investors.
2. Strictly long term investors. Some people don’t have any goal other than holding a domain long enough to see it increase in value. It’s like money in the bank… hopefully growing in value. For these people, a dead end or park page is their way of saying “I’m for sale”. Then they wait as long as it takes to get their price.
In both cases, one reason for a dead end, rather than a revenue generating page (such as a Sedo parking page) is the potential that search engines would bias the domain if it was just a page full of ad links.
I had a domain that generated $2000+ per month with just the links on Google’s old AdSense for Domains program. I actually removed it from the program because although the money was great, Google could not include AdSense for Domains sites in search results.
Another reason for dead ends is that it’s a safe way to defensively buy alternate domains without fear that too many domains pointing to one site will be perceived by search engines as spamming.
In the 90s, I bought over 100 domains that all pointed to the same site. As search engines came along and they frowned on that,I pointed them to dead ends for quite a long time.
Whenever I bought new ones, I still pointed them nowhere, just to be sure they didn’t look like an SEO trick.