This week’s Expired Domain Report (EDR) explains why some domains sell for what they do, plus a preview of domains you might want to backorder.
Why do people bid on expired domain auctions? The number of bidders and the prices are often surprisingly high; so it’s a fair question.
FingerYoga.com is a case in point. Who bought this 12-year-old domain isn’t yet clear. But there were 83 bids as high as $2,227. Were those bidders looking to create a new website? Sell the domain? Take advantage of its backlink profile? Or was the original owner bidding, unaware that he could pay just $80 to recover the domain directly through his registrar? As a developed website, FingerYoga.com remained basically unchanged during its decade-plus lifetime. Yet the owner hasn’t been sitting still. Indeed, he’s been promoting yoga for kids with a program called “Space Stretch” on Youtube. So maybe he repurchased FingerYoga.com for nearly 30 times what he needed to pay
More than 1 story is involved in those 83 bids. Usually we can learn only what motivated the winning bidder — and that only later on. So fresh results from expired auctions can be mystifying.
In case you didn’t already know how WEIRD these expired domain auctions results are each week, here’s a list of what I saw at GoDaddy. Normally I’d filter much of this stuff out:
- $8,101 722.net
- $4,650 ShoutWire.com
- $4,449 Paci.com
- $3,400 VisitTampa.com
- $3,293 SurgeDirect.com
- $2,950 BIIG.com
- $2,710 738888.com
- $2,325 Avat.com
- $2,227 FingerYoga.com
- $2,130 New-Era-Homes.com
- $2,102 GenGreenLife.com
- $2,026 Nk8.com
- $2,001 ICDE12.org
- $1,732 i87.com
- $1,725 BuyCredits.com
- $1,670 YourSexHealth.org
- $1,580 Maringo.com
- $1,555 Tagine.com
- $1,225 ICIP2012.com
- $1,225 RaspberryManor.com
- $1,003 MinnesotaTechnology.org
- $995 Shoomp.com
- $980 RoyalPalaceHotel.com
- $980 ClevelandGBC.org
- $980 ZoningMatters.org
- $970 IraqEnergyExpo.com
- $960 IE6Update.com
- $904 JCDL2012.info
- $900 VoteJesseKelly.com
- $811 TheBlueState.com
- $765 MedicalDevicesToday.com
- $760 Niib.com
- $726 85338.com
- $710 HuntingWorldTop100.com
- $690 DublinWriters.org
- $660 DomainBuyChat.com
- $660 60366.com
- $655 RoofingDealer.com
- $630 RSSMixer.com
- $610 90377.com
- $610 95021.com
- $610 TashanMovies.com
- $610 Kivara.com
- $577 DJForum.com
- $573 WebWorldToday.com
- $541 TheInternetDigest.net
- $535 ELPE.com
- $511 DDQR.com
- $510 Network-Client.com
- $505 GoldenFeed.com
- $500 Haiau.com
- $466 65977.com
- $463 CoachEnglish.com
- $455 BalancedLivingMag.com
- $450 NationalGeographicAssignmentBlog.com
- $449 c4o.com
- $442 Sheji.cc
- $433 Mediaty.com
- $430 mgtm.com
- $410 OurHouseBlog.com
- $409 ArtPod.com
- $405 MillbrookNYOnline.com
- $405 BlogueursSansFrontieres.org
- $400 AFullPlate.com
- $400 MonacoBangkok.com
- $378 Batoo.com
- $356 29269.com
- $355 HairSource.com
- $355 MexicoPackages.com
- $351 23928.com
- $335 89516.com
- $330 52127.com
- $316 3DTshirts.com
- $306 ORRU.com
- $300 SkaLinks.com
- $275 ScotlandCountyHealth.org
- $270 CoolFunnyAnimals.com
- $205 Political-humor.net
- $185 MarchOnBlairMountain.org
- $162 FruitMeetsfun.com
- $162 Etherean.com
- $110 SelfHelpWisdom.com
- $105 Gbail.com
- $100 ServiceElevator.com
I’m not accustomed to seeing city tourism domains sell for $3,400. Paris or New York could fetch more; but Tampa? All the same, Tampa visitors are worth considerably more than that.
Even if I’m a BIIG fan of BIIG.com, the elongation seems less appropriate for NIIB.com.
Initially, ICDE12.org and JCDL2012.info are pretty perplexing. Why the focus on 2012 during 2014? And nearly $1k for such an awful .INFO? It was, in fact, the Joint Conference of Digital Libraries, hosted by The George Washington University. And CheckPageRank.net gives some clues as to its SEO value.
Page Rank: 5
External Backlinks: 15195
Referring Domains: 104
Backlinks EDU: 50
Backlinks GOV: 29
PR Quality: Moderate
“Domain Buy” is a GoDaddy service many domain owners will be familiar with. So did GoDaddy purchase DomainBuyChat.com by bidding for it on their own auction platform? That sounds unlikely.
No, ELPE.com is not Spanish for “the PE”. It’s the English Language Proficiency Exam — a requirement at many universities for foreign students. Did the same buyer purchase CoachEnglish.com? Both combined would total less than $1k, making them each a bargain.
At 32 characters, NationalGeographicAssignmentBlog.com is one of the longest $450 sales I’ve ever seen. Once again, it may have been bought with SEO in mind. Speaking of geography, what’s up with MonacoBangkok.com? It’s a hotel. I’ll let you guess which country.
North Sound Names — a company linked to the .LINKS registry, Uniregistry — has registered Ska.link. So I’m curious about SkaLinks.com for that reason.
Either Google is getting into the bail bond business, or someone has snagged a typo of their email service in Gbail.com. Sounds like Gmail with a cold.
ServiceElevator.com was a good buy at just $100. What’s one installation customer worth? More than a hundred bucks.
Because I’ve gone long, I’m going to show only a short list of last week’s NameJet expired domain sales:
- $3,100 Niza.com
- $1,450 Nilly.com
- $460 CarbonCoalition.org
- $295 Parsonage.org
- $187 PRWriting.com
- $102 Florios.com
PotassiumChloride.com received 1 bid of $69, whereas PotassiumSulfate.com slipped by with no takers. Other single-bid NameJet auctions included these:
- WholesaleTestosterone.com
- Guarniz.com
- TheWritersAgency.com
- CopyCatz.com
- HotelMaui.com
- Financially.org
Interestingly, many of these first and sole bids are placed higher than necessary — at $69, $75, $90, or $100 rather than the $59 minimum. Bidders don’t always understand the difference between pending delete and pre-release auctions and may assume they’re entering a proxy bid.
So as not to shortchange NameJet, I’ll compensate with a list of upcoming NameJet expired auctions that might be worth a glance. Obviously, there are many more:
Pre-Release Domains:
- Alchimiste.com
- Boxfuls.com
- CoinWorth.com
- Conferencia.org
- ConsciousSedation.com
- DispatcherSchool.com
- DJDub.com
- DredgePump.com
- Futbolistico.com
- GaoXing.com
- Garter.org
- GuamShipyard.com
- Holonomic.com
- Kosovars.com
- Lifebook.org
- OperaCD.com
- Podges.com
- RareBookList.com
- Redeems.com
- Reparation.net
- RomeHostels.com
- Senders.net
- TanningSolutions.com
- TeenagePorno.com
- TheaterEquipment.com
- TheLeakage.com
- TheLegalDepartment.com
- Theophobia.com
- TopTenRadio.com
- YourOnRamp.com
Pending Delete domains:
- AllYourPills.com
- AppPPC.com
- AppsNewsletter.com
- BMSCar.com
- BuyLace.com
- CatholicNewsletter.com
- ConstantinopleTour.com
- EuropeEcoTours.com
- FilmMakingTeacher.com
- GoldInsert.com
- GoldPurses.com
- Jilah.com
- LearnerRadio.com
- MatadorTours.com
- NewspaperServices.com
- OnlyBeginners.com
- OnlyRanchers.com
- RecycledNewspapers.com
- RightDietPlan.com
- RioHondoRealEstate.com
- RockstarCourses.com
- RootsTours.com
- StamfordAccidentLawyer.com
- SuburbiaRealEstate.com
- TheMarketsDaily.com
- VisibilityConsulting.com
- WestDennisRealEstate.com
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Some of these NNNNN are zipcodes. Indeed, 95021.net is registered by Marchex.
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Just looking at the 5 numerical sales I saw between $466 and $726 gives mixed results:
85338: Goodyear, Arizona, west of Phoenix
60366: Unknown
90377: Unknown
95021: Gilroy, California, south of of San Jose
65977: Unknown
So zip codes may explain some of the bids (winning and non-winning), but other factors must be present too.
Perhaps Chinese buyers … Perhaps non-Chinese domainers excited about projected Chinese buyers …
@Allemann,
What you touched on is the most important story to be explored; as Domainers, we are wasting our time, as long as Registrars catch these names, albeit using Proxy third parties such as nameJet, SnapNames etc. If you investigate this thing, you’ll realize that there’s really only one actor doing all these.
Your piece needs to delve further into this.
There’s only a handful of actors buying and selling domain names in all platforms! The Registrar!
Yes, the Registrar drops, catches, bids, wins, sells, all MOST, if not all the names we see at snapnames, namejet, godaddy, sedo, everywhere.
The domainer is the bait.
Another point, depending on the size of your portfolio, the Registrar buys names from domainers to keep them in business, and to keep them renewing their huge portfolios. When a newbie or clueless domainer sees these sales, they will think that such names are en vogue, and go off Registering or buying those types of names, but those names will never sell like the ones purchased by the registrar from large portfolio holders. That’s the game.
Take a look at the names that listed as sold each week from all platforms, they are usually common names in everybody’s portfolio, but the Registrar buys from select people. This is not a real market. It’s artificial bull. Look into it. Be brave.
Godaddy offers traffic stats on their expiring domains. I think a lot of the bidders are just looking at that number and not any other metric.
That’s probably true. Many people accept traffic stats at face value or, at least, use those numbers to initially select what to bid on.
Big domain market places have an inventory that is unmanageably large. So any variable by which domains can be sorted and filtered will actually distort the sales outcomes.
Filtering tools are very different at GoDaddy and NameJet, for example, which partly explains why the kinds of domains that sell differ at each venue.
Interesting stories. Thanks.
The only one I liked from GD is $577 DJForum.com.
Interesting that interest remains strong in these funky expired domain names that some of us filter out…now there is much more choice in domain market with the release of many of the new GTLD’s. Maybe this is suggestive that it is the history – PageRank, number of backlinks that makes these domains so appealing versus the actual name itself.
Nice post. It can be very strange to watch the bidding. One thing’s for sure – the auction houses/registrars are doing very nicely out of this.
If you watch the GD auctions feeds you’ll see that a very large proportion of traffic names get $10 backorders. This is the cheapest way to order prior to closeout – use a coupon and your backorder costs ~$13.50. Fairly sure a small number of parkers are ordering the majority of these names.
As to the $69, $75, $90, or $100 single bids – more often than not these are bids placed in prior years and never deleted by the bidder. It’s caught me out more than once.
@Richard Hearne,
I think you’re right about many of those higher-than-necessary opening bids at NameJet.
A domain goes to a 2013 pre-release auction, starting at $69. People bid up and up. You stop bidding at $100. Maybe someone else wins the auction. Maybe the original owner renews the domain, canceling the auction entirely. Maybe the domain was never expiring and the owner placed a reserve on it which wasn’t met.
Fast forward to 2014 and the domain is listed as a pre-release again ($69) or even as a pending delete ($59). Unless you’ve diligently deleted your past backorder bids, you’ll automatically be entered in the auction — and not at your original bid of $69 but at your highest bid of $100.
I know that happens because (like you) I’ve had that happen frequently. So I suspect it’s a mixture of forgotten former bids and misunderstanding the proxy bid system (which I’ve also seen happen).
Joseph I recently got a domain 4 years after I backordered it. My initial namejet bid had a 2010 date and there were several others like me. The domain was renewed every year after it was expired. http://onlinedomain.com/2014/04/24/news/how-i-won-the-domain-dnshost-com-4-years-after-i-backordered-it/
@onlinedomain,
Nice to see that 4-year-old backorder worked in your favor!
I do wish NameJet would differentiate between backorder prices and bids placed during auctions, though. Customers’ interests would probably be better served if their $200 non-winning bid this year reverted to a $69 backorder rather than a $200 opening bid next year.
What do you think, Konstantin? Did you start out this latest DNSHost.com auction at the minimum amount or at your previous high bid amount from 4 years ago?
Excuse me, Konstantinos. Missed a syllable.
I only put higher bids on pending delete domains were the backorder system puts more weight for domains with higher bid. For expired domains there is no point in putting a bid higher than the minimum.
Shocked to see NationalGeographicAssignmentBlogs.com getting sold for $450. backlinks may be the reason
@grabflip,
I agree that’s probably why.