Domain names as investments?

gropinginthedark

Like land "they're not making any more" - not absolutely true in either case but my researches suggest there are almost no unregistered single word (nouns) .co.uk domain names, not even llanfair... (that place in Wales with a long name) or Rumpelstiltskin.co.uk

Sure you can get variants but if I were to buy tesco.ae.org (one of very few Tesco variants still available)

• it would be too obscure to be any use
• anyone looking for that site would probably end up at tesco.com or tesco.co.uk instead
• I might hear from their lawyers

A bit more googling seems to suggest values increasing faster than the price of gold over the past couple of years. Even good multi-word names are getting hard to find for example MoneyMakingExpert.co.uk is being advertised on Ebay for about £2.4M - surely that's too ambitious, or am I wrong?

Gaffy

You're probably about 10 years too late to make any serious money. If you do buy just stick to .com or .co.uk domains and never buy from ebay.

TDPIX

Tesco.ae.org would get you a C&D (cease and desist) order and you'd have to delete the name quickly. It's not a case of "might hear from their laywers"

But yes, you can make decent money on domaining. It was easier 10+ years ago as Gaffy says, but there's still profit to be made.

Registering random domains and hoping to sell them for high profits is a bit of a non-starter though: all the good domains are gone. There will be the odd 'gem' which hasn't been taken, but it's quite difficult nowadays.

I'd suggest signing up to NamePros who are a free forums, you should learn a lot there.

Also checking out http://www.dnjournal.com/ytd-sales-charts.htm should be helpful.

I'd finish with saying that the domain market seems to follow the global market, too: it was going well pre-2007/2008 but since then it's been slow(er). But I'm starting to see things pick up again.

Edit: Oh, and as Gaffy also says, avoid eBay for domains. Also I personally stick to .com which gives access to a lot more buyers than .co.uk.

gropinginthedark

Gaffy wrote: »

You're probably about 10 years too late to make any serious money. If you do buy just stick to .com or .co.uk domains and never buy from ebay.

Don't worry I've not got £2.4M to buy moneymakingexpert.co.uk from ebay!

Yes the massive gains would have been from a purchase of a few pounds years ago becoming £thousands but if £10,000 worth of names could become £12,000 over a year or two it would be an improvement over the derisory % the banks want to give us, and recent increases in domain name resale prices seem to be outstripping the stock market.

TDPIX

gropinginthedark wrote: »

Don't worry I've not got £2.4M to buy moneymakingexpert.co.uk from ebay!

Yes the massive gains would have been from a purchase of a few pounds years ago becoming £thousands but if £10,000 worth of names could become £12,000 over a year or two it would be an improvement over the derisory % the banks want to give us, and recent increases in domain name resale prices seem to be outstripping the stock market.

True. And yes, I think that sort of return is definitely possible.

Especially at the moment since domain prices are still a little depressed.

cisamcgu

Well, I purchased <my surname>.co.uk for the princely sum of about £12 for 3 years, and I am rather chuffed

I would be more than happy to let you have it for £2.4M :rotfl:

(I bought it really to stop relying solely on my work email for everything, just in case I moved jobs/made redundant/sacked for being such a lazy b****rd )

Andrew

gropinginthedark

cisamcgu wrote: »

Well, I purchased <my surname>.co.uk for the princely sum of about £12 for 3 years, and I am rather chuffed

Good move even if your surname is rumpelstiltskin and even more so if you happen to be Mr Sainsbury!
It will be worth substantially more to someone, if you ever want to drop it you can find potential buyers in the phone book!
Having your own domain in order to be able to set up permanent email addresses is highly recommended, unfortunately I had to settle for <surname>.org.uk (That was before .me.uk became available - but the .co.uk is always better if you can get it...)
Do make sure you pay the domain name renewals on time and that your record at Nominet is kept up to date with any address changes etc.

Porcupine

Unfortunately they are making new domains and in a big way. Have a look at ICANN's new generic top level domain plans. Many are generic endings like .shop, .buy, .city and so on.
If that gets through it may transform the landscape (not necessarily for the better).

The other risk is that domains are becoming less relevant - witness ad campaigns that say "just search 'Our Brand Name' " where they used to say 'visit ourbrandname.com'

gropinginthedark

Porcupine wrote: »

Unfortunately they are making new domains and in a big way. Have a look at ICANN's new generic top level domain plans. Many are generic endings like .shop, .buy, .city and so on.
If that gets through it may transform the landscape (not necessarily for the better).

The other risk is that domains are becoming less relevant - witness ad campaigns that say "just search 'Our Brand Name' " where they used to say 'visit ourbrandname.com'

They are making new gTLDs but will it really change the landscape? Tesco will have to buy tesco.shop, anyone else would do so at their peril. Look how little take up there has been of .us .eu and .biz compared with .com or even .uk

Indeed anyone with a shop will need to buy the corresponding .shop domain as a defensive measure during the (expensive) "sunrise" registration period (because a defensive registration will be cheaper than legal costs trying to recover the name from a third party) so in reality the new TLDs are just a massive money generator for domain registrars.
No idea how they'll sort out the battle for generic .shop domains like bicycle.shop - maybe a massive auction? Whatever, you can be sure your local bike shop stands no chance.

And of course there's plenty of scope to create new multi-word domain names even in the most popular TLD (.com) but short or single word (especially nouns) names are in very limited supply in the widely recognised TLDs. If you want anincrediblylongandstupidname.com it's (probably) available but worth nothing.

When choosing which sites to visit (e.g. from search results) English speakers prefer results in .uk or .com domains on the basis that the language is most likely to be English. For a "household name" a fairly reliable strategy is to just type in companyname.com, so tesco.com or tesco.co.uk will work (similarly tesco.pl will take you to their Polish site).

If a UK internet user is looking to buy something then they prefer .uk on the basis that any purchase will probably be governed by UK law, there will be less problem from possible issues like currency conversion, tax (import duties), high delivery costs or shipping delays. (And according to McAfee "riskiest domains" report .com has the highest "weighted risk ratio" which seems to mean some kind of correlation with spam/scam/malware).

Yes "household names" can (usually) rely on being found as a result of good search position but what about everyone else? (And there was a problem for the German BMW web site a few years back when they violated Googles guidelines.)

donkingkong

Parking revenues have taken quite a hit over the last few years too so unless the domain is an A1 domain you'd probably need to develop. In which case you're building a website/mini-business around the domain not focusing solely on the domain.

Porcupine wrote: »

The other risk is that domains are becoming less relevant - witness ad campaigns that say "just search 'Our Brand Name' " where they used to say 'visit ourbrandname.com'

And in browsers these days the address bar has become a search/navigation bar. So instead of typing facebook.com people type Facebook, are taken to Google and click the Google result.

Unless you want to get "into the industry" and make it your job then can't see you making any real money.