I had to make a few hard decisions this weekend, both of them philosophical in nature when it comes to domain name investment.
I backordered two domains (com and net) last year that were closely linked together by topic. Both of them were parked at a well known parking company. While both domains got a bit of traffic, they just werent converting. To be honest, I probably could have sold them on DNF for $XX, but I just don’t have the time.
Another domain name I won at auction many years ago has been declining in both traffic and consequently revenue. In 12 months to date its made US$4.50 on a very popular topic. In my book, that’s not enough, so I decided not to renew any of them!
The domain names are now gone, expired, thrown back into the drop. Some domainers that I know would have a heart attack and say “But you could build a site around X and use Adsense and blah blah blah”. But do you *REALLY* have the time to do this? Are you *REALLY* going to do it anyway?
What are your thoughts on this? When do you draw the line and say, enough is enough?
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Tags: development, domain name investment, parking, strategy
November 1st, 2008 at 5:23 pm
I draw the line based on quality. If I’ve owned a domain for 2 years and it just hasn’t gotten anywhere, screw it. I’m not in the business to develop… I’m in the business to buy profitable domains through domain parking. If they do well enough parked, I try mini-development. If OK, I leave them alone and slowly build. If bad, back to parking.
Rinse and re-use. Buying based on development potential rarely happens. Generics should be good enough to get their own traffic; I hate brandables.
November 2nd, 2008 at 9:27 am
I am certainly not going to drop a good keyword domain or even a very good brandable domain because of low ppc. I doubt if Rick Schwartz had made any ppc off of iReport.com before CNN picked it up for $750,000.
Almost every decent 2 or 3 keyword rich domain can earn at least it’s renewal fee with a basic mini-site template at DomainEmbarking.com or another site using your own add codes.
If I could afford one word generic domains I am sure my strategy would be different… meanwhile, I will hang tight.
November 4th, 2008 at 7:28 am
I really feel that domainers really need to become developers nowadays. With systems such as Wordpress it is really easy to do and domains with websites are far more valuable than ones without.
Domains such as brandable domains, hyphenated domains and three word domains can all be developed and make money. Domainers who ignore this route might be missing an income opportunity.
On the other hand, the topic of the key word is critical. I once spent a few evenings developing a site on a low traffic domain only to find that adsense ads on the site paid around 5 cents per click. It just was not worth my time and effort : (