Just Invested $18,000 Acquiring a One Word, Industry Defining .Org Domain

Crazy or Not? Anyone else spend mad money on a domain in the past year? Do tell.

[Webwork]

Single word. 4 letters.

It's what I like to roll with under .Org. It's industry defining. It's also activity defining. A thing and an activity. Growing in popularity.

Something I'm a bit passionate about, that I personally enjoy. I've even spent a few bucks to enjoy it.

Health related. Fun related. Activity related. Good for the environment. A "whole family" type of activity and there's one for everyone in the family.

Young (tykes), teens, young adults, middle-aged and even old folks do it. Many of my friends do it, some in tandem. ;)

It's done for fun. It's done for professional sports. It's done for charity.

688,000,000 Google results. 68,000,000 monthly global searches. 16,600,000 local searches.

Approx. CPC per search $.82. Some variants, in high volume (300K+), ~$3.00.

Sound crazy to invest $18,000. in a single .Org domain?

Anyone else spend what you may consider mad money recently for a domain? Do tell.

Warning to noobs: This isn't a "list all your recent domain purchases" thread. Pick one domain. Talk about it generally. Say why you went all in. Let's see where this goes. IF the thread gets active maybe we'll each name the one name that drove us to madness recently. :)

[scooterdude]

Looking at the dot com, it looks like the owners have spent a bit on "keyword" domains, they might not be loved by g, but , by jingo their "type in" traffic "free" must be considerable

[werty]

Congrats Jeff.

I rolled the dice earlier this year on a 1k$ .net. I did not fool around with the normal content sources and went "semi high brow" on the whole thing.

A few months later it was ranking. It has paid for itself numerous times over so I am glad I have done it.

So 18k is not really crazy to invest as long as you can do something with it... Also it depends on your whole budget for the project. If you had 20k to do a site, and you dropped 18k on the domain name, I would back order it for when your company runs out of money and forgets to renew :P

I am thinking a crowdfunding site for all non profits and products related to it... maybe just one wing of it.

It sounds like the activity in that domain has changed your life and you are passionate about it so I think those are 2 great things you have going for you to put into the project.

Looking forward to see what you do with it!

[jcoronella]

Nice Jeff. Looks like the .com was purchased in 2006 for $500k. When did you get into xxxxing? ;)

[Webwork]

I could say this activity / this thing saved my life, so $18K isn't much to lay out in comparison to the benefits I've derived from it. Where that thinking gets me, to respond to those wondering "but . . where's the business plan . . the profit", I don't know - except to observe that love or passion or a heartfelt connection has rarely proven a bad foundation for action.

[edited by: Webwork at 3:15 am (utc) on Jul 19, 2013]

[minnapple]

Nice grab Jeff!

[httpwebwitch]

gosh. that's a gourmet domain. Be sure to poke me when you launch something substantial on there. BTW, I like to xxxx too.

[King of Bling]

I like the name. Maybe set it up as a hub for charitable events, and include some type of soft-sell for rev. Nice work.

[carguy84]

Just pedaling some ideas here, but I do like King's idea - and would probably expand on it and maybe try to make it a hub for charity events. Could even be the middle man for sponsor payments (where people could go sponsor someone partaking in the charity event and pay through the site). Might be a good idea to draft a couple letters to local event organizers to see how affective they are at raising awareness.


_{awful puns I know}

[mark_roach]

The posibilities are endless with that domain. It is also an activity where a lot of disposible income can be used up. I know people who have spent nearly $18K on a xxxx.

The only time I have ever spent anything more than the registration fee on a domain was to buy back a domain I had let lapse because I wasn't using it. I had watched the domain for a number of years after I had let it go and it was just parked. The squatter was asking $40K for it which was way to steep for me.

However one night I was watching Dragons Den and someone was pitching an internet related idea which looked to be going well. Until the question "Do you have the dot com ?", and when the answer came back "No" all the dragons chorused "I'm out". It was at that point I realised I had better get the domain back if I ever wanted to sell my business in the future.

I managed to get it back for $6K, not bad considering the $40K price tag, but still a pretty expensive mistake to make. And I still haven't done anything with the domain and have just parked it. One of these days I will get round to developing it.

Most expensive parking ticket I have ever bought !

[Play_Bach]

> almost everyone you know has owned one and done it.

Thanks for the clue phranque, got it! It'll be interesting to see what he does with the space.

[travelin cat]

Anyone who is friends with Webwork on FB will get it quickly. Way to go Jeff. Seems like a bargain to me. Need a developer? ;>)

[jakebohall]

Congrats Webwork...

Personally, I prefer the .org to the .com for this particular domain name.

[StoutFiles]

Sorry, but I don't think keyword domains are a good investment anymore. Google is moving away from that and moving towards PageRank and the big players. You'll start to see things WAY off your keyword before you catch your domain in the results. 18k would have been better spent elsewhere IMO.

[brotherhood of LAN]

>moving towards PageRank and the big players

Not sure about that. PR is a signal that's been manipulated through and through but if you mean 'big players' as in brand signals, then I'd go along with that.

Having a memorable, linkable (and I guess you can infer trustworthy to an extent) domain won't do any harm in building a brand. You certainly could take it as a signal that spending $xx,xxx on a domain means it won't be a slash and burn.

[jinxed]

I'd like to know how many type ins this thread has generated! ;)

[lucy24]

<topic drift>

one night I was watching Dragons Den and someone was pitching an internet related idea

:: detour to search engine ::

Oh, I see.

The title confused me horribly because my personal view of domain-name squatters derives from Calvert Watkins's "How to kill a dragon in Indo-European". His thesis is that dragons interfere with the smooth functioning of society by removing valuables from circulation, thereby making them unavailable for ritual gift-giving.

No connection, apparently.
</drift>

[Mr Bo Jangles]

I've loved this topic and posts - and I have no doubt the site will become something significant.

[Cancellara]

I approve your purchase!

By the way, I paid about the same amount for several much longer domains and when I mean long I mean looooong ..... XXXYYYYYYYZZZZZZZZZZ.com

[King of Bling]

Back OT...

Not bought, but sold a nice domain (with a very basic site) for 200k a couple of years ago. New owner did nothing with it.

I also advised a client to purchase an industry domain for 1M (which they had the cash, and would have set them as the #1 authority in their niche). They passed. The domain was eventually developed. And, err... pretty much put their competition if not out of business, at least to the second tier.

Me? Never spent more than reg fee. But the again, maybe I'm cheap? BTW, WW I look forward to see what you do with the domain. There are viable options. Again, congrats.

[Play_Bach]

OT -
Out of curiosity I ran my domains through some online appraisers yesterday. Nice to see one at $14,000 and another at $5,100. I'm taking those numbers with a BIG grain of salt, but it got me wondering about how to best go about getting a realistic appraisal. Are there any services worth recommending? Please let me know. Thanks.

[Webwork]

@ Play_Bach, I never met an online appraisal tool I liked. Never met one that had a clue about real world buy-sell dynamics.

Just ran a test. One semi-popular online appraisal tool thinks I'm a negotiation genius, having secured my baby for 1/3 of its value: "Appraisal Overview: $ 53,000 USD" (Maybe I am, but this particular bot is all over the map when it comes to establishing value.)

There was a time when you could get a decent feel for a domain's "value range" (using different pricing models) in domain forums. Those days are gone, as a result many factors: PPC parking rev down / less easy money free time, waaay too many noobs entering the forums / too much useless chatter, no more drops / everything going to auction, no real aftermarket activity of any value in the forums, etc. The pros, who used to spend time dishing advice about domain value, have moved on to invest their time in more profitable ventures or would rather spend their free time engaged in a favorite activity. ;)

So, to "get a value" do some homework about past sales, demand curves, PPC values, trend analysis, competition in the space, and on and on. (I'm out of the business of dishing values informally. Too darned busy. Maybe, if we're drinking a few late at night at a bar @ PubCon, where/when many nice guy pros spend time in the bars revealing trade secrets (due to the effects of sleep deprivation and ethanol) . . maybe then you can pick my brains. Slim pickens, tho. )

Ok, back on topic. Who's still in the market? Why? Watcha doin' or planning to do with your latest $$$$$ acquisition?

[Jane_Doe]

I have never made money buying and selling domains. I am not good at it. I am out of the market. I have not made any major profits buying existing entire sites either.

I am just sticking to making my own sites since that usually works out for me.

[ponyboy96]

Took me a minute, but I figured it out. Could be a very lucrative site depending on how you develop it of course. Online community comes to mind. Good luck with it. It will be interesting to see how you make out.

[Clarence]

For $18,000 you could've brought an existing 2-3 word domain website site already earning $1,000 to $1,500 a month consistently from Adsense with the ability to increase it to $1,800 to $2,500

In Today's world, Domain names have no value unless it's your Brands Domain.

Actually buying old parked domain, and starting to build it usually wakes up the leading domains ".com, .net, *oline.com, etc" owners to start competing against you, to push and keep you down.

I seen this before. .com was parked, and someone purchased it. Well the .net and *online.com were both fully developed sites, and once the .com start building, the .net and online.com made sure they didn't out grow them "including spending on advertising, threatening legal action for impersonating their site, branding a new name to direct the niche, building huge Facebook pages, etc". Any thing they could do, to increase the barrier to entry for the new domain.

They were not going to lose money, so they went on the extreme defensive.

In the end the .com never became successful (bottom of first page), and was a waste. The .net and *online.com still dominate.

The only way to make money off that domain is to sell it to someone else who loves the name "or collects domains".

Developed other domain tld, and Google's Changes have made Domain Names less valuable.

Content, and History are more important then keyword domain names today.

[lucy24]

:: detour to site, since we've been bumped ::

C'mon webwork, we're waiting... :)

[phranque]

probably just spinning his wheels.

[pnc123]

Clarence - (or anyone else for that matter) - Where would you go to buy a domain that's up and running like you said.

I have looked around and all the ones I can find are either rubbish and not worth anything or recently created sites that have obviously just been knocked up quickly to sell.

Are there any professional places people go?

[SevenCubed]

I'm off to a business meeting in an hour, my xxxx gets me there, and everywhere, as long as it's within about a 25 kilometre radius of my base.

I'll be humming along and flipping the bird a few times along the way to those drivers texting and driving at same time.

[Webwork]

Oh yeah. Oh heck yeah! The .net was just reported by DNJ as selling for $60,000. Sorry, but I'll take a .Org over a .Net in this instance.

Doubts about my sanity lifting . . but . .wait . . maybe two nuts don't make . . a fastener? ;)