Month: December 2009

November 27, 2009.  It’s already been 1 month and the clock is ticking for Patrick Gavin to take SearchEngineOptimization.net to the top page of Google over its .COM counterpart.  Nov. 27 is when Patrick purchased the name and he plans to take the domain name to the top page of Google within 1 year.  Patrick’s first order of business:  he made a major change and 301’d PatrickGavin.com to SearchEngineOptimzation.net.  A 301 redirect is where you permanently move a website to a new location without receiving any penalties by search engines. 

We wrote about Patrick earlier this month when he only had a simple welcome post.  Things have changed in the last few days.

PatrickGavin.com hit a traffic high in 2009 of nearly 20,000 visitors in May, while SearchEngineOptimization.net has gone from 147 visitors per month in Feb. 2009 to nearly 4,000 unique visitors in Nov.

You can read through his blog archives – articles that also cover domain names.  In one article titled, “All the good domains are gone? NP just use (Pet name + Pet type).com” – he writes about a friend of his that grew BudCat.com  into a successful business. 

A little bit about Patrick:

From the newly updated SearchEngineOptimization.net:

I have been involved in search engine optimization since 2000. I previously co-founded Text Link Ads which was acquired by MediaWhiz in 2006. More information on my LinkedIn page. Currently working on SEO related ventures including DIYSEO.com

According to Marchex’ subsidiary MDNH Inc. which lists an inventory of high quality domain names for sale which are rumored to be from Yun Ye’s portfolio that was acquired by Marchex – it’ll cost you at least $25,000 for names like go-value.com, asiayellow.com, and bd-company.net.

Those names might sound extremely high-priced, but that’s the lowest suggested sale price listed on their domain marketplace.

Other $25,000 names include fedupfeds.org, goldmx.com, home2work.com, ingyenlogo.com, isale8.com, inboxgold.com, and alaak.com.

In many cases, the names listed for $25,000 redirect to Marchex’ directy and reference web site Ypeek.com – a Yellow pages online directory.

A Little About MDNH Inc.

Marchex Inc. purchased over 100,000 domain names from legendary domainer Yun Ye for the price of $164 million. While many of the names were premium names, according to web sites and blogs, a large percentage of the names listed on MDNH are straight out of Yun Ye’s old portfolio.

Times have changed. Marchex looks to be trying to unload several of their names including the bad names for extremely high prices through their subsidiary MDNH Inc.

While they have had some success recently with the sale of Dominio.com for $250,000, would you be willing to pay $25,000 for names like:

Bargin.net?

FitMundo?

Fufme.com?

Marchex does also list some Great Domains

Here’s a look at their top priced names on MDNH Inc.

matrimony.com $2,000,000
invitation.com $1,000,000
3g.com $1,000,000
pickup.com $500,000
criminals.com $500,000
hairstyler.com $500,000
loanfast.com $500,000
moneyorder.com $500,000
recyclers.com $500,000
tornado.com $500,000
drugfree.com $500,000
angry.com $500,000
jobonline.com $500,000
jobsource.com $500,000
livechat.com Personals $500,000
efaucet.com $500,000
decals.com $500,000
fleemarket.com $500,000
moneyclip.com $500,000
shoeoutlet.com $500,000
smoker.com $500,000
china.org $500,000
travelbiz.com $500,000
carkits.com $250,000
carseller.com $250,000

Granted all these prices are just initial asking prices, but it looks like in some cases Marchex may have overvalued many of their names – and now they’re hoping others will do the same. That is, unless $25,000 for esol-owc.net sounds like a bargain.

While 12 domains out of the Top 25 “reported” Domain Sales of 2009 remain parked, 13 have been developed — or at least hint, in some cases, at the possibility of development with “Coming Soon” or “Under Construction” pages.  The grand total for the names that are parked: $7,681,551. 

Amongst the parked names: mystery buys like Luck.com and Russia.com, Live Current’s sales of Brazil.com and Body.com, and Yahoo’s Contests.com that was purchased by National A-1.

It’s too early to tell if the Parked names will remain parked instead of fully developed, but $7.7 million sounds like a lot of money to have sit around for too long especially with the decline of Parking revenue.  While many still do well on PPC with Parked domains, most have seen a decline over recent years.

The list of Parked names isn’t so clear cut, like Exterminator.com which displays Sponsored Listings and others, but most of the names we found parked are your typical parked page, like Russia.com and Brazil.com that both reside on GoDaddy Parked Pages.

Here’s a look at the names in the top 25, parked.

Ticket.com – $1,525,000
Russia.com – $1.5M
Server.com – $770,000
Luck.com – $675,000
Brazil.com – $500,000
Talk.com – $500,000
Resumes.com – $400,000
Body.com – $400,000
Forums.com – $399,990
Contests.com – $380,000
Best.com – $331,561
Voodoo.com – $300,000