Month: June 2010

The news of Bodog’s Founder Calvin Ayre purchasing Slots.com for $5.8 million USD was revealed at the beginning of this month. The landmark sale is one more for the record books for gaming-related domain names in 2010 as Poker.org sold in February for a whopping $1,000,000 USD.

And the purchase of the category-killing name, will likely be one more for the Bodog record books — as Calvin Ayre has built a Billion-dollar empire starting with just $10,000 in cash, so imagine the possibilities when Bodog gets to work on Slots.com.

Were you tempted to guess at the mystery buyer of Slots.com in mid May?

Well, if you were already a regular reader of Calvin’s website (Calvin Ayre) on May 15th, you may have picked up on the hints that staff writer Peter Amsel wrote about in a story titled “Slots.com domain sold for $5.5M, buyer still a mystery“…

The online gaming industry is abuzz with the news that Slots.com, the second most valuable generic gaming domain (after Casino.com), has been sold at auction for U.S. $5.5M. Industry analysts say that Slots.com is even more valuable than Poker.com since the market for slots is a lot bigger than poker. No other generic gaming brand would even come close.

Bodog Poker Network CEO Patrik Selin reports that the Poker.com domain recently sold for $10M US, making the $5.5M purchase of Slots.com one of the most astute purchases in the history of the online gaming industry. It’s clear that the domain’s current traffic numbers (est. 15,000 unique visitors per day) are not nearly where they could be in the hands of a team that knows how to optimize for the consistently large ’slots’ searches. When details emerge on the identity of the purchaser and their plans for the domain, you’ll find all the info right here on CalvinAyre.com….”

The message may have been hard to deduce in May, as many in the gaming industry were celebrating the sale on a number of news outlets — but on the other hand, the writing in the message seems a lot more clear now.

This is going to be one fun domain to watch as development gets underway.

In a story posted today on CalvinAyre.com, Dan Taylor a staff writer for the website acknowleged the domain industry and a recent Fusible.com story that appeared online which discussed how Calvin Ayre, the founder of the Bodog Brand and buyer of Slots.com for $5.8 million USD, now has the best of both worlds when it comes to dominating the online gaming industry.

Namely, deep branding expertise and a category-killing name: Slots.com.

The story titled “Slots.com set to blow away the competition“, reaffirmed what many in the domain industry already know, but Calvin’s competition may not:

…that Bodog is going to wreak serious havoc on its competition with its category killing name Slots.com.

It’s nice to be noticed for news stories which Calvin even commented on, and it’s great to see the Billionaire founder of Bodog taking his talents with building and branding into the Slots.com domain.

Slots.com is going to be an unstoppable brand.

Although most kids may have no idea about the financial and marketing power of domain names – other than knowing the web address of their favorite sites online – they can help create new ideas for registering available domain names and for spotting undervalued domain names.

Not only are kids very creative, they often know about trends within their own age groups that people outside their age group haven’t connected with.

While it’s easy to stick with “what you know” when it comes to buying/selling domains — “what you don’t know” could present a lot of opportunities once you are connected.

Kids expect to find info, online

For instance, kid’s come home with schoolwork that covers a variety of subjects about math, science, vocabulary and a range of topics studied in the classroom all over the country. Having a kid research a subject such as whales and the ocean, the internet becomes one of the first stops for getting the information.

Did you know there were mammals called Bottle Nose Whales? There are two species that closely resemble the bottlenose dolphin, but are far greater in size. After searching online for more information, only to find wikipedia to have the most useful information – and to find the URL bottlenosedolphins.com didn’t resolve – we registered BottleNoseWhales.com.

Sure, it’s not a product domain and doesn’t have a significant search volume, but there are people searching on the term. And this is just scratching the surface.

Kids’ trends are always changing, but anyone with kids can tell you they can be a great source of ideas, particularly with domain names. And when it comes to schoolwork, the subjects aren’t trends that will be going away anytime soon.

In September 2008, Reece Berg acquired the domain name LLLL.com for $7,900 through Sedo and for a short time ran a blog about LLLL domain names on the website.

The blog included a pricing guide and entries about the LLLL market.

Reece ran a number of sites inside the domain industry, many of which redirect, sold or have gone offline like DomainNameScams.com.

On his original WordPress blog called the 4 Letter Noob, he wrote an article in October 2008 that described his plans for the name.

I’ve been wanting to get back on the LLLL.com blogging scene for awhile now and finally have the right name for the job. Beginning in November, LLLL.com will give you the lowdown on LLLL.com investing and will bring back the LLLL.com price guide which has been noticeably absent for a few months now.

Reece established himself as a LLLL expert – creating an excellent resource in the LLLL pricing guide he published, so it’s disappointing the blog is no longer online.  Though the 4 Letter Noob blog hasn’t been updated since 2008, there is still alot of useful information and interesting statistics from 2007/2008.

Reece’s LLLL blog appeared on Domaining.com, and even asked for guest writers to keep it going, until he finally sold the domain name through Rick Latona’s Brokerage and Auction House at Latonas.com, raking in $4,600 in gross profit (before fees) in little less than 2 years.

The name was acquired by RevenuePartner.com.

Some ask why waste your time with hand registered domain names, when you could spend the same amount of money on one or two good keyword domains. But with the internet still in its infancy as Andrew Rosener likes to say, integrating hand registered domain names into your portfolio could be a smart investment strategy, especially if you’re doing your research on new and upcoming trends.

Short term, you could easily be paying out more in renewal fees than you are collecting in revenue, but long term the strategy could pay off if you can spend the time to develop new sources of hand registered domain names.

Catchy domain names have been drawing attention, not only by domain investors over the years, but by businesses looking to brand their company in the absence of strong keyword names readily available for bargain prices. Companies design their marketing and advertising campaigns around these names, proving that a strong business and marketing model can bring more visitors directly to their website.

Catchy Domain Name Sales

Though big fans of keyword names and search engines, the catchy domain name market is heating up more and more. Check out some of the sales in 2010.

Baibu.com sold for $57,000 which redirects to the Google search page in Chinese, though it’s not owned by Google and an apparent type of Baidu.

Pepe.com sold for $61,200 through Mocus / Sedo. The name originally owned by Francois of Domaining.com, rebranded his catchy domain name marketplace from Mocus to Catchy.com, a website that exclusively features short attractive domain names that could be used for companies, services or products.

So whether you think hand registering domain names is a waste of money or not, with the internet still so young in 10 years you might be saying to yourself, “I can’t believe I missed out on the domain landrush of the late 2000s”.

If you search Google, there are a number of catchy web 2.0 domain name generators.

While here at Fusible.com, catchy domains haven’t been the target of recent hand registrations, some of the names recently hand registered based on other trends include DestroyerGames.com, LocalGroupBuying.com – and a number of roulette domains.

There are very few four and five letter domain names in our portfolio, mostly because we missed out.