Category: News

The domain call.me sold this past week for $26,800 bringing attention once again on the .me domain market.  But the sale is more focused on the domain hack meaning behind the name, and less on the .me extension.  As competition in the domain market continues with tons of extensions and possibly hundreds more on the horizon soon, many companies marketing their top level domains will need to step up their game unless they want to be beleagured by poor sales. 

The keyword candy may be a big shot in the internet world with the .com selling for over $3 million, but right now candy.me sits at the NameJet Premium .ME Public auction with a high bid of just $220.  Though there is still a day left in the auction, the price could certainly go up, but will it go up much more?

The future of .ME?
 
There a quite a few premium first name .me domains with zero bids like brooke.me, cameron.me and many more at the Premium NameJet auction.  But despite the strong social branding done for .me domains, it’s hard to predict if years down the road the names will be worth a lot more, but for now, it appears a lot of domain investors are dismissing the brand as a strong investment.  At least, by the small sampling of results at auction.

But while some investors dismiss the branding potential behind these names, others like Bruce Marler continue to enjoy much success with developed .me domains like Missouri.me – a site that continues to give it’s .com counterpart a fight for its money.

With domains expiring all the time, there are often quite a few great domains in the mix creating opportunities for buyers. 

Domainers often devise clever strategies at buying domain names on the aftermarket.  One such strategy is contacting the owner directly to find out if they’d like to sell the name. 

When it comes to the expiring domain market, names that start at a $69 dollar bid, could end in the thousands after bidding wars between interested parties take place.  So why wait until the domain name goes to auction and pay a high price?  Contacting the owner directly before the name changes hands is a technique that doesn’t always work – but in the case of Alternators.com, it worked out well for one domain buyer.

Expired Domain Alternators.com
 
Earlier this week we wrote about Alternators.com that had expired and ended up on NameJet.  A few days after the story ran, we were contacted by Nat Cohen of Telepathy, Inc who wanted to thank us for writing the article. 

Why thank us?

After reading our story, Nat contacted the owner of Alternators.com.  The owner renewed the domain after speaking to Nat just in time.  The owner never intended for the domain to expire, but obviously wasn’t that keen on owning the name any longer. 

What’s even better.  The owner agreed to sell the name to Telepathy.

Telepathy now owns a great domain and acquired it using a strategy that you might want to try.  See a domain name that’s expired on one of the marketplaces?  While it’s in pre-release, there’s a chance you could contact the owner and get a much better deal on the name than you would if it went to auction.  On the flip side, the owner might simply renew it and keep it and thank you for reminding them.  But in the case of Alternators.com, this strategy worked well for Telepathy.

If you remember Patrick Gavin, he took a big gamble last year when he purchased the .net domain SearchEngineOptimization.net on BuyDomains for $62,000.  Patrick has been involved in search engine optimization since 2000 and previously co-founded Text Link Ads which was acquired by MediaWhiz in 2006. 

Patrick has a 1-year plan to get his URL to the top of Google Search Results Page 1.  The clock started in late November.

Today, there hasn’t been much progress.  If you visit the website, a message appears that says: 

SearchEngineOptimization.net has gone offline. We will be back soon!

But Patrick has been busy.  He launched DIYSEO.com this week – with the goal of helping the rest of us with SEO – those of us with very very small budgets.

Patrick Gavin, might somehow do it
 
Patrick’s also been busy with his big gamble: Patrick has got his personal website/blog to the first page of Google for the keywords: search engine optimization.  If you remember earlier, Patrick made a major change and 301’d PatrickGavin.com to SearchEngineOptimzation.net temporarily.  A 301 redirect is where you permanently move a website to a new location without receiving any penalties by search engines. 

It should be interesting to see this all play out.

In case you’re wondering about his new venture DIYSEO, here’s a blurb from an email we received yesterday:

We have some exciting news: DIYSEO has officially launched to the public! You can check out a preview video on our homepage, or sign up for a free seven day trial. After the free trial, the service is $49 per month or $499 for an annual subscripton.