Category: News

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

MoxyMedia, the online media publishing company that gets over 15 million visitors monthly to its online properties, owns and operates web sites like TummyTuck.com, and PlasticSurgeons.com. 

They also own several popular niche domains like ChristmasGifts101.com and Industrial101.com that they’ve developed.  In addition to building out their category-killer names and their niche names, they also develop long-tailed domain names — domain names based on search phrases that only receive a couple hundred Exact Searches. 

While many might stay away from these types of longtailed names, others see opportunity, particularly in development.

FilingForBankruptcyOnline.com

One of MoxyMedia’s online properties is FilingForBankruptcyOnline.com.  A search phrase that according to Google AdWords Keyword Tool only received 210 exact searches last month.  But the website according to Compete, had over 9,000 unique visitors last month, and got as high as 11,000+ visitors in Jan. 2009. 

Most of its traffic comes directly from Google – with a 54.63% referral share.  Other websites that send the longtailed name traffic include BankruptcyLawFirms.com and LawFirms.com — two other online properties that MoxyMedia owns and operates as part of their ExpertHub network.  But the referral share from those two sites is less than 15% combined — Google Organic Search is definitely boosting traffic to this site.

Future with Longtailed Names?

There are lots of opportunities to still hand-register names, especially longtailed names.  Of course, development is key, but MoxyMedia has some great case studies for web development — from 101 niche domains, to dotorgs, to longtailed names — and most importantly, over 15 million visitors per month to their network of websites.

After losing out on the domain landrush of the 90s and early 2000s, many Domainers turned to alternate names – using “THE” starting at the beginning of the name or the term “101” at the end. 

With the popularity of social media sites other variations became in demand like “YOU” and “MY” starting at the beginning of the domain name and “TUBE” at the end.  Despite advice from Longtime Domainers saying you should own category-killer domain names – there are plenty of others who say the contrary – with proof to show that with some good development, it’s worth it. 

Getting a start in the Domain Industry doesn’t mean you have to feel inclined to only buy killer names, because you can buy names and develop them into moneymaking machines.  It’s not just coming from us or other new domainers, it’s coming from very successful companies who are doing it everyday.  While you might not be interested in registering less than category-killer names, it is ultimately less expensive than the alternative. 

Don’t Take it from us – Check out Moxy Media

Moxy Media’s publishing division operates over 300 websites according to their Corporate site – with each site providing consumers with information and access to products and services.  These sites get more than 15 million visitors per month and not all the traffic is coming from their category-killers like LawFirms.com, PlasticSurgeons.com, Dentists.org, or Chiropractors.org – it’s also coming from unlikely websites that use domains like SwimmingPools101.com and DesignerHandBags101.com.

101 Provides a Great Niche, Especially for Developed Names

Moxy Media not only has the skills needed to develop domain names – but they also have the staff and resources to get the job done.  But instead of buying up all the expensive domains, they acquire and develop longtailed names and 101 niche names to boost their business.

Here’s a shortlist of their 101 names that are developed along with some statistics.

Industrial101.com – >148,000 visitors per month

AllergyRelief101.com – >4,000 visitors per month

InsuranceGuide101.com – >3,000 visitors per month

MassageTherapy101.com – >19,000 visitors per month

SwimmingPools101.com – >5,000 visitors per month

DesignerHandbags101.com – >25,000 visitors per month

YourWedding101.com – >30,000 visitors per month

PictureFrames101.com – >3,000 visitors per month

FitnessGear101.com – >5,000 visitors per month

YourSkin101.com – >9,000 visitors per month

OnlineLearning101.com – >19,000 visitors per month

Want to learn how to build an Informational site?

Take a look at Moxy Media’s informational websites and it might help you figure out things you can do to improve SEO, site layout and other innovative ideas.

We got hooked on 101 domain names about a year ago after reading about Moxy Media.  Mike Cohen pointed out their successful model in a story called “30,000 developed domains = hundreds of thousands of exclusive referrals and targeted leads per year… Cha-Ching $$$“.

Patrick Gavin, who has been involved in search engine optimization since 2000 and previously co-founded Text Link Ads which was acquired by MediaWhiz in 2006 – took a BIG BET this past November when he purchased the DotNet Domain SearchEngineOptimization.net at BuyDomains.com.  Patrick Gavin certainly doesn’t do anything small and he’s working on other projects to help others with SEO that can help you make the most of your website. 

Wanna learn how to take your Developed Domains to the top page of Google?  Who better to learn from than someone who has a trackrecord of success, than Patrick Gavin?   He’s proven keyword rich names coupled with a good service, whether they are DotNet or hyphenated, can become very successful businesses despite all the Category-Killer dotcom competition.  Patrick Gavin’s Big Bet on SEO

Patrick Gavin’s Big Bet on SEO

As others have reported when this story broke, Patrick’s SearchEngineOptimization.net wasn’t even cached in Google – at the time of this posting, the URL is indexed by Google.  It’s not even close to showing up in top 10, or 20, or even 50 Results pages – but that’s OK, Patrick has a 1-year plan to get his URL to the top of Google Search Results Page 1. 

Patrick has launched a blog using WordPress on the domain name – and chances are over the next few months, you’ll be seeing some changes. 

What’s Patrick’s goal behind this big gamble?

The idea for SearchEngineOptimization.net was to create a free SEO learning center where the teaching was done in a unique way.  The site will be a living case study chronicling the success or failure of ranking this very site for “search engine optimization”.  It will walk you through the steps I am taking to rank this site and track the results with full transparency.

I recently (over?)paid $62,500 for the domain SearchEngineOptimization.net  It was a parked domain that was not even cached in Google.   My goal is to take a domain that at the time of purchase is not even indexed in Google (so does not rank for anything) to #1 for “search engine optimization” within 365 days and teach visitors exactly how I did it (or failed to do it) along the way!  I will cover such topics as: Keyword research, Domain research and diligence, Domain negotiation, On page optimization, Link building, Tracking success, etc, etc.

DO IT YOURSELF! SEO for the rest of us

Patrick is also launching DIYSEO.com in early 2010 – with the goal of helping the rest of us with SEO – those us with very very small budgets.  And there’s a blog already online in lieu of a site.

But what about the small business that can budget only $500 and 25 hours per year towards online marketing?

At DIYSEO we are going after a different market in a very different way.  Andy and I both get many inquiries every week from small business owners (think real estate agents, small car dealers, restaurants, and part-time entrepreneurs) looking to get better exposure in organic search.  We have devised a way to give that expert advice to small business owners in a semi-automated yet highly customized format.

If you listened to all the Skeptics

If you’re in our boat, with a limited budget, limited expertise and certainly limited good domain names – if we listened to all the skeptics, we wouldn’t be here.  There are probably a ton of Industry experts cringing at the thought of anyone paying this kind of money for a Dotnet – but chances are Patrick knows what he’s talking about, and he’s not afraid to put his money where his mouth is.

After all, he sold a very successful business “Text Link Ads” to MediaWhiz – and the URL for the website is text-link-ads.com.