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Who is Buying up all the Russia domain names?

"Russia"
The new owners of Russia.com and Russia.eu, stand to make a splash on the Search Engines depending on their plans. The phrase Russia had over 800,000 Exact Searches Globally in Nov. 2009, while it's Local counterpart had over 300,000 exact searches.

Russia.com sold in December for $1,500,000 through Sedo, taking DNJournal’s #6 Spot on the Top 100 domain sales of 2009. While the buyer remains a mystery, one of our readers suspects the buyer is Russia Standard, who previously purchased Vodka.com for $3 Million in 2006. Russia.eu also sold this week for $34,320 through Sedo.

If the new owner is the same, they haven’t wasted any time snapping up further extensions of the category-killer geo domain name.

While Russia.net is a website, the only “russia” URL that shows up on the first page of Google for the search term Russia; is russia-travel.com, a site that only gets about 3,000 unique visitors per month according to Compete. The other top placements on Google Search Results belong to Wikipedia, the CIA, and The New York Times.

Russia.org is currently monetized using Google’s Adsense for Domains.

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Millionaire Eric Borgos racks up more domain sales; how they stacked up against appraisal tools

celeb gossip

Even if you watch the domain sales over at Sedo and other sales reported on NameBio, it’s always interesting to see what sales Big Time Domainers like millionaire Eric Borgos, a domainer who’s done it all, ends up selling his names for.  Eric might have sold internet properties in the millions, but he doesn’t hide the fact that several of his names sell in the $X,XXX and even lower. 

I stacked up Eric’s most recent sales to Valuate.com (powered by Estibot 2.0) and Estibot 1.0 (head-to-head) and Valuate (in our opinion) did a better job of squaring up the sales based on the actual sales price.

While this might sound a bit confusing, Valuate is POWERED by Estibot’s 2.0 Beta Engine – so the results are different when Valuate’s appraisals are compared to Estibot’s 1.0 Engine that is currently public.  So I thought looking at the varying appraisals would be worthwhile. 

I’ve decided to provide a little more clarification to this story thanks to one of our readers; since the versions of the Appraisal engines are different when you use the current version of Valuate.com up against the current version of Estibot.com.

While Estibot 1.0 can certainly make you feel better about your names, you might not always find a buyer willing to pay their appraisal values.  If you’re patient, it’ll pay off if you can land that buyer.  And who’s to say, with the right end user, you might even get more…

Everyone has their own way of dealing with things.  Some use Estibot’s 1.0 appraisal tool.  Some use Valuate.com (which for clarification, is powered by Estibot’s 2.0 Engine that is currently available at http://beta.estibot.com/).  Some even use fee-based appraisal sites (which we don’t recommend).  Others use their own market research.   And of course, there’s always your gut instinct.

But if you’re looking to make a sale that might attract more interest and close quicker, chances are the Valuate.com apraisal will fall more in line with market price — which ultimately is based on Estibot’s new BETA Appraisal engine.  Looks like Estibot has made improvements to their appraisal engine in v2.0, so the prices look more realistic for those looking to liquidate.

Here’s How Eric’s Latest Sales Stacked Up Against Valuate and Estibot 1.0

CelebGossip.com – $5000
Valuate.com Price: $9,500
Estibot Price: $42,000

FixErrors.com – $2000
Valuate.com Price: $2,600
Estibot Price: $6,500

MoneyListings.com – $1100
Valuate.com Price: $1,100
Estibot Price: $890

BeautyExpert.com – $3750
Valuate.com Price: $4,700
Estibot Price: $4,000

ResourceHome.com – $1000
Valuate.com Price: $85
Estibot Price:  $2,400

TowersCasino.com – $350
Valuate.com Price: $0
Estibot Price:  $260

NYCStudent.com – $250
Valuate.com Price: $220
Estibot Price:  USD reg fee

FindRates.com $5500
Valuate.com Price:  $570
Estibot Price: $2,700

TeenDays.com – $250
Valuate.com Price: $2,000
Estibot Price:  $670

AutoWizards.com – $750
Valuate.com Price: $160
Estibot Price:  $40

SportsFishermen.com – $1000
Valuate.com Price: $460
Estibot Price: $250

OxymoronList.com – $2500
Valuate.com Price: $380
Estibot Price: $110

4Mags.com – $750
Valuate.com Price: $530
Estibot Price: $90

ParentSavings.com – $1000
Valuate.com Price: $170
Estibot Price:  $1,100

BroadwayStage.com – $2000
Valuate.com Price: $1,900
Estibot Price:  $3,700

WickedLingerie.com – $1000
Valuate.com Price: $1,100
Estibot Price:  $7,000

CarInsuranceLeads.com – $1000
Valuate.com Price: $1,300
Estibot Price: $1,900

SecureDating.com – $2500
Valuate.com Price: $2,600
Estibot Price: $1,800

Other Related Tidbits

According to Eric, all the reported domains he sold he owned personally and most occurred after people looked up registrant information, then contacted him.

At the time of this posting, SecureDating.net and BroadwayStage.org are available for hand-registration.  BroadwayStage.net is a Premium name for sale at GoDaddy listed for $1,888.

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Owner of JerseyShore.com Fails to Cash in on the Popular MTV Show, Despite Nearly 100K Exact Searches

MTV Jersey Shore Girls
According to WikiPedia, "The Jersey Shore is home to many renowned boardwalks including Asbury Park, Atlantic City, Belmar, Cape May, Ocean City, Keansburg, Long Branch, Point Pleasant Beach, Seaside Heights, and Wildwood."

MTV’s Jersey Shore reality TV series that follows eight people who spend their summer on the New Jersey shore, has been picking up popularity since airing in 2009. 

Though the show has stirred up controversy over Italian stereotypes and several advertisers have pulled their ads including Dell and Dominos, the show still gets ratings – and more importantly SEARCH TRAFFIC. 

The owner of JerseyShore.com (the dominant search phrase for the show), hasn’t taken advantage over the show’s popularity.  At the time of this article, a blank web page appears — even though the term “Jersey Shore” is a commonly used term and it’s been registered since the nineties.  The last update occurred over the summer in Jul. 2009.

As early as the nineties, the URL had a full fledged website online, and the owner could certainly rank if a web site was online today, but only 1 page is indexed by Google.

Other Related Tidbits

Type in traffic to JerseyShore.com reached nearly 2,000 visitors in Aug. 2009 according to Compete.com.

The phrase Jersey Shore had over 90,000 exact searches locally in November.  “the jersey shore” only had about 3,000.

The domain name MTVJerseyShore.com was last updated on 12-Dec-09 and the owner currently has the name parked at GoDaddy, with a For Sale link.  The URL doesn’t register any traffic.

TheJerseyShore.com is also available for sale and has been registered for at least 7 years.

JerseyShore.net expired on 31 Dec 2009, after being registered back in 1997.  It’s currently pending renewal or deletion.  The URL doesn’t resolve.

BuyDomains.com owns JerseyShore.org and has the name listed for sale for $2,088 over at GoDaddy Premium Names.

If you glance at JerseyShore.com on Archive.org going all the way back to 1999, the owners had a geo website online that include a beach cam, weather updates and more.

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Patrick Gavin Kick-Starts SearchEngineOptimization.net; The $62K BuyDomains Gamble to Beat out .COM

patrick gavin

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

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New to Domaining? ShoeMoney Looks to Revolutionize How to Make Money Online for the Internet Newbie

"Shoemoney System"With tons of web sites claiming to show you how to make money without giving you the actual means, Jeremy Schoemaker of Shoe Money (a proven moneymaker with a multi million dollar business made famous by his $132,994.97 Google Adsense check) is claiming his brand-new system will more than certainly help you make money online.

Unlike some people who have achieved success by luck, then blog about things that don’t make the least bit of sense – Jeremy has consistently done the opposite.

Jeremy Schoemaker is not only one of the most successful affiliate marketers on the internet, he is also a domainer/developer building sites like Fighters.com and more. He shares a lot of useful information on his blog, but in the first quarter of 2010, he is reportedly going to introduce the Shoe Money System which has the potential to revolutionize making money online. Jeremy will be detailing the step-by-step process for making money, giving those interested a better picture of how to achieve success with concrete examples.

Most importantly, the price to get the information is rumored to be ridiculously cheap. Jeremy is essentially staking his reputation on it among all his loyal readers.

ShoeMoney is one of our regular reads, and WE PLAN to check out his system once it’s released and will let you know our thoughts.

You can watch a sneak peek of the Shoe Money system at ShoeMoneySystem.com.

According to the ShoeMoney Blog

We are planning to change the entire “how to make money online” industry ShoeMoney System launching early q1 of 2010. In the ShoeMoney system we:

Walk complete newbies through every process of making money on the internet.

Have over $2500 in coupon codes from every major advertising network.

Will be at a very low pricepoint so people are not investing thousands just to find out its not for them.

Will WAY over deliver with hundreds of hours of content.

Teach from our many years in building successful companies

I don’t think the cess pool known as “how to make money online” is ready for something like we are going to offer and I believe our system will change that industry forever.

Whether you are launching a new company or are just an affiliate marketer ask yourself what *new* value are you bringing to the table? What are you doing that others are not ? What are you doing that others can not? What story are you telling?