Tag: hand registered domain names

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Newly registered domain names good enough for The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Daily Deal website

San Diego Union-Tribune's daily deal website

The domain name is 18 characters long, cost around $10, and was created on April 8, 2011, but it’s still good enough for The San Diego Union-Tribune. 

Greatestdailydeals.com was one of many domain names hand-registered this week by The San Diego Union-Tribune, which launched its Daily Deal website last April on the URL: dailydeal.signonsandiego.com.  Surprisingly, among the list of newly created domain names, are hyphenated names like greatest-daily-deals.com and top-daily-deals.com.  

The domain purchases follow the Union-Tribune’s acquisition of the lifestyle website DiscoverSD.com. 

And while some companies are shutting down their group buying ventures in face of fierce competition from GroupOn and Living Social, the Union-Tribune is growing.

According to the Sign On San Diego article about the purchase of DiscoverSD.com, “The deal will allow the Union-Tribune to expand its popular “Daily Deal” program, which is expected to generate $10 million this year in new revenue. The U-T’s “Daily Deal” offers discounts of 50 percent to 90 percent off prices at local restaurants, spas, golf courses and other businesses. The Union-Tribune keeps a share of the sales.”

Oddly enough, Union-Tribune didn’t register other domain names like greatestdailydeal.com – which is available at the time of this story.  BuyDomains currently owns the domain greatdailydeals.com and has it priced to sell for $2,088.

I often write about “group buying” and “domain names”.  Despite sales not being astronomical, a domain like dailybargains.com which sold for $10,500 in 2010 – seems like a “deal”.

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News site runs contest to find available domain name for its social media site; receives hundreds of entries

phonedog

Several days ago, PhoneDog LLC, a mobile news and reviews resource that attracts more than 2.5 million unique visitors each month, put out a call to readers to help find a domain name for its forthcoming social media site that will cover Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, GetGlue, and other social networking sites.

The contest which ended on Saturday January 15th, 2011 at midnight, attracted nearly 200 entries on the public site, but with a private survey also made available to contestants the number of entries was likely much higher.  If a domain winner is selected, PhoneDog will award them $200 in cash.

The rules for the contest were simple.  Two of the most important rules were that the domain name is available and that it ends in .com. 

Here’s a look at the rules.

  • Make sure the domain name is available. (Check www.godaddy.com to know if it’s available.)
  • Domain name must end with “.com”
  • Please do not combine more than two words when choosing a name. e.g., TheSocialNetwork.com is three words, thus, would not qualify.
  • Be creative! Think outside the box! Think about names that are catchy, unique, and memorable.
  • Feel free to play with the spelling of words. e.g., Instead of scribble.com you could suggest skribble.com
  • Feel free to combine words together to form a unique name.
  • Please do not use any words associated with the word “Dog”

A number of words were eventually excluded from consideration, such as social, dog, and phone.

As of yesterday, dozens and dozens of suggestions were left on the web site ranging from syncinit.com to whassuppeeps.com, phonehydrant.com to techlightbulb.com, myfriendsarephones.com to spaceeater.com.

Though running an online contest is a great idea, it’s strange that PhoneDog didn’t keep all submissions private, given that suggested names might be snapped up by readers as was the case for names like mediadog.com.

Others used the comments to simply plug their own names they were trying to sell.

It should be interesting to see whether PhoneDog goes with an available domain name or an aftermarket name. 

Given the company’s success, it shouldn’t have any problem affording a name on the aftermarket.  However by the looks of the company’s other online properties, it’s writing good content, not owning a premium domain name that has determined its success. The company owns and operates other properties like TmoNews.com, DroidDog.com, and BberryDog.com.

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Mult-millionaire Rick Schwartz projects 40 of his hand-registered 2010 domains will rake in $4 million in next 10 yrs

millions of dollars

Multi-millionaire domain investor Rick Scwhartz whose biggest publicly reported sale to date is Candy.com for $3M+Equity, revealed earlier today that he hand-registered nearly 3,000 (2,840 to be exact) domain names in 2010 – his most in a single year since he first started buying domain names in the early nineties.

For those of you not familiar with the term “hand registered”, basically, it means buying a domain name that isn’t registered and is available to anyone who wants it.  Instead of paying hundreds, if not thousands of dollars later on the aftermarket, hand registered domain names can be purchased for around $10.

About 99% of the names Rick expects won’t bring in any significant revenue, but forty of the domain names he projects will be longterm investments that will rake in $4 million in the next 10 years.

2800 of those babies may expire or have no value because it was time related or become Pigeon Shit. But the 40 others, I expect they will rake in some $4 Million over the next decade and provide a nice return. I know many of you don’t like or agree with this approach. Ok. But it is tried and true and it works for me because I have patience and look at things with an eye that combines the evolution of business with the evolution of consumers and then factor in plain old evolution. Success breeds more successes and more folks looking for success.

And 2010 isn’t over yet.  Rick hand registers domain names on a daily basis looking towards the future.  Rick writes:  “They won’t have much value in 2010. But come back in 10 years.”

How these 40 domain names will bring in $4 million in profit, is not known.  It’s a statement that many won’t believe, but if anyone can do it, Rick Schwartz can.  Remember the story of iReport.com – Rick Scwhartz sold that name CNN for $750,000.  He originally hand registered the name iReport.com for “$70 to $100.”  

Read more about the 2,840 hand registered domain names by Rick Schwartz on his blog.

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Domain King Rick Schwartz sells two more domains in the six figures, one hand registered for less $100

Sydney Hotels

It’s not often that Rick Schwartz sells a domain name or least shares the sale publicly.  Since the nineties, he has only sold a handful of names out of his portfolio of thousands.  But the total sales for those domains is in the millions.  The Domain King, who got his start in 1995, with the purchase of lipservice.com for $100 has sold less than 20 names.

Today Rick Schwartz announced the sale of two more domain names, each in the six figures.  The first one, according to Rick’s blog cannot be disclosed at present, but the second sale which sold for $100,000 was a name he registered early on in his domaining career: SydneyHotels.com. 

A name he purchased for less than $100.

These aren’t Rick’s first sales in 2010.  In April Rick sold the numeric domain 273.com for $50,000 to a Chinese buyer.

It’s unlikely most domain investors, will see the same results as Rick Schwartz, but if there’s one thing Rick Schwartz can teach you – it’s that patience pays off.