Mike Sullivan did a great interview with the Domain King — Mr. Schwartz! In that interview, it is revealed that Rick registered around 2,000 .CO domains. I was surprised to read this, but then again, not really that surprised once you think about it.

Personally, I only bought into a few hundred .CO domains as I already wrote in a few previous blog posts, and most of them were the type most domainers would stay away from because yes, they are typos, but who cares… Speculation and exploitation is part of the domaining game and taking risks is as well. It would really be “UNDOMAINER” from my part not to at least gamble a bit with this new extension which potentially can be a goldmine when it comes to typos.

Now, bigger players such as Schwartz can gamble x 2000…. I know my limits, which is why I was only willing to put up $X amount of cash for a few hundred carefully selected domains ahead of time and so does he. Every move with most successful domain investment strategies is calculated and done in such a way to take out as much risk as possible from the equation…. You basically have a plan right from the start and try to stick with it..

My plan was to generate some traffic from the few hundred typo’ domains and find ways to monetize them and then get rid of them as soon as possible… Rick Schwartz’ plan is to probably flip them in a few years once valuations for .CO’s are stabilized and well established, meaning in-demand from a large pool of buyers. All he needs is a few homeruns and that more than takes care of the rest. With domain collections, it is normal for a few domain sales every so often to take care of all of the rest when talking about renewal fees and keeping the dream alive

But you know, it happens to everybody, sooner than later. Rarely anything good lasts too long. This is what has been happening the past few years in the domain industry… Big time. The bigger players, such as registrars and veteran domainers with money up the ass have been squeezing the little guys right out.

Crying or bitching really won’t do much. You just have to suck it up and re-strategize. There are many ways to go about earning a buck in this wonderful biz we call domaining. You just can’t get attached to any one method too much. You have to be well prepared and ready for the unexpected because that’s how this biz is. Lifecycle of any one opportunity is very short.

So I have a good friend who I helped start his very own e-commerce store about 4 – 5 years ago. He did great in 2005… 2006 he did even better. 2007 and 2008 he continued to grow his entire operation by 300 – 500% easily, year over year, with record sales. Now 2009 is when he started running into problems… He started getting squeezed!

The whole idea behind going online with his retail operation was due to the fact that his offline store was seeing less and less activity as more people were shopping online, because there were better deals. I suggested to go exclusively online with e-commerce and soon after they did just that. It just made more sense and was better for the bottom line.

Well, they had a great run for a couple of years and then they started seeing more competition from smaller players who turned into big players, because that’s what always happens with time. People flock to where there is good or easy money. Then soon it didn’t make sense anymore to mess around with eBay, one of their best sales outlets so they said bye bye to it.

Now earlier this year, Amazon, the place where they sell close to two third’s of their stuff and do the most of their biz online started directly competing with them… Looks like Amazon saw an opportunity (analyzed all the sales data from last few years, looked into margins and added the inventory by going direct to manufacturer since there is some nice $$$ to be made) and that’s that.

Looks like by this time next year they will be all out of biz… Just hard to compete with all these big boys, and these guys just squeeze you right out. Unfortunately it happens to everybody, sooner than later. Once my friend was one of the top guys in their niche, but in a few month’s time ever… It may all be over.

Now back to domains… Registrars are nowadays squeezing out the small guys, more and more. They are keeping tons of the best expired domains inventory, and whatever good domains do make it to the auction stage, the well established and professional domainers who have been around for 5 – 10 years or more are overpaying because they can do just that.

Register.com for example keeps tons of domains, and then they try to liquidate it by running special auctions via SnapNames and NameJet. A domain which cost them to acquire $7 per year they easily flip for hundreds or thousands. Nice ROI there… Aaah!

It’s not easy to make it in the e-commerce biz or any online biz as a matter of fact in 2010 and moving forward… Unless you find yourself a small niche which you can dominate eventually, and the sooner the better. Same goes for domains. You gotta have a specialty and go after a very certain type of domains. Being all over the place is not a very good or winnable strategy for those who are beginners.

You spread yourself out too much and you will lose focus and just end up in a big mess. You gotta have a specialty when doing “domain investment” and know exactly what it is you are getting yourself into.

Holidays and extended weekends… Ahhh These times, my friends, is when you can make 10x and 100x of what you normally earn easily… All in a matter of days.. Yep! Even most people who make their living online take weekends and especially the big holidays off, which means… HUGE OPPORTUNITIES!

I already know that somebody is going to step up to the plate and go at it hard… No no, it won’t be me, but there is always a couple of people who come through because timing is just right. It’s perfect actually. You can win auctions for some killer expired domains with little to no competition…. We’re talking about absolute STEALS.

Back in 2004, I went month’s without going out on weekends, and as for holidays… Forget about it. Hell, I lost track of time… I wasn’t even aware what day it was really, because every day for me was auction day…. And every day had the same ol’ routine where you research domains and research some more. All I did was buy domains and flip them… Non-stop.

I have since retired from the daily hustle and grind, but I tell ya… These are the times when you want to take advantage of because really, they don’t come around that often. Those who plan and execute carefully will always come out on top. I wish you all a happy holiday and much success… Go get em you…. Stryke gold

Now it’s really no surprise to see such results, but here it is… Results from two on-topic networks we mass developed less than a year ago. One consists of approximately 30 domains, which already generated  67,000 unique visitors and the other consists of exactly 100 domains which received over 140,000 unique visitors.

These domains had no organic / type in traffic to begin with so all of this traffic was generated via search engines and other website referrals.. How?? Why?! Because we developed them properly, by putting together the right content and doing all of the on-page SEO as well as cross linking all sites within each network accordingly. Search engines love this stuff, as do other webmasters / visitors.

Since 2002 I’ve helped launch hundreds of these on-topic networks.. Some of them consist of 10 – 30 domains.. Some 100 – 200 while some even with thousands of domains. The results are pretty much always nothing short of amazing as time goes by. In this two cases, we did no link-building or anything else that is fancy schmancy whatsoever.. Just picked out the right keyword domains, optimized them properly and it’s a done deal… Success! All thanks to domain mass development

The first network that I’d like to talk about is the “salary” group of websites which consists of domains ending with the suffix *salary… It was launched August 2009. Our client registered 30 relevant keyword domains, so each domain was about 2 – 3 keywords long. The domains were all registered in late 2009. They were not aged domains, or anything like that… They were your typical domains that are often overlooked, because they are too specific and targeting one specialized niche.

The second network we launched in July of 2009 and it consisted of eyewear related domains which were registered for a couple of years already, so they were indeed aged but unfortunately they were all parked for all these years. Many of them were banned and/or penalized with the search engines… However, as you can see, we were able to re-establish the domains SEO profile quickly and get them ranking for 1000’s of targeted keywords overtime.

So, when you know what you are doing when it comes to domain development, it’s really not all that difficult to make money in this biz. Not that difficult to start turning in a profit the same month either. You don’t need a huge budget for SEO and marketing… You really don’t. But what you do need is the right keyword domains.

You can still find great keyword domains that end with dot com… Don’t expect them to receive type-in traffic though… But what you can expect is for them to go to work for you right away as soon as you develop them. The search engines love targeted 2 – 3 keyword .COM domains that contain relevant and unique content.

You are probably wondering how much it cost to develop those 130 domains? It was around $6,000… Less than $50 per site actually total. Yup.. It was more than affordable… It was a steal! But that is what domain mass development is all about at the end of the day. So if you think there is no more opportunities out there in the domain space or that domain development is too expensive, think again.

Once again there is a lot of buzz surrounding IDN domain names and ccTLD’s within the domaining community… So lets see, is there really any money to be made with these kinds of domains in 2010 and moving forward? Yes there is but first you have to understand a couple of very basic principles and avoid the hype.

You gotta understand that when everybody is talking about something freely, that means that the opportunity has been mined and had…  Most bloggers and media is talking about it just because somebody else is talking about it and that doesn’t necessarily mean that the investment opportunity here in IDN’s or ccTLD’s is a good one but who the hell verifies anything this days? No need… Because they take you for a fool. Yes, you… They feed you all this bullshit and you just eat it all up because it sounds so fun and exciting… YUM YUMM!

I remember few years ago when a bunch of IDN’ers popped up onto Rick Schwartz private forum and they went at it non stop rambling about all of the potential, trying to brainswash myself and others… Trying to get us behind the whole concept and on the bandwagon before it’s too late.

We tried to understand them but unfortunately we were speaking a different language it seemed. Nobody could provide any proof or make sense of things. Those IDN enthusiasts and die hard supporters of the next big thing got banned from Rick Schwartz’ forum within a few days by the man himself.

Lets face it… Most domainers and other up-and-comers in the do it yourself internet business are sheep and have the follower mentality. Maybe one out of a hundred or even five hundred is an actual leader who can come up with original ideas and dig up their own niche-within-a-niche and capitalize time and time over and over again.

Rick Schwartz’ private forum had some of the greatest domain investors of all time and those IDN’ers failed to even make an impression or provide one sound argument… But nowadays, the messages and misinformation is being spread across various other channels.

There is some valuable IDN and ccTLD domains… The category defining ones with type-in traffic that can be converted into dollars one way or another. The cream of the crop. Unfortunately all of these domains were had a long time ago by insiders… Domainers and techies who keep their mouth shut. Ones who go about their biz quietly, avoiding the spotlight as much as possible and for a very good reason.

Lets rewind for a bit… In the early years of 2001, 2002, etc… while most non US based domainers in France, Germany, Italy, etc… were following what everybody else was doing in the domaining biz, which was buying up gTLD domains such as com/net/org because those were proven extensions and selling for big bucks, only a handful had the brains to invest and diversify into other extensions, such as ccTLD’s which had a well established internet infrastructure and penetration that was increasing consistently year over year over year.

So even all those hundreds and even thousands of local domainers in Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, China, etc… couldn’t capitalize on their own ground… They missed their opportunities, in their own markets… They missed it on home soil. Most of them got the scraps left over from the real pros.

So I really find it quite hilarious seeing people from India, Mexico, Spain or Israel… Nowadays investing in ccTLD’s and IDN domains in Europe or Asia for example, when of course their kinda too late to the party. The biggest opportunity was right under their noses early on, and they had the edge by knowing local language, culture, economy, etc… But nope, they missed it.

Look, there is money to be made with any kind of traffic, but not a whole lot. Let me illustrate it this way which should make sense with a real life example: Somebody slips, falls and breaks something in a mall in Russia or Taiwan or Pakistan or Egypt or wherever… It’s highly unlikely that they are going to be able to file a lawsuit or win shit. They probably won’t even be able to get their medical expenses taken care of. They will probably get a kick in the ass and be told to go fuck themselves. That’s just the way it works in those parts of the world.

It’s really nothing new and that’s just the way it is in those countries, most countries in the world actually… While in the US, a slip and fall lawsuit can result in millions of dollars won in damages because the US justice system is well established and quite unique unlike any other. Now there are still some lawyers who handle cases and lawsuits filed in local courts in Russia, Mexico, China, etc… You just don’t get much as far as payouts go. A doctor’s malpractice will get you maybe 1/100th of what it would in the USA or Canada. You get what I am saying.

So traffic from all these international countries really isn’t all that valuable.. Even the most targeted. The US infrastructure and current internet ecosystem (publishing/advertisers) is very advanced, while the rest of the world is still playing catch up. Unfortunately all this killer ccTLD domains and IDN domains may have all this traffic but nowhere to convert into dollars, in other words to cash in. That is the problem that investors in these emerging markets have faced for 10 to 15 years… That is the problem you will face if you don’t do your homework.

We all know that category killer keyword domains get type in traffic and really, ccTLD domains and IDN’s are no exception, they get lots of traffic as well, but where the hell do you monetize it… How?? So before you decide to invest in any of these domains, ask yourself this question and you better be able to answer it, otherwise you will end up paying thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for domains that produce a whole lot of nothing… Just headaches!

So don’t believe the hype. Do due diligence. Seek the truth… It’s up-to you to put together the pieces of the puzzle and make sure that everything is 110% clear and makes sense. See first hand that this international traffic converts and then you can begin to talk about it with friends, blog about it and maybe even invest more heavily, just as you do with the proven top three gTLD’s which are .com/net/org which everybody just loves and for a very good reason… WORLDWIDE

Uhhh, Bido.com is gone now so where can bargain hunters find .com/.net/.org keyword domains at low prices for under $99 day in and day out ??! Of course you have DomainStryker.com lists which are available daily for FREE! You can find literally hundreds of great deals available at GoDaddy auctions that are expired for as low as $25 and for under $99 tons of steals at SnapNames and NameJet as well.

Two other good places which were just recently launched are Rick Latona’s daily auctions and Francois Carrillo’s BargainDomains.com which are worth checking out as well. There is really no shortage of  domains to be had on a daily basis, like I always say… It’s all about consistency and looking in the right places. Bido was really a hit or miss type of site… It got some decent action from the up-and-comers in this biz but no love from the pros. It’s too bad. Lacked the inventory, but it was also mismanaged big time… But what the hell do I know.

With close to 230,000 domains and growing fast… I think Andrew Reberry is onto something “huge” here. Not too many people are familiar with HugeDomains.com or Mr. Reberry but he is no rookie when it comes to the domain biz and internet marketing / development. In the last 1 – 2 years he has put together an impressive domain portfolio and quite a unique online marketplace that is visited by probably 400,000 – 500,000 end-user domain buyers monthly on average right now.

It’s clear that he has modeled his entire biz similar to that of BuyDomains, and that wasn’t such a bad idea… The entire concept of “retail” domain sales has been proven time and time again by BuyDomains over the years who are probably one of the top 2 or 3 domain investors in the world with 1,000,000 domains in their arsenal and millions of dollars in sales monthly. So if you see something working great, do copy it, just don’t forget to put your own unique twist to it and try to do it a little better. It’s what 90% of all businesses do, whether they like to admit it or not.

Andrew Reberry’s company, TurnCommerce.com got accredited as an ICANN registrar a little while ago as NameBright.com which is currently one of the top 60 largest registrars in the world. Now of course all of the domains registered there are their own… But that just goes to show you that this man is on a mission. Anybody who is running a huge operation like that should have his own registrar, plus it makes sense because you can save some nice cash. Guys like Kevin Ham and Frank Schilling have their own registrars as well.

It looks like all of the traffic coming to the main website, HugeDomains.com, is from direct navigation. Visitors who type in one of the 230,000 owned domains are immediately redirected to a for sale page. No PPC ads or any other bullshit. It’s straight to business… And the Huge Domains website setup is just as good as Sedo.com or BuyDomains.com. Andrew went all out and put together something truly special and unique in order to close as many sales as possible. You only get one chance at making a good first impression

So far he has probably invested $2,000,000 on all these domains, infrastructure, development, etc… Still though, he is registering thousands of domains and making improvements. I tried to get the lowdown but the man kindly refused when asked for an interview. I guess he’s just not done yet and ready for the spotlight but really, the man has accomplished a lot in a very short period of time and should be recognized for that… It’s impressive for a thirty something year old self made businessman / entrepreneur. He’s now part of a very elite group of domainers.

This just goes to show you that if you put your mind to it, anything is possible… Even in 2009 or 2010 or 2011!! It was a little less than one year ago when Andrew really cranked things up and went hard at it as far as domain acquisitions go. You know, there was a new blogger who popped up a few month’s ago into the blogosphere who claimed to have 200,000+ domains and earn millions with this and that… Blah blah.. But it’s impossible to verify his claims. Impossible to know if he even owns 1/10th of what he says… Not that it’s anybody’s business or whatever.

But anyways, then there was a huge debate and discussion at one of the domainer forums where people tried to figure things out (snooping around) and many said that it is impossible to create a huge portfolio of 100,000 domains in 2 years that can earn PPC $ and especially 200,000 of them… But come on, anything is possible. It’s not easy to put together a quality portfolio that can be turned profitable in such a short period of time, but if you’re experienced and know what you are doing… You will figure it out. It’s never too late.

Looks like Andrew did just that and proved everybody wrong. He figured it out for good… Forget parking and PPC,  lets focus on domain sales. PERIOD! That is of course where the money is… Always has and always will be. Domain parking income is a nice passive revenue stream but a domain sale can generate a lot more cash flow than the expected lifetime PPC income. No arguing or denying this.

From my domaining career early on, we’re talking about right around 2004, I personally always took the “exit” option when I was presented with a reasonable offer to buy one of my domains or a whole group of them… I never got attached to them whatsoever or actually fantasized and believed that PPC earnings can magically somehow go up 2x, 3x, etc. I am not very patient when it comes to investments and if there is a chance to make a guaranteed profit with little to no effort… DONE DEAL!

Yup, that is right… If there is some money to be made with the right keyword domains, I am all about it !!! Sex tourism, food brokers, car tracking, reunion island, kurta’s, private label rights, coin buying, breast exams, video conversion, fingerboarding, boxed sets, muscle building supplements, natural breast enhancement, prostate exams, stringing, etc.

I don’t discriminate when I see money making opportunities both online or offline…. But especially when the upfront costs are as low as $20 – $25 for some of these pretty good keyword domains and the returns can be as  high as 10x to 20x easily… Hell, even 100x is not out of the question. It really doesn’t get better than that folks.

I personally do not know much about Sex tourism but when I saw the domain was up for grabs over at GoDaddy auctions for something like 25 bucks, of course I pulled the trigger… It’s a no brainer. Shortly after that, we went ahead and developed it. Now that was December of 2009. Few month’s go by, and the domain is generating some nice traffic. 100 – 150 visitors daily.

Now earlier this month, we decided to put together and add even more content… Grow the site further. So new articles have been added daily and will continue to be added. Last night I noticed a huge spike in traffic, because the site was mentioned in a news article on a website called the GlobalPost. I never heard about this site, but it drove a lot of traffic to us past 48 hours and the visitors are still coming and will continue to come. It’s great!

April was a record month as far as visits go… March was more trafficked than February and February was better than January… The organic growth is there. Month-to-month. I’m not really worried about monetizing the site right away. I just like to launch the sites by the hundreds every month, let them be out there for a while, get established / picked up and then once there is enough activity… We get to work with the right monetization and optimization strategies. It’s all done “lottery style” pretty much as far as domain mass development goes. You launch. You wait. You see.

Content rich sites drive loads of traffic to the “longtail” keywords which means not to the main root keyword which most people assume generates the most traffic. Over 50% of all visitors came to this sex tourism site by searching for one of 623 related keywords. Now sure “sex tourism” by itself sent 49% of the traffic but there is only so much “sex tourism” searches. Everybody else searches for more descriptive and unique keywords, and the only way to capitalize is to have the right content… We’re trying to do just that since there is some nice growth and potential being shown here.

Once again, I don’t really know or care much about sex tourism but you bet your ass off if there is money to be made… I am there. The opportunities which most other people will pass up, that can seem as a bit risky or not that good can in fact be a killer opportunity to make some cash if you know what you are doing that is.

So what do I know about food brokers? Not much really.. But apparently there is many of these, all around the world. Food brokerage is big business. What about car tracking? I know that this technology is pretty new and becoming more and more affordable and of course in-demand. What about reunion island? It’s just an island with a decent activity in the tourism sector… etc.

What about all those other sites listed in the beginning of this post… Blah blah blah……. LOOK…… I don’t know or care to know too much or every detail on every single domain I acquire. I buy hundreds of them some weeks because they seem as good opportunities… There isn’t enough time however to figure out everything 100%. You gotta be able to pull the trigger and still be able to keep sane.

Don’t drive yourself too crazy by trying to figure out everything, all you need to know is that if the domain consists of strong and relevant 1, 2 or 3 keywords and it’s followed by one of the 3 most popular gTLD’s in the world, com/net/org, then it’s probably worth at least $25 – $100 and can be turned into a money maker with some additional development and optimizaiton…. If not, then it can be a quick flip. So long as the domain is priced right… Get it! It can make for a great investment or project. Why the hell not?

Lets take for example DesignerLeatherHandbags.com which is a truly keyword rich domain and as good as it gets in every sense if you know what to look for that is. Now most designer / leather handbags are very much a “luxury” item that isn’t cheap. Most of these retail for at least a few hundred bucks while others cost thousands. Hell, some go for $10,000+ when you get into all that exotic and really high end stuff.

On any given day, there is about $800,000 to $1,000,000 on average worth of handbags / purse sales over at eBay.com. Around 9,000 listings close daily and the average price is just under $100 a pop. Now keep in mind that eBay is very much a “wholesale” and bargain finders type of place. Still, it gives us a good insight into just how many of these sell… An indication that the market is absolutely massive and very very active.

So just at eBay there is at least $5 to $6m worth of handbag sales each and every week of the year. That is 60,000 items selling every week… Week after week after week. The numbers really are as solid as it gets. So that is hundreds of millions of dollars in sales per year. Just one item pretty much; handbags. It’s probably safe to say that at least one million shoppers went after approximately 3 million of the sold auctions / listings.

Below is a graph of some interesting weekly data directly from the eBay.com Clothing, Shoes & Accessories > Women’s Handbags & Bags > Handbags & Purses listings / auctionss from the past 12 month’s. Averages are 1 week’s worth of data / totals.

But lets not forget that those sold items aren’t just any type of handbags; they aren’t referred as just handbags or bags but rather the designer and leather type of handbags. That is what everybody’s after. I am not really sure how big the “handbag” market is in the US or worldwide but it’s probably at least a few billion dollars worth. It’s also a luxury item where margins are always huge, so it’s a great business to be in. Everybody makes a lot of money and ultimately the client / buyer is still very happy because they get something special and unique.

Most of you would probably look at this domain, DesignerLeatherHandbags.com, a pretty long and not so clear domain that consists of three keywords, and it wouldn’t even leave an impression on you… If it was to come up on the daily expired Domain Stryker lists, most of you would probably give it a pass. The value and keywords aren’t all that great here, right? So it’s not even worth $60 or $100…. But you couldn’t be more wrong. Now let me explain why.

This is a keyword rich dot com domain that is really a triple threat. It is a plural, which means it ends with “s” so it has exact match benefits when ranking for the the singular targeted keyword “handbag” plus the plural which is “handbags” so that is a great bonus. You got the best of both worlds. Plural domains are always much more valuable than singular… Should be pretty self explanatory

The domain also contains two of the most popular complimentary keywords that go with “handbags” and that is “designer” and “leather” so this will really help us rank for all of the most desired keywords such as ___ leather handbag/s and ___ designer handbag/s. Search engines love keyword rich domains, and if the domain has the most relevant keywords that are directly matching or related to the search the better.

This domain is an SEO / competitive webmasters wet dream because it has all of the right keywords, it is aged (registered since 2004) so it has massive potential. I acquired this domain about a year and a half ago during an auction at SnapNames for exactly $89. I was prepared to spend at least $1,000. I got a great deal and was extremely pleased

About 6 month’s ago or so we put up a “quick start-up” minisite on this domain so it can start getting crawled and indexed with the search engines + establishing it’s profile. Just recently we had it re-developed as an affiliate store so we can start rolling in some profits. It’s currently ranking #1 at Yahoo.com for the root keyword, #2 at Bing.com and brings in a consistent amount of $xxx sales daily… Traffic is building up for the longtail thanks to Google as well. We’re on page 2 right now at Google.com but expect to crack the top few spots sooner than later with a bit of linklove.

Estibot.com  says that this domain is only worth $1000… Ask another professional domainer and he will say $100… Ask another webmaster or domainer and he will say $500… Another will say $2000… etc. It’s really impossible to get an agreement on this stuff. However, to properly understand keyword rich domains, their niche and their true valuation / appraisal you gotta get down and dirty with the research.

You gotta do a lot of market analysis. Gotta crunch up the numbers not just for the main root keyword but related keywords as well because they are just as important and tied up to your domain if it’s in a niche-within-a-niche. You gotta figure out exactly what types of products you can up-sell well… You gotta figure out just how much traffic there is to be had. Lots of stuff to figure out

The current setup of the website up on DesignerLeatherHandbags.com could be improved 100x and we will probably do just that in the coming month’s since the hidden potential of the domain has been slightly revealed… We’re thinking either about doing something with a reliable dropshipping partnership or direct sales of a few very exclusive but in-demand brands.

Either way, I’ve already made my initial investment for the domain acquisition + development many times over. From here on it’s just optimizing and tweaking… Getting things right slowly but surely. Building something truly special and unique. It should be a lot of fun.

It’s nice finding these types of keyword rich domains… They are often overlooked and extremely hard to find because they are buried with all the other crap,  but those who put in the hard work day in and day out will always get a nice payday sooner than later. That’s how it works folks… Nothing new. So roll up those sleeves and get to it… The domains are just waiting to be discovered

I get asked this question pretty often by our members, so I figured I’d take some time to answer it in detail and provide some examples. Some seasonal domains or in other words specialty types of domains dealing with a product / service that is in demand only during a few weeks / month’s  of the year are indeed worthy if you do your research… Lets take for example DogCostumes.net and FlowerSeeds.org.

Dog costumes are high in demand for about two month’s of the year, each and every year, September and October, because Halloween happens at the end of the month, every October 31st. So naturally, there is a lot of people searching for dog costumes during those 2 month’s. There is a 1000% – 2000% spike in interest.

Flower seeds are in demand year round but the season for planting them is from January to May or June so there is a lot more interest in this stuff, as it is a seasonal type of buy so there is almost a 400% – 500% peak in interest during the Spring season, each and every year.

We developed DogCostumes.net a few month’s ago. It already ranks at the top at Yahoo.com and has consistent traffic. It has only generated a few sales but as we get closer to Halloween, I am sure things will pick up and we will be able to make some decent $$$ as we will be actively promoting this affiliate based site.

FlowerSeeds.org was developed about two month’s ago and it has managed to rank at the top over at Yahoo.com for the root keywords as well as approximately 100 “long-tail” keywords which are very very targeted and valuable. It has generated some nice $$$ in commissions… There is at least 5 to 10 sales coming through each and every day.

Now flower seeds usually cost only a few bucks, and dog costumes are like $20 to $30 but little by little it always adds up. So does it really make sense acquiring season / specialty types of domains? Yes, sure it does… You just gotta have a clear plan ahead of time.

The flower seeds domain has already more than paid for itself (it cost under $100 and was acquired via NameJet, then developed in-house by us) for approximately $200 total.

The dog costumes domain will take a little longer to break even and then make a profit, but it was a good investment and we will make a lot of money once demand is there come August / September… Cost around $300 total to acquire it over at SnapNames and once again develop in-house.

So keep your eyes wide open… There are many good similar domain investment opportunities out there. Domains that are usually overlooked by others. You gotta learn how to recognize the potential and then capitalize. Good luck!

Lets take a look at two domains which I recently acquired for under $100 total. They aren’t the best keyword domains in their categories, but they are pretty good ones with plenty of potential and I will explain why they were worthy of getting picked up once they expired and investing $$$ to have them properly developed. The domains are TennisPlayers.net and PilatesExercises.net.

We just developed TennisPlayers.net the other day… Why? Because it gets about 5 to 10 visitors per day on average, mostly type-ins. The domain is very similar to TennisPlayer.net which is a well established educational Tennis site that is often advertised on TV, so there is bound to be spill-over traffic as there always is with singular / plural types of domains.

The domain TennisPlayers.net was also actually developed in it’s previous lifetime, since 2002, as some sort of a Tennis players network…  So there is some back-links as well. These free links are always helpful and boost up the SEO profile with the engines.  Basically all we had to do was buy the domain and put it to good use. We did just that by setting up a customized Amazon powered affiliate store with 10,000s of Tennis related items.

From here on traffic will grow day after day after day… Slowly but surely. I actually had this domain parked for the past month and it didn’t earn much… 10 bucks! By having the domain developed we are going to make sure that at least some of those visitors come back or even bookmark the site… Maybe even share it with their friends, associates and family. Maybe even link to it as a useful store / resource… Who knows

With parked pages, unfortunately that never happens… Visitors are “one timers” and the revenue potential is always much greater with developed sites when we make 6% – 8% of some items which cost $100s or $1000s while parking only pays literally 20 or 30 cents. Parked pages are never indexed by the search engines so there are no rankings either. Basically, things are at a standstill.

The other domain is PilatesExercises.net… I don’t know too much about them to begin with but my GF and her friends are all about this stuff. Anyways, after looking at the numbers for “pilates” on the Google AdWords keyword tool it became clear that this domain was the next best thing to “Pilates” or “Pilates Equipment” which are the highest searched keywords.

So we worked with what we’ve got, and that is the 2nd or 3rd best thing… PilatesExercises.net the domain is still very much descriptive of the whole pilates category and both keywords make sense. The same exact affiliate powered store went up on this domain the other day. I am sure that visitors looking for “pilates” and “pilates exercises” will be more than happy with what they find on the site. We have pilates apparel, equipment, dvds and books… What more does one need?

Of course the two examples above aren’t dot com domains… Of course they aren’t the best keyword combinations in their respective niches but like I said, we worked with what we’ve got. The domains have enough “hidden potential” and we are going to bring it out by doing the right type of development and search engine optimization.

It cost us around $200 – $250 total for domain acquisition + domain development of these two keyword domains… I expect us to start turning in a profit within 20 – 30 days… Domains don’t always have to be the best or right keyword domains, so long as you have a “business plan” and you know what you are doing with them… You can make them work. Development is a sure way to put a decent keyword domain to good use. It gets the ball rolling if you know what I mean

Some people would argue that the two domains aren’t even worth anything, and definitely not worth the development efforts… But look, the numbers speak for themselves. There are tens of thousands of people searching for the root keywords each and every month, plus the niche is an easy sell. It’s not like insurance, loans or cars where conversions are crazy… and the best thing I like about these types of domains is that they still are descriptive of an entire niche… Perfecto!

Everything is on auto-pilot right now and the domains were just turned into money-making machines. Literally overnight! Next time you come across a few similar domains, I am sure you will think twice about whether they are worthy or not… Whether to spend $$$ in developing them or flipping them… Cheers!

I like to check up on domains which I sold every now and then. Always interesting to see whether it’s been developed, marketed, etc. So I sold the domain WallStickers.net about 6 month’s ago to an “end user” and it was immediately developed by the new owners as a full blown e-commerce store selling you guessed it, wall stickers and wall decor.

It wasn’t that difficult to get it sold, because a good keyword domain really sells itself. Of course it has to be priced right. We kept the asking price reasonable, got multiple offers and made a deal with one fella who seemed very nice and definitely knows what he is doing. It was actually a quick flip, as I acquired it for about $100 or $150 last year from another domainer.

Lets look at the monthly search volumes with the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, [exact match] for root keyword wall stickers is 135,000 in the US and 246,000 worldwide. That is more than 3,000,000 people typing in wall stickers into Google.com annually and looking to shop for these.

Broad match is exactly 1,000,000 per month globally… So it’s safe to say that these wall sticker things are pretty popular and in-demand. Also if you look at the Google search trends for the keyword wall stickers from the past few years… It shows that this product is slowly but surely still growing. Heck, it’s only existed for about five years. Still a lot of room to grow…

I could of easily developed this domain, sure… But I always try to flip a domain first if possible. There is really no shortage of good keyword domains to be had which can be developed, and I already have literally 1,000’s of similar domains sitting in my portfolio waiting and waiting for something to go up on them.

I am sure the new owner’s of WallStickers.net are extremely happy with the purchase of this category leading domain. I am also 100% sure that they got their money’s worth literally within a few month’s as the domain now ranks at the top for keyword “wall stickers” at Google.com, Yahoo.com and Bing.com as well.

Now that is the power of keyword domains… Put up some relevant content + do a bit of standard on-page search engine optimization = organic keyword rankings within a few month’s and you know what specific e-commerce product related keyword rankings mean… $$$ Cha-ching $$$$ !! Those are targeted shoppers brought right to your door, at no cost. Just give them the opportunity to purchase what they want and it’s money in the bank. Gotta love it!

Lets take for example the three domains below: AdultTalentAgency.com, ForensicPathologist.com and HomeWeatherStation.com — I owned them all for at least one year and sold to three different people just last month. All of them were developed for about $100 – $150 max and re-sold for a decent ROI.

I paid $1000 for HomeWeatherStation.com + HomeWeatherStations.com a little over a year ago during a SnapNames auction. I immediately “flipped” the plural to an e-commerce operator / marketing company who goes by the name of 3tailer. The singular we developed last month, shopped it around a bit and got it sold as well. The new owner is going to re-develop the site with his own unique setup apparently.

AdultTalentAgency.com I won for the standard $60 one time backorder fee at SnapNames as it was a drop. We developed it like 6 month’s ago, so it was receiving around 30 visitors per day. Shopped it around… Got it sold to NetTuner.com who are currently using the website to drive traffic to their InternetModeling.com business and boost up SEO for the new PornModels.com site which is coming soon.

ForensicPathologist.com I originally purchased for $100 from a domainer last year on a private forum along with a few  similar domains such as CrimeSceneCleaner.com and BailBondService.com which were flipped last year. So anyways, we developed the domain, and it was receiving 50 visitors per day on average and slowly increasing. The domain was sold to another domainer who is keeping our original website setup, just adding advertisements in order to monetize the traffic.

So does domain development really make sense?? Does it create any value? Of course. All this free traffic is quite valuable. It also brings out the hidden potential of the domain’s keywords, once it is properly developed and furthermore optimized / marketed. So you buy a domain for $60, $100 or whatever… What next??!

You need to continue investing in your domains wisely if you truly believe in them and want to increase value the proven way. Not too much cash, but just enough to get in the game. As you can see, the $100 – $150  that we spent on each of the three domains’ development got us search engine rankings, a consistent and targeted traffic flow and a sale in each case at the end which we are happy with.

On any given day, GoDaddy.com auctions off and sells more of it’s expired domains than SnapNames and NameJet combined. Why is that though?

Firstly, GoDaddy’s prices are much less than it’s competitors as it only costs about $20  – $25 to acquire a good .com/.net/.org domain if you can manage to avoid a bidding frenzy whereas SnapNames charges around $60 – $99 minimum and NameJet is at $69 right now. The prices are much more attractive and this is what makes GoDaddy.com so successful.

Secondly, all of the GoDaddy domain auctions display the visitors that an expired domain is receiving. It’s kind of hard to verify this stuff, so you shouldn’t always assume the traffic is type ins or from what we call backlinks / search rankings but it’s good to know “Estimated Monthly Web Site Traffic” which is readily available for each and every expired domain name auction.

They even have a “search engine ranking report” displayed on every auction. It displays the domain’s Google pagerank, Alexa ranking, incoming links from Google and Yahoo as well as search saturation. So basically GoDaddy is really trying to get the domain sold by providing as much relevant data as possible, which is very nice of them and definitely helps close a lot of deals if you know what I mean.

If SnapNames and NameJet displayed traffic stats as well as some other metrics, they too would get a lot more action. I’ve always wondered, why the hell don’t they do it? It makes sense, doesn’t it… ? Of course it does but we already know the exact reasons as to why they don’t.

This lack of transparency is nothing new and it’s been plaguing the domain industry since the early days. This small things can make all of the difference in the world. It can increase user and bidding activity exponentially which will increase the revenues.

GoDaddy isn’t your typical “domainer” operation, so they do things a bit different. Ok, a lot different actually!! So to the smart guys over at SnapNames and NameJet, why don’t you pay attention. It’s time for a change…  Look at GoDaddy, they have a proven and winning formula. You don’t have to straight out copy it but just take bits and pieces. It will do wonders, what do you think??

I am always on the hunt… Looking for great domain deals to be had… Firesales, oh I love them! Expiring domain listings at NameJet or GoDaddy aren’t the only place where you can score some absolute steals. Nope! There are a couple of forums which you should browse every chance you get because domainers looking to liquidate their domains dirt cheap, list their domains for a quick sale and the prices are very attractive if you know what I mean

If you  like what you see, you buy it… Deals are usually completed in less than 24 hours and the best part of it all is that you do not need to be going back and forth with auctions or pre-bids. So below are a couple of domains I picked up just the other day at one particular domain forum; DNForum.com. I have been buying and selling domains there since early 2004.

SexyAdvertising.com — I knew I had to have it right away as soon as I saw it up for grabs. This domain’s keyword combo just has a great ring to it and a lot of possibilities to be developed and run as a standalone business.

I will probably try to flip this one sooner than later to a body paint artist or company… It’s big business and an expensive service. Those companies who hire these creative artists to paint the bodies of half naked / fully naked models pay literally thousands of dollars. Not bad for a one time gig… Hmmm, maybe I should get into this business myself? What do you think??!

DrunkGirls.org — It’s highly unlikely that I will develop this one because I called it quits with adult a few years ago but I just can’t pass up a good deal. This domain was priced right so I pulled the trigger.

The drunk girls / amateur partying niche is pretty popular and this one domain should make for a nice and profitable flip. It’s a domain which is in-demand and should sell easily… Right now It’s in good company, along with PublicFlashing.org, DiscreetAffairs.net, TransexualEscorts.net, CaughtPeeing.com, FaceTrample.com, etc… All unsold, but they will be sooner than later. The time will come.

ElectricToothbrushes.org — Those things didn’t even exist 5 or 6 years ago. Still relatively a new type of product and popularity of it is on the rise. We’ll setup a full blown store selling electric toothbrushes and related products on this domain along with reviews, so the entire setup fits nicely with the domain’s keyword and .org extension. Should be a successful developed site… Done deal!

SalonFurniture.net — Any type of furniture is expensive… So this one was a no brainer. I had to have it. Some salon / spa furniture literally costs thousands of dollars so this one should be a nice money maker… Should pay for itself within weeks.

BestSelling.org — What comes to mind when you first hear of “best selling” ?! Hm… BOOKS!! But of course… So we’re going to setup a store with the best selling books, broken down in dozens of categories. Books is a very competitive niche, but we have a great domain… So that should give us a little edge and help convert a majority of the visitors.. I mean, wouldn’t you want to buy something at BestSelling.org ??! Yup! The power of keyword domains… Ah, gotta love it!

NotebookReviews.org — Consumers want reviews before they buy something, and we’ll give them just that… Going to setup a basic store selling notebooks with reviews. Should be an easy sell, thanks to all of the data we aggregate from Amazon web services. Everything is on auto-pilot. Once again, the trust factor plays a major roll in converting visitors into dollars. With a domain such as NotebookReviews.org it’s pretty much a done deal.

BackstreetBoys.org — Oh man… Backstreet Boys!! What can I say? So yea, I am a big fan, without a doubt and who isn’t really? Those guys are legends. When I was growing up, I used to jam to their songs all the time. Not really sure what I am going to do with this one, we’ll try a couple of things but for now it will just sit there with Timbaland.org, JustinTimberlake.org, etc… Some good company

I like .org a lot as you can see… But why? Because search engines like .org as do users. It’s one of the top global extensions, worldwide. If you spot a good deal for any keyword .org domain… Don’t hesitate, get it! I spent a little over $500 on all domains above and glad I did.

If domains of similar quality were available every day by the dozens or even hundreds, I would get them all and put them to good use.. Unfortunately, there aren’t so you have to act when opportunities are there… Gotta think quick and act quick!!!

Some of the domains above are easily worth 2x, 3x.. Hell, even 5x – 10x of what I paid for them on the reseller market. I can flip them easily today, if I wanted to… But no. I am going to develop. Build them out properly and bring out all that hidden potential. Make the big bucks $$$$$$$$