Jay Gaulard Blog

Buying and Selling Domain Names

March 21, 2008 – 8:42 am | by jaygaulardcom

The more I look around, the more I learn that the domain name business is big business.

As I told you yesterday, I am trying to scoop up a bunch of different extensions for the domains I already have. It’s working out pretty well, but I have hit a little bump. I already bought up most of the available ones and now I have to enter the market of second (or third) hand domains. That is when it gets expensive.

Let me give you a little example…a guy called me a few years ago to offer a .com domain that he was selling. This was a hot name and he was looking for $50,000 for it. I almost started laughing when he told me that. I think I offered him $300 and went off and did something else. As it turns out, I am kicking myself. I have a feeling I am going to be seeing this domain in action soon because someone out in Las Vegas just purchased it at auction for $135,000. Why was, or is, it worth so much? Well, it was first registered in 1996, so it has some age. Also, it rolls off the tongue extremely easily and is two very powerful keywords. It’s also quite descriptive. Those things alone give it a lot of value. I talked to the seller last night and he mentioned that he does have another .com for sale that I would be interested in. He wants $50,000 for it. This one is definitely not worth what the other one was, but it does give me pause. Honestly, if you can get a well known .com that was born back in 1996, $50,000 is not too much. You do need to do a little research first.

Yesterday, I put a bunch of bids in for multiple .com and .net addresses. I did receive an email back telling me I could buy a .net for $2,688. I am going to have the name appraised today to see if it has been blacklisted or anything like that. I believe it was first registered back in 2002, which isn’t bad.

What’s the benefit of purchasing a used domain name? The answer is Google. Google likes “aged” domains. You can set up a site and not have to wait for Google’s aging filter to do its thing. Also, there may be links to the domain already. So basically, if you get a used domain, you could set up a site and have it indexed very quickly to start making money fast.

I am going to buy a few more today and then call it quits for a while. The guy I spoke to last night is also looking for $50,000 for a little known extension that will become very popular. This is for the same domain as I was talking about above.

What I do know is this…if I buy a bunch of these names now and sit on them for a few years and let them age, I can send them to auction and sell them for some $$$. From what I have been learning, I do have quite an investment already. Just remember…if you are going to get into this, you need to buy domains that people will actually want in a few years. I am not sure how many people would be interested in jaygaulard.com. There are also huge price variations with what the name consists of, like one word, two words, hyphens, etc…