Well after spending over a week on posting about ICANN new extensions and legal issues, I thought it would be time to get back to writing about making some money.
A few people commented on the $30K sale of BubbleShooter.com that we posted yesterday in our weekly Afternic.com report.
Most of the commentators couldn’t understand how that domain name sold for $30,000.
However as one reader pointed out, it was the result of an upgrade.
Sometimes companies build out sites using some other extension other than a .com and then once the site becomes successful they want to upgrade to the .Com.
If the .Com owner is aware, they can rightfully place a higher asking price on their domain, well above what it would be priced without having that information.
We sold a domain name a few weeks ago through Sedo.com that was a similar situation.
We sold BornRich.com for $38K net or $42K gross to the owner of BornRich.org who wanted to upgrade.
Of course there are other sites built out on even ccTLD’s that eventually will want to upgrade to their .com equivalent.
So with over 100 extensions including ccTLD’s how can you quickly see if you may have an upgrade buyer on your hands?
Well do a quick Google search like this.
“www.Bornrich
What that will tell you the most highly ranked sites using that domain leaving off the extension.
Other things you will typically find doing such a Google search are Facebook & Twitter accounts or other popular sites that have part of your domain in there domain.
If you have a bang on .com for a name of a Facebook page that has tens of thousand, or hundreds of thousands of followers you have something to justify a higher asking price.
If you do a traditional search for a term on Google; lets use born rich as the example, you will see there is a completely different set of result than you will get if you just type in www.bornrich into Google
If you do a traditional search on Google for born rich you will see most results are going to be for a documentary made years ago.
That’s not going to help you much.
Or give you any clue that someone is wanting to upgrade its domain to the .com.
Instead type in: www.bornrich
You will now see bornrich.org all over the page as well as other URL’s which include Bornrich in their longer URL.
You now have the basis for finding out if there is a domain holder of another extension that might want to really need an upgrade.
If you check the whois records of the other domain extensions that show up on the first few Google result pages, you might even find the inquiry email coming from the same email address of the owner of the non-com.
Bottom line check on a possible upgrade before you quote a price on your .com.
Follow these simple rules and you might be answering a lot more inquiries with the phrase:
Let me upgrade you.
Your welcome.
but it’s very hard to find mid-big companies that haven’t yet registered their .com
also, many small countries’ companies don’t need a .com since they have a very local market
There is also this tool http://domain-search.domaintools.com/ that will show you all domains registered and deleted that have your domain’s keywords in the domain.
Great way to find all the domains like best…com, ….newyork.com etc in case you want to see who else has a similar domain to yours.
in other words, we must be very very lucky to own and sell the RIGHT domain
Not that I don’t love the idea but it has some what of a grey area I’ve always wondered about. How is this not playing off the value of someone elses’ mark, even if a common law mark. I’m no lawyer, but you are and you posted it so that’s why I ask. Can it becomsidered unjustified enrichment? Again, I’m no lawyer.
When that happens – more often than not – the domain holder is usually looking at a UDRP…especially if the .com holder has a parking page on it
Seven comments from the ‘cups half empty’ brigade there…..
Thanks for the search tip – it’s just helped me find a couple of dozen new prospects for a name I’m wanting to sell.
@ James
If you had to wait til now for MHB’s advice (blindingly obvious) on what to do when you have an inquiry for a domain, you strike me as a johnny-cum-lately noob
Now run along & send plenty of spam to all the “potential” buyers of your 3rd rate domain…LOL
Hey Aggro – Not all things are blindingly obvious to everyone. For instance, you’re probably not aware of being a prick – but to the rest of us, it’s obvious.
JP
Who is saying these guys had a “mark”
If your saying a registered trademark that’s not what happened in either situation I referred to.
The more likely scenario is that the .com holder already had the domain, the price the domain holder wanted, although substantially less than the final sales price was too high for the buyer and the buyer used the same name in different extension.
I can’t tell you how many offers I get with the person winding up saying “that’s too much money for us I’ll just go register the .net or org.
I love when that happens, because if they enjoy any success with their .net or .org they will be back paying an even higher price in the future
Another tip that most of you probably know, but bears repeating, is to do a Google search using “inurl:” like this:
inurl:exactkeywords
Funny you should mention BornRich, less than a week before it sold I came accross the .org site and of course looked up to see who owned the .com..You 🙂 Congrats on the sale.
You already had your early christmas present from me, I saved you quiet a few bucks by not bidding against you on a really nice domain 😉 happy christmas MHB
“also, many small countries’ companies don’t need a .com since they have a very local market”
That’s been the case quiet often with mine , even with some pretty big companies. Europeans don’t all see the .com as being King and are happy enough with their cctld….even if the .com is available for less than 10k
“Seven comments from the ‘cups half empty’ brigade there…..”
Half Empty, Half Full or just Plain Old Dose of Reality kicking in 😉
This is a viable strategy. Estibot Lead Generator will also automatically find all inferior tld registrations and provide you with the contact info, and our small business finder will find all small businesses in the U.S. with your domain keywords in their name
Have that exact situation here where Ihave the .com and they have all the other extensions. They are a wig and makeup company out of korea and offered me two domain names with same key word they registered 10days ago and 500 bucks…saying I am not using the name.
I originally got the name 9 years ago for an adult site. I mentioned over 15k to them and they never got back to me. I am now thinking of putting up my little adult site for a little pressure:)
or lease it to them with escalating terms for the next 50 years time starting at 2k year and going up 500 bucks every two to three years(value going up doubling in 9-10 years if they want to take me out at anytime.)
It’s spelled “you’re welcome”. Not change the last line in your post.