Ali Zandi regged 4600 domains in a .com promotion

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Ali Zandi took some time to explain his recent strategy for hand registrations. In the very popular available domains thread, Ali lists which names he picked up from Bill Eisenmann’s lists.

Ali went of topic a tad to detail how he picked up 4600 .com names during a Fasthosts promotion for cheap .coms.

I reg’d around 4,600 names ~60 days ago and added them all to Afternic. Made 50% my investment back already.

With Afternic – the domain names get shown directly in the registrar path. Which is the most important thing to note. A lot of these types of endusers only know of GoDaddy, so they head over and start typing names in to see if they are available. Having them at Afternic allows that to happen. So if they type in something like “Shorteo” (another domain Bill listed) this is what they’ll see:

Screen Shot 2017-04-16 at 9.22.34 AM.png

That is why I use Afternic for these types of names. As they are usually impulse buys from someone constantly seeing that a domain they like isn’t available and when they see one that is – they get excited and move forward.

There is no big “secret” to how it’s done. The only thing that separates names that have a higher chance of selling and those that won’t is research and data driven registrations. The internet is filled with data and there are numerous creative ways to extract it to build your own system of registering domains with certain metrics that have proven to have a higher chance of selling.

Why 4,600? Because that’s as many as I could register before the FastHost promo ended ;)

I only work this method for these types of names. For my long term names, I do it differently.

When asked how long it took to compile his list ? Ali replied:

Haha! Actually spent ~200 hours obtaining/sorting data, creating permutations and scouring deleted names lists and created a list of ~5M domains that are were available (had bulk availability checker developed)… then sorted those by certain metrics, picked the best ones and reg’d as many as possible each day (since FH only allowed 50 reg’s at at time) till the promotion ended. I also reg’d a lot of the daily deleted names along side the list I made.

5 million names is a big list, thanks to Ali for sharing his research methodology.

About Raymond Hackney

Raymond is a writer, domain trader and consultant based in Pennsylvania. Raymond is the founder of 3Character.com and TLDInvestors.com.

Comments

  1. page howe says

    so quick question, even if inside the 60 day window you can list with afternic for fast transfer?

    or do all afternic listings appear on the godaddy path, even if not fast transfer.

    ALI, great job of professional domaining.

    page

    • Alan Shiflett says

      Great to hear of your success Ali, great job!

      Page- If you list in Afternic during the 60 day window it will be distributed across the network as slow- transfer for those first 60 days. Even with the domains being in slow-transfer your domains will show up on most of the major registrars (GoDaddy, NetSol, etc.) so it is still well worth your time. At the end of the day opting your domains in to Fast Transfer tends to see a 10-15% lift depending on the domains.

  4. Danny says

    Probably why the promo ended. Same thing caused the reshift of godaddy promos.

    Fasthost is very hard to account to setup, and push out of, many domainers do not add oppurtunity cost of 200 hours of time, let’s say $10 per hour is $2000.

    So add that to your real costs. Don’t forget to remove 20 percent from
    Afternic commissions also.

    This only could happen because fasthosts took a 80 percent loss on the registration, otherwise with a reg fee portfolio of maybe 1 percent sell thru the numbers would not make sense.

    • Ali Zandi says

      The 200 hours of time wasn’t just for a one time registration pursuit – that data stays with me forever. So even at $10 per hour for a lifetimes worth of solid data to backup registrations – data which can be easily updated now with up to date information/metrics = totally worth it.

      Without the promo – this wouldn’t make sense, I agree – that would net a MUCH lower return at these pricepoints (although still profit at only 2% sell through) by end of reg cycle.

      The numbers made sense, the data and the permutations were top notch, and so the trigger was pulled on a nice investment opportunity. Even after the 20% commission to Afternic, the average NET return has been ~43,000% with about half the investment already paid back within 60 days.

      I’m not the only one that was able to register this many – some were able to get even more, but it’s on them to say it, not me 😉

      • Raymond Hackney says

        That’s what I was going to say Ali, this is your job it’s not time taken away from being an accountant or nurse or some other occupation. The time would be spent anyway.

        • Ali Zandi says

          Totally agree. Time passes regardless of what I’m doing – and since this is my full time job, then I better put every minute to good use.

      • Trent says

        I guess time will tell, something tells me we are a few months out from another flippa firesale.

    • Ali Zandi says

      I’ve been playing with pricing on these since day one. List them at one price for a couple weeks to see how they do, then change pricing and compare results till I can settle on one.

    • Ali Zandi says

      The original list was over 100M possible permutations – of which 5M were available. Don’t see how that’s impossible – I’m staring at the list 😉

  8. OmarVG.com says

    1) If you regged domains on a Cheap Registrar like Fasthosts you are a Broke domainer. Bad image for any domainer.

    2) Last year he made a “Good Bye” thread on a domain forum, maybe its another strategy to liquidate a lot of his crappy domains after the “Good bye” thread, which is a terrible strategy, and now he come back with this massive regged “strategy”, LOL

    3) Managing a 4,600 mega crappy domains is a pain in the ass. You wont be able to sell 99% of all bad names in one year, and he obviously wont have money to pay all the 4,600 renewals!

    4) ITS A TOTAL WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY THAT “STRATEGY” ahahahahahahaha

    5) I feel even more better after reading this post. 😀 Less quantity and more QUALITY!!!

  9. Trent says

    I think ALI you have exited this industry about 3 times now, I have lost count.

    You make these lists, then you put a mega portfolio sale on flippa for 30 days, 10 days before the auction is set to close, it ends, and it is all over.

    Then rinse, and repeat you are back doing it all over again.

    I followed you when you said to bundle one good name with a whole bunch of not so good names, and sell it to some newbies on flippa. That whole flippa crew is like poof now, the site is on fumes, are you for real, or just a hypster?

    • Ali Zandi says

      Never exited the industry – only took a bunch of time away to deal with family issues which frankly aren’t yours or anyone else’s business. As far as bouncing around – it’s just what I do, I’m wired that way. I go from idea to idea to idea and onward – been that way since I was a little kid. Some things stick because they keep my interest – most things don’t because they bore me.

      Whether I am for real or not isn’t up to you, or anyone else – it’s up to revenue I continue to generate buying, selling, brokering, and acquiring domains full time. I’m happy, my kid is happy, and my bank account is happy.

      As far as Flippa goes – they are their own company, I haven’t worked there in ages.

      And it’s spelled Hipster. 😉

      • Peter says

        Right on, Ali!
        Keep doing your thing!
        Let the Haters Hate.
        Re: Hypster : “And it’s spelled Hipster” LOL!

      • Abi says

        AliZandi let almost all of these 4600 domains go without making a dime. He’s a manic who thinks that the few flashes in the pan he was successful with buying low and selling high mean that he knows something others don’t.

        Now all he does is broker because his domain picker is broken.

  11. Rich says

    Ali,
    I think it is a very good tactic.The fact that you already got half of your money back in 2 months just proves that it’s working.
    I did the same thing with 1,000 .com.I bought them at $1.99 a name and i already sold 2 names for $1,980 each within 4 months.I got to admit i did not spend 200 hrs locating them.I just used a pattern that Chinese like.
    Both names i sold to China.
    Thanks for the post.

  12. Rich says

    Raymond@
    How many more years i have to wait for my comments not to be moderate by you until i’m worthy enough that they will post directly ?Really … i wanna know.Because it has been 8 years since i write here and with Michael was not an issue.

    • Raymond Hackney says

      All comments are moderated now, too much nonsense, it was either that or do away with comments.

  13. robert says

    I loved this promo, wish i had the bandwidth to take on more domains. I only did about 150

    BTW – if you post to Sedo – mark as Tucows to be eligible for fast transfer (after 60 days)

    and… dying laughing at mosquito post

  14. Jeff says

    First off congrats and testing. Can’t go wrong with afternic.

    Now having read this, I can’t imagine how your itemizing each single domain and showing this to IRS as inventory ? The drops. The amount of domains. An accounting nightmare unless you have a book keeper and or have countless hours in this.

    Kinda assume how it’s being done but will leave it as that. Many successes in this and off to races.

  15. Domains for sale says

    Dear Ali, thank for sharing your story with us!

    Quick question: you mentioned to have the process of bulk checking domains to have automated with a tool. Would that tool be for sale somewhere or published as open source code?

    Hope to see you in the next Domain Sherpa show, now that Andrew Rosener took over! 🙂

    – Jan de Wit