PokerRooms.co.uk $22,000
Bandwidth.co.uk $12,225
BestSlots.co.uk $ 4,483
eStore.co.uk $ 4,401
YourSpace.co.uk $ 4,075
Poker-Sites.co.uk $ 3,260
Teckentrup.co.uk $ 2,445
EducationalFurniture.co.uk $ 2,445
4Sight.co.uk $ 1,630
AutoFinders.co.uk $ 1,223
eCamp.co.uk $ 1,100

Some nice solid sales.

Perhaps the most important event this month was ICANN’s decison to relax the rules about naming domain name extensions. Now anyone with enough cash can buy their own domain extension. So we could easily see new top level domains like .sex, .london and .eBay. Is this a disaster waiting to happen or will this open up the pool of available domains. See what expert domainer Elliot Silver has to say on this development  and see what other people are saying about ICANN’s decision in this post on TheDomains.com blog.  

Meanwhile, the Self Made Minds blog has a post that offers some tips for domainers thinking of leasing rather than selling their domains. Once you have read this, read this post about domain leasing agreements and then look at leaseadomain.co.uk/. This is all very early in the development of this market, and I would recommend that you get yourself a good lawyer before taking the plunge in this highly speculative area. This is one area novice domainers should avoid completely.

Next, here is a short introduction in how to use the Wordpress blogging platform to build sites that actually look like sites, rather than blogs. This will be especially useful for domainers who want to develop domains into minisites, for example.

Many domainers are taking their best domains and developing them into fully fledged websites. These new internet entrepreneurs have learned how they can make a decent income by either selling their domain with its established website for good money or by developing their domains and enjoying good regular incomes. I like reading about successful internet entrepreneurs and this article How I Built A Six Figure Internet Income about the income potential of blogs, from the Financial Hack blog, is quite inspiring.

Finally, this post about domain name appraisals on the Domain Junkie blog is well worth reading. It compares domain name appraisals from Moniker and Sedo and recommends obtaining appraisals from two trusted sources before negotiating a price for a domain.

So, how long will it be before all LLLL.co.uk domains are registered?

That question is hard to answer but there are a number of market drivers that mean, to me, that four letter .co.uk domain names may sell out relatively quickly. Importantly, domainers who missed the opportunity to make profits with LLLL.com domains are chasing other opportunities such as LLLL.net and LLLL.org domains and it looks like they are next to sell out. After that it could be LLLL.co.uk s turn.

There are also plenty of brandable four letter .co.uk domains left and they are steadily being bought up as the available pool of decent domain names generally gets ever smaller.

Clearly, four letter domains with less popular letters such as Q,V,X,Y and Z are likely to be the last to be sold. However, many domains names with such letters are already developed into fully fledged websites.

Here are a few developed sites I found where at least one of the four letters is Q,V,X,Y or Z:-

QXYZ.co.uk  is an international technology firm

ZXZX.co.uk is a programmers personal website

VWD.co.uk (only 3 letters, though) is a lottery syndicate website

TOXI.co.uk is a developers portfolio website

VISN.co.uk is the website of Vision Internet

These were found with just a brief random search around the net, and I would have found far more if I’d searched for longer. 

Could it be that within say 12 to 18 months all .co.uk domains will be registered? In my own personal view I think we could see them all registered within 18 months although many domainers disagree. Then we will see prices moving slowly upwards, although it is unlikely that these rises will be massive.

So what do you think. Do you think UK LLLL.co.uk domains will be fully registered soon? Do you think they will never sell out? Are you buying four letter .uk short domains? Tell us what you think, below.

I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of good .org.uks left. I know they are not worth much yet but do you think they will be a good long term investment for further down the line? The same with .me.uks as well.

Domaining.org.uk gets readers from all over the world so its worth explaining a bit of background first.  

In brief, .org.uk and .me.uk are two of a number of UK Second Level Domain Names and the best known is .co.uk. – me.uk is for personal domains and org.uk is for non-commercial organisations. However, like the Top Level Domain .org, over time .org.uk and .me.uk have been used for a wide variety of purposes and in a variety of enterprises.

It is true to say that domainers, generally, prefer Top Level Domains such as .com and .net although demand for country code domains like .de (Germany), .cn (China) and .co.uk domains is also quite strong.

Compared to .co.uk demand for .org.uk domain names is relatively weak and I would guess that the main market for .me.uk domains is domain name speculators and some website developers.

Sales prices of .org.uk domain names have not been that encouraging and are far below .co.uk prices. There is no reason to think this is ever going to change, at least in the forseeable future. This means that, in my opinion,  all but the most generic and sought after keyword rich .org.uk domains are going to be of interest to domainers and end users.

Reported sales on the website DomainPrices.co.uk, which lists reported sales prices of uk domains, are worth looking at and back this up. (Of course, these are ‘reported sales’ and many, many sale prices are never revealed.) 

Most of the top sales of .org.uk domains reported on Domain Prices, are:-

Betting.org.uk £1,351 ( $2,700) May 2007

Mobile.org.uk £675 ($1,350) Oct 2006

Locksmith.org.uk £510 ($1,020) Jan 2008

Counselling.org.uk £370 ($740) Mar 2007

Apply.org.uk £250 ($500) April 2007 

There was one reported sale of a .me.uk on the Domain Prices site – HouseInsurance.me.uk which sold for £1,000 ($2,000) in December 2007.

I believe that domainers considering adding .org.uk and .me.uk domains to their portfolios should understand that only the most generic domains and sought after keyword rich names have a reasonable chance of appreciating in value. However, they are likely to be worth much more if developed into websites.

Domainers determined to buy .org.uk or even .me.uk should concentrate on buying domains on topics that people are searching for and are in demand such as business and commercial topics and, more generally, domains that can be used for business/commercial websites.   Brandable domains should be avoided at all costs. Also, in my opinion .org.uk and .me.uk domains are unlikely to appreciate as fast as domains with more sought after extensions.

Having said this, it is true that there are many more ‘good’ domain names available to register with these extenstions.

In terms of search engines optimization, a key word rich .me.uk will rank as well as a .co.uk domain, containing the same keywords, in the same order. Furthermore, because Google ignores hyphens, keyword-keyword.me.uk is viewed by Google as the same as keywordkeyword.co.uk. So, many domainers are establishing ‘minisites’ and niche sites on domains with these extensions and will register and develop the hyphenated version of the domain name if the non-hyphenated version is not available. Minisites can produce an encouraging monthly income and, by developing substantial numbers of these sites, they can become a significant revenue stream, in addition to any appreciation in the value of the domain. However, the amount of earnings can vary enormously depending on the topic. I have produced an introduction to developing minisites and niche sites which you can find here.

So although prices of these types of domain names will rise as the general tide of domain name prices rise, I believe that they will always be the most problematic of domains and most illiquid. This means that only a very small proportion will be worth buying and keeping for the long term. Furthermore, it takes time and experience to be able to identify those domains with potential.

The strength of these domains is the fact that they are relatively cheap if bought at registration fee prices and, if developed, can frequently be made to rank well in the search engines. However, whether building and monetizing one (or two or three) large websites is more profitable than building a substantial portfolio of minisites, or niche sites, is a matter of considerable debate.

So what do you think? Have you had success selling .org.uk and .me.uk domains. Are you holding on to the best .org.uk and me.uk domains in the hope that they will appreciate in value? Have you any experiences of developing minisites? Share your thoughts below……..

Part one of this two part article was a basic introduction to the need for effective domain name valuation. Part two below, discusses concepts, tools and resources available to assist in domain name valuation.

In the first part of this article the practical reasons for valuing a domain were explored. Now we come to the heart of the matter – domain valuation tools and techniques.

I have covered the factors that should be considered when valuing a domain name - else where on this blog. These factors include the length of the domain name, the domain name extension (e.g. net, org etc) and the amount of traffic it receives.

Appraisals

Appraisals are frequently criticised within the domaining industry and while appraisals from legitimate companies such as Sedo.co.uk might be worthwhile a great many domainers never need to use them.

There are two types of appraisals………

Paid appraisals, such as from Sedo.co.uk. You can find out what a Sedo appraisal looks like in this post from the highly recommended Self Made Minds blog.

Free appraisals from discussion forums and from appraisal sites. You can find domain name appraisal sections on most domaining forums. For example, there is an appraisal sections here at DomainState and here at the UK domain name discussion forum AcornDomains.

Estibot.com provides free instant appraisals. When I tried it tonight Estibot appraised the domain name of this site – domaining.org.uk – at $180 and valued the site taking traffic into account at $640. 

Valiations based on sales of similar domains

One way of attempting to estimate the value of a domain is to consider sales of similar domains. There are many sites containing sales data. Website DNJournal lists weekly reported domain name sales and ‘year to date’ sales data. Afternic.com lists salse made through their site  and reported UK domain name sales can be found at DomainPrices.co.uk. Namebio.com is another excellent resource.

Discussions on domain name valuationThere are many discussions in forums and blogs on domain name valuation techniques. Here is an interesting thread from NamePros.com discussion forum, from 2005 which covers the topic well, and here is a quite old (2002) but still interesting discussion on domain name valuation, from Webmanster World forum. [The prices quoted are particularly out of date but the general concept is worth looking at.] In this discussion thread from the AcornDomains.co.uk domain name discussion forum a representative from domain name sales website Sedo.com provides a particularly valuable insight into how they go about valuing domains.

Other good stuff

You can check a websites backlinks with a number of sites, including www.backlinkwatch.com, www.backlinkfinder.com and perhaps the best known, www.MarketLeap.com. You can also see a history of all the websites ever built on any domain by entering the domain name into the search box at Internet Archives Wayback Machine. Finally, I’ll conclude with this article from internet entrepreneur Tyler Cruz on the Top 10 Reasons People Overprice Domains.

This is Part 2 of a series on valuing domain names. Part one can be found here. 

Do you have thoughts about valuing domains?  How would you work out how much a domain is worth? What do you think of domain name appraisal services – cool or rip off? Share your thoughts below…………………

While this article is aimed at more novice domainers it will be useful to experienced domainers who have little knowledge of this niche. I decided to write this article after researching the revenue potential of forums.

In this article, I provide some background information about how forums are developed and monetized and I think this will be of interest to domainers who need to buy or sell forum domains. Armed with information in this article domainers may be better placed to negotiate effectively with end users when selling forum domain names. Domainers will be better placed to negotiate down sellers who ask unrealisticly high prices for their forum domain names, while being better able to justify the asking prices for their own forum domain names. It also provides a brief introduction to forum development and will be of interest to domainers looking at the opportunities in developing forum domains.

Forum domain names ought to be big money makers! This is because:-

• forum software is free,
• website content is developed by site visitors,
• over time this content will be of considerable volume,
• the content is regularly updated which is a benefit in terms of search engine optimisation,
• there are many potential revenue streams such as Adsense and many others

The reality is very different but the reasons why are more complex than you might think.

Revenue: Forum owners argue that because their visitors are interested in the forum, and interacting with other forum members, smaller proportions of visitors click on the forum’s ads than visitors to other types of sites. This means that forum earnings are generally modest, as discussed here and here, for example. The reasons why this might be the case are discussed in this post from the Admin Zone Forum.

Forum owners resort to advertising to cover running costs and many are content with making a modest surplus out of thier forum. Some even return this surplus to members of their forum in the form of competition prizes and incentives.

Additionally, the amount of revenue generated by a forum is influenced by the forums discussion topics. Where the site is monetized by Adsense there is a wide divergence between the sums earned from high paying and low paying clicks on ads - business / finance ads produce more revenue per click than pets. 

A small number of forum owners offer premium memberships. These can generate significant revenues but are generally only viable on larger, more popular discussion forums. 

For domainers, the most important thing to bear in mind is that forums are cheap to set up but frequently only start to make significant revenue when they are popular and this can take a significant period of time (perhaps up to a year or more).

Costs: Forum software such as phpbb and SMF are perhaps two of  the best known free forum software packages. vBulletin is another popular forum software package, although it is not free. Altogether, I would guess that the vast majority of discussion forums are developed using one of these three packages.

Forums also require a hosting package that supports the php programming language and a MySQL database. Hosting packages that provide these facilities are likely to be slightly more expensive than those that don’t and larger forums may be very intensive users of server resources, which may also incur extra costs. 

Content:  Google loves regularly updated site content, and the pages of content produced by site visitors is a great benefit. However, early on in the life of a forum there is unlikely to be much content and in the ’start up’ phase of developement most significant content is frequently produced by the forum owner.  

It takes time, energy and luck before forums reach the size that allow the site owner to take a step back from intensively producing content.

Motivation: Generally, forum developers do not establish forums with profit in mind. Forum developers have a passion for their subject and work hard to set up communities that form around their chosen topic.   By setting up a forum, forum owners have made a comittment to work on their forum site for weeks, months and years. Obviously the domain name they chose is vitally important to them and this will help determine the selling price of forum domains. It is also worth saying that developers release value from their forums by selling their developed forums on the open market, although determining a forum’s market value may be a problem. Forum owner and expert on forum development, Martin Reed, discusses today how much forums are worth on his forum owner’s blog CommunitySpark .com .

Forum domain valuations: Forum domains rarely earn the fantastic sales prices reached by generic and some brandable domains. However, forum domain names are marketable, are frequently sought after and can sell for a good profit. (Especially if bought at registration fee). Notable forum domain name sales include Forums.co.uk in 2006 for £5,000 (around $10,000) and more recently SportForum.com for just over £2,600 ($5,300) and  CarInsuranceForum.org for around £1,200 ($2,400).

Forum, chat and talk domain names: In my opinion, [keyword] + ‘forum’ is preferable to [keyword] + ‘forums’, but not everyone agrees. Hypenated forum domains are generally unlikely to be worth much. Domainers should expect [generic keyword] + forum(s) + .com domain names to be most sought after of all. Domainers need to know that while ‘forum’/ ‘forums’ is preferred, the words ‘chat’ and ‘talk’ are often acceptable alternatives to the words forum or forums such as in ‘cardschat.com’ and ‘webhostingtalk.com’. 

Conclusions

In conclsion, I think there will be demand for forum domains for as long as there are people developing forums. The best forum domains are probably worth holding on to for the long term until you find the right end user. In the meantime develop it as a forum, if you can, or set up a minisite to off-set hosting costs. 

The million dollar UK domain name. Perhaps the biggest news item of recent weeks is that the sale of Cruises.co.uk broke the record for the most expensive UK domain name. The buyer, who also owns cruise.co.uk,  paid in the region of $1 million, which is about £560,000.

Next – here is a question. Anyone heard that there might be a recession? Well there has been a lot of speculation about how a possible recession might affect domain names. At the time of writing it seems like the majority of economic commentators think there is a good chance that we will slip into a prolonged recession. So if it does happen what might be the possible impacts on our domaining activities. Paul Sloan writing in the US business journal Fortune Magazine says that domain names may be recession proof. I dont think he is right and neither does Mark Jeftovic, from easyDNS.com. His appraisal of the possible impacts is well worth reading.

King Domainer Rick Schwartz had a cool interview in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald    

Social networking site MySpace recently won what might become a landmark decision after it won a case against the owner of MySpace.co.uk. Importantly, the owner obtained the domain many years before the site MySpace was created.Scott from the entrepreneurs blog Self Made Minds is an active domainer with some great names in his portfolio. He recently blogged about an domain name appraisal he received from domain name sales site SEDO.co.uk and reproduces the appraisal, which makes interesting reading. It is interesting to see what a Sedo appraisal takes into account. Scott is kind enough to share his domaining strategies on his blog. Here he taks about turning down an offer of $57,000 for a few of his domain names. Finally, domainers who use eBay for buying and selling domains will be interested to read how eBay now stops sellers leaving negative feedback for buyers. Whether this is a good idea that will improve the user experience or just lead to a increase in non – paying bidders remains to be seen.

What do you think is best for an end-user with a limited budget to buy: a spectacular term in .net or .org or a so-so term in .com?

Now the question Jeff raises is one that will become more common as the world wide demand for domain names grows.  The attraction of ‘good’ names in lesser (read cheaper) extensions is easy to understand. However, cheaper does not always mean better.

I will assume that the end-user is some sort of business start up - lets say a bricks and mortar business establishing their first website.

The short answer is that it depends on the names they are considering and it depends on the business.

In my opinion there are a number of factors which need to be taken into account when choosing between domain names with either .com or .net/.org.

Non .com extensions will leak traffic to the .com version of that domain name. Every business set up on a dot org and dot net domain will lose a proportion of their traffic to the  dot com version of that domain name, although the amount of that leak will be difficult to predict. 

The leak occurs because customers/ potential customers will frequently recall the name of the site and add ‘.com’ almost instinctively, unless they recall that it is on a relatively unusual extension .net, .org etc.

Inevitably, the more the .net or .org site is marketed, the more traffic is sent to the .com, however, the problem is that the .com domain may well resolve to a competing business’s website.  

Some businesses are willing to live with that loss (perhaps because the .net is a relevant, memorable generic, for example) – for them the .net or .org is a viable option.

However, without a compelling reason like the one mentioned above, I would argue that a business on a limited budget just cannot afford to develop a site using a .net or .org domain name.  It is as simple as that.

Additionally,  there are good .com domains still available at under $10,000 at the moment on the secondary market. If that sounds like a lot of cash, I suggest that $10K will not sound excessive when you look at the cost of placing one decent sized advert in any reasonably large circulation newspaper, journal or the like. 

Finally, there are still unregistered .com domains available and the fear of buying so-so domains needs to be put into perspective. The ’so-so’ domains of today may be the sought after domains of tomorrow. Contrary to what a lot of people think, all the best domains have NOT been registered. Three word domain names are becoming more common and we are going to see a lot more of these in future as one and two word generics become harder to find, or become relatively expensive.

End users will need to weigh up the pros and cons of developing sites on a spectacular .net against developing a so-so .com. Clearly, there are a number of factors that need to be considered when deciding the best course of action. The information in this article can help businesses in this situation to devloped an informed opinion on which course of action is best for them.  

So, in my opinion the .com will almost always be the better option for someone in this position – but what do you think? 

However, one area of domain names that is least likely to change is the fundamentals that support the internet addressing system. By that I mean the existing system of domain names and domain name extensions – the fundamental way that people navigate the internet.

It is not perfect system by any means – but in many ways we are stuck with it. While it is difficult to see how internet navigation will change in any fundamental way (were are stuck with domain names and domain name extensions for some time, I would think) there is at least one trends that I see emerging that domainers need to consider.

The .com domain name extension is by far the most easily recognised and understood domain name extension of all. For many, possibly most people their online surfing experience is limited to websites with a .com extension or the extension for the country they live in. The .net, .tv or .mobi extensions mean little to many people and I suspect that the problem is greatest with older users, and users in countries where internet usage is much lower than that of the US and UK.

Dot com is known worldwide – it is effectively a global brand – and this advantage gives it a dominant position that puts it far ahead of any other domain name extension. That is unlikely to change. As a consequence .net and .org as well as other extensions will never be viewed in the same light as .com, except for the purposes of search engine optimisation (which is not covered in this article). In addition, if you have a site that is not built on a dot com domain, it may be harder to market the site. This is because people who are looking for your site but don’t remember its name are likely to type in the dot com version of the domain name first. Having said that, there will always be demand for memorable, short, descriptive and compelling domains, regardless of the extension.

So, to put it simply, dot com will continue to be ‘king’ for the foreseeable future. What does that mean for domainers? Three things, I think-

• If your domain name portfolio contains names without the .com extension be aware that they are likely to be worth only a small fraction of the .com version.
• I believe that many domainers are avoiding non dot coms for the reasons mentioned in this article (except for premium generics)
• When valuing domain names be sure to factor in the unique characteristics of .com domains, as outlined below.

Having said that, I am still very optimistic about the .uk domain space, and I am encouraged by the healthy sales being reported. For this reason I will continue to seek premium generics in the .uk ccTLD.

To start off I really enjoyed DNJournal.com’s great article on the life of domainer and NewYork.com owner Leyland Hardy. It makes great reading.

I was pleased to see a report from DomainNews.com about a recent survey of UK marketing professionals about their use of the .co.uk ccTLD. I was reported that:-

.co.uk is the Internet domain of choice for 60% of UK marketers, an independent online survey has found. The survey showed that of those companies that maintain a .co.uk domain, 83% have chosen it as their primary domain.

Basically, the .co.uk ccTLD is a strong brand, so thats very good news!

Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal discussed a new facility in Google Adwords that permits the blocking of domain parking pages. He writes that Google Adwords is  

running limited testing of a feature which lets its advertisers block domain parking sites which their AdWords ads will be served on; specifically ‘Domain Ads’ and ‘Error Page Ads.

Quite rightly he goes on to advise advertiesrs to think carefully before blocking domain parking sites as the parked domain could be a site with type in traffic that converts well. Nevertheless, Google has put doubt into peoples mind about the quality of traffic from parked pages. Could this be a mistake that Google might regret? As the Search Engine Journal article suggests, parking companies may simply look for ads from paid search companies. I will be watching this story to see how things develop!

Michael Gilmour has recently started a series on domaining called Domaining 101.  Mark Fulton of DotSauce also posted an article covering domain name investment called Domain Name Investing 101. Both will be invaluable to newer domainers.

CNN discusses the future IDNs. IDNs present a great opportunity for domainers with the skills to exploit them. Frank Schilling posts his response to this article, here 

Finally, I have added a new page to this site listing all the domain name internet discussion forums (20+) so far. Check the Page/ Article list in the sidebar, and visit the forum listing page to make sure that your favourite forum is on there – and if I’ve missed it out leave a comment and I will add it in.