The Most Valuable Tool I Use Throughout My Entire Domain Buying/Selling Process

Category : Domain Names, Tips

Responses : 7 Comments

Being profitable in buying and selling domain names can take a lot of time.  Time to do research on what you are buying.  Time to do research on who to sell to.  Time to set up payments or receive payments.  Time to negotiate.  Time to keep abreast of the latest news and sales prices.  Time, time, time.  Unfortunately I don’t have 100 hours in a day and I do more then just domain name investing so I like to minimize my time expenditure, but only if I do not drop any quality of work.  There are a few tools that I use on both the buy side and sell side within the domain name profiting process.  All these tools are homegrown that cater specifically to my needs with the exception of one tool.  And this one tool saves me the most amount of time out of everything.

My Old Process

I used to go to Namejet everyday.  Filter, search, filter, search…  you know the drill if you’ve used it before.  Done with Namejet for the day, then I’d hop over to Snapnames and do the same thing.  Once done there I’d go to GoDaddy auctions and do the same thing.  This was worth doing because I was able to scour these sites and find great deals on domain names.  The only problem was it was so time consuming.  It could take up to 3 hours a day to do this.  I love the output I was getting but I needed to decrease the input (i.e. time component).

My New Process

What used to take me up to 3 hours before takes me no more then 30 minutes today and I lose no quality.  I use quite a few homegrown tools to help me makes my domain buying/selling process use less of my time, but the best tool I use I pay for.  The tool is Freshdrop (you can get a 7 day trial here).  What is Freshdrop?  It is an online based tool that combines all the expiring/deleting auctions from places like Namejet, Snapnames, GoDaddy, and more in one place and has a great set of filters that allows you to quickly scan everything based on whatever prerequisites interest you.  More then that, it also provides great information about each domain name like age, pagerank, DMOZ listed, and about 20 more things that you would need to gather manually since Namejet and company don’t provide this to you.  And one of my favorite features is that when you click on a domain within Freshdrop it gets added to your Watchlist on Freshdrop.  This way I can easily keep track of the domains that interest me without having to bid on them.  I wait until the last moment and then I bid on them.  This helps me TREMENDOUSLY keep the price down on domains a lot of times because I’m able to swoop in on at the last minute and be the only bidder on a domain.  I can’t give an exact figure of the amount of time and money I’ve saved by using Freshdrop, but I would be comfortable in saying annually I’d estimate it in the five figure range.

One thing I never understood about domain buyers is why if no one else has bid on a name at Namejet would you go and place a bid before the last possible moment.  There are hundreds of people that search Namejet daily and their only filter criteria is if a domain has a bid on it or not.  Once you place that bid on a domain you are giving that domain exposure to hundreds of lazy domainers out there.  I’d rather lay low, wait until the last minute, and either get the domain all to myself because I’m the only bidder, or if another guy or two is playing it the same way as me then I’m competing in the auction with 2 or 3 other guys instead of 50 or 60 other guys.

An Example

I was able to be the only bidder on an auction at Namejet last year for a domain name.  So I won the domain for $69.  No bidding or bidding war, no increased prices, no hassle, no having to sit at the computer and bid at the last 2 minutes of the auction.  This year I listed the same exact domain for sale on Namejet with no reserve.  I spent about 15 minutes to get a little exposure to the domain name so that it would get a bid or two because thats all you really need in order to get it on the radar of the majority and soon there was somewhere around 90 bidders on the domain.  The domain went to auction status and the sales price was a little over $3,000.  Take away the 15% auction commission fee and my initial cost and I had a solid $2,500 profit.

So the point of my example (in case you haven’t picked it up) is that I was able to easily find a good domain and by holding off until the last minute to place a bid on it I was able to buy it for $69 by being the only guy who found it.  If I bid it on earlier and gave the domain exposure then I would have had to pay $3,000 for it.  Domaining is not always this easy, but sometimes it can be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Ending Thoughts

The interface of Freshdrop the first time I used it was a little confusing… for about an hour or two, and then it’s simple as pie so don’t let it intimidate you.  A little time and effort and you’ll be a poweruser on your first day.

If you use Namejet, Snapnames, GoDaddy and you are not using Freshdrop you are wasting a ton of time and paying a lot more for domains then you should be.  This is without a doubt the most valuable tool I use throughout my entire domain buying/selling process.  If you won’t shell out the $0.66 cents per day that it costs (on average) to use Freshdrop then you probably shouldn’t be in the domain name game.  If you have a question on using Freshdrop drop a line below and I’ll share my two cents whilst giving you an answer.

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Comments

  1. How do I get exposure for a domain I am selling on Namejet?

     — Reply
    • A quick post on one or both of the main domain name forums takes 60 seconds and if the name is decent you’ll get at least a few bids.
      You can also try mentioning it in the comment section of a regular article of a popular domain blog post.
      And there’s also other forums out there on internet marketing and related where you may catch some eyeballs.
      You just need a few bids so when people apply their filters on Namejet it will show up on their screen.

       — Reply
  2. Going to take a closer look, this looks interesting, as i tried domaining a long time a go with some success (GenericDomainer) :-)., but got distracted by another shiny object. Tahnks for the great tips, will be browsing your sight for more info. Thanks again,

     — Reply
  3. What is the process to place a domain name on Namejet auction?

     — Reply
    • You would need to get in touch with the guys at Namejet and submit the domain name. If you are only submitting one domain it must be a very high quality one otherwise I would make an educated guess it will get rejected.

       — Reply
  4. I am interested in using Fresh drop. Could you please suggest some general search criteria for a new domainer using fresh drop?

     — Reply
    • Domain age, domain length, how many extensions the keyword is registered in. Those are a few that I like.

       — Reply