Valuing Generic Names with High Search Count Apart

Mac writes:

""Frank,
Names like Scubamasks.com (2056 Overture, 0 with extension, 32 per day Wordtracker) Without the direct type in traffic, the monetization is predicated on building out the site. Can you give me a glimpse of how you would evaluate this domain;  what would you pay for it now and what traffic would you expect without a build out?

Thanks for making your 5 year nap a power nap- please keep up the website insight.
 
Thanks,
Mac""

***FS*** Names like these have great value because they represent a sale-able item. This particular item is easy to ship and likely has a high manufacturer to retail margin. The Overture count is fairly robust but they are not updating that tool any longer so the data is not to be solely relied upon. Still, I expect this name to get 2-7 uniques a day organically (just a trickle). That said, diving is a huge business, there are lots of folks who manufacture and resell this product.  I would probably bid $8-12k in an auction at Snap for that..  but the name is worth 50-100k on a resale ..  The difference in wholesale to retail boils down to the 'time value' of your cash outlay before another buyer appears "or" before you develop that name into a functioning website for yourself. I love names like that one because there are very few of them in the grand scheme.. I mean, there are many hundreds of thousands or millions of terms that mean things,  but there are very few (relatively speaking) that can be developed into sites and even fewer relative to the amount of people and businesses in the world.  Hope this helps.

Comments

[steve]

And this is what I love about domaining, and the .co.uk space especially (which still has a long way until saturation point). You see a generic mentioned somewhere that you haven't considered before, and have the chance to go and register it.

Sure, the Scuba market may not be as large in the UK as it is in the US, but it should still pick up a trickle of type-ins and other traffic. Self-parked it can start earning me money whilst I finishing coding the forum section.

***FS*** Long live opportunity :)

[Al Vin]

Hi FS..

In other words, domains like ScubaMasks.com should be developed to really gain its highest value? But IMHO, developing it into a site just for scuba masks is too overly targeted and the type-ins will not really make it feasible to feast off its natural traffic. If I owned this name, I can think of selling it off to mask manufacturers but developing it wont really have good ROI.

Now, I am curios about your take on this because I incidently own ScubaDiving.net and assuming both ScubaMasks.com and ScubaDiving.net has the same trickle of type-ins, I would rather develop the .net.

I am always wanting to know what to do with generics with very little type-ins and overly targeted niche...hope you can help.

Thanks,
Al.

***FS*** I wouldn't automatically assume they have the same traffic although in this case they might.. development is something you need to pick the correct time for.. everything is always about development in the end.. but the question is timing.. If you developed three yrs a go you would have missed huge opportunities to acquire expiring names.. today, not so much, so you could develop or resell to a developer.

[adam]

woosh! 50-100k eh? This is another one of those PVDs (Perceived Value Domains)

You keep raising the break up value of my portfolio with posts like this. Keep it up Frank!

***FS*** If you have names like 'that' in your portfolio then I think you have something of real value Adam.. The thing is if you look hard at your list and your honest with yourself about it .. you probably don't have that many names that are like that one.. it's easy to get lost in the subtleties.. and I do it myslef.

[David Wrixon (aka Rubber Duck)]

The crazy thing is that you could almost certainly pick up the local language equivalent of these in the aftermarket for a couple of hundred bucks. They may never reach the levels of the English Version, but your ROI over the medium term is almost certainly going to be bigger by a factor of at least 10.

[Sahar Sarid]

"***FS*** If you have names like 'that' in your portfolio then I think you have something of real value Adam.. The thing is if you look hard at your list and your honest with yourself about it .. you probably don't have that many names that are like that one.. it's easy to get lost in the subtleties.. and I do it myslef."

Well said.

[JP]

".. it's easy to get lost in the subtleties.."
Frank, could you please give an example of this.

***FS** The answer to this is where the rubber hits the road.. it's where art and science intersect and it's subjective. I could spend hours talking about this.. Suffice it to say great names make great businesses.. It's why one person would pick ceilingfans.com over a name like whalewatching.com.. One ships products in boxes the other provides services. One can help you sell real estate (the guy looking to remodel with new fans may want to sell the home) the other can help you sell travel and hotels (whalewatchers will need a place to stay).. There are even more facets such the correct tense, the correct vernacular, search count, meaning , resonance.. It's deep and subjective.. But we all know names that have the B-factor when we see them -- and that B-Factor changes depending on external market demand. Wish I had a magic answer for you.

[Jamie]

Given that the Overture/Yahoo folks are not providing current data for that tool, what do you use to estimate traffic now?

you've probably covered this elsewhere but for some reason I can't find it..

***FS*** After 6 years I mainly go by instinct.. but still reference historical Overture counts from time to time to back up my gut.

[Rob]

Aside from Wordtracker you can also use for your keyword research the KeywordSpy http://www.keywordspy.com - a keyword research technology where you can also earn and even surpass what your competitors are making with Google Adwords and Overture. KeywordSpy gives you the key to their success: a good ad-campaign with the right keywords. KeywordSpy also has a free trial.

***FS*** Thanks for that :)

[Hilton Rutgers]

many domains are now turning to
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/ to get their domain scores.

With free access and even API for those serious domainers out, this is a must.

Cheers
Hilton