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If I needed to buy 100-200 domains right now...

by SantiSantana
14 replies
What would be the cheapest option?

The plan is to develop absolutely all of them over time but there cannot be any risk of someone buying them for reselling, so the plan is to buy all of them at once, place them on parking and start developing them one by one.

Any ideas on this would be welcome.
#buy #domains #needed
  • Profile picture of the author onSubie
    Why bother buying them all at once?

    They are not "precious" domains and can easily be replaced by another domain name that is equally not precious.

    Why would anyone buy and try and resell?

    You haven't really articulated why your domains are so much more special than the millions of other domains available.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve B
      Santana,

      As much as we all have great plans to develop many web sites, I can tell you from experience that it just won't happen. This forum is filled with posts about marketers planning an empire of sites only to change their direction when they see the work and effort that must go into a single site to get it ranking and drawing sufficient traffic to make it profitable.

      And then you must keep your site current, "fresh" and relevant over time. It's almost impossible to do a good job with more than 3-5 sites you may be working on.

      And just remember, you have to keep paying recurring yearly registration fees to keep your sites active. Parking them isn't going to cover those fees in most cases. If you have 200 domains and you pay $10 each to renew them, that's a $2,000 expense every year. Are you ready for that?

      Good luck, but I think you're overly optimistic about your future in site development.

      Steve
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      • Profile picture of the author suggs
        Thats a heck of a lot of pressure your going to put your self under registering that many domains! and some hefty registration / renewal fees.

        I remember a few years back when i had a number of domains / sites on the go its a heck of a lot of work to keep on top of them all, even a simple update across all your sites will end up a mammoth task.

        And with the way google is nowadays you really need to add quality to a site to to see any rewards, and thats something you can not do with that many domains, trust me i speak from experience.

        id suggest picking one or two domains from your list, build them out and get them earning, once you get them earning regular money use the profit to register and create some more, rinse and repeat..

        Its so much better to put 100% effort in to one site rather than 1% effort in to 100 sites!
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      • Profile picture of the author EricRand
        Originally Posted by Steve B View Post

        It's almost impossible to do a good job with more than 3-5 sites you may be working on.

        And just remember, you have to keep paying recurring yearly registration fees to keep your sites active. Parking them isn't going to cover those fees in most cases. If you have 200 domains and you pay $10 each to renew them, that's a $2,000 expense every year. Are you ready for that?
        Steve
        I wish I had no idea what Steve was talking about.

        My maximum number of domains (entertainment industry related) at one time was 179.

        Even though they were all "good" names and worth a lot, parking didn't help out at all. 2 of the names were my profitable business sites. Paying the extra $1800 yearly to hold them sucked big time! I figured it out after paying more than $5K in holding fees, actively sold my names, gave some up....

        I made some decent money on them ultimately (~$11K), even after holding costs. Luckily, I realized that domaining wasn't ever going to be my main business! It is about utility. We are best when we spend time (and money) on the most profitable pursuits.

        Internet marketing of specific products is almost always more profitable than spending time trying to sell many different items. It destroys your focus. If I had spent half of the time and money that I "wasted" on domains and holding costs on my core business, I would have easily made twice the profits. I know it because I did exactly that the next year.

        "Domaining" can be profitable, but the problem is each domain is unique and usually has a different ideal customer. So you have to spend too much time trying to find the right customer who would be willing to give you the best payoff.

        Advice: Find the exact thing that you love (and that others are willing to spend lots of money on...) and spend your time promoting it. It is hard to fail doing that.

        EricRand
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        • Profile picture of the author SantiSantana
          Let's see if I can explain what I'm trying to achieve without giving everything away. Let's say I want to setup a website about an oscar winner (let's suppose it's last Winner Mathew McConaughey) to sell memorabilia about him.

          Let's say I find His name is available ( and that it is legal to acquire it of course, which I know it is not, this is just an exercise). Suddenly I realize I can do that with every oscar winner out there. So I start thinking "maybe I could buy Click and do a separate category for each winner".

          Then I get thinking " but if i could acquire as many as possible of the winners own names I could hold onto those (perhaps by temporarily parking them) and develop oscarwinners.com, perhaps turning each winners name into a separate site selling the stuff as well.

          Let's Imagine for some reason I believe there is enough potential on the idea that whenever a possible competitor snifs the chance to copycat it all he has to do to make my life harder is start buying thoe domains.

          So buying and parking those domains is mostly about making sure The main site I want to develop doesn't get attacked that way.

          What happens is simply that I see the arrange of domains I'm looking at as a possibility for a website each on their own ( hence a previous thread I did recently in which I asked whether to do a single big site or many smaller ones creating a de facto network.

          I know it all sounds like a weird attempt but something tells me that if I can get the domains on offer I could at least give it a o for a year. If after that don't see the main website doing its desired effect I could simply put it down to experience.

          I hope I have explained it in a way that everyone more or less gets what I'm getting at.

          Thanks in advance for all your help.
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          • Profile picture of the author DWolfe
            Since you want to buy that many domains go with the best and buy from Name Cheap. You want to deal with a reliable company. You could also try godaddy but you may end up paying a price when all of a sudden the domain name you want is gone.

            If you are trying to do that with any major industry such as Oscar Winners (Movies) , Sports Champions, Emmy's. Grammys (Music) etc. You may find a few notices from lawyers telling you that your domain name is in violation of a trade mark.
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  • Profile picture of the author seobro
    Hi Santi:
    Try with only 20 and see how it goes. There are plenty of great domain names expiring every year.

    Hi Steve:
    And then you must keep your site current, "fresh" and relevant over time. It's almost impossible to do a good job with more than 3-5 sites you may be working on.
    I have many times more than seven. Plan is to get a domain name. Then you create content and get it to rank and sell it later on. Often, customers want a track record of at least one year. Let us say you sell 20 web sites at $2,000 on average every year. That is enough money to live on.
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    100-200 domains is alot to be sitting on. I hope you get sales and money from them right away because the motivation to keep going on with this plan will die quickly. Just sell something super simple (like an ebook or an affiliate marketing offer(s)), make a business out of it, and relax in the sun. Do you know how much work is ahead of you for 100-200 domains? By the time you have all 200 to the income level you want them at.... you might have already been 20 years deceased.
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  • Profile picture of the author DubDubDubDot
    Are you absolutely certain that 200 domains is better than having the project under one roof?

    If this project involves "gurus" telling you that exact match domains will drive free traffic to your sites, I would rethink that plan.
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  • Profile picture of the author Tom Addams
    Simple answer: Godaddy.

    Lengthier answer: You should look into turning PARKING revenue while these domains are sat around gathering dust. There are ways to actually earn well from parking, whether or not the domains have type-in traffic just yet, and this will actually end up more than covering the cost of your domains - well, it should. I will say, though, while I'm a big domain purchaser myself, and do develop for a living, you are usually better off throwing web development into ONE project at a time - one BIG project. It's a big subject, but those are my initial thoughts.

    GRM
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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
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    I've seen more than one person buy that many domains and then get overwhelmed with the work and not get them developed. In one year, it's renewal time and they probably won't make much parking.

    Buy five. Develop five. Buy five more. etc.

    It's far more lucrative to own 5 sites to resell that are making some money than it is to sit on a bunch of unused domains. Develop them and then promote them and make an income with them and then flip them for a much higher price.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tom Addams
      Originally Posted by sbucciarel View Post

      I've seen more than one person buy that many domains and then get overwhelmed with the work and not get them developed. In one year, it's renewal time and they probably won't make much parking.

      Buy five. Develop five. Buy five more. etc.
      Without type-in traffic, they'll make zilch. So the trick is to get that type-in traffic.

      Overall, though, I agree with the advice about getting overwhelmed. And it isn't so much as getting overwhelmed, it's about how spreading yourself too thin can have an impact on the quality of the websites you produce; you may find yourself diluting the quality.

      GRM
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  • Profile picture of the author KenW3
    I've known of several companies buying larger quantities of names to lock up a niche or prevent competition. The process is valid, and I've done it myself. The classic story is someone coming up with a new service for the U.S. market, then buying all 50 dot com state names and the larger city names associated with the niche.

    For a site I will be branding, I want the 4 primary gTLDs (at least), and often a couple ccTLDs just to play it safe. For 100 names, a grand a year to protect a brand is an investment in the future for a company.

    Any registrar is going to offer you a discount once you go past 50 or 100 names. The lowest price (currently) is the GoDaddy Discount Domain Club. It has an annual fee, but the rates are excellent.
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    I say... forget what everyone else says.

    IF you know you can handle the work load, and you have already had experience and a process to monetize each site then why wouldn't you just get them all?

    You can probably pretty easily handle 75 websites a year as a one man show. If you have a team, then it isn't unreasonable to be able to handle 200 projects. In fact, you will make more than the cost to register the domain even if it doesn't turn a profit.

    The smart thing to do.... 200 domains registered....200 sites.

    Keep your top 20 (10%) revenue generating websites. The rest, sell them. It's not worth keeping a website and staying on top of content and maintenance when it isn't going to earn anything. Sell the crap websites on flippa, or even here, people will easily pay $100-200 even on a site that isn't earning money, or very little money.

    I have a ridiculous amount of domain names. I've developed more client sites than most web designers and even firms have designed and the domains I've developed for my own use have easily doubled or tripled that amount. That being said, I still have a few hundred domain names, that have been collecting dust. Some I've had for 6 or 7 years but continue to pay the yearly renewal and will likely continue doing so. I can absorb the renewal fees... but it's not going to be easy for everyone.

    If you can do it.... do it. Go big. If you aren't sure you can... then don't waste the time... money is easy to make, but time you will never get back.
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