| Domain Trader Guide |
Getting Started
Buying and selling domain names looks like the easiest thing to do, but there
are many things to watch out for if you are new to the domain name market. DNF24 is
trying to protect new domainers by providing some useful information about
buying and selling domain names online.
Domain Name Value
The domain name market is a very complicated market
and many people lose a lot of money because they buy "valuable domain names"
from other domainers which turn out to be not so valuable at all. To help new
domainers, we have created a minimalistic guide to warn about common issues.
Marketing
Professional Domainers know how "the game" works. They are fully
aware of things like premium names, valuable characters and the overall market
prices. Domainers also know when the time to sell a domain name comes, which can
make things even more complicated.
Things you should ask the seller:
- Traffic statistics (if available)
- Age of the domain name
- Is or was the domain name banned by search engines
- Is or was the domain name banned by Adsense
- Is it a developed name or a parked name
- If parked, how much revenue did it create
Great Names vs Bad Names
If a domain name is really great, they speak for
themselves. For example: If you see a domain like ways.com, you know it's a
valuable name because it's a word. On the other hand, if you see a name like
wzyq.com and the seller starts explaining what the name means, it's probably a
good idea to stay away from it.
Short Domain Names
Short domain
names can be valuable, but only if they are "brandable" or extremely short
(1-3 characters). There are still many things to consider, such as the domain
extension (.com/.net/.org/.info/.name etc.), copyright and trademark issues etc.
If someone is offering aol.tld and you think it's a great domain name, think
again, as AOL's lawyers will most likely contact you within days to get the name
under their control. If you have any questions about short domain names, click
here to visit our short domain names topic or
ask your questions in our Help Center.
Sales Tricks
As in real life, there are many tricks people use to make
a domain name look more attractive. Such tricks are used by people who are
targeting newbies to get rid of their domain names.
Common Tricks
- Price Tag Trick
- Pagerank Trick
- Traffic Trick
-
Forum Trick
Price Tag Trick
The price tag trick is simple and used frequently by sellers. Sellers basically
start a new topic and post a domain name with a high price tag like US$ 2000.
They are not really expecting to sell for this price, but when they come back a
few days later, they will lower the price step by step to make it look like a
great deal.
Example: Domain1.com US$ 2000 => US$ 1500 => US$ 1000 =>
US$ 500
The seller is fully aware that his name won't sell for US$
2000 and his "reserve" will be most likely a much lower price than the last one
he/she posted. If you notice such topics, simply wait a few days for additional
"price drops" and you might get a nice domain for much less than it was
originally announced. There are exceptions where people really lower a price,
but 90% of such posts are really just tricks.
PageRank Trick
Many people sell domain names "with PageRank". PageRank reflects Google's view
of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables
and 2 billion terms. In reality, PageRank is a calculation of other sites
linking to a specific domain name, but that's another story. There are 11 ranks,
where 0 means no PageRank assigned and 10 is the highest and best PageRank
possible. The problem with PageRank is that it can be manipulated easily by
simply redirecting a new domain to a domain name with a high PageRank. Within a
few weeks, the redirected domain name will have the same PageRank as the target
domain.
This is also called "Fake PageRank". Some people try to sell such "Fake
PR" domain names, but you can easily spot such names. Simply visit Google.com
and search for "site:thedomain.com" (replace thedomain.com with the actual
domain). Most times you will find the content of the target domain in Google's
description and you can tell it's all fake. You can also try archive.org to have
a look at the domain's history (if available).
Traffic Trick
The traffic trick is another one to look out
for. There are many services offering traffic, but most of them simply send
automated programs to a web site to simulate traffic. This will look great in
the server statistics but is actually worth nothing. When buying a domain name based on
traffic stats, you should always ask for referral statistics to learn where the
traffic comes from. If most of the traffic shows without a referral web site, it's
most likely fake traffic.
Forum Trick
Many people are trying to sell "established" forums,
because such forums sell quickly. When interested in buying a forum you should
ask the seller the following questions:
- Was a paid forum posting service hired to "get the forum started"?
-
Were any automated programs used to create posts? (RSS Feeds, Yahoo Answers
API, etc)
- Is the content unique or was a script used to "grab" content
from other forums?
- How many times was the forum sold in the past, and
why?
- Is the software license included in the sale or not?
- Are
referrer statistics available to find out where the traffic comes from?
As you can see, there are many possible issues with buying forums because
there are many ways to make a forum look active when it's actually not. Forum
owners can use API's like the Yahoo! Answers API to generate literally unlimited
posts (even with unique usernames which are automatically created), hire
services to make paid posts to simulate activity and much more. There are even
scripts which fake active users by adding random usernames to the "Who is
online" area of a forum.
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