LLLL.coms, LLLL.nets, other LLLL domains — where is the future of LLLL’s? Will LLLL domains make great long term investments? Will end user demand increase in the future as internet penetration increases? How will higher quality LLLL’s compare to lower quality LLLL’s? Renewal fees currently account for a large portion of the value of most LLLL’s — can we expect that to change in the future? I guess what I’m trying to say is can we expect LLLL’s to follow the path of LLL domains?

This question gets asked quite often on domain name forums by newer members who I guess think more experienced members have all the answers. Now it’s impossible to say with certainty what will happen to LLLL.coms, however I’ll elaborate more in this post about how I see LLLL.coms and how I think we need to look at LLLL.coms to determine whether they deserve to have a place in our domain name portfolio.

First things first, while LLLL.com is a nice domainer term which means 4 letter .com, the similarities between many of the four letter domains end there. Have you ever heard a new domainer ask what the future was for dictionary domains? How much is there really  in common between a category killer like Stocks.com and a much more obscure dictionary word, such as Megalomaniac.com? Would prices falling on dictionary domains of comparable quality to Megalomaniac.com necessarily impact category killers like Stocks.com? Of course not. One is in a completely different league than the other.

That’s the way I see the LLLL.com market to a certain extent — the domain I’m blogging this on is a 4 letter .com, it also received upwards of 3000 uniques/month between development/promotion undertaken by the previous owner and direct navigation traffic. Is there much in common with an ordinary LLLL.com? Other than being 4 letters in length, I would say no. Something like CASH.com, LOVE.com, DATE.com, FISH.com, etc (yes I deliberately didn’t mention adult terms) is of obvious value — not because it has 4 letters, rather because they all receive plenty of traffic, would make plenty of revenue if parked, and really are category killer domains which someone could easily create a business around (eg. Hotels.com).

I thought it was quite funny earlier this year when Pizza.com was reported sold and some less experienced domainers went on a pizza domain buying binge. Some other pizza domains are of course good — say, CheesePizza.com, Pizzeria.com, or Pizzas.com, however these weren’t what people were buying, rather, they were buying whatever-pizza-domain-I-can-still-get-for-regfee.com. Any chance of getting an enduser on that? Now relating that to LLLL.coms, what’s there in common between a name like my LLLL.com and a name like XZQJ.com? One receives highly targeted traffic, the other doesn’t. One has meaning, the other doesn’t.

I often talk about LLLL.coms and how I see them as great long term investments — I never expected them to rocket up as fast as they did, nor do I expect many people did, otherwise we’d have all been taking out huge loans and buying as many as we could possibly afford back when they were regfee. What happened afterwards was a market correction, one which despite taking many by surprise, was justified. While I do sometimes buy domains hoping to flip them and I won’t deny having flipped more domains than most in 2008, that’s hardly why I initially invested in short domains. I saw an opportunity, I capitalized on that opportunity. Too many domainers nowadays are just looking for a quick buck. I’ve said this many times lately because it really is what I’ve been seeing. What’s wrong with holding a domain for a few years if necessary to see the return you want? When I say this, by no means am I encouraging anyone to invest or continue to invest (through renewal fees) in domains you don’t believe in hoping one day they’ll magically pay off — that’s not what I’m suggesting here, rather, what I’m suggesting is that you carefully look at the short domains (and the same can be said about other domains) you’ve picked up over the years and carefully evaluate what you should keep, what you should sell, and what you should let drop (eg. what’s not worth taking the time to try and sell).

We’re all different, we all have different goals, we’ll all have different opinions on what’s worth dropping and what’s worth keeping. I’m slowly building out my portfolio more towards domains which are either development friendly or make money on their own. Why pay $7900 for an LLL.com when I could buy a domain like this one with that money and develop it into a website which will eventually make me money? But development takes time you say? So does sitting on a forum chatting for hours, however many of us  seem to find plenty of time to do that too. I like talking about domains and spend at least a couple hours a day on Namepros talking about domains — what better way to make some money off that time spent on Namepros than to put up a few domain blogs discussing what I spend my time talking about on Namepros in greater detail than I originally did on Namepros?

Elliot had a great post on Elliot’s Blog awhile back (sorry, couldn’t find the exact post link, been awhile since I read it) about how he preferred blogging versus contributing in forums. It made a lot of sense to me — a blog is forever. People can and will come across this post on search engines, months, maybe even years after it’s been written. There are so many posts on domain name forums that even quality posts are often soon forgotten. Now I like Namepros and won’t be abandoning it, however Elliot’s post on this topic did get me thinking about how I could create a more lasting contribution.

Now before I stray too much off topic, I just wanted to finish talking about how radically different the highest quality LLLL.coms are from the lowest quality ones. An LLLL.com which receives traffic, produces revenue, and is pronounceable is, in many cases, almost as good as a dictionary word — one will find that many of the strongest pronounceable LLLL.coms are indeed dictionary words in one language or another. It’s not usually all that hard to tell… I don’t speak Spanish myself, however after coming across the relatively large number of searches being reported on Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery for DATO.com, a domain I was considering purchasing earlier this year, I decided to do some more research into the name. This seems to be the case with a lot of the stronger pronounceable LLLL.coms which are receiving traffic — they mean something to somebody. In the case of DATO.com, I soon found out it meant “data” in Spanish — pretty good name considering how expensive data recovery services are. So what do we consider this as — a dictionary word, a “good” LLLL.com? If we consider this to merely be a “good” LLLL.com, then there are a lot of good LLLL.coms out there — at least about 1/4 of premium CVCVs I’ve looked into have very significant meaning which no doubt underlies their desirability.

The same can be said about other extremely strong LLLL.com pronounceables — consider the “OO” letter pattern extremely popular in CVVC-type pronounceable LLLL.coms… BOOM, DOOM, ROOM, ZOOM, COOL, FOOL, POOL, TOOL, BOOT, FOOT, LOOT, MOOT, SOOT, FOOD, GOOD, WOOD, …The “OO” letter pattern happens to be extremely popular and pronounceable in the English language, perhaps unsurprisingly leading to it’s high level of desirability amongst endusers. FOOM.com sold earlier this year to an enduser for $21,000, NOOL.com for $2389, and WOOK.com sold recently for $10,000. YOOR.com saw $5100, MOOT.com saw $45000, GOOT.com saw $2100, and several others saw sales well above reseller value in the sub-$1000 range, undoubtedly more still selling unreported in 2008.

Too many domainers want someone to feed them on a silver platter a risk-free way to invest in domains — not going to happen. When I talk about intelligently investing in LLLL.coms, this would be an example of it. Recognize that CVVCs with an “OO” tend to sell for more than CVVCs with other repeat vowels or other different vowels. Even if you take my advice here on CVVCs with an “OO” double repeat vowel pattern, it’s still useless if we throw common sense out the window. In this case, the value of the “OO” pattern is because it generally increases pronounceability. We all know endusers like prounounceable domains — whether we look at dictionary words, company names, or even people’s birth names, it should be obvious that pronounceable names tend to be encountered far more than unpronounceable or difficult to pronounce names. So when we apply our “OO” double repeat vowel research to the LLLL.com market, we’re not only looking for CVVC-type LLLL.coms which have an “OO” double repeat vowel letter pattern, rather, we’re looking for pronounceable CVVC-type LLLL.coms which have an “OO” double repeat vowel pattern.

You’d have to try awfully hard to make XOOQ.com pronounceable in the English language — this is not the kind of domain which should see a premium because it has an “OO” pattern. Funny enough, many domainers continue to pay premiums in many LLLL.com segments in instances such as this — perhaps nowhere is this more prevalent than in the CVCV space. Like a CVVC-type LLLL.com with an “OO” double repeat vowel letter pattern, a CVCV (or VCVC, or insert other pronounceable LLLL.com category here) is popular with endusers because it’s pronounceable and/or otherwise meaningful to them. An enduser is not going to pay you more for your domain because it follows a CVCV pattern instead of a VCVC pattern — that’s something only us domainers seem interested in doing.

An enduser wants whatever he wants for whatever reason he wants it. We know a few reasons why endusers want domains — pronounceability tends to fit into many of the reasons and I’ve already discussed that above and elsewhere on this blog. If a CVCV isn’t pronounceable and doesn’t have significant meaning to someone out there, chances are there isn’t an enduser who’s going to come begging you to sell it to them. I’m surprised there aren’t more mathematicians/statisticians in the domaining world — it really is a numbers game. If you do some research on a domain and there appear to be X potential endusers for the domain, another domain having X-Y potential endusers, why would you ever choose to go with the domain having X-Y unless the endusers in that case are either a) much more likely to buy the domain or b) much more likely that if they’re interested in purchasing the domain that they’ll pay a large sum of money for it?

Domaining is a numbers game

Probability of an enduser sale times expected payout from that enduser sale sums up what a domain should be worth for the purposes of targeting an enduser in a perfect world. There are of course plenty of other things we could do with a domain (like resell to silly domainers who might pay ridiculous prices which defy logic), we could of course develop the domain, we might have reason to believe the domain will be of more value in the future — all valid reasons we might be willing to pay more for a domain than we otherwise should. So what am I saying here? As I always say, quality is important, however it’s important we carefully consider what quality means. An LLLL.com is not necessarily of high quality because it’s a quad premium, a VCCV, VCVC, CVVC, CVCV. While these individual segments have more quality domains “on average” than other LLLL.com segments, they are by no means the only quality LLLL.coms, nor are they all good examples of what quality LLLL.coms are. Just because a domain fits a VCCV, VCVC, CVVC, or CVCV pattern does not make it valuable. It might sell for a lot to another domainer — we’ve seen that a lot recently and we’ve seen how quickly that pyramid scheme can come toppling down. There are plenty of good LLLL.coms out there, plenty of good LLLL.coms that aren’t all that expensive and have a very reasonable chance of one day landing an enduser. It takes time to find them, it takes research to make sure they’re a good value at the prices they’re being offered at. Pretty much any CVCV has a much greater chance of landing an enduser than a buyout LLLL.com, however it also comes with a price tag generally between 100 and 500 times as high. Buyout domains are actually pretty decent for finding endusers granted  you can buy so many of them for such a small amount of money — again, don’t forget to account for all costs associated with purchasing and owning the domains. In the case of buyout LLLL.coms, the renewal fees happen to eat up the large majority, if not all of the profits most people make from reselling buyout LLLL.coms to endusers.

We can choose to try and make things simpler than they really are, we can lie to ourselves thinking we have the necessary skill to invest in markets we don’t, we can lie to ourselves and others about how high our losses really are, about how we don’t care about the losses we’ve suffered because we’re just going to wait it out or because we would have lost just as much if we’d have put our money in the stock market. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it doesn’t change the facts. If we want to play stupid, the LLLL.com market is one of the easiest markets to invest in. Find any CVCV under a couple hundred bucks and no matter how ugly it is, rest assured that some domainer will pay more for it. Find any quad premium under $100 — again, no matter how ugly, and you can rest assured a domainer will be happy to take it off your hands at a profit. Find an LLL.com under $2500 — you’re probably in a good position to make a decent profit so long as you can get it sold quickly. Domaining can be easy, domaining can be hard. We can make it easy, however that leaves so much money on the table… Why limit yourself to only buying at prices below the established minimums? Don’t know the LLLL.com market enough to do it any differently? Why not put in the time to better understand the differences between the different LLLL.com and other short domain name market segments so that you can make more intelligent short domain name investment decisions? Why strictly depend on what others say? Why not go out there and collect your own research?

You’ll never know who’s being honest, who’s a bit biased, and who’s outright full of it if you don’t have something to compare it to. There’s no reason anyone can’t put in the time to become much better at recognizing opportunities. As we’ve seen lately, when it hits the fan, it’s usually the stuff at the very bottom which gets hit worst. In part because the stuff at the bottom (in the case of LLLL.com, LLLL.net, 5L.com, and other weaker short domain segments) have a renewal fee which substantially increases the cost of long term ownership and in part because a large portion of these weaker short domains are held by domainers who aren’t so sure about the markets they invest in and like to stay near reported minimums thinking it reduces their risk. When the minimum starts to fall, these type of investors are the kind most likely to panic. There’s nothing wrong with necessarily selling under what’s believed to be the minimum and might indeed be necessary or the smart move to make in a falling market, however more often than not this move is being made by people who seem to have used little more rationale than a flip of a coin to decide how to move forward with their domain name investments. Buying good domains below established minimums is a good idea. Buying bad domains below established minimums isn’t necessarily so, especially in a falling market.

We need to rethink what qualifies as a weak domain. Weak LLLL.com to me means not only a buyout LLLL.com but also a vanity LLLL.com in the VCCV, VCVC, CVVC, and CVCV segments where the value of the domain in question seems to primarily be derived from a general understanding that all domains in those particular segments are worth a certain amount of money than from anything else. We’ve seen this behavior in the LLL.com space (non-premium versus premium LLL.com pricing), we’ve seen this behavior in the CCC.com space (eg. NNL.com versus NLN.com pricing). It works great for price guides to give information in such a way — If I say that on average an ordinary LLL.com goes for less than a premium LLL.com, that a single premium LLLL.com on average goes for less than a quad premium LLLL.com, or that an NLN.com goes for less than an NNL.com, those are of course *usually* true statements . The problem arises when we try to apply what holds true in many instances and apply that to all instances. You just can’t do that and if you do choose to do that, expect to get burnt eventually. Nowhere other than in the short domain world am I aware of such simplistic thinking going on. Who would ever ask what a dictionary words RPM was, how much traffic it was receiving, and make a judgement call about buying the domain based solely on that without knowing anything else about the domain? Unless you’re getting a really good deal (low revenue multiple, or in the short domain space, a price well under the currently accepted minimum wholesale), this just isn’t a viable strategy.

A person asked on Namepros about what members there thought about the future of LLLL.coms — that’s what inspired this post. What I wrote there was relatively similar to what I’ve written here, albeit 3000 words less. LLLL.coms can be classified into many different categories, I split them below into where I see them fitting “on average” based on how safe of investments I see them as being. It’s assumed you’re paying the same percentage of fair market value regardless of what segment you choose to invest in. This is not necessarily representative of what is and what isn’t a good investment if you’re purchasing at a price well under or well above likely reseller value.

1. Four letter dictionary words or other 4 letter domains producing revenue/receiving traffic

2. highest quality pronounceable LLLL.coms, brandables + acronyms, generally registered 5-15 years ago

3. higher quality LLLL.coms regged 3-6 years ago (encompassing weaker pronounceables + quad premiums)

4. buyout domains

The strongest domains were registered a long time ago. You’re not finding many of those stronger CVVC-type LLLL.coms I mentioned in this post registered around buyout time, nor are you finding other strong pronounceable LLLL.coms as having been registered in the months leading up to the November 2nd, 2007 buyout unless they were the result of a drop. Many of these stronger LLLL.coms are upwards of a decade old — these are domains that people chose to purchase when bad LLL.coms could still be had for regfee, these are domains which often receive more traffic, more revenue, and appear to have more potential endusers than weaker LLL.coms.

As with any domain investment, having a plan about how you’re going to go about monetizing what you’ve decided to purchase is necessary. For some of us, that plan may be development, others it will be resale to other domainers, and others still it will be resale to endusers, or otherwise monetizing the traffic received. No strategy is inherently wrong, no strategy is unworkable. Some strategies may be more difficult for some people than others… Blogging is hard for some people, other people struggle with web design, some people aren’t good at selling to endusers,…. We all have our strengths and weaknesses — it’s important to consider that when going about buying domains.

Web hosting is one of those things you just can’t get around if you plan on developing your domains. Saying it’s important that you choose a good web host would be an understatement. Stay away from web hosts making unrealistic offers (eg. 2000GB bandwidth for $1.99) and remember that you usually do get what you pay for, with cheap hosting leading to poor service. Do you think you’ll need help with server maintenance? If so, it might be a good idea to signup with one of the managed hosting provider. Shop around, look at web hosting review websites, and read on for more ideas of what you should look for in a web host and what questions you should ask before buying a web hosting package.

There is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth.

Some hosts have an unmetered bandwidth option, however there is still a bandwidth limit based on port size. A 10mbps unmetered port in example could theoretically process a maximum of about 3200GB of traffic per month. Most people aren’t going to need more than 50GB of bandwidth per month unless they’re running either extremely popular websites, have a large number of websites, or are employing bandwidth-intensive features (eg. anything resembling video sharing).

Most web hosts oversell.

Again, this is why it’s important to read the contract and ask any questions you have before signing up. Simple math and economics – disk space costs money, bandwidth costs even more. With 100mbps ports currently around $2000/month (I’m sure the large web hosts get a good discount, but that’s not the point) and yielding around 32TB of bandwidth, a host offering 2000GB of free bandwidth on a shared plan can only keep that promise for 16 customers. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that between bandwidth costs, server costs, and data center related expenses, $3.99/month isn’t going to cut it. Free shared hosting generally means unsightly advertisements on your pages and getting harassed to upgrade to paid hosting should your traffic start to pick up. Try and determine how disk space and bandwidth you’ll need before signing up with a host. Will you need FTP, shell access, or the ability to upload large files? Hundreds, sometimes thousands of accounts placed on each server and a long list of restrictions that will pretty much guarantee you get nowhere near using all that disk space or bandwidth they promised you.

How web hosts cut costs

Some hosts cut costs by delivering a low quality network infrastructure plagued with unacceptable downtime. Unreasonable lock-in periods, usage restrictions, large bandwidth overage charges, outsourced customer service, and fine print in web hosting contracts are some of the common cost cutting tactics used by many web hosts to deceive customers into believing they’re providing greater value than they actually are.

Take the time to read the Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and all other legal agreements of the web hosts you’re considering and make sure you understand what you’re agreeing to. Browse their frequently asked questions (FAQ) section and ask any unanswered questions you have. This will give you an opportunity to see first hand what their customer service is like as a bonus.

Server management may vary from you being on you being expected to manage your own server to your host providing installation of software and operating system updates, firewall setup, malware protection and operating system hardening, control panel software (eg. Cpanel, Plesk) installation and customer support for both server related issues and non-server related issues.

Good hosts can go bad at any time – regardless of discounts, it’s a bad idea to prepay more than a few months in advance. In addition to hosts going bad, your server needs may change in the future.

If you don’t agree with their rules, don’t use them as a web host. Don’t host domains with your domain name registrar or register domains with your web host.

YP.com was reported yesterday on Namepros as having sold for $3,850,000 by an astute member who came across an SEC filing. This has been discussed on many domain name blogs already (see Domaining.com) while I was sleeping, so I won’t repeat what’s already out there. It’s a good sale for the LL.com market and one which continues to show that even in tough times there are companies out there buying domains for large amounts of money.

There’s of course no guarantee we’ll see another sale like this again anytime soon, however when people sometimes wonder why LL.coms, LLL.coms, LLLL.coms, and other short domains have the value they do, it’s important to consider the very small chance they might end up with a “big enduser”, this one being incredibly huge and unlikely to be repeated anytime soon, however we do see smaller sales in the $10,000-$100,000 on LLL.coms and LLLL.coms every so often. The chance is extremely small in most cases, however one can of course greatly increase their chances by holding a large number of domains or looking for short domains which you believe to have better than average odds of finding an enduser (eg. not buyout LLLL.coms or minimum wholesale LLL.coms).

I know a few people sitting on 1000+ LLLL.coms and most have sold between 1 and 10 domains to endusers who approached them over the past year (more of course if they proactively reached out, however this would require assigning a value to the time they’re spending doing this) — predictably, those with stronger LLLL.coms (CVCVs and other pronounceable LLLL.coms registered a decade ago) have been having much better results than those with largely weaker LLLL.coms (buyout LLLL.coms). Renewal fees do of course need to be subtracted from profits earned and is something especially important for bulk LLLL.com owners to consider — 1000 LLLL.coms is an $8000/year liability. If you sold 10 LLLL.coms to endusers for an average of $1000/per, you’re only up $2000, minus your time over the year (not factoring what was paid for the LLLL.coms — that’s obviously sunk and irrelevant as to whether the LLLL.coms should be kept or not at this point).

As I’ve said many times on this blog and on domain name forums, I’m not a particularly large fan of very low quality short domains — if we look at YP.com in example, it’s certainly not the strongest LL.com however it’s a long, long ways from the weakest. Why pay $50,000 for an LL.com which has pretty much an absolute zero chance of landing an enduser when you could have an LL.com of comparable quality to YP.com for say $70,000 and have this chance? Despite it being unlikely you’ll see a result like this one, divided over the relatively small number of LL.coms there are, even just having that chance is worth a great deal of money. I haven’t gone over every LL.com to report an exact figure of how many are still in the hands of domainers or weak endusers (smaller companies who might be inclined to sell for a good offer), however let’s take 200/676 in the hands of domainers/weak endusers as a ballpark figure. If you divide the $3,850,000 by the 200 LL.coms, you get an average of $19,250 value just from this sale alone. This of course  strictly theoretical and means nothing for everyone not holding the domain that gets the sale (eg. 199/200 not better off from this sale).

I don’t want to get into probability and it’d be highly inaccurate without spending a great deal of time on the post, however I think common sense should dictate that something like QZ.com which probably would fetch $50,000 or so in a reseller environment has one heck of a lot lower of a chance of ever landing an enduser than something like OW.com which sold for $100,000 earlier this year — twice the price, probably 20 times better a chance of finding an enduser.

The same can be said for LLL.coms, LLLL.coms and short numeric domains — the weakest examples of each just don’t make a great deal of sense in light of how much better examples can be had for a bit more. I know a lot of domainers want an LL.com, NN.com, NNN.com, LLL.com, etc just to say they have one — if all you can afford is a bad example in such a category, why not downgrade a category and pickup a very strong domain which stands a chance of finding an enduser?

We can all agree to disagree on the merits of short domains and certain short domain segments, however I think we can all agree a domain like QZ.com has much lower odds of ever finding a permanent home than something like CSE.com. If you were only allowed to sell to an enduser, would there be any doubt in your mind which to go with? I know there’d be none in mine.

Warren Buffett once said “Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.” How many people would want to be stuck holding QZ.com or QXZ.com for 10 years (and I apologize in advance if anyone reading this owns these domains — seems to happen to me a lot when I start throwing out names) if they weren’t allowed to resell them? I certainly wouldn’t. What’s incredible about both the LL.com and LLL.com market segments is that a huge increase in quality can be had for a modest increase in price. If we look at generic domains, the average generic you can get for $50,000 isn’t all that much worse than the average generic you can get for $100,000. When it comes to short domains, a $50,000 LL.com and a $100,000 LL.com can be the difference between a domain which produces zero revenue and has realistically no chance of ever finding an enduser and a domain which earns a few dollars per day ($XXXX/yr) and does have a reasonable chance of finding an enduser within a few years.

EIV.com recently went for $5000 — not a gigantic leap in price over the minimum which most people currently see as being in the $3200-$4000 range, however it has one heck of a lot higher odds of finding an enduser than a bottom of the barrel LLL.com. Times are tough, many of us might want to develop our short domains so they can at least earn us some of that money we spent on them back — how the heck is anyone going to develop QXZ.com? I’ve heard the letters are good in China but I don’t speak Mandarin, nor do most of the domainers investing in these domains. EIV.com, while not being the easiest domain to think of an acronym for, is certainly something I’m sure I could meaningfully develop if I spent a few hours thinking of a plan of action. QXZ? I have enough trouble even thinking of words that start with X or Z — one of them might be workable but having both X, Z, along with Q is really pushing it in my opinion. You have my respect if you can find a meaningful acronym for that… Of course you don’t necessarily need an acronym to develop your short domain and I certainly wouldn’t discourage people from developing a domain like QXZ.com (that’ll be the only way it’ll make any money afterall).

The year 2009 is upon us — here’s some motivation for you to become a better domain name investor or more involved in the domain name industry. The great thing about investing in domains (if you’re good at it) is that you have no boss! Working in the domain name business means setting your own hours. The domain name industry doesn’t discriminate based on age, race, or gender — all we discriminate on are the quality of domains. How can you make your domains make more money for you in 2009? You want to make more money online but just don’t know how? Take a risk in 2009 — if you haven’t started a domain name business, start one. If your domain name sales aren’t satisfying you, work harder or find a way to work smarter. Need more inspiration for why you should make 2009 the year you get more involved in the domain name world? Read on for more reasons why domain names are the way to go.

That certainly seems to be the case for most people. Regardless of whether domain name investing or web development becomes a full time activity or something that gives you a little bit of extra income, that little bit of extra income just may allow you to do what you want with your life. How many people take a job more because they need the money than because they’re interested in the job? Even if domain name investing doesn’t make you enough money to do it on it’s own, what if investing in domains allows you the freedom to not be so limited in what you can do during the one third of your life you spend working? I like domaining — it’s not work, it’s fun. It was a lot more fun before this recession hit, but it’s still something I enjoy doing and wouldn’t trade for the world. I can’t imagine how anyone could do a job they hate for 30, 40, 50 years. Time is money — when you work a job, you’re trading your time for money. If you don’t like the job you’re doing, this is, in my opinion, a trade not worth making. Life is short, find something you like to do and do it. I’m sure you’ve all seen those commercials on TV talking about the freedom that having a home base business gives — it really is true. What’s more liberating than deciding when you want to work?

Don’t feel like working today — then don’t. Most bosses aren’t quite that understanding if you tell them you’re not coming into work today because you don’t feel like coming in.. Of course you won’t get anywhere if you don’t put in hard work just the same, however if you’re doing something you truly enjoy, is it really work? If it’s something you’d be happy to do in your free time just the same — it’s something you consider a hobby, how much better can it possibly get than being able to monetize that hobby and make a part time or full time living off that hobby? Even if you do decide to keep your job in the end, who doesn’t like having a few extra hundred/thousand in their pocket each month? How many of us couldn’t use a few extra hundred/thousand — especially considering the economy we’re living in today.

The thing I hate about most jobs is that they just don’t appreciate what you do for them — you get paid an hourly wage, maybe a small bonus, regardless of how hard you work. The lazy co-worker of yours makes the same as you and does one quarter the work. If you work really hard next year — twice as hard, reckon you’ll get twice as much pay? If you work twice as hard one day, reckon your boss will let you leave when half the day is over? I’m willing to bet no. That’s the great thing about domaining, the internet, and working for yourself — you put in the amount of hours you want to put in and while a bit of luck is involved for some people, more often than not, you’re properly compensated for the time you put in. If you work twice as hard, there’s no reason you can’t earn twice as much. If you slack off and put in 1/4 the work, you might very well earn only 1/4 the amount — seems fair to me.

The great thing about the Internet is that it really doesn’t matter who you are — you can be 15 like Han Sup Yoon who recently sold Zuneboards.com for $62,000 or you can have multiple Ph.D.’s slack off on the Internet, and everyone regard you as a nobody. What I love most about the Internet is that people are recognized for what they accomplish — it’s not about who they are, it’s about what they’ve created. The Internet is a place where all the college degrees and professional designations mean little, if anything — it’s a place where everyone has a relatively equal chance of achieving success. It takes roughly $8-$10 to purchase a domain and that $8 could very well change your life — it certainly did add a few zeros to the bank account balance of the 15 year old I mentioned. That’s what I love about the Internet — you can live anywhere, come from anything, be a somebody or a nobody, and nobody is going to hold that against you. The other great thing about an Internet based business (or any business you own rather than work for) is that you make money even when you’re not working. Even if I do absolutely nothing tomorrow, I’ll still earn a bit from parked domains, I might have a few enduser or domainers email me asking if they can buy domains off me which might eventually make me money when I get back to them, I’m in the process of monetizing some of my developed websites which will also make me money even if I do absolutely nothing. How many bosses will pay their employees for doing nothing other than whatever amount of weeks are built into their contract for vacation and sick days? Being a domainer, webmaster, or internet entrepreneur really is like being an author — you earn royalties from previous books written regardless of whether you write new ones or not. Unlike an author however, you aren’t giving a large chunk of your profits to your publisher. Shared hosting is free — all you need is that domain which as mentioned above will only set you back $8-$10. How many real world businesses can you start for $10? How many can you even start for $1000? The high costs associated with starting a business in the real world cripple many people from living their dream. The Internet cripples nobody. Anyone can start a business, anyone can start a successful business, anyone can start a million dollar business. Now it won’t be easy — that’s true of any business and is even more true online. While the low barriers to entry gives everyone a chance, it also means you have to be all the better to succeed.

As I like to say, we’re all an expert in something –  find what you’re an expert in and share it with the world. The great thing about the Internet and the people that use it is that there’s so many people in the world looking for so many different things that there will always be opportunity for those who know how to find it. Be it presenting information in a different light, giving your thoughts on the information presented by others, sharing your life experiences with the world, … Be it creating a new platform for people to interact on or be it advancing the internet to a new level of interactivity. Perhaps your skills reside in the realm of search engine optimization, affiliate marketing or consulting — how will you really know unless you try them all?

Nobody comes into this world knowing all the answers. A lot of people think a full time job is a better choice than being a business owner because there’s less risk. How so? How do you think all those auto workers are sleeping right now, worrying about what the future holds for their jobs? Not so long ago, my father was told he’d have to work another 3 years before he could retire because, to put it bluntly, the pension manager screwed up. Now in light of everything which has happened in the USA lately, I’m sure some people aren’t so lucky — what they’re probably being told is something more along the lines of “You have no pension anymore”. Less risky? I beg to differ. If you work for yourself, you can plan for and manage your own retirement. Put all your retirement savings in the most conservative investment you can find if you want — it’s your money, you can do what you want with it. Who doesn’t like speaking their mind? I appreciate when people speak their mind to me. If you don’t like my posts, feel free to say “Reece your post today sucks”. Use an expletive if you want if it helps you get your point across and yes, I will publish it. I don’t see how anyone is better off by lying to themselves or others about what they really think. If something is stupid, it’s stupid. If there were more people in this world not afraid to speak their mind, we’d probably accomplish a lot more. The Internet is great that way — if I don’t agree with something, I’m not afraid to say I don’t agree with something. I don’t have to worry about a boss firing me because I don’t agree with him. I don’t have to worry about having co-workers being hostile around me for the next 6 months if I say something which angers them,… Most of you reading this live in a democratic country, however there seems to be little democracy in the workforce. Is it really equal opportunity? Is everyone really given a fair shake? Do you really think if you and your boss have a problem that it just might not be something he holds against you well into the foreseeable future and potentially affect everything from your employment with the company to any bonuses or promotions?

If you’re one of those readers who just stumbled onto this blog from a search engine or if you’re new to domain name investing or making money online, or if it’s just been a hobby for you so far, I really recommend giving an online business a try in 2009 — make it your New Year’s Resolution in 2009 and give it a real try.

Prices on short domains and for the most part domain names in general have fallen substantially from where they were in 2007 through early 2008. Have we reached the bottom? Some domain name investors say “Don’t try to catch a falling knife.” Other domain name investors quote the great Warren Buffett and suggest that domain name investors take advantage of the opportunity this recession has provided them with to “buy low and sell high”. While the domain name market at present certainly isn’t friendly to domain flippers, it might be a good time for the long term focused domain name investor to begin investing once again. Recessions are when fortunes are both made and lost — I’m sure we have and will see far more people lose a fortune than make a fortune, however the opportunity is there to pick up cheap domains which will not doubt sell for more in the future as economic conditions improve.

There’s a lot of doom and gloom out there and a lot of reasons to be pessimistic — nobody’s saying you should be happy if half your retirement savings have vanished over the past few months or if your domains have lost upwards of 90% of their value in some market segments.. But we have to make the best of it right? The great thing about recessions, like any other time, is that there’s always opportunity — perhaps moreso for the careful domainer. It’s important to not get carried away in the buying you do and it’s important that you’re able to hold until the market recovers should conditions worsen. It’s not a domain flipper’s market, however it is a market perfectly capable of turning a large profit long term. Uncertainty and Unpredictability fuel Panic and Pessimism. As I’ve previously mentioned, people are not always rational. Word came out recently that the U.S. has “officially” been in a recession for a year now — for some reason the large majority of the general public didn’t receive that message and thought the economy was doing just fine up until about July (at least that’s the impression I get from my neighbours 90 miles to the South). September comes around, some big investment banks go broke, and “the sky is falling”.

Bad LLL.coms were going up in price earlier this year while good LLL.coms were going down in price — is something is wrong there? It’s not always easy to figure out what or if something is — in the example I just presented, there are many reasons one could explain away what happened earlier this year, ranging from greater demand from countries where weaker letters are considered to be premium letters, greater internet penetration increasing demand for LLL.com domains, LLL.coms continuing to be seen as “domainer tokens” with most simply wanting an LLL.com, not particularly caring about it’s quality, resulting in the bottom being driven upwards and the higher value LLL.coms coming down in price. Or of course one could work out that perhaps the lower end LLL.coms were behaving in an illogical manner with respect to a large percentage of the domaining market. As I said, it’s really hard to tell sometimes and a lot of domainers with plenty of years in the business got burnt bad in this case. LLLL.coms — Their rise to glory, their fall from grace…

What I’m trying to say here is that people are often both overly optimistic and overly pessimistic. When LLLL.coms were at their peak in February 2008, there were some people predicting LLLL.coms would soon hit $250-$300 per and that within a few years would be at $1000 per. Prices got so out of hand that at one point I even predicted the minimum might hit $100 per based on trends observed from the past — I did of course fortunately sell mine out for about $40 per believing any further appreciation on the current rate would be due to hype and overvaluing than due to “real value” at that time. Another example — LLL.coms had been going up month after month, year after year consistently for about 5 years heading into 2008. People begin to believe they can’t fall based on such a past — it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy with domainers buying LLL.coms, reselling to other domainers who take these same LLL.coms, add on a premium and resell it to other domainers who… Some LLL.coms have been sold 10 times within the past few years — I recently reported on this blog about one which has been sold 3 times since September. That’s not to say the LLL.com, LLLL.com, or any other of the many markets which have crashed don’t have proper investing fundamentals; surely some LLL.coms and LLLL.coms at least at one point in time represented good investments, it’s merely that they got carried away with hype which drove them up to levels which were unsustainable.

It’s almost impossible to predict when a Bubble is going to burst, however it always does pop at some point. Perhaps some of the people who believed LLLL.coms would reach $250 or $300 shortly didn’t really believe in the market — they merely believed others believed in the market enough to invest at this price point. The worst thing about Bubbles is that they often claim more victims than they would have if they would have popped sooner and that’s what makes them so destructive. There were many cases of domainers who despite having the same opportunity to buy LLLL.coms pre-buyout decided not to and decided to buy them at a later date for $30, $40, $50 per — LLLL.coms rose in price so quickly that in many cases people who did not see these domains as worthy investments seemingly overnight had a change of heart. People who didn’t see LLL.coms as worth $2000 were suddenly dropping $8000 on them. Suddenly a large portion of the people investing in the market are not investing in the market because they believe it has solid fundamentals and that these solid fundamentals can support these prices, rather, they’re investing in this market because they believe they can find someone willing to pay more for their domains — be they LLL.coms, be they LLLL.coms, be they new domain name extensions, or be they something else. A Bubble bursts when people cease being prepared to take more and those who didn’t really believe in the market (or at least didn’t believe in the market at that price point) begin taking their profits. The worst thing about Bubbles is that prices often come crashing down as fast and in many cases faster than prices were built up in the first place. If we look at LLL.coms in example, it took them many years before prices went from $200 (2003) to $3800 (July 2007), however between June 2008 and December 2008, the minimum wholesale on LLL.coms effectively lost a full $3800 off it’s June 2008 high.

It does work both ways however and that’s something to keep in mind — while prices have come crashing down and may continue to decline if the economy as a whole continues to worsen, it’s important to remember that not only can domains (or stocks) increase in price to unreasonable levels, however so too they may decrease in price to unreasonable levels — the domain name market in 2002 could be an example of this. Despite the recent setbacks, domain prices today are much higher now than they were in 2002. I’ve told the story on numerous occasions about how I didn’t see the value in short domains back in 2004 and how I used to see LLL.coms on eBay go for $400 and wonder who would ever pay $400 for a domain with 3 weaker letters which seemingly had no endusers — fast forward a few years and people like me are suddenly paying an extra digit for these same domains, even after the recent decline. The illiquid and speculative nature of the domain name market lends itself to both big booms and big busts. While I’m not sure what we’ve currently experienced should be qualified as having been a bust — more like prices being brought down to sustainable levels, it remains to be seen how much further the domain market will devalue. The fundamentals of domain name investing have radically changed between 2002 and 2008, there are many more ways to profit from domains today and it’s generally understood that direct navigation traffic has value, and that the entire Internet is not going to end up having one big fad (a surprisingly common belief back then) which failed to materialize.

So no, I don’t see another 2002 happening here. But I do see domains having declined a lot and in many cases, perhaps moreso than they should have. The pessimism and panic present in the domain market today will favor those bargain hunters who make the best of the market we find ourselves in today. Recessions are when fortunes are both made and lost. A wealth transfer from the weak domainers to the stronger ones — if you’re in a position to go about making purchases, by all means do not hesitate to do so. If you’re one of those aforementioned weaker domainers who’s already worried about whether you’ll be able to both keep your domains and put food on your family’s table, stop buying domains, focus on your family, and try to be in a better financial position when the next recession comes around so you can capitalize from it or at least not fall victim to it. Some people will have no choice but to sell their domains — people who need to take for their domains whatever they get offered because they badly need the money. New lending in the USA is down big time — people who might have qualified for loans in the past just aren’t qualifying anymore. Man would I love to be Rick Latona and own DigiPawn.com right around now — I bet he’s making a killing. It’s sounds harsh, maybe even unethical to be profiting from the misfortune of others, however that is life. If you don’t do it, someone else will. You’re doing them a favor — they need money and you’re giving it to them. Without you, their kids might starve, their house might get foreclosed,… Recessions are tough. People need to do whatever they can to survive. If the decision has to be made between your family and your domains, which will you choose? I know which one most domainers will choose and while it’s good for them that they have a conscience and put their family first, it’s also good for you if you have money in hand and are prepared to trade your money for their domains.

What do you think 2009 holds for the domain name world? Do you see domain name parking revenue continuing to decrease? What about domain name prices — can we expect another .com price hike from VeriSign? All those new domain name extensions soon coming out… We’ll no doubt hear much more about them in 2009. Reckon we’ll see a brand new flock of domain name investor who are seeing gold in these new domain name extensions? What will happen to existing domain name extensions resultant of this decision to open up the namespace? How will the recession impact domain name prices? How much longer is the recession going to last? As for cybersquatting, can we expect companies to come down harder on those domain name investors who choose to invest in domains which infringe on their registered marks? Read on to see what I predict the domain name world will see in 2009, as well as what other domain name investor think 2009 will bring to the domain name world.

A thread on Namepros about what the next few years hold for domaining got me thinking about how I see the next few years playing out. As I’ve said many times, I see development becoming more and more a part of day to day domaining and I do see PPC continuing to decline as CPA begins to rise. I see Call to Action domains becoming increasingly desirable, especially Call to Action domains receiving traffic — I expect we’ll see many of these convert very well under a CPA model. Over the next few years and largely thanks to increasingly lower PPC, I expect the idea that “all traffic is good traffic” to largely become a thing of the past with domainers increasingly focussed on targeted traffic which converts — this is what advertisers want and this is what advertisers are paying for hoping to get.

As has always been the case, good domains will continue to be worth good money. Having 100,000 domains is no longer going to be regarded as something one should be proud of, rather it’s going to increasingly be regarded as what it really is — a $1 Million/year liability. Domainers will continue to cut the fat out of their portfolios — domains which have little enduser potential, little development potential, and don’t make earn enough to justify their keep. The combination of higher registration and renewal fees, combined with lower RPM and a weak economy will hasten this process.

I expect to see many new domainers overjoyed by the possibility of investing in these new extensions — “A real gold rush, a new beginning for the Internet” they’ll say. We might hear a few success stories, however more often than not we’ll here of more domainers getting burnt. Webmasters are already licking their chops thankful that paying good money just to have a nice keyword domain for SEO will finally be a thing of the past. Strong .coms receiving sizable amounts of type-in traffic will of course continue to be prized by the people who can afford them. CNO + ccTLDs will remain the professional choice, .org will overtake .net and .web will be one of the few new extensions to achieve moderate success, becoming a cheap alternative to .net (which really is itself a cheap alternative to .com).

And lastly, I expect that a few years from now we’ll see plenty of newcomers to the domain world moaning about how if they would have started in 2008 they’d be so much ahead of where they are now and that it was so much easier to make money back then. People have been saying that one for the longest time, now haven’t they? If memory serves me correctly, there were according to many people no opportunities to make money domaining left in 2002 — it was all over, right? How many people want to go back to 2002 and reg a few more? If I’ve learn one thing in life, it’s that saying “never” is a word which pretty much always comes back to bite you in the $$$. It’s impossible to say with certainty what the future holds — all we can do is make our best guess and try to adjust what our next move is accordingly.

With credit card offers not coming as often in the mail, people will have to learn to live within their means and we’ll all benefit from that if people remember that moving forward. And as the WSJ says, I think it’s safe to say you’re likely not going to be paying more taxes in 2009 which is always a bonus

As I’ve mentioned a few times now, I really do see 2009 being a year where more domainers start shifting towards domain name development, looking for better methods of monetizing their domains, and cutting the fat out of their domain name portfolios. We’re going to see more companies aggressively protecting their marks, and likely more bad press about cybersquatters, especially as these new extensions from ICANN start to be rolled out. Cash is King. Domain flippers will be increasingly few in numbers, many converting to long term domain name investors. Good domains will continue to sell and I see stronger ccTLDs having a good year.

Scott from TrendDomaining.com sent me an email asking what I saw as some trends to watch for in 2009. So with that, I’ll post below what I do see happening. Be sure to check out Scott’s blog if you haven’t done so already — great information on there for niche domainers and those looking for trends to follow in 2009.  Scott’s working on a post which will cover what a diverse group of domainers see as trends to watch out for in 2009 which should provide us all with new insight into trends to watch out for in 2009. Elaborating on my prior post about 2009, I’ll cover some other subjects which I believe will gain popularity in 2009 — this time it’s not related to domaining or web development, rather, it’s about developments in the offline world which may create new opportunities for trendwatching domainers to pick up domains which may one day be worth considerably sums of money. As I’ve mentioned a few times here, be careful when buying into these kind of names — it can be fun, it can be a learning experience, and it can certainly be profitable, however it can be a very expensive lesson if you get carried away and start registering too many domains speculatively.

I see Cyberterrorism starting to be something governments around the world will start better planning for. I think we’ll see Cybercrime continue to increase and the barriers to entry continue to be lowered. We saw a lot of firsts in 2008 such as widespread availability of ready-made phishing and other malware kits, the outsourcing of certain parts of social engineering scams to native English speakers, the increasing presence of international hacking networks and criminal organizations in Cybercrime. Domains related to cybercrime present an opportunity for domainers in 2009 — properly developed, they may present both a financial opportunity and an opportunity to better help the general public protect themselves from people who would like to see harm done to them.

I’m a big fan of the health and technology niches and I expect we’ll continue to see major advances in technology (display technology, nanotechnology, MEMS, increasing popularity of software as a service and grid/utility computing, continued advanced in broadband and mobile Internet technology and increases in global internet penetration ), further research into the benefits of antioxidants (new antioxidants, new research on existing antioxidants, new superfruits) and continued advances in biotechnology (pharmacogenomics, gene therapy, cloning/stem cell research).

The great thing about niche domains and trendwatching is that it never ends — who remembers Joe the Plumber? New buzzwords and phrases are being coined all the time, new discoveries and scientific advances are constantly being made,… Barry from PredictiveDomaining.com had a great article recently about using Urban Dictionary to find new slangs. I expect we’ll see social media continue to evolve in 2009, Twitter and microblogging will continue to gain popularity, and Myspace will continue to lose out to Facebook.

The LLLL.com market has one of (if not) the largest differences in the short domain name world between sale prices of the cheapest and most expensive short domains of equal letter length (in this case, 4 letter .coms). Are there really any similarities between a non-premium LLLL.com and a CVCV, VCVC, rare, or other strong pronounceable LLLL.com? Both cheap and expensive domain names have their advantages and disadvantages — we’ll look at that in this post in the context of the LLLL.com market. Are you planning on reselling the domains to other domain name investors or are you going to try and find end users for your LLLL.coms? What about liquidity — will you need to sell out sometime soon or can you afford to hold and renew these domains until satisfied with the return on your short domain name investment?

Whenever we talk of LLLL.coms, we see the same thing repeating itself –  a lot of domainers (new and old alike) fail to truly understand the diversity of the LLLL.com market. This post is dedicated to anyone new to domaining or the LLLL.com market with the goal of getting you up to date on how much this segment has changed over the past few years. While it hasn’t been updated in awhile, I wrote a post on Namepros last December designed to help people completely new to domains learn about domain name investing — check out the Domain Newbies section to learn more about it. If you’re new to domaining, this link will be useful even if you stumbled across this blog, still unsure of what domaining segments you want to invest in.

While we may refer to all 4 letter .com domains as LLLL.coms, it’s clear not all are created equal — the same can be said about LLLL.net or even LLLL.info where highly quality pronounceable and brandable examples in these extensions may fetch prices higher than weaker LLLL.coms would. It’s important to differentiate between “bad” LLLL.coms which were registered right before the LLLL.com buyout, and higher quality LLLL.coms which were registered years before the LLLL.com buyout.

If you look at when a lot of the highest quality pronounceable LLLL.coms were first registered, something may surprise you — people chose to register these 4 letter .coms despite there being plenty of 3 letter .coms still available to register. Almost without exception, 1 letter domains are worth more in the same extension than 2 letter domains, which are worth more than 3 letter domains. When we get to 4 letter domains however, that starts to change. Why? It’s hard to say. For one thing, there aren’t a great deal of pronounceable domains with under 4 characters. A second thing, many of the pronounceable LLLL.com letter patterns are already used with great frequency by corporate America and elsewhere in the world — this encourages domainers to pay more for these domains as they see them as being desired by endusers.

Unpronounceable LLLL.coms with bad letters and seemingly little enduser potential or traffic accurately describes many of the LLLL.coms registered right before buyout. You’ll most likely need to proactively reach out to endusers or have a very large number of these if you wish to make any meaningful number of enduser sales. One advantage of these domains is that their low cost eliminates the risk in offering the domains to TM holders (at least for those of us outside the USA). The domains are cheap enough that if a company wants it, you’ll likely be able to sell it to them for something cheap (still well above your cost) and avoid the dispute resolution entirely. The purchase price is often low enough that it won’t need to get approved by upper management. LLLL.coms as a whole have a certain rarity and inherent element of collectibility. The main downside of the low end LLLL.coms are the annual renewal fees which can rapidly eat into any success anyone with a large portfolio of low end LLLL.coms achieves. Food for thought — 1000 LLLL.coms will cost about $8000 per year to renew. If you sold $10000 worth of LLLL.coms to endusers in a year, you’d only have $2000 left after renewal fees are paid. If, on the other hand, you sold $20000 worth of LLLL.coms to endusers in a year, you’d have $12000 left over — 6 times more for having sold double the amount. As can be seen, this absolutely is a numbers game and one which favors those willing to work hard and proactively seek out endusers. Despite this market having declined considerably since February 2008, many LLLL.com investors have remained in the black by proactively reaching out to endusers. Return on investment (when positive) is, on average, highest in this segment. Unfortunately, so too are the losses.

Pronounceable LLLL.coms are a much more difficult sector to master than ordinary LLLL.coms. While there are base prices for LLLL.coms that have a certain letter quality, certain letter patterns, certain levels of brandability, assumed enduser potential, traffic, etc, it’s much more difficult to accurately appraise pronounceables, nevermind assess their value beyond a reseller level. A good grasp on the English language is necessary in most cases to see why one domain is better than another. While domainers are told that “C” is a good premium letter, it can also often weaken a pronounceable LLLL.com. Similarly, domainers are told that letters X and Z are bad letters, however both of these letters can in many cases make for great pronounceables — eg. ROXY, LOOX, ZUNE. Semi-Premium? Anyone want to tell VISA.com that their CVCV has a semi-premium “V” in it? How about telling the Bank of America that BOFA.com has a weak premium “F” in it?

If I haven’t made my point clear yet, let me do so now — pronounceable LLLL.coms operate on very different market fundamentals than do ordinary LLLL.coms. While an unpronounceable LLLL.com may almost always go for more if it’s a quad premium than if it’s a triple premium, while a triple premium with J/K/U/V/W/Y almost always goes for more than a triple premium with Q/X/Z, while a quad premium with A/S/E almost always goes for more than a quad premium with F/G/H, … While all that goes on, someone else (enduser) looks at a pronounceable LLLL.com and decides they like how it sounds, that it fits in well with their business model, that it’s the perfect name for a new product of theirs, etc. “ZUNE” being a double premium means nothing to Microsoft and their MP3 player. ZUNE is easy to pronounce, it’s unique, it’s kinda cool — it works for them and that’s what they decided to go with. Highly Pronounceable LLLL.coms fitting a CVCV, VCVC, CVVC, and VCCV pattern make up the large majority of top dollar sales, none of which were available anywhere near shortly before buyout, however we do see quite a few sales of pronounceables which don’t fit these particular LLLL.com market segments as well.

If you’re aiming to resell to endusers rather than to other domainers, it’s time to forget about letter quality, rarity, domain age, and pretty much every other element previously mentioned — they don’t mean squat to most endusers. An enduser doesn’t care how many other acronyms your LLLL.com has or that you mention the domain makes  $100/month parked, granted he has no intention of parking it. If he’s not able to convert visitors to the domain into customers of his, he likely doesn’t care about traffic either — they’re worth Zero. Zilch. Nada.   What does mean something to an enduser? To some endusers, traffic may be something they’re interested in.

Okay, so now that we’ve got what an enduser doesn’t want out of the way, let’s finish covering what an enduser does want? Pretty simple — an end user wants what he decides he wants. The enduser might need to have or might want to have your domain. It’s important to do your best to try and differentiate between the two — someone who wants to have something probably has a budget in mind and is going to stick to it. Someone who needs to have something (particularly if it’s a large corporation) may, on the other hand, seemingly have the sky for a limit.

Everything from Ravi.com which was reported in DN Journal last night as having sold for $200,000 and was registered in 1993 to the stuff which was among the last domains to be registered on November 2nd 2007 is by definition an LLLL.com — they are both 4 letter .com domain names, however in many cases they don’t have a great deal in common other than that.

Since October 2008, LLLL.com prices have started to increase once again — great news for short domain name investors, or is it? As some domain name investors not invested in short domains have mentioned, it’s important to account for domain name renewal fees when investing in short domains and attempting to determine whether a particular short domain name investment will prove to be profitable or not.

Lower quality LLLL.coms have continued to rally upwards so far in December from the beating they were dealt between March and October 2008. We’ve slowly crept up from a minimum wholesale of $2.00 to what is now in the $5.00 range.

As some of the domainers less optimistic about LLLL.coms on Namepros have made known, it’s very important with low end LLLL.coms that we factor in the cost of renewing these domains each year. It’s unfortunately not quite fair or mathematically correct to suggest the minimum wholesale has gone from $2 to $5 over the past month and a half — we need to factor in the renewal premium for those 49 days which have passed and add it to that $2.00 October figure to accurately determine how much prices have appreciated.

Assuming an $8 renewal fee which seems to be about the average renewal fee LLLL.com investors are paying to renew their domains, we’ll need to add an additional $1.07 to that $2.00 figure (bringing it to $3.07) to properly compensate for 49 additional days of the LLLL.com’s registration having been used. For the purpose of all calculations on www.LLLL.com, it’s assumed that the renewal is paid daily. This takes the guesswork out of pricing the domains and allows prices to be analyzed each month in a precise mathematical fashion, rather than prices varying heavily depending on what month most of the domains sold expired in.

$5.00/$3.07 = 63% profit for those who purchased minimum wholesale quality LLLL.coms in October. Similarly, anyone with minimum wholesale quality LLLL.coms should now see roughly 63% more for their domains than they would have otherwise.

It’s important to note that lower quality LLLL.coms continue to be difficult to sell in bulk and you’ll likely need to sell for lower than the prices reported here if you need to rapidly liquidate a large collection of minimum wholesale quality LLLL.coms, especially a large collection of soon to be expiring LLLL.coms. In reality, most domainers have at least a moderately large amount of higher quality LLLL.coms to go with those lower quality LLLL.coms, so if you were to sell them together in a lot, it’s quite possible you’d end up getting the minimum wholesale or above the minimum wholesale still, despite the quantity being undesirable for most investors in this market. It’s a bad idea to try and sell LLLL.coms in bulk lots larger than 100 LLLL.coms — split it up into 2, 3, etc lots if necessary, however be careful about putting too many in a lot.

I offered this suggestion on 4 Letter Noob last year and I will offer it here as well — keep your eyes peeled for deals over the next couple weeks. We should see a few of them as less serious domainers spend time with their families instead of continuing to actively follow the drop and auction scene. Don’t neglect your families of course, however do set your alarm or make a note to make sure you don’t miss out on the auctions you’ll want to take part in. Patrick, the owner of ChefPatrick.com, made an absolute killing recently – picking up Oyoa.com on Namepros for $70 and reselling it on Sedo for $490 within 3 weeks. Now I’m not sure if we’ll see a deal quite that good over the next couple weeks, however I’m fairly certain we’ll see a nice supply of good deals and a few steals.

Sandboxing is a concept every domain name investor should familiarize himself with. Viruses, trojans, keyloggers, and other malware which is the enemy of every computer user (and especially domain name investors or anyone else doing monetary transactions online) can often be prevented by using a sandbox. What is a sandbox and how can sandboxing protect me from malware you ask? We’ll talk about that  and even mention a free sandboxing application you can use to make browsing the web and conducting domain name transactions a safer experience.  We’ll cover the pros and cons of sandboxing and mention what sandboxing can and can’t do. Is it right for you as a domain name investor? Read on to find out.

The problem with most malware detection software is that they’re largely reactive rather than proactive. In short, a program designed to detect malware operating off a malware signature-based database is always going to be playing “catch-up” with malware writers who create new malware which is undetectable using the current database. If you’ve ever done a virus scan before and after downloading new virus definitions, you probably have a good idea of how this works. While malware detection software is getting better at detecting malware and in recent years has been expanding beyond solely signature-based detection, malware writers aren’t standing still either.

When I refer to Sandboxing in this article, I’m referring to a computer security measure, not the “Google Sandbox” some SEOs like to talk about.

Sandboxing has many applications in the software and web development fields, however in this article we’re going to focus solely on how Sandboxing can increase the security of web browsing, email, and privacy. A shareware product I’ve tried which does an excellent job at Sandboxing is Sandboxie.

Sandboxie and other sandboxing products allow select applications to be run in a virtual environment which reduces the likelihood of malware being permanently written to your hard drive or other attached media. By using a sandbox, cookies, new registry entries, and cached or downloaded files will be written to this virtual environment, being deleted (along with malware) once the Sandbox is closed or emptied. In short, “What happens in the Sandbox stays in the Sandbox“.

While sandboxes are a great way to increase your security and privacy when browsing the web and reading emails, a few limitations to remember when using Sandboxes follow:

* Sandboxes provide limited protection from many social engineering scams, such as phishing and pharming.
* Sandboxing software doesn’t disable all keyloggers immediately. You must close or empty the sandbox to remove any keyloggers you’ve acquired while browsing the web, prior to it being safe to enter passwords and other confidential information. Sandboxie recommends first stopping all activity within the Sandboxes prior to closing them for maximum protection against keyloggers.
* Sandboxes cannot protect you from malware already residing on your computer

Like all other security-related suggestions made on Domain Name Scams, Sandboxes are an important component I recommend adding to your domain name security arsenal. 

I’ve said that a lot over the past year when talking about LLLL.coms and it really does hold true today — not just for LLLL.coms either. Whether we look at LLL.coms, LLLL.coms, or keyword domains, it’s clear that quality still sells reasonably well, low quality or mass quantity, not so well. That said, I think we can all admit that at least in the case of the LLLL.com market, prices are up noticeably since the lows of October 2008 — even on the lower quality LLLL.coms.

I’m developing some of my names at present, however if I were looking to invest I’d be paying close attention to the CVCV market. Quality CVCVs have certainly weathered the economic storm better than most domains, largely imho because of how depressed their values were and have been for years now.

As I’ve said many times, I always have seen a quality CVCVs as a better investment than a bad LLL.com — they often have more traffic, almost always have more acronyms, and are always more pronounceable.

If you’ve ever bought something expensive over the Internet, you’ve probably heard of Escrow.com. Escrow.com is but one of the numerous escrow services available which ensures that both the buyer and the seller are happy with the final outcome at the end of an online transaction. Because Escrow.com is currently the most popular escrow service, it will be the covered exclusively in this post — this doesn’t mean there aren’t other good escrow services out there, however Escrow.com is a safe bet for online purchases of almost any kind. Most escrow services operate in a relatively similar fashion, so once you understand how to use Escrow.com, you should have a pretty good idea of how to use other escrow services as well. Be careful of fake escrow companies and always remember that just because an escrow service is being used does not mean you should let your guard down. While using an escrow service significantly reduces the risk of you getting scammed, it does not eliminate the possibility for digital goods or counterfeit goods (unless you detect it during your inspection period and make this known to Escrow.com).

Beginning an escrow transaction involves first creating an escrow account — in this case, one at Escrow.com. Once that’s done, log into your Escrow.com account, indicating which type of escrow transaction you’d like to begin.  Follow the instructions carefully laid out on the screen for your escrow transaction. You’ll need to enter a name for the escrow  transaction, along with the total price to be paid. Before proceeding, discuss with the other party who will be responsible for the escrow fees. Regardless of whether you’re using Escrow.com or another online payment processor, labeling your escrow transaction as precisely as possible will help your prove your case in the event a dispute arises. Prior to agreeing to the Escrow.com transaction, be sure you’re comfortable with the Terms associated with the escrow transaction. If unsatisfied with the default Escrow.com contract, consider drafting up your own contract for use. This will of course need to be agreed upon by both parties.

Once you’ve agreed to the terms of the escrow transaction, an email from Escrow.com will be sent to the other party letting them know that an escrow transaction has been setup through Escrow.com. They’ll be asked to login to their Escrow.com account or create one at this time and agree to the terms of the Escrow.com transaction.

Once the terms of the escrow transaction have been agreed to by both parties, the buyer will be prompted to pay for the purchase. This is generally done by credit card, Paypal (requires both the buyer and seller to be from the United States) or wire transfer. The buyer can also choose to submit payment by check or money order drawn upon a U.S. bank, however this will result in an approximately 2 weeks delay – a 10 business day hold plus transit time.

Once payment is received by Escrow.com and confirmed “good funds”, Escrow.com will ask the seller to deliver the goods to the buyer. Depending on whether it is a tangible or intangible good, Escrow.com may require that you transfer the goods to Escrow.com who will then transfer it to the buyer. In the event of the sale of an intangible good (domain name, ebook, software, etc), make sure you’re transferring the goods to the address which matches exactly the Escrow.com account information listed for the buyer. Once you’ve transferred the goods to the buyer, login to your Escrow.com account and indicate that you’ve done this, following instructions given to confirm that this has been done.

Escrow.com will now start the Inspection Period, during which time the buyer will need to verify that he has complete control of the goods and possibly that they are genuine. Regardless of whether you’re using Escrow.com or another online payment processor, be sure to do your homework as you always should when buying and selling goods online to people you don’t know. Research the person you’ll be doing business with (eg. do a search to see what appears to be their real name, social network or forum username, email address, etc) and consider contacting both them and people they’ve done business with in the past if you’re able to find that information.

Before the end of the Inspection Period or once completely satisfied, the buyer must login to his Escrow.com account and either accept or reject the goods involved in the escrow transaction. Should the buyer do neither, Escrow.com will begin a second Inspection Period – at least that’s been my personal experience when this has happened to me, however there’s no documentation on the Escrow.com website about what happens under such a scenario. Provided you can prove the transfer of ownership has taken place, Escrow.com will eventually release the funds should the buyer remain unresponsive and your able to prove you delivered the goods.

With  domain transactions, some buyers have attempted to manipulate the fact that Escrow.com is not a true  escrow service by  modifying the whois information to make it look as if the  transfer never took place, despite having received the domains. Take a screenshot (Print Screen) of the whois immediately upon transfer of the domainss and keep all emails from the buyer, Escrow.com, and your registrar regarding the status of all domains involved in the  escrow transaction until it’s been completed and you’ve received payment. DomainTools offers a  History service which documents historical whois changes and may help you prove your case.

If the buyer rejected the goods during the Inspection Period, he’ll have to return them to the seller. As knowledgeable as the staff at Escrow.com are, nobody watches out more for you than yourself –make sure the Escrow.com staff are kept up to date on the status of things and ensure they don’t refund the buyer prior to you receiving your goods back.

Upon the buyer accepting the goods, Escrow.com will review the escrow transaction and send payment to the seller via the payment method chosen. You may phone Escrow.com at any time prior to the conclusion of any Escrow.com transaction should you change your mind and prefer to be paid via a different payment method.

Escrow.com allows both buyers and sellers to begin escrow transactions. Escrow transactions involving a large number of goods can be done through Escrow.com by faxing them a list of the goods to be included in the escrow transaction. Escrow.com does not cover goods which were fraudulently obtained and sold through their escrow service — if you choose to keep the goods once the Inspection period has ended, Escrow.com’s role in the escrow transaction has been completed.

Note: Fake escrow companies outnumber real ones. A seller might pretend he’s trying to safely conduct business, however he might be trying to scam you through a bogus escrow company. If for whatever reason you can’t use Escrow.com, do some research to make sure the seller is recommending a reliable escrow company. I’ve never heard of there being problems with Escrow.com however.

Phishing was a bad enough problem, however social phishing takes phishing to a whole new level. What is social phishing? In short, social phishing is pretending I’m your friend so I can gain access to your domain names or anything else I may be interested in (eg. credit card numbers). Social phishing happens more often than people think and the consequences of social phishing can be devastating. Read on for more information on social phishing.

Social networks have ushered phishing and social engineering to a new level, one which many security experts have dubbed Social Phishing.

Social Phishing, also known as context-aware phishing, exploits technical vulnerabilities and human nature of being too trusting of the intentions of friends and family. Most domainers and webmasters who make their living online are shocked at how easy it is to spoof an email. Social Phishing takes email spoofing one step further, with the social engineer learning about his victim via information freely available on social networks. Gaining knowledge about the intended phishing victim, the social engineer can create more convincing emails which appear (or do, courtesy of malware or a compromised email account) to come from sources the intended target is more likely to trust, such as his friends.  Information gathered by mining social networks and other online sources increases the phishing success rate, by allowing the phisher to send spoofed emails which are both personalized as real ones would be and targeted, such as spoofed emails for the correct financial institutions that the intended phishing victim uses.

Research from Indiana University confirms the powerful role social networks are beginning and will continue to play in the future of phishing.

Phishing has both financial and psychological costs, with victims often too embarrassed and ashamed to admit they fell victim. Be careful what information you disclose on the internet and don’t let your guard down merely because an email appears to have come from a friend. 

The December 2008 LLLL.com price guide looks at LLLL.com performance in November 2008. November was an interesting month, marking the one year anniversary of the LLLL.com buyout and an end to the decline in LLLL.com prices we had seen up to that point since February. Looking through the sales results visible by expanding this post, we see that the cheapest LLLL.coms have been hit far harder than the medium and higher quality LLLL.coms. Indeed, the pronounceable LLLL.com market has been negligeably hit — likely due to increased LLLL.com end user demand at the higher end. While domain name investor to domain name investor prices have fallen considerably for most LLLL.coms, end user sales haven’t fallen to near the same extent — presumably because most end users (corporations) are highly unlikely to have been affected by the 2008 recession to the point that smaller domain name investors (comprising a significant portion of the LLLL.com market) have. Read on for a complete breakdown of LLLL.com performance and sales results.

We’ve heard some interesting opinions over the past year — both overly optimistic and pessimistic, and while the LLLL.com market fared worse than most LLLL.com investors would have hoped over the past year, all signs point to the buyout holding.

After a dismal performance in October 2008, LLLL.coms have begun to appreciate once again, with the minimum wholesale being approximately $4 today, up from $2 in October 2008 (both figures based on LLLL.coms about to expire).

November 2008 started out strong, seeing average prices of $19.56 at eBay, $38.09 at SnapNames, and $38.67 at TDNAM (outlier $200+ sales removed) during the first week, for an overall average of $25.94 across 242 sales for a total of $6278.26 in sales under $200.

Median sales ranged from $14.20 at eBay to $28.00 at TDNAM, with SnapNames seeing the median sale bring in $19.00 and the median across all venues coming in at $21.00.

All told, 124 sales were reported under $20 and 115 more between $20 and $100 (1:1.08 ratio). Sales were distributed largely between eBay, TDNAM, and SnapNames, with both eBay and TDNAM resulting in 93 reported sales each and SnapNames reporting 62 sales. NameJet was a distant fourth with 13 reported sales.

Week 2 in November brought in stronger results, with $10,941.60 in sales under $200 bringing in an overall average sale of $30.91 and median of $19.40. Averages and medians were closer between venues this week, with eBay reporting a median of $20.50 and an average of $27.79 on 191 sales. SnapNames reported median and average LLLL.com sale prices of $19.00 and $23.00 respectively and TDNAM reported median prices of $18.00 and average prices of $28.77 on 131 sales.

There were 197 sales under $20 and 141 more between $20 and $100, with 39 (10%) reported sales above $100. Fifteen LLLL.coms were reported sold for $500+ this week, with DN Journal reported several more (included at the end of this article).

Week 3 saw a median of $19.00 and an average price of $32.43 across 231 sales, bringing in $7490.82. Ebay saw an average of $22.60 and median of $16.67 on 112 sales, SnapNames saw 62 sales with an average of $17.63 and median of $15.00. TDNAM saw an average of $28.00 and median of $18.00. It was another good week for quality LLLL.coms and end user sales, with 14 LLLL.coms reaching $500+.

Week 4 saw 44 reported sales above $500, led by Vida.com and Loto.com on Namejet for $50,100 and $91,331 respectively and followed by nineteen 4 figure LLLL.com sales by Afternic — these are of course all excluded from analysis, along with all other outliers and foreign language dictionary words, however they deserve mention nevertheless. The lowest reported sale during Week 4 was mvqb.com for $8.50 on eBay, however many firesale LLLL.coms are currently for sale on TDNAM for $5 without takers, so this suggests the minimum wholesale is still below $5 on LLLL.coms which require immediate renewal. The average sale under $200 came in at $27.04, with the median for the week being $18. Ebay saw 86 sales, averaging $17.40 (median $12.50) and TDNAM saw 112 sales averaging $26.26 (median $18).

Compiling all the results, average sale price was $29.30, with median $19.50, classifying sales above $200 as outliers. Using $500 as our benchmark outlier, the average LLLL.com price soars to $42.99. There were $47,206.17 of reported LLLL.com sales under $500, Afternic alone surpassing that figure with enduser sales.

There were 596 reported sales in the month of November under $20, with 395 more between $20 and $100. There were 83 sales above $500, representing ~7% of total sales.

Suggested Minimum Wholesale: $4.00

5th Percentile: $10.01

10th Percentile: $11.63

25th Percentile:$16.00

Median: $21.00

75th Percentile: $40.02

90th Percentile: $237.00

Buyout names will typically find themselves between the Minimum Wholesale and the Median, with the Minimum Wholesale being approximately $12 for fresh renewals, versus $4 for expired or LLLL.coms near expiry. Renewal fees are factored into sales which require renewal (eg. all TDNAM expired domain purchases), otherwise, they are not. Renewal fees are assumed to be $8.00. Registrar prices will vary.

Quad Premiums saw a minimum of $149 in November, something which has held relatively constant oevr the past couple months. Most quad premium sales are currently falling between $160 and $240, depending on overall quality. The worst premium letters are, on average, F, G, and H. Looking at the quad premium sales results, it’s not difficult to see this holds true, with most of the lower quad premium sales having at least 1 of those letters. If your quad premium LLLL.com has no F,G, or H, it’ll likely be able to fetch at least $180. Remember that Letter Quality is just one factor we need to look at when attempting to evaluate the worth of a domain and it’s a small factor at that — it’s really a quick cheat to determine the value of an LLLL.com without putting in the work which will be elucidated in the bulleted points soon to follow. Triple letters saw JIJJ.com report the lowest sale at $195 and ZXZZ fetching $200 — neither of which is a bottom of the barrel triple letter and I suspect the minimum is approximately $140 at present. Triple repeats saw SQQQ.com fetch $210 and YYYN.com $260, suggesting a minimum wholesale of about $200. Again, overall quality is of the utmost importance when analyzing sales results.

• Pronounceability (does it pass the radio test?)

• Memorability

• Brandability

• Likelihood of an existing or future enduser

• Traffic/Revenue

• Anything else which differentiates it from other LLLL.coms

At the end of the day, an LLLL.com is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. This guide cannot unfortunately predict that, nor can any guide or person. The best we can do is observe past sales and what made them desirable (see bulleted points above) and attempt to apply these principles to our LLLL.coms.

In excess of 99% of LLLL.com data we use on LLLL.com is sourced from public sales. Private sales are only considered for inclusion if they come from reliable sources or if proof of purchase/sale is provided. All private LLLL.com sales are clearly marked “Private Sale” to avoid any confusion and allow easy elimination should you choose to conduct your own research on the numbers presented here. Sales above $200 were excluded for all calculations of averages, so as to not heavily skew results. Median prices included all results in the calculations (the outliers of course being removed in the process of calculating the median). End user sales are not reflective of what domainers can typically expect to receive for their domains and with that in mind, please view the sales above $200 with caution, especially if they appear to be of low quality — similar domains won’t necessarily sell for similar prices, especially if you’re not aware of the reasons behind a seemingly bad LLLL.com selling for a seemingly good price. Loto.com, Vida.com, and Juzi.com in example are common dictionary words in foreign languages — similar domains which aren’t dictionary words won’t fetch remotely close to as much.

While I strive to report accurate sales results, please understand that I can’t take responsibility for any errors or omissions, nor do I recommend making investment decisions based solely on the data provided on www.LLLL.com. The Catch-22 with domain name price guides is that those invested in what they report on often have a bias and those who report on what they’re not invested in often don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. I admit to being invested in short domains myself and have included all sales that I’m aware of above, allowing you to do your own research if you believe mine to be biased in any direction. Never invest more than you can afford to lose. Past performance may not be indicative of future results.

End of Guide.

Released: December 1st, 2008.

All domain names are registered with one domain name registrar or another. Which domain name registrar is the best fit for you? While domain name prices are an important factor to consider, what you paid for your domains won’t matter much if you lose them due to your registrar having inadequate security measures in place, theft at the company, or policies unfriendly to domain name investors written into their legal agreements. Are their services you’re going to need for your domains — are they included or optional extras? Are there additional security measures that can be taken for valuable domains? How cooperative will your registrar be in helping you get your domains back should the unimaginable happen? Does your domain name registrar have hidden fees? Read on for more advice on picking a good domain name registrar.

Make sure you’re aware of all services included with a domain name registration, renewal, or transfer at your chosen registrar. Some registrars offer free domain name forwarding, DNS control, shared hosting, 24/7 telephone customer support, among other freebies. While a registrar may appear cheaper, be sure it’s still cheaper after all the services you’ll both need and might need (eg. domain registration fees, domain renewal fees, domain push and transfer fees) are factored into the equation. With a monetization account, Fabulous has some of the lowest prices in the industry. Without it, Fabulous is much more expensive than most alternatives. Godaddy has very low prices for executive account holders and those who don’t mind asking other domainers all the time what the latest coupons are. It’s worth noting that Godaddy has hidden fees (eg: next paragraph was pretty much written off of Godaddy policies) and spams you to death with product offerings. Moniker’s prices are a bit higher than Godaddy, however they’re still very reasonable. Moniker charges for URL forwarding which I personally find ridiculous.

Hidden fees

Some registrars occasionally run promotions offering domain registrations below or near the registry wholesale price – selling domains at (or near) a loss requires them to make the money back somewhere else, usually from other products, hidden fees for spam, invalid whois, fees for customer support during ownership disputes, warehousing domains, and, almost always, more expensive domain name renewals (easily avoided by transferring the domains to a different registrar). That’s not to say more expensive registrars don’t have hidden fees — don’t agree to anything without both reading and understand it and ask all questions you have prior to choosing a domain name registrar.

Domain name security

Will you be needing additional security features or private domain name registration? Compare costs and features. We’ll look at 3 different registrars: Godaddy, Moniker, and Fabulous.

Godaddy Protected Registration: $24.99/year.

Moniker MaxLock: $34.99/year. Edit: Moniker recently introduced a Portfolio MaxLock option which costs around $200/year.

Fabulous.com Executive Lock: $0.00/year

“Fabulous is trying to offer this as another free value added service. If this manual transaction service is overused by wholesale account holders by processing high volumes of lower value domains, the service will have to become a paid feature in the future. Please take care to use this service appropriately for your special domains.”

Expiration Protection – Godaddy will renew any domains you purchase Protected Registration on for an additional year should they expire. This is a one time  feature and you’ll need to pay the renewal fee back should you wish to keep the domains. This may come in handy if your auto-renew  billing source fails or if you  forget to renew your domains. A common sense alternative for Moniker and Fabulous would be to renew your domains for additional years in advance, and this is something you should be doing anyway with valuable domains.

Nameserver Protection – Fabulous provides additional protection against nameserver changes as part of their free Executive lock. It’s unfortunate that Godaddy and Moniker do not offer  additional protection against nameserver changes as they do transfers of ownership with their premium security offerings. Hijacked nameservers can be extremely damaging to a company, having both financial and consumer trust-related consequences.

Private Registration – Many people purchase private domain name registration to increase the security of their domains. If a hacker can’t figure who owns the domain, it makes it much more difficult to compromise the account containing that domain. With the high level of security provided by the Fabulous Executive Lock and Moniker MaxLock, private registration isn’t really necessary unless you want to conceal your identity from the noobs sending you lowball offers on your generics each day. Private Registration currently costs $2 per domain at Moniker, is included free of charge with Godaddy’s Protected Registration or when you purchase or transfers 5 or more domains to Godaddy ($8.99/year for future years) and isn’t currently offered at Fabulous.com, however it appears there are plans to offer it in the near future.

User Experience — Customer support depends to a large extent on who your rep is, moreso than necessarily the company. Some companies have a reputation for having many incompetent reps,  Godaddy in example being a bad company to contact for support via email. That said, I’m quite happy with my Godaddy executive account rep — very knowledgeable and helpful. Godaddy, Moniker, and Fabulous all score high points for customer support. The domain name management interface is also something to carefully consider. My best advice would be to try them each out and find what works for you before transferring your domains over and finding yourself unhappy. Out of the three, I consider Fabulous as  having the best interface, followed by Godaddy, and then Moniker.

Transfer Protection – Even if you choose not to go with an Executive Lock on your domains, Fabulous still offers exceptional protection over the industry average. With up to five security questions requiring answer, Fabulous makes it very difficult for any would-be domain thief to make unauthorized transfers of ownership on your domains. By default, domains at Moniker are locked at both the registrar and registry level. Fabulous offers a registry level lock with their Executive Lock feature.  One of Moniker’s main attractions is that all transfers out are reviewed by Moniker employees, rather than being  a strictly automated process. Moniker has  a longstanding reputation for being one of the most dedicated and successful registrars when it comes to domain name security. Godaddy’s regular protection in the event of transfer requests is limited to sending an email to the  email address listed as belonging to the administrative contact. This is unfortunately insufficient in many cases, with many phishers obtaining access to domain name accounts by first compromising  the email address listed as the administrative contact and subsequently requesting the password. Godaddy’s protection for intra-registrar transfers is non-existent and Godaddy locks only at the registrar level, facilitating decisions which  may detrimentally affect domainers (eg. FamilyAlbum.com).

Government and Cybersquatter Protection – When incidents such as Kentucky happen, whose side is your registrar on? Moniker and Fabulous have time and time again put their customers first. I can’t say the same about Godaddy unfortunately.

RegistrarJudge.com is a free website which allows domainers to submit feedback about their experience with a domain name registrar. If you’re still unsure of who to go with, this is a great place to start. Choosing a safer registrar is an excellent start, however it’s no  reason to forget entirely about security measures you can take to help your registrar better protect you.