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Archive for March, 2009

More LLLL.com Statistics

Mar. 30th 2009

Jeremy on Namepros was kind enough to share with us a first quarter LLLL.com sales report. Jeremy’s LLLL.com sales report includes all reported LLLL.com sales through March 30th and breaks down prices based on letter quality. Reading over the LLLL.com sales report, I see that anti-premiums are priced differently from non-premiums and that the gap appears to be widening. The difference between what the weakest LLLL.coms go for and the better LLLL.coms go for appears to be widening on a percentage basis as well. One thing which is interesting in this LLLL.com sales report that you’ll notice is how much higher average LLLL.com prices are for particular LLLL.com letter patterns versus the minimum wholesale of each of the LLLL.com letter patterns.

average non-premium $16.36

average single premium $21.84

average double premium $29.81

average triple premium $38.11

average quad premium $181.01

What you’re looking at is a compilation of first quarter 2009 LLLL.com sales results with outlier sales (defined in this case to be above $300 for quads and above $100 for everything else) removed. Some interesting findings which are noted:

1. The average non-premium LLLL.com fetches a fair bit less than the average single premium LLLL.com — We know true anti-premium (with 4 bad letters) LLLL.coms sell at a fairly hefty premium versus min wholesale, however that doesn’t appear to hold for all non-premiums, merely the least premium of the least premium.

2. LLLL.com investors value the premium to be placed on a letter quality difference between single premium LLLL.coms (average:  $21.84) and double premium LLLL.coms (average: $29.81) roughly identically to the premium to be placed on the letter quality difference between double premium LLLL.coms and triple premium LLLL.coms (average: $38.11).

3. Quad premium LLLL.coms stand out as an outlier when looking at all other available data on how one should “appraise” LLLL.coms based on letter quality — domainer demand associated with being a “premium LLLL.com” likely has some role in this.

4. As we all know, double and triple premium LLLL.coms account for the large majority of enduser sales outside the quad premium space, yet price differences between non-premium and single premium LLLL.coms versus double and triple premium LLLL.coms aren’t all that significant — the former being about half the latter and being way more expensive than can be explained by enduser demand which is much higher for double and triple premium LLLL.coms.

5. As we all know, LLLL.coms are collectibles — they’re like LLL.coms, only 1 letter longer. One could make a reasonable case that $16 represents the average wholesale price one could expect to receive for a bottom of the barrel LLLL.com and that any deviation from that must be attributed in part to enduser and domainer demand — domainer demand of course being influenced by the likes of letter quality, pronounceability, expiration date, and where it’s registered.

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Posted by Reece | in Uncategorized, short domain names | No Comments »

Increasing Productivity

Mar. 18th 2009

Investing in domain names is as much about being smart as it is working hard. How does a domain name investor go about making the best use of his time? Effect time management principles such as making a to-do list and sticking to it, among other things are discussed elsewhere on this blog, however, there are some other things we can do beyond that to increase our productivity and make sure that we’re the best domain name investors that we can possibly be. Who wouldn’t want to be able to work both harder and smarter without feeling like they’re putting in extra effort? All those years that people said IQ scores couldn’t be changed… Guess what, they were wrong. Read on for many tips on productivity and be sure to read the time management section on LLLL.com if you haven’t done so already to ensure that you’re the best domain investor you can be.

One thing I’ve spent a lot of time researching over the past couple years is how to increase memory, focus, and concentration — I spend a lot of time rereading what I’ve already read because my memory just isn’t very good. Exercise (both mental and physical) are great ways to help maintain and even improve your memory (google it — lots of reputable sources backing this up). Physical exercise will likely improve your motivation levels as well, further increasing the amount of work you get done. As for nutrition (and it bears mentioning that nobody should begin taking dietary supplements without first talking to their doctor), the first thing (and easiest thing) to do is to monitor is your diet.

Omega-3 has been getting a lot of press lately for its lengthy list of benefits — I’m not a big fan of fish, so I try to get a little extra in my diet through Omega-3 eggs and flaxseed. Walnuts are another great way to get a bit more Omega-3 in your diet.  Most of us aren’t getting enough Omega-3 in our diets and it’s safe to say getting a little more through natural food sources is unlikely to do anything but help (you do have to be careful with fish and fish oil supplements regarding mercury levels) Like Omega-3, it’s fairly well established that a deficiency in the B-vitamins can cause problems ranging from poor memory to poor concentration. When I recently went to my doctor, I was shocked to learn that my iron levels were about 30% below the entire range of normal iron levels — Iron deficiency is certainly one of the worst there are and many people don’t understand that problems may be apparent even from mild iron deficiencies — some symptoms (it would take this entire page to list everything which can result from iron deficiency) courtesy of WebMD include:

  • Feeling weak and tire out more easily.
  • Feeling dizzy.
  • Being grumpy or cranky.
  • Have headaches.
  • Look very pale.
  • Feel short of breath.
  • Have trouble concentrating.
Iron deficiency is obviously not something you want if getting work done is on your agenda. There’s a lot of conflicting data on whether iron supplements are good or bad — Vitamin C greatly enhances iron absorption, so you’re probably better off just having a glass of orange juice with a bowl of cereal (or other food high in iron) rather than going the supplement route.
One of my favorite areas to read up on outside of domaining is on nootropics — essentially, chemicals which enhance cognitive functioning. Plenty of prescription medications work very well off-label for ordinary people — many college students have found that Ritalin and Adderall for example substantially increase motivation and concentration levels, even in people who don’t have ADD/ADHD for which it’s typically prescribed. These drugs are scheduled unfortunately in most countries, so you won’t be able to get your hands on them legally, however there are many legal alternatives (as always, always talk to your doctor before starting a supplemental regime and be very careful if stacking drugs and make sure your doctor knows exactly what you’re stacking).
It’s been known for quite some time that people with Alzheimer’s are deficient in acetylcholine. There are enzymes in the brain for many chemicals which prevent levels from going too high, in the case of acetylcholine, acetylcholinesterase takes on that responsibility. Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that inhibiting acetylcholinesterase would probably be a good way to increase acetylcholine levels — and indeed many medications for chronic memory loss  work on this principle. Huperzine A is a quite powerful acetylcholinesterase inhibitor I’ve been taking for about 6 months now that has helped improve my memory and despite being freely available without a prescription, performs quite comparably to prescription medications and has had positive results even in patients without any memory problems.
Closer to the boundary between supplement and drug, we have Selegiline (which is regulated in some countries), a compound which in some animal studies has led to substantially increased lifespans (like calorie restriction, there is of course little evidence at present to suggest this will necessarily have a comparable effect in humans). This is not the kind of supplement one should ever take without speaking to a doctor (inhibits MAO-A potentially leading to hypertensive crisis at doses above 20mg per day (most people should only be using 1-2mg per day max)). Selegiline’s effects are fairly remarkable — it’s recently come on the market as a treatment for major depression under the EMSAM label and is documented to reported to improve mood even in healthy individuals. At doses under 10mg, Selegiline is a selective irreversible MAO-B inhibitor — the main benefit most people would derive from this is increased dopamine levels, possibly lowering the risk of Parkinson’s later in life (which will really mess up your productivity as you age!). It’s worth noting that seeing as it is an irreversible MAO-B inhibitor, it’s not something children or younger adults should be taking in large doses.
Another one of my favorites are the racetams — Piracetam, Aniracetam, and Oxiracetam. Some people also like Pramiracetam. The effects from these nootropics vary considerably from person to person — Piracetam was the first discovered and has undergone the most research. Racetams, like many other nootropics, appear to protect the brain as it ages. As a class, racetams are low on adverse side-effects and their toxicity is extremely low.
One last one worth mentioning is Modafinil — if you’re any bit like me, you’ve probably found yourself too busy from time to time to get things done. In the past, your (legal) choices were to either sleep and finish the work tomorrow or pound back a few energy drinks / cups of coffee / caffeine pills. Speaking from experience here, it’s a bad habit, tolerance builds up relatively quickly and it’s just not very healthy (not to mention the crashes aren’t fun!). A better alternative is out there and it’s name is Modafinil. It’s a bit on the pricey side currently at about $4 per pill (not really more expensive than what you’re currently paying if you’re using multiple energy drinks to stay up and better for your teeth than excess coffee), however it produces a less jittery burst of energy than caffeine megadoses and many people find it better for motivation and focus (hard to focus if you can’t stop fidgeting!) In double blind studies I’ve come across, Modafinil generally performs equivalently to 600mg of pure caffeine — about the equivalent of drinking 6 to 8 cups of coffee in a row. Sleep is important and this is (or caffeine for that matter) are not an alternative to sleeping, although they can be very helpful for those days where 8 hours of sleep just isn’t possible. Melatonin… I don’t know where to start with that one. You might want to read up on it even if you’re not having difficulty with insomnia. Melatonin will help you enjoy a deep sleep (sometimes very vivid dreams) and is a very powerful antioxidant. On the antioxidant front, plenty of conflicting research has surfaced over the past couple years — safe to say one is better getting their antioxidants from food (eg. fruits, vegetables, nuts, dark chocolate) than from supplements whenever possible and more antioxidants isn’t necessarily a good thing, although melatonin supplementation appears to be much safer than say, Vitamin E which has a lot of studies which recommend and discourage supplementation. Now at risk of this post sounding too much like I’m running a pharmacy instead of a blog here, it’s time to shift the focus to other ways to increase productivity.
Headlines were made in major newspapers and even in prestigious scientific journals last year when a game called dual n-back was found to substantially increase working memory and even IQ scores (presumably due to working memory dependent tasks such as digit span and mental arithmetic found on IQ tests)  in healthy patients. There are some free websites where you can plan this game (warning: it isn’t so much a game as it is a serious brain brain workout!), such as: soakyourhead.com and brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/. I’ve been playing it every few days and it does seem to help with working memory, something which most people could benefit from. I recently purchased a version of the dual n-back game from Mind Evolve which I feel is a much better implementation than the free versions.
While this is the cheapest game I’ve found that has been documented to significantly improve cognitive performance, there are a few others out there which I’ve research but haven’t yet gotten around to trying. Posit Science and CogniFit also have very good (albeit very expensive) offerings — think of these as Nintendo’s Brain Age, however instead of trying to make it fun, it’s intended for maximum cognitive improvement. In this case of dual n-back, one study reported increased dopamine receptor density in one area in the brain — a rather good sign that the memory improvements were more than a placebo effect.  The aging brain and what we can do to slow cognitive decline are pretty hot topics and the market for brain games is currently valued at over $225MM per year, with lvaro Fernandez from SharpBrains.com predicting sales will top $2B annually by 2016 — might be a good market to think about registering domains in, no?

Tape television shows and watch them at a later date fast-forwarding through the commercials. According to Wikipedia, you can expect to watch about 18 minutes of television advertisements per hour of television you watch in the United States. A Nielson Media report I dug up from 2006 found that the average American watches well over 4 hours of television per day — times that by 18 minutes of commercials per hour and your average American is wasting well over an hour of his time each day looking at commercials from which he presumably derives little pleasure. You could watch another TV show with that time, you could do some extra domaining with that time, the bottom line is that you could do something more enjoyable with that time. Take that 1+ hour per day of commercial watching and multiply that by 365 days on the year — we’re talking about 15+ 24 hour days which are being wasted watching commercials. I don’t know about you but I have better things I can do with my time than watch commercials!

If you want to be more productive, a good place to start would be to chop that TV time in half or more — do we really need to watch 4 hours of television per day? So many people say they don’t have time to exercise, they don’t have time to do their work, etc — but on average, they do have time to put in 4+ hours per day watching television — which translates to about 1500 hours per year or about 2 entire months spent watching television (more if you factor in sleep time). Disturbing to say the least!

One of my goals for 2009 is to learn the Method of Loci – a 2000+ year old powerful memorization technique which is still used by memory champions today.

More tips on improving productivity are available in my post on time management.

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Posted by Reece | in Uncategorized, internet/advice | 2 Comments »

The State of the Short Domain Market

Mar. 13th 2009

Prices on short domains are much cheaper than they were a year ago. Is now the time to start thinking about buying a short domain or should you wait a bit longer to see what the future holds for short domains and the domain name market as a whole. Some people say “Buy Low, Sell High”, others say “Don’t try to catch a falling knife” — which best describes what one’s next move should be as a short domain investor? Read on for my thoughts on the short domain market.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen LLL.coms fall to new lows — $3000 sales are happening and they certainly aren’t outlier sales anymore. With some decent quality LLL.coms being sold for not a whole lot more than the minimum (eg. kxf.com for $3400), one has to wonder if the market will be able to hold at $3000. I know more than a few domainers who are itching to get back into this market — you can quite easily buy twice as many LLL.coms with your money as you could 6 months ago, however I haven’t yet seen much to suggest prices are done falling.

Another market which has taken quite a hit lately has been the quad premium market — we’re seeing sales in the very low $100s with increasing frequency. It saddens me to see this as I do like the quad premium LLLL.com market, however with things going the way they are, I fear it’s only a matter of time before we start to see sales in the $90s. The very high end LLLL.com market seems to be weathering the storm far better than lower quality LLLL.coms and LLL.coms — Fizy.com was reported sold for $10,000 (enduser sale),  Dumi.com saw $2604 and DGPS.com $6200 recently on Sedo. When it comes to quads, it’s clear that not all quads are equal — no doubt an LLLL.com like DGPS.com is an order of magnitude better than your average LLLL.com (or quad premium LLLL.com for that matter), and that’s what one should be on the lookout for — a domain being priced based on letter quality when it shouldn’t be priced based on letter quality. I know quite a few people have had success doing just that in the CVCV space, where some of these pronounceables are meaningful words in other languages.

I don’t really have time to approach endusers unfortunately, so buying low end LLLL.coms or paying anywhere remotely close to full market value isn’t something I can consider doing during a recession given the unpredictability of where prices may be by the time I get around to selling the names purchased — that said, I still do look around and you never do know when a deal may present itself.

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Posted by Reece | in Uncategorized, short domain names | No Comments »

LLLLL.coms

Mar. 1st 2009

LLLLL.coms (also known as 5L.coms) are the latest short domain market that domainers are talking about. With LLLL.coms in many cases currently hovering around the price of a domain name registration, is it too soon to consider investing in LLLLL.coms? This does to a certain extent go back to that whole short domain debate about whether a short domain should sell for a certain value based solely on it being of a certain length or whether a short domain should need to satisfy metrics which other domains are valued upon, such as domain traffic and the revenue the domain produces. It’s no secret that LLLLL.coms won’t be selling out any time soon, so investing in LLLLL.coms is to a certain extent not like investing in many other short domain markets, in that there isn’t going to be that sense of unavailability. Many LLLLL.coms are highly pronounceable and with pronounceable LLLL.coms costing anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars, a highly pronounceable LLLLL.com for the cost of the domain’s registration fee may not be a bad investment afterall. Read on for more thoughts on this short domain market.

Timing is everything in this business — I have no doubt in my mind prices on many LLLLL.coms will be higher in the future than they are today. That said, is now the right time to invest? We’re in the middle of a recession and prices on short domains have been hit very hard. Can you afford to hold these domains for several years and will these domains appreciate faster than other domain segments (the opportunity cost of your investment in 5L.coms)?

The risks associated with an investment in LLLLL.coms are certainly higher than in most domain segments — there isn’t a whole lot of certainty about anything really. Domainers disagree on which 5L.com letter patterns are best and some trends in the LLLL.com space clearly do not appear to be holding in the 5L.com space (eg. quadruple repeat LLLLL.coms, palindromes, VVVVV, etc really haven’t caught on with domainers). Sticking to strong pronounceable 5L.coms is a must in this space in my opinion –it’s probably best to go after quality rather than quantity, even if that means buying in the aftermarket.

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Posted by Reece | in Uncategorized, short domain names | No Comments »
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