Dictionary Domain Names Revisited 2008
Dictionary Domain Names Revisited 2008: Are they being used effectively?
By Charles L. Harmon
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Nearly three years ago in my article on dictionary domain names I was expecting, even hoping, that dictionary domain names would be a rare commodity. That would have driven up the price someone would pay to get a hold of one. After all, it is definitely more difficult to find a good dot com domain name now compared to that of a few years ago.
But now almost three years later I find that has not happened, dictionary domain names don’t seem to have gone up in value. Although I recently read of an Internet marketer promoting buying domain names and immediately reselling them for a nice profit I think this is the exception. Actually I think there were two or three promoting making big profits flipping domain names. One did not indicate anything special about the names that were bought or sold. One of the others created websites for the domain names and then flipped them.
Here are examples of a few dictionary domain names; radishs, seizin, two-piece, zebeck, tythe, tishri, tobol, nutgall, sexological.
My experience the last two years, although it may not be typical, has reinforced to me that domain speculation is very risky at best. Even the so-called dictionary domain names don’t appear to have much, if any, edge over multiple word domains. As an example I have let many of my dictionary domains expire. This was mainly due to an excessive number of names I was able to register. All told I had almost 600 domain names with about a fifth of them being dictionary domain names.
Here are examples of a few non-dictionary domain names, some of which may have sites on them; nicheriver, hairstyleholiday, safarikay, mygardendelight, fourteenbucks, iideal, webprofittrainee, mykudo, trafficwish.
Now, the market for any domain name is really up to the buyer to determine what they are willing to pay. There does not seem to be any intrinsic value in a domain name, however, since each is unique and different people have different ideas about what a name is worth, one could argue that any commodity that is one of a kind has value. It is fairly obvious that dot com and other domain names with two or three letters (when available) are selling for more than longer names. But to put any specific worth on a domain name is difficult to do. Dictionary domain names are no exception.
Just today I checked on some of my expired dictionary domain names to see whatever happened to them. Not good. Several were parked on directory pages, effectively not being used for much. Some were still unregistered. The clincher was a dual-purpose dictionary domain name I sold a few months ago for a nice four-figure amount was still sitting parked (not even collecting money) at one of the popular registries.
That was a name I was actually going to use and had already designed most of the website. But because of the very good offer I sold it. If I had paid that much for a domain name I certainly would not let it sit months doing nothing with it. In all fairness, however, I have been so busy with other activities I too have not used most of the domain names I bought with the intention of using for my own websites. But then again I did not pay a lot for any of the domain names. In fact I only paid for two and they were less than $100 each. The rest I only paid what it cost to register then – less than $10 each.
During the domain check two of the other three most recent domains I had sold did not look promising either. Although not dictionary domains, one a name with a nice amount of traffic when I owned it was used for a directory totally unrelated to the domain name while the other gave a page not found error. That domain name, however, did have a website attached to it at one time, a nice one for a short time, but no more. Both of those two domain names were names that I sold for many hundreds of dollars each.
From my perspective it seems like one has to be very careful when contemplating registering too many domain names unless you have a use for them. I haven’t looked lately, but since I was able to find dictionary domain names easily before, it probably still is. But let me warn you – do not spend a lot on dictionary domain names unless you are sure you know what you are doing. The same holds true for any domain name.
I did not aggressively promote any of my domain names and that surely must have made a difference. If you want to make money, or not lose money on domain names you have bought for speculation, you will need to actively promote them. Don’t get in over your head as I probably did and acquire so many you can’t handle them. Also try not to use too many registrars as that makes it difficult to manage them.
I have two registrars now to handle my names. I have some with GoDaddy and a lot with Fabulous.com. I cannot recommend GoDaddy and have removed almost all of them from there. The remaining I tried to move from there, but due to their convoluted system renewed automatically because I could not prevent it. I hope the third time is a charm, or better yet I hope I can sell those few names before renewal time comes up.
To answer the question are dictionary domain names being used effectively I would have to guess a no. There are too many available for sale. I have seen some domain names that I have thought much less valuable than many dictionary names (my opinion only) and they sold for amounts I could never imagine. So I guess the value of any name is in the eyes of the beholder.
As with anything else there are exceptions. If you have other ideas or are someone making decent money collecting dictionary domain names or any other domain names I would be very interested to know about it. Please enter your comments or use the contact form on my charlesharmon.com site.
Copyright © 2006 – 2008, Charles Harmon
About the Author
Charles is a computer programmer and developer turned web entrepreneur. He has written software for many major U.S. Corporations as well as written and sold his own software. He is currently on an Internet training mission so his domain collecting has come to a standstill. Charles has recently started his own personal blog where he writes about caring for someone with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.
