Cheap domain name hosting

Analyzing eBay completed listing of domain sales for last two weeks in $1-$1000 price range.
The main difficulty is to determine if the actual sales are real, especially at the high end of the range. In fact, the very first reported sale $999 for “Google Nexus One Premier Domain Pack” (the title itself scares me away, suggesting the bad names with trademark violation) is not valid, as this “super domain pack” gets relisted with $350 price tag.  However, the next  “official” sale, make you realize that  “Google Pack” is not that bad… How about biloud123456789.com selling for $799? You do not need to be an eBay or domainer expert to say: “ain’t real “, without wasting the time by checking out  whois history data.   There are many amusing sales in ebay “domain names” category.  Sometimes I think that if you’re starting as a domainer, you just need to check out eBay’s completed at the high range $100+, to learn what domain names should not be bought.

 
Back to Earth: let’s categorize what domains names are selling, or pretending to be sold on eBay

Celebrity names: see my previous blog entry on ebay’s domain name sales
Trademark names: a lot of iPad.com sales for last two weeks  on Apple news
3-4 letter names: many of not all sales records in this category can be trusted
One dictionary word names: for example RABID.net this week for $260, very rare on Ebay
Two-three dictionary word names:  BillPaymentCenter.com $114
IDN Names: names containing localized non-English characters ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name  for better explanation ), very rare
Really bad names, no one is going to look at, not only type in the address bar of a web browser.  You can take biloud123456789.com as an example.  Unfortunately, the volume of the names in this category is much higher than all other categories combined

A small comment for Trademark name lovers who are hoping to make a quick buck of well-known names: do you know what happened to forbes.ru and some Apple related domains about a month ago? No need to click on the link, just read the titles: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/forbes-gets-300000-from-cybersquatter/397561.html Forbes Gets $300,000 From Cybersquatter, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/07/AR2010010704421.html Apple Seizes 16 Domain Names From A Guy In One Fell Swoop

Do you think spending $50-$400 on a domain name containing iPad\iPod is a good investment?  Use your own judgment, but I personally would stick to generic names.

In general terms, eBay market place for domains today is a bit twisted reflection of large specific domain name markets.  Yes, I believe, you can make a sale on eBay faster; more patience and additional investments (buying feature listings, appraisals, etc ) are needed when working on a sale with Sedo, AftreNic and GoDaddy auctions.  The common side effect of a quick sale is that the price which you get for your domain might be much lower than you expected.  If you’re ready to accept this, work with good names, do your research: keyword tools, domain history, past sales for similar names, existing in-links, Google ranking, etc. and you will do just fine with the domain sales on any market place.

Expired domains since my last posting, hope these are still available:
Establishedwebsite.com
macaroni.com
analystlabs.com
artworkdomain.com
temporaryarea.com
dealsexpert.com
sketchmaps.com
sportsecret.com
This is the one which makes me smile at first, though the name may not be as bad as it seems at the first sight: toiletdesigner.com