New Registration: Diamond in the Rough

I dont register many new domain names. I prefer to focus on strategic aftermarket acquisitions when I buy, as I believe the payoff can be greater. However, just like almost every other domain investor, I like to register new domain names every once in a while. Hunting for domain names is fun, and it feels great to find a gem in the rough – although one person’s gem may be someone else’s waste. I think everyone would agree that a gem of a new registration is a name that earns its annual registration fee and more, without any marketing effort.
In March, after doing some keyword research related to the outdoors and hunting, I registered MountedHeads.com (no link to avoid violating TOS). Although the Overture wasn’t strong, I felt the name was unique and in an interesting niche. Of course, “mounted heads” is related to taxonomy, where hunters pay to have their animal heads mounted. There are currently over 18,000 Google results for the term, “mounted heads,” and although it isn’t typical that a parked page is ranked so high, this one ranks #5 out of 18,000.
From the time I bought the name, I have had it parked on Fabulous. Between March and September, I received almost no visitors at all. I started receiving traffic in October, and I have been averaging about 20-25 visits per month, not too bad for a newly registered domain name. The name is also seeing a 40% CTR and rising, now that I made some minor keyword adjustments and used the Fabulous+ program to customize the layout based on landing page testing.
The name has made more than twice the registration fee, and it has earned 9o% of that revenue since it started receiving more traffic in October. While this wouldn’t be considered a great name for the biggest portfolios, it’s a gem of a new registration. Based on just a 10 year revenue multiple (using $4/month), this is close to a $500 domain name. Not bad for paying $6.95 for it less than a year ago.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
  1. Elliot,
    That was a nice little gem you snagged. You should put a little content on it with adsense and let it get indexed. This time next year it will be doing very nicely as hunters will become familiar with this targeted domain and click on the ads surrounding the content. It will be worth 3-4 times this amount by just adding a little content.
    On Dec 5, I registered the following Gems. There is luck with new registrations. These are the new packs replacing the ruck sacks in the military being issued to everyone going to war(gaining popularity with consumers). Worth some big money since 1 molle pack costs a min. of $70.00 with the average one costing $140.
    Traffic started on January 15 08
    mollepacks.com (3 uniques, 2 clicks earned $2.03)
    mollesystem.com (2 uniques, 2 clicks earned $0.78)
    Picked up the common mispelling mollypacks.com today. It was not available when I looked on 5 Dec. Checked today and it was free. Domain kiting had it tied up the day I looked.
    It is always fun when you find a few gems others have overlooked.

  2. After two years of domaining I have recently finally started to understand exactly what your talking about here. Not being a “wealthy domain investor” myself, I am seeing similar results if not triple from newly reg’d domains like petairfares.com domainersbusiness.com and especially with applygold.com useing credit card related keywords. All three of these domains have more then paid for themselves already. http://www.makewords.com is a neat little tool also for creating some nice keyword domains.

  3. Hi Elliot
    Congrats mate on your blog being voted the best for 2007
    I think it is realy great and original. Keep it up.
    I think that there are some great 2 or 3 word domains available for the price of a new registration that will get easily enough money to pay their reg costs for the year.
    Take them to the next level and do some development work on them with a WordPress Blog / Site etc and that can then turn into a very healthy ROI over 12 months.
    For eg. I registered http://www.biodieselkits.co.uk on the 26th Feb 2007 and left it parked. It was getting about 10-15 visits per day from type-in traffic and making about 20-50 cents per day. So it was well and truely washing its face.
    Late last year I decided to take it to the next step and setup a WordPress Blog with some content and Google Adsense.
    It now gets about 100 visitors per day and makes between $5 -20 per day. (Being number 1 for the phrase “BioDiesel Kits” on Google UK has not hurt 🙂 )
    I spent about 6 hours getting the blog setup and that is all I have done so far. I am negotiating with a Biodiesel Kits supplier at the momment for a JV project which should increase the returns over time even more.
    So my point after that long shaggy dog story is that there are some very good domains still out there that are un-registered. I have been buying a few every week for the past month and applying the same process to them.
    If anyone can show me another way of taking an $8 investment and getting these kinds of returns, them please let me know. But I think it is very hard to beat!
    Regards
    Ed Keay-Smith
    http://www.ozdomainer.com

  4. Hi Elliot

    Any idea how long parked domains actually manage to rank in google?

    A few weeks ago a parked domain of mine http://www.oksauce.com was top in google for “ok sauce” and receiving traffic. Of course, after I blogged about this it’s since disappeared!

    Is mountedheads getting traffic from type-ins or search results?

    ***UPDATED BY ELLIOT***
    I am not really sure, so I can’t give you an answer. I think it probably depends on the parking company and how the name is optimized. My gut says Google doesn’t usually like parked pages, but depending on the particular niche and the amount of info on the niche, a name can rank pretty high if there isn’t great competition.

  5. Hi Elliot,

    Congratulations on winning TOP BLOG! I’m a new reader and have enjoyed it thus far.

    In regards to a price for debtcollectors.com – what does Mojo say? She’ll slap a number on that bad boy…

    -Ted
    NameMedia

    ***UPDATED BY ELLIOT***
    I think Mojo (and BD) would sell it for $250,000 and buy it for $500!

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