If you decide to do this, save yourself some headaches by also registering the spelled out version of the number as well (if it's going to be pronounced as a number).
This doesn't matter for domains like al3x.net, but it does matter for domains like ftw1.com. There will inevitably be users that try to go to ftwone.com (and possibly ftwwon.com as well).
"The results surprised me. Apparently the optimal number of digits to include is 1, and the more digits you have the more likely it is to be registered. In fact, it appears that someone has registered every dot-com combination of 4 digits."
It shouldn't be completely surprising. The more characters (c) than digits (d) in a name, the more options available. 3c1d has more options (26x26x26x10=175760) than 4d (10x10x10x10=10000).
for 3c1d i think a better count is four times higher: you can have aaa1, aa1a, a1aa and 1aaa, which your count of 26x26x26x10 only includes one of these options.
i don't think factorial is relevant here: combinatorially, factorial represents the process of sampling without replacement: so if you were to be able to only use each letter once in each domain, then you would get 26!/4!26! possibilities for 4c.
this is combinatorics: the art of advanced counting, not probability, really.
...something which has not worked out so well for many economies. I don't want to make it illegal or anything - although I could live with some sort of -use-it-or-lose-it clause that kicks in after a year, and which proved a decent rule of thumb in the real world. Indeed, the term 'squatting' in relation to real estate describes gaining ownership by continuous occupation of property - which is a lot more work than going to the public records office and writings 'dibs!' on the land register.
Domain squatting is just a waste of productive resources, based entirely on the hope of extracting an economic rent from someone else later; and that rent is in proportion to the productive use a site developer (not the squatter) could make of a given domain name. The only investment squatters make in a domain name is usually to stick an ad page on there and track accidental visitors, which may give a useful data point to the buyer; but even then, the buyer is almost certainly not purchasing the domain because of such random traffic. Although registering a domain has a nominal cost, it's not really an investment in any economic sense; indeed, an ad-farm or 'coming soon' page on a domain which receives any significant amount of random traffic is polluted before it becomes branded, albeit very lightly and in a fairly harmless way. The rational economic price for a domain you own which is not making any money is the cost to date of holding the domain plus $1. Any profit beyond that is predicated on the buyer's project being sufficiently advanced and well-capitalized that writing a large check to the squatter is less painful than picking a different name.
The only economic benefit I've ever heard a squatter claim to justify their asking price was that they had made it uneconomical for someone to put porn there. Can you imagine this if domains were actually real estate? 'Yes, I do want a million dollars for this barren patch of desert with a weatherbeaten billboard and a cow skull - you should be grateful there ain't a saloon or a whorehouse here already.'
You clearly misunderstand the entire business models of the industry.
Those 'accidental' visitors are actually quite 'regular.' A certain stream of people type in domain names to find what they want every day. Just because you don't behave a certain way to navigate to things doesn't mean others don't. It's called Direct Navigation in the industry. That's what has fueled the growth of domain investing since about 2003ish when PPC parking systems actually created an easy to monetize method for domain holders that scaled incredibly well across virtually all niches. Google pumped it even higher until about 2007.
Those people who directly navigate to a website are amazingly consistent. I have held names for many many years and the type in numbers have remained almost constant for most of them. What is the value of X potential customers coming to you without any work every day? What is the value of a more memorable brand name? What is the value of a domain that is an exact match to a super high value keyword term that defines an industry and google puts a giant bonus on in SERPs?
Very few domain sales ever reach the million dollar mark and especially not new registrations (http://ohashi.info/article/there-money-fresh-domain-name-reg...). You're confusing a billboard in the middle of nowhere and a billboard in times square. The value of the billboard is the distance from times square. There are a lot of unreasonable people, but that's life, there are just as many professionals who know what their domains are worth. Just because you have one value doesn't mean others don't see the value differently.
There's quite a lot of difference between buying a domain with the intention or prospect of putting something of value it and buying up a large array of domains without any intention whatsoever to ever put any content on it or make any use of it besides squatting. The second is a blatant waste of preciously limited resources and should not be allowed in my opinion.
What would you propose? Require an essay declaring your intentions for every domain prior to purchase?
How is it less valuable if the purchaser wants to make $100 from selling the domain versus making $100 on it selling trinkets?
I own a lot of domains that I may or may not do something with in the future. What should the cutoff point be? Should I be penalized after my 10th domain? 30th? 100th?
(I don't like squatters in general, but that doesn't mean I think they should be outlawed.)
In my opinion, the difference between trinkets and domain names is that you can manufacture an unlimited number of trinkets, however, there is a very limited number of useful domain names. Normally, very limited resources (such as radio frequencies) are regulated so this is not an entirely new concept.
Obviously it's hard to come up with a definition of what should and what shouldn't be allowed because chances are that it would be either unfair, easily circumvented or both. None the less, I believe there should be some way to take away domains from obvious squatters.
Some of the newer TLDs seem to have reduced the prominence of squatters by increasing prices enough to make squatting prohibitively expensive. I guess that would be one solution to the "squatting problem" for the more mainstream TLDs... Although, I don't think there will ever be a fair system to take domain names away from one entity and give them to another.
similarly, i own domains that i've used in the past that are now sitting dormant. i don't want to let them expire and immediately get snatched up by a squatter, so what am i to do? if i put up a "for sale" page on them, am i a squatter now?
You have the causality backwards. There is always "speculation" anytime there is an opportunity to buy something that one thinks can be resold at a profit. The real estate bubble, by inflating the prices of homes, increased the opportunities for successful speculation. The main cause of the bubble was cheap mortgages which allowed the price inflation to get so out of control. The speculation was a result of the problems, not their cause. And most real estate speculators were hammered worse than anyone else, except their creditors, when the bubble burst - always a risk with speculation.
I have a few domains I like but haven't gotten around to using yet, but that's a far cry from having thousands I'm just trying to flip and extract rent from.
I have about 1200 and I'm not squatting. Squatting is taking something that belongs to someone else that you use for free or that you extort money from to give it back.
These are all bought and paid for. Each and every one of them was bought with a specific reason in mind, and even though I may never develop all of them (highly likely) at least I don't have to go and pay a ton of money for a good name.
I rarely sell domains, but when I do it's usually worth it (gameplay.com for instance).
Only at the margins would the registered stuff change. Tasting is a different problem from people actually buying. Tasting was a free loophole where you could buy a domain and 'return' it within 5 days and not get charged. It now costs 25 cents per domain over X domains (some reasonable numbers, i think few hundred for legitimate client mistakes), per registrar.
If you really want a 4-letter .com, plenty of people sell them for relatively little money. I own dufz.com, ikxr.com, izkc.com, liwk.com, puzd.com and I don't remember paying more than $10 for each. I also own vjot.com, a more readable name, which I think I paid around $100 for, but this was a couple of years ago.
I'm interested in a couple domains that appear to be unused, but I'm having trouble contacting the owner. How do you go about making the offer? I've emailed a couple contacts now obtained off of whois and it seems they never reply.
As a domain owner and frequent recipient of such requests, here are a few tips:
First of all, don't assume the domains are unused. You have no way of knowing this. I have domains that are critical to my infrastructure but don't necessarily have a web site (or even public DNS records). I'll never sell them. I have others that are look-alike domains that aren't activated in order to prevent conflict with my other domains. I'm unlikely to sell these, either.
Secondly, and this is really important, make your offer as professional and informative as possible. I never reply to offers from freemail addresses that amount to something like, "Hey, I'm interested in buying a domain that you don't appear to be using for an awesome project I'm working on. Please reply ASAP. George". You don't have to divulge your business model, but at least include the name of the domain you're interested in, your FULL name, a phone number, and preferably a company name and/or related URL. Consider including your offer in the email, since it's more likely to get a response if it's at all worth considering. Serious offers are much more likely to get a reply, even if it's to say, "Sorry, not interested."
If you call and leave a message, include the same information. But keep in mind that I probably won't return a long distance call, so consider saying that you'll call back at a certain time, and do it. This will help to show that you're seriously interested.
Whatever you do, don't file a complaint with the registrar or try to initiate an unauthorized transfer. This will only annoy the domain owner and could destroy your credibility.
Finally, understand that the domain owner has no obligation to respond to your offer in any way. If you really want a response, follow up a couple of weeks later, and be prepared to make a serious offer. If you don't want to be considered a pest, stop after 3 attempts and give it a reasonable long rest before trying again (6 months to a year).
First of all, don't assume the domains are unused. You have no way of knowing this. I have domains that are critical to my infrastructure but don't necessarily have a web site (or even public DNS records). I'll never sell them.
How does this work? I'm not following you. It would seem that the less people/systems that know about a name, the less critical it is.
Responding to billybob (I guess the thread is too deep):
I've used domain names with no public DNS for corporate Active Directory domains. They might have a different domain for their website, but by registering it you are covered.
You forgot the most important piece of advice. A number not just showing interest but an exact dollar (or euro or whatever) interest. You will almost certainly negotiate more and try not to offend the current owner with a lowball. If you want it, someone else probably did before you.
I had someone call me up for a domain our company wasn't using any more. He asked, and I simply transferred ownership. It had been made clear to me earlier that the domain was not at all desired by the company.
I've purchased quite a few by contacting the owner.
Always specify the domian name and make your outreach email as professional and formal as possible. I never include an actual offer so I can at least get them to reply (if you offer too little, they may not even reply). I never discuss the reason for purchase. The first email is only to determine their interest and start the dialogue.
If they fail to respond in a week (it takes time), I call the phone number listed on the whois record and try the personal touch.
Sometimes the domains will be listed for sale on sedo.com, otherwise you can use a service (also on sedo.com) to try and contact the owner on your behalf.
Domain hacks are funny but counterproductive and problematic in the long run. Domain hacks involving digits are a marketing problem squared.
See the reasoning behind the switch from del.icio.us to Delicious.com:
So why did we switch to delicious.com? We’ve seen a zillion different confusions and misspellings of “del.icio.us” over the years (for example, “de.licio.us”, “del.icio.us.com”, and “del.licio.us”), so moving to delicious.com will make it easier for people to find the site and share it with their friends.
Also known as "We wanted delicious.com from the beginning, but couldn't afford it. Now we are big enough to pay for it." ;)
I always liked the hack (I still us it; it's shorter), but I'm obviously not an average user. You are completely right that being "clever" in your domain (or really anything regarding your product) is often not a great plan.
Actually, we'd bought the domain in 2005. It seemed like the right thing to do later on.
Remember that nobody had really done domain names like that (maybe cr.yp.to? i also have had burri.to for 15 years...) in a big way before, so it wasn't clear that it was a bad idea at the time.
Some of the other domains, like http://delicio.us/ worked correctly too. I wonder if Yahoo! kept them all.
I use semantici.st for my email and blog, and it's a real chore. The ccTLDs used in domain hacks are frequently expensive at renewal time and reading your domain out to people verbally is a huge pain.
This tactic surprisingly works very well with Chinese websites. Most Chinese firms have reached the conclusion that a short domain name with letters and numbers work even better than a cute, clever wordplay. Those names don't work in Chinese anyway as Chinese is based off ideographs. Short combinations of letters and numbers (especially with 8s) work well.
Give me an example of a 4 character domain with a digit in it and I will suggest a much better alternative. If you want to have a respectable web presence, use keywords or find a quality brand on the aftermarket.
If you must, the real secret to 4 letter domains is backordering as they expire or making an offer to existing owners.
There always seem to be unregistered 4-letter .com domains when I look. When I bought awio.com it was simply unregistered. Taking a sample of 500 names and then saying all of the hundreds of thousands of other names must be registered is just wrong.
I tried it with much larger samples for that character distribution and have yet to find a single unregistered name. You can't say with certainty that it must be that 100% are registered but I think that extrapolating from large random samples is a pretty good way of making inferences.
Faster to just scan the zonefiles. You run into a black swan problem with this technique. However, that said, all of them WERE registered, TWICE throughout history. Once way back and again more recently (someone wrote 2007, sounds about right). People have realized the cost of holding them is higher than the potential sales in many cases, especially at the bottom of the quality barrel. They weren't kept because they sucked but domain investors like all people like patterns and herding and get sucked into poor investments.
Another trick is to use .org or something. I got my four letter domain name a few years back, and it's even pronounceable! And it was pretty close to the kind of thing I wanted.
bluh.org, a great website name for pointless nonsense!
loads of good true 4 letter domains around if you don't won't a .com
just bought we.gd om.gd and whi.im all at standard price and none been regd before.
try iwantmyname.com to find and reg 2 letter names but other registrars often sell them cheaper. I used modone.gd and domainmonster.com
(and before I get accused of squatting... we good is the name of an company I'll be opening after my current employment, thought om.gd will be perfect of url shortening with a twist... wait and see. whi.im is for 'things to do suggestions that poll your friends' ... lots of ideas planned at the moment just not got names for the others.
also eurodns.com sell .com.es for just $5 a year, not bad for doing hacks like here.xyz.com.es for(here xyz comes) hard to spell out but cheap enough not to care...
This doesn't matter for domains like al3x.net, but it does matter for domains like ftw1.com. There will inevitably be users that try to go to ftwone.com (and possibly ftwwon.com as well).