Domain Treasure Map - HeadQuarters

Today I've done a fun post to give you a brief video tour of my home office - headquarters for the Domain Treasure Map blog.

This is in response to a blog post at Darren Rowse's ProBlogger where he posted a video of his new blogging office, and invited comments from his readers to show their offices as well.

This is my first public appearance and not the greatest video quality, but we all have to start somewhere - just like domaining! This shows what you can do with the tools available today - even if it's your first time making a video for the web.


Press > to play.

"Junk" Domains

I just want to remind everyone that at Domain Treasure Map our focus is NOT premium domains like those reviewed in a recent article at the Domain Tools blog. Although this is an informative and well written article, it really applies to the ultra premium domains that you and I will never own in the near future.

Sometimes I think that domainers are doing a disservice to the entire domain industry when they write only about the premium market. I think the way the domain industry will get more respect and ensure maximum value will be to get more and more average people involved - not just multi-millionaires and billion dollar investment companies.

So that is why we are focusing on non-premium domain names at the Domain Treasure Map. As you read other articles on the web, many "gurus" will say that it's better to buy a few great domains instead of hundreds of lousy names. I disagree. Their point is that a few great domains can make more money with simple PPC monetizing strategies than hundreds or thousands of lousy names that get very little traffic. This is true, although I haven't yet had the pleasure of owning one of these premium PPC domains (sigh). BUT, it is not logical to conclude from this thought that non-premium domains are worthless. In fact, with the right strategy non-premium names can be "built out" and become extremely profitable. This generally takes more work, but as the internet continues to become more competitive this is inevitable.

A good analogy is the person that snapped up the best property in a new town years ago usually got the most valuable property for the cheapest price. However, later investors who purchasd lower quality land and paid more money, made far more profit than the original land speculators - especially when they used smart strategies and built the most appropriate developments on each parcel of land.

My main point is that there is money to be made with each strategy. We are still in the infancy of the internet and domain real estate, but you have to step back and take a bigger look at the landscape. Even the extremely successful early "domain kings" (Rick Schwartz, Frank Schilling) are immersed in strategies appropriate for the premium domains they own. They probably do not care (or are not interested in the increased amount of work) to pay attention to the new layer of "junk" domain opportunity that is upon us all.

Cost to Register Domains

In this short post we'll review the costs to register a new domain name, as opposed to purchasing one from the resale market.

The only real cost is the registration fee, which will vary depending on which registrar (reseller) you choose to use, and the type of tld that you want to register. Currently, the cost is anywhere from $6 to $12 for most of the top level tld's (.com, .net, etc.), and some of the more common country code tld's.

The cost can increase significantly for some country code tld's, depending on the cost that has been set by the organization assigned to oversee that country's domain registration process. For example, to register European Union, China, German, New Zealand domain names can cost anywhere from $12 - $60. You need to look around a lot more carefully when choosing your registrar for foreign country code domains, because of the larger variation in cost and service.

Remember, many country code tld's have restrictions as to who can own them. For example, Canadian domains (.ca) can only be owned by Canadian individuals and corporations. Of course, depending on the requirements to create a Canadian "entity" or choose a delegate to represent you, there are usually ways around these restrictions.