For those of you thinking of getting into mainstream, it all starts with the right domain...
 

I am a domain seller as many of you already know. What many of you may not know is I do about 90% of my business in mainstream, which includes a lot of business to repeat buyers who are developers, SEOs, ad networks, and even domainers who resell the domains.

Unlike many domain dealers who price high & pray, we understand the rough economy and are being more realistic about what to expect for domains. Because of that, I've turned into a bulk domain dealer in recent months, and business has been great for me while being horrible for many other domain dealers. I don't do this for shits n' giggles...this IS my source of income and has been for years, and it wouldn't be unless I knew what I was doing and was providing great value to my buyers.

What's it mean to you? Well I've seen more and more threads here lately from people looking to get into mainstream (some of you back into mainstream after a long hiatus) and asking if it's worth it. Judging from how business has been going for me with the varied plethora of buyers we get, it's definitely worth it if you do it right. It all starts with going after the right domain(s). The paths to start on are pretty much the following:

A. Get exact keyword matching generic domain(s) for the purpose of setting up niche sites to get search traffic and profit.
Specifically seek out high search and/or high CPC .com, .net, and .org domains for this (those 3 extensions because they're the most established and trusted in Google's eyes). Domain age can be an added bonus. We offer many of these in our $99 domain sale as well as in our posted deals at DailyDomainNames.com.

It's important to note the high search and/or high CPC aspect...there are certainly other factors that can be evaluated such as rankability (judged by SEO competition generally) and profitability of the various things you can sell via affiliate/CPA, but the easiest way to understand a base value of the organic traffic you can get from the largest source of it online is the combination of how much there is and how much each visitor is worth. We intentionally seek out both high search and high CPC domains because they are what our developer buyers have been seeking.

B. Start up an e-commerce or services company on a highly brandable .com domain.

There are tons of white-label programs out there that you can use to essentially start with a fully-functional business and only have to worry about standing out and getting customers. Brandability can do exactly that, and the largest companies on the net are all about brand. That said, it's still nice to be able to rank for terms if possible with a brandable domain, and thus domain age becomes more of a factor for SEO with these because most of these domains are intended to be more eye-catching and memorable vs. matching generic terms (the ones that are both tend to cost a lotttt of money). Also, .com is more important with this because it exudes more professionalism/eliteness (other extensions are intrinsically thought of by the typical consumer as second rate to .com).

More time may be involved with this avenue and you'd do best to get involved in forums & social media in the industry you intend to do business in. While the generic domain route is great for doing more half-assed sites in bulk, this is for doing a single full-fledged business. Our $99 domain sale has some of these, but a more extensive selection of them with domain age in mind can be found in our Aged Domain Sale.

Feel free to email or ICQ me if you have any questions about the domains we have or what would work best for you, or if you see anything in the aforementioned mainstream domain sales that interests you. My primary purpose on GFY is still to sell adult domains and I know there are still many people making great money in adult, but clearly adult is no longer working for some of you, and if you are looking at moving into mainstream, starting on a strong foot is very important! Domains are the book covers by which sites/companies are initially judged, whether by customers or by Google, and for the minimal cost above registering a new worse quality domain, buying good domains you need on the secondary market instead is one of the best bang for your buck you can get!

The links in your sig have one too many .com's in 'em.

Oops, fixed now. Thanks!

Bumpity.

Welp, this is never more relevant than NOW when Epass woes may have just killed your business. The mainstream $99 domain sale FYI now has more than 450 domains in it! It won't cost you much to get the ball rolling in your new mainstream business.

I can't tell people enough how domain age is important for SEO. Google doesn't mention anything about or doesn't want to admit it. It's just from pure experience. Not to forget the importance of diversification in business. If you're making it in adult, mainstream shouldn't be a problem what so ever.

I find it to be somewhat common sense if you look at it from the eyes of Google and their fight against scammers, illegal sites, blackhatting etc., almost all of which are typically done on throwaway newly-registered domains. That's not to say one should NEVER register a new name, but considering you only have a one-time cost over the cost of registering a new name and you get benefits for the lifetime of the website not to mention a more valuable asset that can be sold, if the perfect name for it isn't available to reg, you should buy a name vs. reg.

The biggest reason to do it is that your dumber competitors aren't doing it, and your smarter competitors are. There are limits though...like cam_girls has perfectly illustrated, you should never spend beyond your means for a domain, especially when you have no idea what you're doing. Still, that said, I've actually had a number of cases where I bought a domain that I was considering developing, plans fell through, and wound up selling the domain for profit anyways. In one case, I overpaid for a brandable domain I intended to use, paying $2,000 for it when most other domainers would have spent no more than $xxx on it, and I ended up selling for $8,000 a couple years later after my plans had fallen through and I had received the offer.

People seem to forget that apart from whatever they put on the domain, the domain itself is an asset that has value...unless of course you register a crappy domain, in which case it's not likely to ever have much value. You should see the crap that expires on a daily basis...the massive amount of money that gets wasted on domains that should have never seen the light of day. :(

I have what I think is a good 2 word mainstream sports domain? Do you broker anything like this?

Ah weird, didn't see your response to thread - judging by your use of words: "what I think is a good...", probably not. We only broker domains that are $xx,xxx or higher and priced to sell - anything lower than that we focus on selling our own inventory for 100% of the gain instead. If you feel it's at that price level, contact me.

FYI everyone, our mainstream $99 domain sale ends in less than 24 hours! September 11 4:30 AM EST, it comes down and prices on those domains are back up to $200-$800. We've sold over 140 domains in our $99 sale and should likely have well over 150 sold by the time it comes down. Don't miss the ones you want!