DNHeadlines Exchange

I don’t often hand register domains names anymore, mostly because I’ve tightened my definitions for what makes a domain name worth registering. Each day I learn a little more about domains, and more importantly, the ever-increasing yearly renewal costs for my impetuous past.

The other day I was trolling Google keywords to see what was still available, more out of curiosity than anything, and I went through the usual keywords but with but this time with a different spin. This particular search was for “credit”, likely one of the the most mined topics out there. As I was doing this, I had my two favorite auction results tabs open to Namebio.com and DNSalesPrice.com. It was DNSalesPrice.com that put me onto a train of the thought when I saw a number of “my” prefixes on some of the most popular keyword domains. Sidenote; one of the reasons I love DNSalesPrice.com is because it gives you a more broad range of results as it uses all the keywords in your search to pull all the results with those keywords – great for getting ideas.

So I started running all the Google search keyword results for “credit” through iwhois.com, each with the “my” prefix and remarkably, “MyLineOfCredit.com” was free. At first I was amazed because all the results before, and for a while after “line of credit” (which ranks 27th for broad and 19th for phrase for all “credit” Google searches) were taken. Regardless of which filter I used, it held steadfast with 450,000 monthly searches with a fairly decent average CPC of $16.17 with full competition.

THIS is when I start to wonder if I really know what I am doing or not. So rather than proceed on a whim and once again fill up my account with yet another “I thought this was a good idea” domain, I started researching it a little more.

To quickly gauge it’s popularity online;
Google: “Line of Credit” = 5,610,000 search results
Yahoo: “Line of Credit” = 24,700,000
Bing: “Line of Credit” = 839,000,000 (not quite sure what this number tells me actually)

Ok, so the term is used a lot, I get it, and it is widely pursued by advertisers, what about a few recent sales?

HelpWithMyCredit.com – $2,388 Nov 08 – domain has a clear call to action, but four words, 16 letters, 1900 monthly searches so low poss. direct nav, 6 registrars and 2 drops, likely in latest developed iteration since 2007; PR of 5, Alexa 449,000 +, but they must have worked on it to get it there.

MyCreditClub.com – $600 Jan 09, Afternic – now parked so one has to assume it wasn’t developed and throw away any SEO value that came with it

MyCreditConsultant.com – $144, June 09, Snapnames, parked, 2,900 monthly searches with the “my”

MyTaxForms.com – $630, March 09, Afternic, parked, 823,000 monthly searches for phrase, which is twice as many as “line of credit” but also only $1.06 CPC, 1/16th the CPC of “Line of Credit”.

MyCarePlan.com – $1,001, Aug 08, old domain, developed, no PR or Alexa, and what industry is this in? turns out wills and trusts. Domain must have had something going for it, because the PR and Alexa don’t support traffic as the reason.

I decided not to get too granular because frankly, after everything mentioned above, it seemed like a no brainer. What am I missing though? How is it that after all this time that this simple domain in a 2.0ish “my” niche with “line of credit” in the url, and the possible development opportunities for it, why it is available? how and why did it drop through the cracks? it isn’t like I found a dotinfo or something in some highly competitive industry and was influenced into thinking it is a good name by virtue of the fact that the dotcno’s were taken. This is the dotcom, with no other registrations. The domain has dropped a few times and I’ve seen it for sale on NamePros before.

Yes, one could call their site “ooga-ooga-booga.com” and SEO it towards line of credit or credit cards and achieve results, since URL isn’t the only SEO method out there. Even “MyLineOfCredit.com” would take marketing to make up for a complete loss of direct navigation, but at least it is on topic and the keywords ARE in the domain name, it is easy to remember, bolstered by increasingly common “my” prefix, easy to brand, and a host of other benefits which outweigh the registration fee.

Oh, GoDaddy was having a sale yesterday of $1.99 domains – so for a grand total of $4, I also said what the hell and included another $1.99 on “EquityLineOfCredit.info” which has 165,000 monthly searches (phrase) on almost $30 average CPC…ok, so dotinfo isn’t the most lucrative out there, but it too has to be worth more than $2 to me somehow, if not or resale then development.

So, the question is, what am I missing? Is it a crappy domain and I just don’t get that?

This isn’t the first time I have questioned by choices. I can’t just NOT look for domains to register, and the notion that all the good dotcom domains have been taken I believe, to a degree, is true. It does leave us with dropping names and the ones that no one else thinks is decent, but the latter is a subjective preposition. It is the fact that there are now so many people looking for domains as I am that makes me wonder what it means when I find an unregistered domain. I was reading a post by Rick Schwartz about what kinds of words make a great domain and it seems to fit.