The 4 Letter Domain Buyout

For years this event has been talked about!
Now it looks like it will finally happen!

There are 456976 possible 4 letter .com domain names. They have been available to purchase on a first come, first served basis. Today over 430,000 of these 4 letter domain names are taken and the last 25000 are disappearing at a rate of hundreds per day. It looks like they are going to go soon!


Massive Spending!

The cost of buying all these domains is phenomenal! Each domain cost between $6.25 (wholesale pricing) to $9.20 per year. This equates to $2.5million - $3million spent in the past 12 months on 4 letter domain names. From now on, it is expected that over $3million is to be spent on annual fees 4 letter domains every year. Most of the people buying these last names are buying them for investment value. They think that their portion of the $3million/year is worth it. The growth potential of 4 letter domains as assets is just so high that they are willing to take the gamble!


3 Letter Domain Names

In 1999, all the 3 letter domains were bought out. At the time it wasn’t a huge event as a lot of people didn’t understand it’s significance. By 2003, the domain name community were realising that every 3 letter domain had huge potential as acronymns for businesses. A 3 letter domain is often quite easy to demand a high mark-up to a potential businesses who want the domain. Good 3 letter domains have hundreds of businesses all wanting the same domain. Due to the high demand 3 letter domains, the minimum value for these names has risen from $200 to close to $5000 in the last 4-5 years. 3 letter domain investors commonly expect a 40% annual return on their investment as the growth in these assets has been going for so long that some take it for granted. (For more info on 3 letter domains visit 3character.com)


4 Letter Domain Names

As the price in 3 letter domains became out of reach for a lot of domain name speculators, the 4 letter domain names became a desirable category of domain names on their agenda. A little over 2 years ago less than 70% of these names were taken. Now over 95% of them have gone. Many 4 letter domain names that were considered to be rubbishy domain names 2 years ago are typically selling for hundreds of dollars today. Now it is reaching the stage that anything is considered to have potential and names that are considered rubbishy today by most people disappearing at a rate of hundreds per day.

VURG.com is an example. I purchased it 3 years ago. I bought it for $9 three years ago and most domain name professionals I talked to about it in the following 12 months didn't think it was very good. Now people I talk to about it consider it be worth hundreds of dollars!

How many 4 Letter Domains Are Available?

Visit the following page (VISIT PAGE) for daily updates. At the last update there were 17945 (3.9%). There is variation of a few thousand at times as some domain name buyers will buy them and cancell their purchase a few days later. These people tend to do this with a lot of domains and this called traffic testing as they are testing the domain names for popularity as popular domains produce advertising income.

A few days ago DYYO.com published the information that the milestone of 95% of 4 letter domain names being purchased has been crossed. By current trends, this is a permanent milestone!

Types Of 4 Letter Domain Names That Have Ran Out

Those that are real english words (e.g. CARS.com)

Most foreign language words.
Those without any of the following letters (Q,V,X,Y,Z)
Those that include only two types of letters (e.g. SYYY.com, QJJQ.com)
Those that start with the following letters (A,B,C,D,E,K & W)
Those that follow the following formats: (C represents Consonant, V represents Vowel)
CVCV.com – (e.g. MUJO.com, FAQE.com) - these names sell for hundreds or thousands
VCVC.com – (e.g. ALOT.com, EXUK.com)
CVVC.com – (e.g. QIUW.com, MOON.com)

Easy to pronounce names (e.g. VURG.com, ONTA.com)

Where To Learn About 4 Letter Domain Names

The Namepros Forum has over 50,000 members and have an active community who regularly talk about domain name issues. The following page currently has daily discussions about 4 letter domains. VISIT PAGE. The people are very friendly and are usually willing to answer questions for free.

DNForum, DNLodge and DomainState are also great forums to learn about 4 Letter Domain Names

DYYO.com is a website dedicated to 4 letter domain names. It is professionally run and extremely useful!

DNJournal produces weekly sales reports which include high sales of 4 Letter Domain Names.


Where to buy the best 4 letter Domain Names

GoDaddy.com, Moniker.com and NameCheap.com are 3 of the most popular places to buy domain names.

Every day at approximately 8pm EST, a list is created and released as public information at the following webpage. This list contains the domain names that people have refused to pay the renewal fees for and are now available. Within minutes of the list produced the best names are bought every day and so you need to be prepared. Some people prefer to use OneClickReg to buy the names this way as it is one of the fastest ways to buy domain names.

Every day, Snapnames, Pool and TDNAM have auctions where the best 4 letter domains are competed for. Snapnames and Pool require a minimum bid of $60 and TDNAM requires a minimum bid of $10. These domains are the better names that people lose that refuse to pay the annual fees for. The competition is often intense and many names sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars each week.

If you search through DYYO.com or this page there is a good chance you can find a name that you can buy today for less than $10.

BuyDomains, Swapnames, Amdo, Sedo and Afternic are also great places to find 4 letter domain names for sale. The price varies a lot per domain

What To Do With 4 Letter Domain Names

The general attitude is to buy them and sit on them and hope that demand for them pushes the price up. To be prepared for the rare occurance that somebody wants to buy the name you have for a marked up price, it is recommended to join a company like Sedo and list your domain name for sale through them. It costs nothing and instructions on how to set up your name for sale are on the site.

It is not recommended to sell them straight away. Only buy them if you are prepared to spend a few years of annual fees. Domain Name Asset growth tends to move in waves. You have your slow months and your fast growth months.

The Last Of These Domain Names Will Run Out Soon! Time will tell how much they go up in value but if you want one for less than $10 it looks like you have to move quickly!

VISIT THIS LINKED PAGE TO KEEP UP TO DATE!


*This is not recommended as financial advice. Buying domain names for investment is taken at your own risk.

4 Letter domain names

What is a domain name?

A domain name is a website name like google.com or vurg.com or blogger.com. In the early days of the internet all the possible domain names became available on a first come first served basis. Since a domain name requires up to 53 characters and the characters are typically a letter, a hyphen or a number this leaves over 37^53 possible domain names. .COM Domain names typically require a registration fee of $7-$17US per year and so it can easily be seen that there are always more possible domain names than there are those that are registered.

Since everything on the internet that is software based is moving towards getting cheaper and cheaper (e.g. email, hosting websites, voip, etc... ) and the participation rate on the internet is growing faster than most businesses, it stands to reason that the attraction of having the better domain names is growing. Many domain names have been sold for millions of dollars such as Wallstreet.com and others. Good domain names sell high as they attract people who are curious to know who has them and they are effective in drawing people to a site. (Somebody interested in potatoes will be more attracted to potatoes.com than good-potatoes.com) Many well run websites with good domain names reach a point where they are noticed and have huge growth that can attributed to their domain name.

What is the value in 4 letter domain names?

There are 26x26x26x26(~450thousand) combinations of possible 4 letter domain names and some people like myself believe that these domain names are a possibly a very good buy. The fact of the matter is that over 75% of the four letter domain names are owned by different people leaving the remaining domain names available for registering. With majority purchased and the trend in domain names that there are more domains being registered per day leaving people to believe that they will run out soon!!

My discussions with different people lead me to believe the 4 letter domains will probably run out within the next 2.5 years. Historically when certain types of domain names run out, they become more valuable. A few years ago a guy bought out all the remaining 3 letter .info domains. At the time people thought he was crasy. Today those who want 3 letter .info domains are willing to pay a premium to get one. This was not a crasy decision. When the 4 letter domains run out those who want them will pay more.

Why do people want 4 letter domains?

The fact that they are short makes them easy to remember
Those that are available are often unique and short and unique makes a good brandable term
They often make up a good acronym
They are a potentially good investment

One of the characteristics of short domains like 4 letter domains is that since there are so many, the variability in the value of the domain is reduced. This is a positive thing for investors as they know that they can get a higher minimum value for their domain than other types of domains.

What to do now for those interested.

Buy the better 4 letter domain names. Either search through the possibilities and pick the best ones or buy off somebody who has. I have spent large amounts of time finding the better domain names and I sell them at competitive prices. Many of my customers buy my domains and then list them for sale at a higher price.