Business – Page 2

This page explains the process and actions taken once you’ve taken the decision to buy from Steven UK, its in 4 parts for your ease of reading.

I Like A Name… Now What ?

Finding a name you like is the easy part really, the hard part is negotiating a price, and moving forward. 85% of the domain names we hold have been purchased for far more than the standard registration fee. Some names have cost us thousands such as bomb.co.uk or even my own name steven.co.uk.

If you bare this in mind, and do a little research Domain Name Journal and Domain Prices list some previously sold domain prices, a quick search of Sedo will show some buy it now or sold domains to give you more information on the prices.

Once you have an idea what the domains could be worth, think about what they are worth to you. Now try and reconcile the two and formulate your maximum price.

I suggest starting at 40-60% of your maximum price, this lets the seller know both that you are serious, and want the name and allows you both to negotiate a few times and reach a mutually agreeable price.

I’ve Agreed A Price… Now What ?

Once a price is agreed, we remove the name from sale for 21 Days to allow time for the domain sale to complete and any slip ups to be corrected, this can be extended usually without a problem.

Next we will need some information form you. Name, Address, Email Address and Phone Number, this is to populate an invoice, which will be sent to this email address.

The Invoice will include payment options, which are paypal for smaller purchases and bacs for larger ones. We can do IBAN and Swift for international customers. It will include an itemised list of what you are purchasing, and not as the case may be, please ensure this is accurate.

I’ve Paid My Invoice… Now What ?

Once the funds have been verified as received, we will need 2 more pieces of information from you. We need to know what name to register the domain to, i.e. a business name or a personal name. Lastly we need to know which registrar you will be using, this is to complete the transfer of control to your chosen registrar. You can’t control the domain without this step and neither can we.

As of March 2016, Steven UK only recommends name.com and daily.co.uk as registrars for .uk domains.

Once we have the required information, the domain name will be transferred into your name, and tag will be changed to your chosen nominet tag.

The Transfer Has Completed… Now What ?

You will need to login to your chosen registrar account and choose “transfer” or “transfer in” or some similar wording. Enter the purchased domain name, and complete the free check out.

The domain name should now be under your control and the transaction is complete.

All Done…

We hope you have a smooth experience and any comments or suggestions are welcome, and we look forward to any future business.

Steve Morley

A Manchester Based Photographer and Website Developer with interests in Strongman, Fitness and Geekery.

www.steven.co.uk

On an almost daily basis, I get email from potential customers looking to buy the domains I hold in my portfolio for pennies or close to standard registration fee, who are then shocked by the counter offers they receive. Domain Names are very much like Car Number plates, when you see your name on a car or number plate dealers site, do you expect it to cost the same as the first person who bought it? There is only 1, and possibly dozens or 100s of people who want that one name, so cash is the great decider.

I thought I’d talk a little bit about costs involved with drop catching, and the significant costs involved.

Nominet Membership
Firstly you need membership to Nominet, which costs £400+vat and then £100+vat per year, additionally you will need DAC membership is £25+vat per year on top again.

You require all of these to gain access to the basic systems which you will need to run a drop catching script.

Once you have your Nominet account, you have 3 main options…

Catching Software
Option 1: You can buy a script at around £10,000 for what is considered the best available to the public. There are cheaper ones often in slower high level languages, but when you’re talking in millisecond speeds, you need as fast a language as you can get. Lower level languages have a steeper learning curve, and thus cost more to have developed.

Option 2: Alternatively you can code your own script and spend months, years honing the intricacies of low level network programming, working out which language is faster for the specific job etc. Those who code their own software are often the fastest and most successful but have many years experience, generally they have been drop catching for 5, 10 or more years.

Additionally with Option 1 and 2, you will need Suitable Dedicated Server hosting. Any old server won’t be “fit for purpose”, you one which is close to the nominet servers, and in general you are looking at £300+ per month, I just checked a reliable provider and the yearly price was £3,651.60 inc basic support. If you are competent with Linux server management, you can save some money there. Server management can be £150-300 per month depending on who, where and how much “support” you need. The support is generally to install software, update software, patch security issues, fix faults, etc.

Option 3: Lastly, you can lease or rent a “catch system”, these can be as high as £1,000 a month for the top catchers, who are usually self coders (Option 2), but the average is around £400 per month for the best chance systems. As with script purchases, there are other options available, I’m working on averages and easy for the context of this post.

Drop Lists and Metrics
In addition to Option 1, 2 and 3, you will need access to “Drop Lists”, which are lists of domains due to drop on specific days and often you need “Metrics” which is information such as how many back links a domain has, what domain authority it has, things like that. Metrics are a whole other category, and not for this post.

Some basic drop lists are free, others are up to £15 per month. Metrics Data can be upto £4o per month but includes drop lists. Again cheaper limited options do exist, DCE.co.uk is once such example.

Drop Lists take some time to go through, and it takes a degree of skill to know what is of value, and what is trash. This again isn’t for this post.

Registration Fees
On top of this are the nominet registration costs, which are £5+.

Sales and Stock
Like all businesses, we have to hold stock, 100s or 1,000s or domain names, at £5ish per year. Sales are not regular, and we expect to sell around 5-10% of our stock per year, which means they need to sell at enough to cover our costs, pay our bills, buy new stock (which is from previous owners, auctions and catching) and pay wages on top.

In Summery
The bottom line is, it isn’t cheap to operate in this niche. I hope this goes some way to explain why drop caught domains are not sold for the price they are purchased for. Its not the domain you are paying for, its the time and costs taken to obtain, the skill learned to recognise it and the money invested up to this point.

Drop Catching IS a business, and as such it has overheads. Above are just a few such overheads. Remember this when you’re looking buy.