I’ve got so many ideas about business ventures that I’d like to try, there is no way I will get to them all. It’s challenging enough to manage the few things that I do. To get some of these things off my mind and help me focus, I’d like to offer them up to anyone who would like to take them… or leave them. This is the first idea I’ll be sharing this year, but I expect to unload several others. My goal here is to provide something of value, inspire additional thinking, and potentially to put ideas in the hands of people that will execute on them.
A while back, I registered 69Dollars.com when I had a thought about a development idea. We’ve all let domains drop in the past and often times these domains are scooped up again. Companies like Namejet, Pool, and Snapnames typically start the bidding for these names at $69. Sometimes $69 might be the highest bid while other times it ramps up into the thousands of dollars. As a result, the prior owner gets zero.
My thought was to offer domainers a place to list their domains that they are not planning to renew. All domains would be listed at a flat fee of $69. Maybe a buck or two from each sale would go to the house. There would be some rules set up such as how close to the expiration date the domains need to be listed as well as other rules. I just haven’t thought it through that far. My idea is to keep it simple, fair, and not turn it into anything too complex.
The main idea is to put an opportunity in front of the drop process. This would save buys some money and the prior domain owner could make a few bucks on the drop as well. Now there are some registrars such as Fabulous (and Fabulous may be the only one) that will share some of the revenue with the prior owner of the domain, but most do not.
If you’re interested in picking up this idea, I’ll push the domain to you for free at Moniker. If you like the idea and not the domain, then take the idea. Don’t like either? That’s fine too.
26 comments
Don’t give to many of those out 🙂
Great idea.
Plenty more to apply 🙂
Ideas are a dime a dozen…. I’ve got a folder full too.. Money to start the venture, thats not easy to come by.
@Mike, ideas are a dime a dozen but it wouldn’t take much money to get an idea like this in motion.
Hey, I’ll keep my eyes out for it! Sounds interesting and I’d probably check it out.
Cool idea and giving it away is itself another neat idea.
@Rusty, glad you liked it. I plan to share more over the coming months.
great idea!!!!
I think just limit the max price to $69, but allow min of lets say $9 (reg fee)
@dnm, not a bad idea. I was also thinking about starting price at $69 and having it automatically lower as it came closer to the drop date.
I would like to take the domain.
I believe it’s very good idea.
Thank you!
George
email me your info at moniker and I’ll push the domain to you.
I like this idea and had exactly the same, however I think that all actions should start at 1 usd, also no need to limit to expiration conditions. Please convience me otherwise. I do not like limitations personally. I have domain I want to use for this domain4dollar.com and developement already started. What I need is some vc or angel or at least knowledgable domainer to back me up. If yiu interested let me know. I have excellent web development background and we can team up together.
@Mike, also a good concept… I was trying to keep it simple.
Good Idea! Im not a player in that market as my development skills are just not up to par.
But I have let several domains drop that I would have listed for sure.
Thanks for sharing.
@Joey, curious if any of your drops were picked up?
I would bet there are… amazing how many get bought for 69 dollars when they could have been bought for less. I think the main thing the drops provide is advertising so I think this is a great idea. Especially having it reduce incrementally as expiration approaches…
Mike,
Good idea and awesome about providing domain/business ideas and advice for public use. I am actually building a business model around this concept alone. I do not feel good ideas are a dime a dozen. Easy to come up with an idea, harder to come up with a good one that you can execute and make money with.
@Andrew, looking forward to seeing what you have.
this is a great idea – now lets hope that the new owner of the domain actually makes it happen!
@chris, keep an eye out 🙂
Hey Sully,
With your idea you would have had to pay $69 for AskSully .com instead of just reg fee. 🙂
@tricolorro, lol! or a domainer would get $69 instead of letting something drop.
Hey Sully!
Am I on the right track with these domains?
kind regards,
Robert McLean
@Tricky, As far as letting them drop?
Sully,
FYI I’ve seen this exact same TrickyToBeat posting so far also on DomainNameWire and Elliot’s Blog.
Maybe someone should tell Robert this type of posting is considered spamming.
@Tricolorro, thanks. I deleted the domains from that comment.