Namejet auctioned domains, two years later

Domain sales prices at Namejet are often ridiculously high, so one can assume that the winning bidder really knows how to make money from a domain. This is why it is very important to check domains that were sold earlier: to learn new methods monetizing your domains. While it should be true, I am very often disappointed how these domains are finally used.

I have collected 50 domains from Namejet that were sold 2 years ago. Their domain name and current Alexa Rank, Pagerank, and usage are shown in the table below.

Among the 50 domains, 17 are not resolving or load a blank page (including suspended hosting or default WordPress installation). These domains cost $12,000 altogether to the winners, it is really hard to imagine why it is so important to win an auction and then leave the domain without using it. Additional 5 domains have some weak content at least, one with Adsense banners, so at least it earns something. My message to this group: please don’t make a bid on domain auctions, it would be better for you, better for the others.

Another group (7 domains) uses the domain for spamming. The most popular topic is the weight loss but there are some adult topics, too. I have to admit it is hard to imagine a user behavior like “okay, then I am going to buy these weight loss pills instead of reading about a plug-in computer”. There should be a reason that spammers buy these domains and use it, I just cannot imagine that these specific examples are profitable. Especially because these domains always get banned, so they cannot be resold for serious money.

Using these domains for SEO is also amongst the most popular methods (10 domains). There are 3 kinds of SEO methods can be found among these: 1, SEO services offered on the domain itself; 2, writing low quality posts and inserting backlinks into it; 3, redirecting the domains to other sites. Having no Alexa rank, I have a doubt that method 1 is useful. Methods 2 or 3? Only the owners know it.

9 domains are parking and among those 7 are showing PPC ads. Considering their Alexa ranks, they only earn cents now, maybe nanobusiness2010.com is better. At least some of these domains can be resold. Additional 2 domains are parking with for sale message and not with ads.

There are 2 domains with mostly white hat traffic. Opencroquet.org was a programming language earlier, while the new owner installed a webshop on the domain. Considering its Alexa rank of 600k, it has some chance being profitable. However, the domain has no SEMRush rank, so I am not that sure that their traffic (about 100 visitors a day) is converting well.

The only real, white hat project on this list is redback.com that was bought for $5,000. Their name was trademarked back in 2003, so they just bought their own name. So it is somewhat different since they are not regular players on Namejet.

What a huge disappointment to go through this list. I am very optimistic if I say 10 of these domains might made a profit. My conclusion is that I don’t understand why most of the bidders are there and win domains on Namejet. Do they like losing money?