At the beginning of this month I did a post about the difference between exact and broad match search volume. The post was inspired by all the readers who submitted names to my domain contest who didn’t know the difference. It was actually sad to see in some ways as there were a good number of people who thought they had names with great search volume that actually had none.

After the contest I had a few panicked domain investors email me. Most of their stories went something like this, “I bought all these domains thinking they had incredible search volume. Nobody wants to buy them and I’m losing money, I read your post and found-out I was using broad rather than exact, what should I do?”

These are great examples of why no matter what you’re investing in, be it domains, stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. it is absolutely critical to take the time to learn before jumping in. The silver lining is, better to find-out now than two years from now when you’ve wasted even more money. So I decided to take my previous post a step further and show a video illustrating exact vs. broad match search volume to make sure everyone is crystal clear on the difference.

As many of you know I held an exciting contest on my blog to buy a domain name for $1,200 from one of my readers. With over 120 comments this post caught a lot of attention and had some great names submitted to it. I spent the weekend crunching the numbers and picking a domain from those submitted. In the end I choose WeddingFlorist.com as the winner and sent a congratulations email to the owner.

A day later I hadn’t heard anything back so I sent another email this time trying both the email address on the WHOIS as well as the email address used to submit the comment. The next day, still nothing. So I tried calling the phone number on the WHOIS record, wrong number.

Of course I know people are busy so I waited another day, still nothing. I tried emailing again over the weekend but am sad to say that I don’t think the owner of this domain exists, or if he does, he doesn’t seem to have the correct WHOIS information or email address in his blog comment.

I would still love to buy this domain so if anyone reading this post happens to know the owner, let him know I’d still like to buy the name. If not then I will be buying my second choice name which I’ll announce later this week. Still, I’m a nice guy and fair is fair so I want to make sure I’m giving the owner a fair chance. Heck I know that this is a great time for a vacation and many of us unplug on vacation so I’d hate for him to miss my emails while he’s enjoying some R&R.

So I’ll give it until Wednesday of this week. If any of you happen to know the owner if you could be so kind as to ping him that would be great. Either way it was a very successful contest and I will be buying a name from one of my readers for $1,200…that name might just not be WeddingFlorist.com.

Wow – what a week! A lot has happened this week and a lot is happening this weekend, in fact right now I’m sitting on a plane cruising along at 35,000 feet. This week has been exciting with some major appraiso announcements on the horizon, one nice five-figure sale, and two end-user sales that look like their going to close next week!

Yesterday I was in a kayak on Big Bear Lake, a lake at the top of  a mountain less than two hours from LA. Now we’re on our way to Sonoma for a wedding and followed by a weekend of wine tasting.

Since this weekend really is all about spending time with Daina and my family I’m going to keep this particularly short and sweet, okay maybe it won’t be sweet, alright, I’m really bad at short too, here we go!

• We launched a new kayak store on Kayaking.org that is run by our partner, Outdoor Play, the first website on the Internet to sell kayaks! This has been one of the top requests from our visitors and I am very excited with how it all turned-out.

• BlogAboutWine.com crossed the 3,000th fan mark on Facebook. This feels good, we’ve turned something that we love into a resource that other people truly enjoy, and we’re still at the very beginning. This weekend we will be doing some great coverage of what Sonoma has to offer.
• The top story in the Domaining world this week was .CO and some statements made by Juan in a video. I have stayed-out of this one but will say that like many of you I was not a fan of what was said. Still I like .CO and think that they are doing some very innovative things to build their brand.
• I’ve been getting a lot of questions from readers about the Google Penguin update. If you haven’t had a chance to read my post about 3 ways to rank better after the Penguin update, make sure to check it out.
• I am blown-away by how fast WPEngine is, seriously, it’s insanely fast. Next week MorganLinton.com will be moving over to WPEngine so get ready for a much faster experience with my blog!

Last, but certainly not least, Happy Mother’s Day to all the incredible Moms out there! Have a great weekend, now back to the flight!

(Photo Credit)

For those keeping score, .ME has been having one heck of a 2012 with strong support from major startups and big sales happening every single week. One of the areas where .ME has really shined is mobile where app developers are seeing .ME as a great extension to build their brands on. Given that mobile is probably the fastest-growing industry on the planet, this is a very good sign for .ME and .ME domain owners.

Starting on May 24th .ME will be holding a premium auction on Sedo with some absolutely incredibly domains. There really is no limit to what a one-word .ME can sell for which was very clearly illustrated with the $450,000 sale of Meet.me, a domain purchased for under $6,000. I will definitely be bidding in the auction this month and while I don’t want to give-away all my favorites I would like to share some of my top picks.

Boats.me – boats are expensive and there are plenty of people that are fanatical about boats. This has great development and end-user potential and would be perfect for an boating-related app.

Cruise.me – while we’re on the topic of boats, let’s not forget the cruise industry. I can already see a daily deals site for cruises or a slick app to find a great cruise near you.

Debt.me – nobody likes to be in debt, everyone who is in debt wants to get out of debt. I think this could be one of the names to go for the highest price, and I’ll definitely be one of the bidders.

Graduate.me – the education space is big money, this is one of the top category-killers in the entire niche.

LosAngeles.me – I live in LA and love this city as do millions of other people, this would be a great domain for an “Around Me” like app specific to LA.

Rap.me – turn the videos you shot on your smartphone into a rap video with Rap.me, I can already see it now!

VentureCapital.me – what VC wouldn’t want this for their blog?

Traffic.me – we all deal with it, some of us more than others, traffic apps are huge and this would be the perfect name for the next big traffic app.

There are many more great names in this auction. I am writing about this because I think it does truly represent a great opportunity for investors. Think about it, three very savvy Domain Investors bought a .ME domain with each spending less than $2,000, and each walking away with over $100,000. Mobile is hot, .ME is hot, put the two together and there could be some future six-figure sales on this list, and you have a chance to get one for much less in a few weeks!

Last week I tried something new, it was a simple idea, write a post asking for readers to submit domains that met a specific criteria. I had no idea if the concept would work or not but as always I thought, “let’s give it a shot!” 118 Comments later it now holds the record for my most-read, most-commented, and longest time-on-site per visitor, oh and of course it was a lot of fun.

I spent a lot of time this weekend analyzing the submissions and I’m happy to say I’ve picked a winner. What name did I pick? Watch the video below and find out!

If you guessed yesterday that this was the domain I was going to buy, congratulations to you too, you’ve won a free copy of my book!

Phew! Well it’s taken a lot more time than I thought to go through all the submissions for my offer to buy a domain from a reader for $1,200. I’m about three quarters of the way through and already have a few good candidates. Along with evaluating the domains that met the criteria, I have also had a fun time picking some of the worst names submitted that really missed the mark.

Now I don’t want to make fun of anyone, but at the same time I do want to make the process a bit more fun. So here’s what I’m going to do. Tomorrow I will announce what domain name I will be buying for $1,200. Along with announcing the domain I will be buying, I will also be awarding three prizes to the people who did the absolute worst job of following the instructions. Once again, my point here really isn’t to make fun of anyone, but more to have fun with some of the submissions that just completely ignored the instructions, hey I can take a joke so you should be able to as well!

Along with prizes for the people who really missed the mark I will be holding an open contest that anyone can enter in to guess which domain I will be buying. The person who guesses right will get a free copy of my Domain Investing Handbook, if multiple people guess right, you’ll all get free copies, it’s that easy!

So now the question is: what domain will I be buying for $1,200?

So you’d like to go a step beyond a simple WHOIS search and become a real Domain Detective, good, you should! I play detective several times a day whether I’m looking at buying a domain, looking at a potential deal, or protecting my own brand. I’ve tried every single tool I could imagine and Domain Tools has been my go-to tool for years now, and for good reason, it has everything you could want and a whole lot more.

Today I thought it would be fun to show some of the features that have made me such a big fan of Domain Tools. So watch the video below and in under five minutes you  will be ready to be a Domain Detective yourself.

On Monday of this week I did a post that now holds a new record for number of comments received on a single post. The post was an open invitation for people to post domains that meet  a specific criteria with a chance to sell one to me for $1,200. I was very excited to see the number of people who submitted domains but also pretty amazed to see how few people took the time to follow my instructions, and actually shocked at how many people didn’t know what exact-match search volume was!

I was so surprised how many people misunderstood exact-match search volume that I did a post titled, Understanding The Difference Between Exact And Broad Match to shed some much-needed light on the subject. It actually started to get a bit sad as I saw people who obviously thought that they were buying great domains, when they were actually buying complete junk with incredibly low search volume.

Along with a misunderstanding of search volume, many people ignored the rules and posted domains that didn’t come close to meeting the criteria. I knew a bit of this was going to happen, but it really happened a lot more than I thought. Still I published every single submission since I feel that if you want to take the time to comment on my blog, I’ll publish it!

Now this has turned-into a bit of a project for myself since I have to check every single submission to understand if the search volume and CPC actually matches what people submitted. I’ll be spending a few hours this weekend organizing this all and on Monday will be reporting the following:

• # of domains submitted
• % that met the criteria I specified
• Domain I will buy (if there are enough that meet the criteria)

I received a great question from a reader yesterday morning, he asked, “Does the keyword order matter when it comes to the potential resale price or monetization potential of a domain name?” Since I’m having a lot of fun getting back into the land of video I thought I’d take the time to answer this question in a short video. If you’re not patient enough to watch a three minute video (hey, nothing wrong with that!) then I’ll tell you the answer, yes, watch the video to hear more about why it matters so much!

Okay, here’s an idea I’ve wanted to try for a while and I decided that today is the day! This year I’ve made some incredible sales as well as purchased some fantastic domains and I’m continuing to buy more names that meet the profile I’ve found the most liquidity with. I get a ton of emails from readers looking to sell their names and get some quick liquidity, so I thought I would provide this opportunity but make it available for everyone to submit their names, and publicly.

Don’t get confused by the title of this post. I’m not asking for the best .COM in your portfolio marked-down to $1,200. What I am asking for is the best .COM you have that you’d be willing to sell for $1,500 not the very best .COM in your portfolio for $1,200 (unless of course that’s what you’d be willing to sell it for!). Here is the criteria of what I’m looking for:

• Over 1,000 exact-match local searches
• CPC over $1
• One and two-word .COMs only
• No existing website on the domain

Please use search and CPC data from the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. To submit your domain please enter it in the comment field below along with the exact-match local search volume and CPC. In order to make this fair I’m only allowing one domain per person so please don’t submit a huge endless list of domains in the comment field. Any domains listed without search volume and CPC will be ignored so please make sure to include this data.

For this first round I’ll be buying one domain but if this goes well I might open it up to buying more like this in the future. The final purchase will be made through Escrow.com, and I will be happy to split fees with the seller. And with that, let’s get started!

Important Note: Please make sure you are looking at exact-match local searches. I have had a number of submissions now where the search volume given is a broad-match. So just to re-iterate, please make sure that match-type is set to exact as shown below: