What I Look For In Expired Domains and How It Has Changed Over Time

As many of you know this year I’ve made a big shift from investing in multiple TLDs to almost completely focusing my acquisitions on .COM domains. While the average price-per-domain has gone up considerably, I am very happy with the names I’ve been buying, sales I’m making, and development projects that my team is working on. Since buying .COM drops is still a rather new venture for me I don’t claim to be any kind of an expert. This blog has been and always will be me sharing with all of you what I’m learning as I’m learning it.

That being said I have had my best domain sales year ever so far and I can absolutely attribute that to buying .COM domains. A vast majority of what I’ve sold this year is .COM names that I’ve purchased off of drops and the least I’ve sold a domain for is 2x the price I paid (however as I want to have even quicker flips I’m looking at lowering this to 40%-50% profit which is still damn good!). So I thought now would be a good time to take a step back and let you know how my criteria for picking expired domains has changed over the years with a little before and after.

Before:
  • Focused on .US, .NET, .ORG and .INFO drops
  • Mostly purchased longtails with three or more words in the domain
  • Valued CPC over search volume
  • Buying mostly drops that had one or no bids
  • Average purchase price under $80
After (aka now):
  • 95% of my purchases are .COM
  • Most of my purchases have two words or less
  • Value search volume over CPC
  • Buying mostly drops that have more than ten bids
  • Average purchase price over $300

Just like the rest of you I don’t have a magic eight-ball that tells me the perfect investments to make. All I can do is learn from my own experience of what works and what doesn’t. Feel free to share your own criteria below along with how this has changed for you over time.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton