Midascode | Buy & Sell Websites

It is often difficult to be creative with gifts at Christmas. Often we just buy gifts and hope for the best, knowing that a few weeks later these gifts will be put in a cupboard and left to gather dust.

But what if there was a gift that was not only fun, and uber-cool, but was also a gift that could be used for many years, and could generate tens of thousands of dollars?

Today we are going to look at buying websites, and our 5 reasons that they make a killer gift for a family member or loved one.

1 - It is what they love - does your son love Football? Is your brother passionate about street cars? There are websites on almost every subject on the planet. If your father likes antiques, perhaps buy him an antiques and collectibles blog.

2 - They rise in value - ipods, cars, toys, computers, video games, mobile phones… they all have one thing in common: they drop in value very quickly. Websites can grow in value, and with a little love and care they can become very valuable very quickly.

3 - Longevity - Even the latest mobile phone will be worthless in 18 months. But websites generally become more valuable with age. How many other gifts could provide entertainment and value for decades?

4 - Give them a business - Once a website starts making money it is technically a business. You can buy web businesses for as little as $20 and this gives people invaluable real world experience, business lessons and a look into a possible new career option.

5 - Meet new people - There is no better way to meet huge amounts of like minded people in a short period of time than owning a blog or website. I have met hundreds of inspirational people and contacts from owning websites.

Ok, so now you want to buy a website, but where do you get them from?

Sitepoint.com is a popular choice.

Alternatively, contact us and let us know your budget and let us know your areas of interest, and we will keep an eye out for a site that matches your criteria.

Remember, a website is for life, not just for Christmas.

Looking for domains and websites on ebay is like looking for money in the streets: there is lots of it out there, but it takes too much time and effort to find it.

But today I stumbled across a 3 letter domain name that is currently for sale at Ebay.com

8UI.com

Not a bad domain name, and the ease at which you can type it is certainly a plus factor. So let’s see what the seller has to say about this domain name:

There are only 17,576 (26 x 26 x 26) 3-letter .com domain names. All of them are already registered. The last one was registered sometime in the beginning of 2000.

For those who are curious, all 3-letter .net names were registered by 2001. The last 3-letter .org name was registered in 2003.

The prices have been rising ever since, with 3-letter .com names selling for about 10 to 15 times the selling price of an equivalent .net domain.

The average annual return of a 3-letter .com domain has been ever 30%, with some names providing 100% gain per year! More recently, 3-letter .com domains have been appreciating at a rate of 5% to 7% per month.

Here are some recent sales figures for 3 letter .com domains from domain name industry journal Dnjournal . com:

NHS $151,300
GLU $75,000
OLT $93,000
GED $150,000
VIP $600,000 cash & $800,000 in stock ($1.2 million!)
UJC $17,400
SCW $60,000
ASB $50,000

Here is some examples of what you can use it for:

1- You can invest in it and resell it within a year (or 2) for 30% to 60% of the price you will pay now.
2- You can resell it immediately to any of the following ui abbreviations:
* User Interface (advanced programming language)
* University of Indonesia (sell to students)
* University of Idaho (sell to students)
* University of Illinois (sell to students)
* University of Iowa (sell to students)
* Universal Indicator (???0
* Unit Intervals (Serial Data Communication)
* Unemployment Insurance (sell to ferms)
* Ui is also a surname
The possibilities are endless (search Google ui= 120000000 results and 8ui= 104000 results)
3- very easy to remember (look at your keyboard now) all three keys next to each other.
4- forward domain to your existing site whether business or personal (name don’t matter if it’s not related to your site, after all what was the meaning of Google or xanga)
5- start a whole new brand to do business with.
6- You will profit from it.
7- UI is also a music band name.

Winning bid: The domain 8ui.com will be yours and it’s valid till 07/2008 and you can renew for $8.95 a year after.

Upon your request I will provide you with info on how to get a real good traffic and hosting plan to host your new site (Hosting plan not included with this sale and this is only a one email sent for ideas, no further info will be sent) last but not least if you (the buyer) like I can give you some business ideas (Also a one time email deal with ideas and no further support will be provided without a fee).

note: Midascode are not recommending that you purchase this domain, and we certainly feel the $9,000 BIN price is too much, but you can see the listing for yourself here: ebay domain names

This is one weird scam. Someone registered the domain Faebook.com (Facebook without a C) and redirected it, using an iframe, to Amazon - of course, with his/her own Amazon referrals. It’s the good old tactics of using misspelled domain names for profit, but it’s uncommon to see such an obvious misspelling of a site as big as Faebook used like this.

Some have suggested this may be Amazon’s doing, but you can clearly see the difference in registration details here:

Domain Name: FAEBOOK.COM
Registrant [1003228]:
Moniker Privacy Services
20 SW 27th Ave.
Suite 201
Pompano Beach
FL
33069
US

Amazon’s own records look different:

Registrant:
Amazon.com, Inc
Legal Dept, P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226
US
Domain Name: AMAZON.COM

It will be interesting to see how this one pans out over the coming months.

PS: I wonder if anyone has registered Midacode.co.uk yet?

Lego vs Louise Lego

Lego, the iconic Danish maker of plastic toy bricks, lost a brand infringement case today when Denmark’s Supreme Court ruled an art gallery owner could use the Lego name since it was her surname.

The high court decided that Louise Lego could continue using the name for her Copenhagen gallery, Gallery Lego, where she displays her own paintings, and her website, http://www.galleri-lego.dk.

The toymaker, founded in 1932, had argued it had the exclusive rights to the Lego name.

Its use of Lego stems from the contraction of the Danish phrase “Leg godt” which means “play well,” and has nothing to do with the Lego family.

The company also wanted Louise Lego to stop promoting her gallery online under the Lego name.

But the court found that there was little risk that people would confuse Louise Lego’s paintings and artworks with Lego toys.

The toymaker was ordered to pay Louise Lego 150,000 kroner ($A31,500) to cover her court costs.

I have to say that I agree with this decision, you can’t really tell people to not use their own names. So I am off to change my name to Mr Google

What are the cheapest domain name registrars? This is a common question… but bear in mind that cheapest initially doesn’t always mean the cheapest long term.

That said, domain name registrations can be done via any of the following for a low price:

NameCheap.com - Namecheap have domains for $2.95

Netfirms.com - We have been told that Netfirms is very cheap, but we have had no references of quality yet.

Ipower.com - $2.95 for a year. Lovely!

Enom.com - Enom may cost a little more than most on this list, but we have had many positive reviews of this domain registrar

1and1.com - $5.99 per year, but that includes free whois protection. A great deal!

If you know of any other sites that offer cheaper domain name registration, please let us know.

If you are planning on buying a blog then you will need to know of something called “the Digg effect”, and you will need to learn how to detect it. If you don’t, you may end up paying a LOT more for the blog than it is worth.

What is Digg.com?

Digg is a social news website that is hugely popular. Blogs and news based websites can get huge bursts of links and traffic if they get on the Digg homepage.

Why does this affect buying blogs?

There are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of blogs that have experienced the Digg effect, so if you buy blogs, then you are likely to experience this.

Why is this a bad thing?

It is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is something that can artificially raise the value and stats of a blog.

For example,

Site A gets 100 unique visitors per day, then, one day it gets on the Digg homepage and gets 50,000 uniques in 24 hours.

For the next month the site averages over 1000 per day, and then two months later it settles at around 150 per day.

If you were to buy this blog during the 1000 per day period, it is likely you would pay up to 10 times the actual value of the site.

So for example, a blog worth $2000 may be listed for $20,000

The Digg.com curve

Being on digg can have long term and even permanent effects, but it is the short term that it appears most impressive. Therefore, buying a site within 2 or 3 months of a major digg experience is likely to cost you a lot more than the blog is actually worth.

How to avoid this?

Simply check the stats for any Digg referrals. Also, check Alexa and look for any big spikes in the past 6 months. If you see one, then ask what caused the spike and check the stats to confirm.

Summary

I am not saying you should deduct all factors from the Digg effect, overall it is certainly a positive. But you have to know that you may be paying for something that has already finished. It would be like paying full price for a 2006 Superbowl final ticket.

My Favorite WHOIS service - or should I say, my NEW Favorite WHO IS SERVICE

This is a new WHOIS service to me - like most domainers and website buyers, I have developed a relatively short list for favorite WHOIS and Domain Suggestion tools over the years.

Well here is one - that appears to go some way to combining both of these options: http://who.is

This is A WORLDWIDE Whois service - it does the usual look up - including many international domains. (Searches 364 extensions)

I was doing a WHOIS on a .to domain when I found it.

In addition it also gives the ALEXA ranking and number of page views per visit (On the tests I did page views per visit looks pretty accurate - so a very useful tool when trying to evaluate a website you might buy.

It gives you a list of Available Domains - related to your search

For example on a WHOIS of NewYork.com - it suggests: NewYorkRoundup.com - which I thought a pretty decent suggestion.

GO ON - YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO: Digg this

Favorite WHOIS service - my NEW Favorite WHO IS SERVICE

We have all had an idea for a website or web business that we felt was a killer idea. Some of us decide to turn that idea into a multi million dollar business (Google, Facebook, Flickr, Myspace), and the majority of us forget about it and then regret it later.

But in between these two ends of the spectrum is something far worse… it is the people that think of an idea, create the website, and then realise that the idea has already been done many times, and success is almost impossible.

At Midascode we get a lot these cases, people contact us with an online auction website they spent $10,000 on, and they then realised that there was a little thing called eBay, so their site never got off the ground. To make matters worse, they often want to sell for more than $10,000 to “cover the development costs”.

This angers and upsets me in equal measure. I don’t like to see people fail, I certainly don’t like to see them lose money, but at the same time, it is clear that these people have rushed into creating their website without doing any research.

Which begs the question: should development companies have the morals and good faith to tell such clients that they are wasting $10,000?

It is easy for us to laugh and joke about people who want to create a search engine for $500 to compete with Google, or a $10,000 site to compete with eBay, but many of you have spent a lot of time on the net, you know the rules, and the unwritten rules, you know what works and what fails, you know what adverts not to click, and you know not to show your willy via webcam to a guy called KinkyJoe (ok, perhaps that was just me then?!?)…. but remember that each and every day there are thousands of people who are using the Internet for the very first time, these people don’t know the rules and unwritten rules, they barely now how to load the Internet browser.

Perhaps there should be a one year buffer period, where nobody is allowed to create a website or web business until they have been online 12 months.

For instance, take my mother…. no, please… take her!

She started using the net recently, using the IM username: Deans.Mum (bless)

The other day she contacted me and was furious about the fact that on the net, people pretend you have won things, but really, they say it to every visitor. I laughed at this because I have had 10 years of seeing such banners and pop-ups, but she hasn’t, and from time to time we have to remember that we were just as naive when we started online.

We all make mistakes, for me, “mistake” is just another word for “experience”, but until you have got your Internet “experience”, it may be best not to invest $10,000 into an idea that has had no market research, and what’s more, if you do make this big mistake, please don’t use us as your “get out of jail free card”, we can get the same $10,000 site developed for $2,000 and we are “experienced” enough to know that it would take millions of dollars in promotion to launch an online auction site these days.

Rant over.

For all of the people reading this who are new to the Internet, I would like to share one vital piece of information with you, one nugget of info that will change your lives:

****Congratulations, you are the 1 millionth visitor, you have won a prize, please send $100 to INeedMoreInternetExperienceBeforeISpent10kOnMyIdea @midascode.co.uk to collect your cash.****

Have you ever wondered who owned iphone.com before the iPhone was invented?

No? Perhaps it is just me then.

I can reveal that this is an archive of the iPhone.com website prior to Apple purchasing the domain:

iPhone website in 1999

It makes you wonder, perhaps you are currently the owner of a domain that could be worth millions in the near future. Perhaps Apple will create a product called “Midas Code”

We can only dream.

Google has purchased the shortest possible domain name to make it easier for Chinese users to find Google: g.cn.

This is the first time I have seen a single-letter domain sold. So let’s have a quick look at some other one letter domains:

Z.com is owned by Nissan.

Q.com is owned by Qwest.

X.com is owned by Paypal