My adventures in “Domain Name Hand Registration” circa 2014

Hand registration is hard! I participated in the hand registration contest that Elliot run on his
blog at DomainInvesting.com. I came up 3rd with 49 votes. Thanks to those who voted for me. My list was #7. I think I did ok considering that I was at the bottom of the poll.

You can find the 7 lists here and the results here.

My list was this:
TransplantDatabase.com
CycleMonitoring.com
BannedIPs.com
NewClinical.com
RiskVerification.com
SummerDeco.com
BowelTransplant.com
WinterExploration.com
TransplantMedications.com
OrganRejection.com

I liked lists #2,#3,and #5. #4 was too focused on 2 areas and the two were too brandable for me. Not sure what I would have voted. I liked mine the best! 🙂

From #2 I liked EduScholarships.com but didn’t care much for PestControlStPetersburg.com and for LaredoAccidentAttorney.com. Maybe that is because I don’t really like 3 word domains.

From #3 I liked AssistingCare.com the most. All medical domains are nice too. I needed help to understand what CollegeFootballBowlTickets.com meant but that is because I am from Greece! Nevertheless 4 words if a no-no for me. BulkWhoisSearches.com seems to have a double plural in it.

From #5 I liked BodySunscreen.com and InteractiveSurveillance.com. I didn’t like NewJerseyInsuranceFinder.com.

The contest was during the Christmas holidays so it was really hard for me to concentrate so I didn’t have the diversity that I wanted. A couple of list had domaining domains in them which is always a good thing when domainers vote. I only searched for 2-3 days out of the 7 provided. Of course the same applies to the other contestants.

These 2-3 days I was in domainer mode that gets you quite tired very fast. I used the Google keyword planner and google search not to find domains but to make sure that the terms I was searching for actually meant something and how popular they were.

My inspiration? Mostly what I read in my everyday life. A lot of blog posts, articles, news, magazines (Wired, GQ and Esquire) and … my life. Mostly what I know, what I am interested in and what I need. What I learn everyday.

Mark from DomainPicks.com commented that he had to search to see if intestinal transplantation was real. I learned the hard way. My friend’s newborn baby needs one.
Now a lot of hospitals in the world can handle it but hopefully she will get one.

I kinda felt the end user frustration when looking for a domain name from a certain field that I found myself interested. It is had to find a good free domain name when you are on a budget (ie $10). But these still exist. Not an urban legend.

The 10 domains I bought I would have bought them anyway either I was in this contest or not. But I wouldn’t have find them if it wasn’t for the contest. I spend too much time searching. Time I don’t have. But I didn’t waste any money for this contest. And I only plan to sell these domains to end users.

I suggest everybody do this for at least a week. You may find out that there are better domains available for hand-reg that the domains you have been renewing for years… Or the domains you buy at auctions.

So what were my rules for the hand registration? They were pretty simple:
.com only
2 words max
not many brandables

I searched for maybe 1000+ domains. I found about 30 free and bought 25 of them. I then had to choose the best 10.

These are the ones I left out:
TrialOutsourcing.com
BadPass.com
LondonExploration.com
NewYorkExploration.com
TissueRejection.com
WrongPass.com
EUInvoice.com
ExplorationPhotos.com
CityExplorations.com
AlternativeDeco.com
ResearchOutcome.com
ClinicalCaregiver.com
AlternativeTree.com
AutumnDeco.com
WinterDeco.com
GreeceEnergy.com

Do you think that I should picked a different domain?

The domains that I searched for and were taken ranged from 1995 up to the 20th of December 2013 in registration dates. This was just a couple of days before the contest started.

BowelTransplant.com dropped this September after being registered for years (since 2004) by a hospital. It stayed fee for a few months. 1 domain I wanted was caught in September with a backorder zone backorder.

There were a lot of domains that were registered in the past year. From the older ones most domains were owned by big players like MostWantedDomains.com, DomainNameSales or BuyDomains and of course Hugedomains.com that had most of the 2013 domains.

While searching I found 2 domains that I own. This is always good! Yes, I do forget what I own. I backordered 3 domains that are in pending delete or redemption. InfantSleepApnea.com was in pending delete. I got it today, 15 days after it dropped. It has 390 Monthly Google Searches (all locations) and 5,46 € CPC. Pretty good for a 3 word domain.

I also got a few domains after the contest was over:
IntestinalTransplantation.com
TransplantAssociation.com
TransplantAssociation.org
GraftRejection.com
UndergroundExploration.com
ExpiredLink.com
BowelTransplants.com
DigitalToothbrush.com

I think the best compliment for my list I got was from Tony:
“I like list 7 most because it most resembles a pending delete list.”