I subscribe to all major domain newsletters, have been receiving them for a few years now. I even have a special folder in my email account for that and set up filters to skip inbox and send them all there, so I can store them and review later. And lately I’ve been doing just that – reviewing all the recent messages, hoping to find some bargains, or at least some decent domains at somewhat fair prices. With no luck at all, no surprise there however.
Domain newsletters aren’t for domainers! In fact I doubt domainers even buy domains through newsletters at all. For high quality, generic domains prices are usually through the roof, higher than on dnforum and higher than on auctions. For average, or mid quality domains prices are also usually in the end user levels, much higher than what any domain reseller would consider paying. Only affordable domains are.. well, the kind of domains I wouldn’t take for free.
Sure you can find some bargains or decent deals if you spend a lot of time looking through the emails, and in fact I even bought a couple domains, but the vast majority of domains in newsletters are priced for end users, which is really strange – end users don’t subscribe to domain newsletters! They usually email you when they want your domain, or look it up on sedo and make you an offer.
Newsletters must have terrible selling rates, much lower than auctions and other venues, its not uncommon to receive the same names in the email over and over again, with ever falling prices. In fact I’ve submitted some of my domains to newsletters on many occasions – those were good domains and I priced them fairly, but nothing ever sold. Newsletter owners would tell you they have extremely high selling rates to get you to subscribe and send them good names to sell. Obviously there is no way to check that, but one thing is certain – newsletters are extremely profitable for those who run them: not much is needed there, just send a newsletter with a bunch of domains and prices you’re given by domain owners every few days – and if a domain sells you get 10%. 10% is the norm in the industry for brokering: investigating, searching for all potential buyers, end users, finding an actual buyer, negotiating a price, closing the deal; newsletter owners get the same % for just sending one email.. Some domain newsletter owners only list their own names, while others only broker domains submitted to them. But everyone would usually accept good domains to broker to their subscribers and why wouldn’t they? It’s easy money if it sells.
Still feel like subscribing to some newsletters? Here are the most popular ones:
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TobyClements.com – formerly Rick Latona’s newsletter which was hugely popular and sold tons of domains weekly. Recently changed it’s format and relaunched under a different name by Toby Clements. Some of the highest quality domains, one the recent emails featured Cars.net! 18 emails received in the last 30 days, so that’s about 4 emails per week.
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DomainsNewsletter.com – managed by Kevin from bigticketdomains.com. It’s a mix of different domains, even some sites. Most are well overpriced, however there are also some decent names at somewhat fair prices. received 26 emails in the last 2 months – average of 3 emails per week. Also on that matter – there was a big discussion about Kevin Leto on dnforum, with some complaints from people who did business with him. Not quite sure what it’s all about or how it got resolved, but it seems serious if it spanned over 16 pages. I usually avoid long heated threads as they lack substance.
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DomainsForMedia.com and DnCartoons.com – managed by Eric Rice, opposite to other newsletters it frequently features domains asking for offers. Recently it’s not very often and promoting the domain madness auctions. Features many high quality domains and some at decent prices. Only 1 email this month so far, but 4 emails in April and 10 emails in February this year.
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Domainate.com by Sharon Hayes and Steve Jones. Offering many domains at $127, $99 and sometimes even $60. Not the top quality names as in the other newsletters, but many good keyword combinations. I purchased a couple great domains from here before, but even though I buy a lot of keyword domains on the forums, I wasn’t able to find anything else suitable here lately. I have a feeling the quality has gone down, or perhaps it’s only because of the change in adword search numbers a few month ago when google moved to the new keyword tool. You can see some of their domains here. It’s very convenient that they include the cpc and search count values, as well as age, I wish all domain sellers did this! 4 emails in the last 30 days. Emails aren’t on a regular patterns, but usually every week or two.
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HuntingMoon.com by Evan Horowitz is another domain newsletter, but it’s somewhat inactive lately. In fact the last one was 2.5 months ago and there were only two emails in 2010, but in 2009 the newsletters was very active with several emails per week and featuring many top quality names.
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DifferentInvestments.com by Justin Godfrey, known in dnforum as Rockefeller. The newsletter used to be active and had many good names for sale in 2009 and 2010 and but I haven’t received any emails from Justin for over half a year now.
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Dnjournal Newsletter is a newsletter by the respected DNJournal publication by Ron Jackson. There are no domains for sale here, just updates on the recent articles, editorials and sales. Highly recommended as it features top quality interviews and domaining news.
Other newsletters which I haven’t yet subscribed to, but they seem rather popular as well: MediaOptions.com, LuxuryNames.com, DomainAgency.com, MorganLinton.com
If you want more information on domain newsletters there are also some other posts (possibly outdated) on domain newsletters at Elliot’s, Nametalent and DomainNameNews.
That’s about it. I’m sure there are others, if you have one with over 500 subscribers let me know I’ll list it too.
19:18
Best deal you’ll find this year! In light of the recent SOPA controversy many registrars are now offering discounts for domain transfers. Ok, to be fair there is no controversy – SOPA is bad, very bad, for the whole Internet, except GoDaddy, who helped write it and are now paying the price as customers are leaving. SOPA threatens the freedom of the Internet and if passed will allow copyright holders to have sites taken down by a quick order of a judge, without any representation or court. More bad news is that it’s likely to pass due to wide spread support in the Congress.
Wishing everyone a happy and extra prosperous 2011. May your parking revenue quadruple and genuine end user request emails fill in your inbox!
I’m glad to see 
Computers break and servers get hacked. Sooner or later everyone realizes the importance of backing up your important data, usually after a few unfortunate events. I had a few of these, from having my laptop stolen with all the important business data that I didn’t have a copy for much of it (luckily I had my passwords and other sensitive data on a flash drive) and to having servers hacked and losing the sites.