Economy in tatters, opportunity matters.

In the current economic climate I think it’s fair to say a lot of people are tightening their belts, food and fuel prices are forever breaking new records and the banks & finance are suffering as much as they have been for decades.

Mining

It is therefor the perfect time to go on the offensive, you will not go a week without seeing several rumours of takeover bids for weak and vulnerable companies and we do have billion or million dollar budgets the same opportunities still exist for those that are proactive on a smaller scale.

Sellers of websites are more open to negotiation, in fact I am finding cold call emails are being met more favourably as money can be tight it’s a great time to build up contact with a site you wish to purchase, online business venture are being closed down every day. Businesses that could be 1-10 years old, have old backlinks and good rankings but the business model has run into difficulty.

You can pay to get lists of companies in administration, these companies more than often have domain names, those domains are not expiring and could have traffic, rankings & value, some companies trade under their name but also hold category killer generic domains, you can use tools such as DomainTools to find other domains a company in administration has.

Administrators try and sell the business as quickly as possible when they are taken in however in many cases if a buyer is not found their job is to get as much money as possible for the creditors and that’s a golden opportunity to contact the administrator and offer money for a domain name, you do that enough times and you will find a diamond in the rough.

About Scott Jones

Scott hails from the north east of Scotland and started earning online at the end of 2000 building websites for local businesses during which time he won an award from Lord Alan Sugar for Excellence in Enterprise. After having quite a bit of success with domaining Scott mainly runs educational evergreen websites which generate over 3 million visitors per month but is always on the lookout for a fresh thinking out of the box way to turn a buck. Follow on Twitter.

Comments

  1. Ariel Ozick says:

    Scott -

    I think we call it bankruptcy - where did you see these lists?

    Ari

  2. What a nice positive outlook you paint 😉
    Interesting I have been seeing almost the reverse queries regarding web site findability and visibility have increased ten fold since January with people seeing even our relatively expensive services as a cheap alternative to their brick and mortar businesses.

    One interesting but seemingly growing trend is the use of two companies with the domain name being held separately from the normal company assets not sure if this is for tax purposes or simply forward thinking.

    • :) Traditional brick ‘n mortar companies with good sites/domains would make up the main element of what I am seeing, I am getting lists of dozens of companies every day in administration for various reasons, probably more the type that wouldn’t have the foresight to contact you Tim. Interesting that some may be protecting the asset that is their domain, on the flip side there are still a lot of companies with old reg’d generics that don’t know the value of what they have, hence the opportunity.

  3. I know that the medias are trying to paint a picture of things going really bad, houseprices coming down and “hell on earth” but honestly I think they are overreacting.

    The outcome will be the same as the media is what tells the public what to believe so your strategy will still work.

    Personally I feel that this is one of the best times ever. The dollar is cheaper than ever and because people are scared (or just doesn’t know) prices of great investment opportunities are coming down.

    If that isn’t a great thing I don’t know what is. I’m investing as much as I can right now :)

  4. Bona Vacantia used to be good for getting quality domains from bankrupt companies. Sadly, no longer possible - http://www.bonavacantia.co.uk/default.asp?pageid=1316

  5. This is a very positive post. I was kind of expecting you to recommend a… cautious approach, but this kind of ‘aggressive opportunistic’ approach really appeals to me.

    Do you think we’ll be seeing some steals in the DP sites for sale forum?

    • Possibly the odd one Justin but I am more aggressively targetting companies that perhaps registered some decent domains 10 years ago and without capitalising on them have run into difficulty in this current climate, not knowing what they have. Administrators have the power to sell these domains at whatever price they can get so being pro-active and aggressive here can really pay. I have sent lots of emails and agreed a few deals on domains that were owned by companies going or gone bust.

      • Very very interesting. Coincidentally this post has given me the perfect solution to a problem I’m facing with a long-time client of mine. They have a .ca domain which has #1 rankings for most of their keywords in Google.ca. But they want to start getting international traffic, and want to use a .com to do it. I’m going to recommend that we go this route, and find a quality .com for purchase!

  6. I worked for a company a couple of years ago and owner (who just happened to be a billionaire - no joking) was given a talk one day, during this talk he said he built-up his business during the recession and always buys companies that are finding it difficult.

    That has always stuck with me….

  7. The UK is heading the same way as the US. Time to start saving and to see what opportunities become available.

  8. A good entrepreneur will find ways to make money in all sorts of markets and economies and keep moving forward looking for new ways to make money.

  9. Since the end of World War II, there have many economic recessions experienced by various countries around the world. But I think this current crisis is more devastating than all the financial problems that hit in the past.

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Trackbacks

  1. […] reading and sources which helped me write this post; Scott from Self Made Minds wrote about now is the time to go on the offensive, on Make Your Mark they reported figures from […]

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