In this week's Inside Interview, I speak with John Quail, the owner of Claims.co.uk - a personal injury claims website that helps people to connect with solicitors in order to pursue compensation claims.
The domain name was acquired by John for £100,000, but this wasn't his first domain name investment. Before buying claims.co.uk, he owned domains such as Inside.com, Diseases.com, Lapland.com, and Toddlers.com - all of which he has successfully flipped.
In a DNJournal article, John mentions that he bought Inside.com for $9,000 and a week or two later, he sold it for $90,000 - the type of deal that some of us only dream about!
Now, John's focus is on claims.co.uk, but that doesn't mean he has sold all of his valuable domain names. Among his small portfolio are the domain names c.co.uk and c.uk.
In the interview below, John shares details of why he bought claims.co.uk rather than sticking with a brandable name, how he bought the domain, and gives us some interesting details about the domain name c.uk and the amount of type-in traffic it receives.
NP: Can you give us a brief description of Claims.co.uk and what you do?
John: Of course! We’ve developed resources that give people in-depth information on the process of making an injury claim. If after reading through the information, people would like to talk to a solicitor, we put them in touch with one who deals in their specific area of claim.
NP: You bought Claims.co.uk for £100,000. Can you tell us whether you actively sought out the name, or was it a domain name that was offered to you?
John: I’d actually been after the name for quite a while. I had a few sites in the personal injury niche that had more ‘brandable’ type domains, but to launch us to the next level, we needed a brand that was more professional and carried more weight. I’d been in contact with the owner through a uk domain forum, and we had a few people we knew in common, but even with that, it took months before we both came to a deal we were happy with.
NP: How did you determine the domain was worth £100,000 to you?
John: To be honest, I knew it was end-user level pricing that I was paying but given my experience in the sector, I knew I would be able to put it to good use. I knew with the competition in the space, and the high cost of advertising, a domain like claims.co.uk would give us a much better ROI than a purely brandable domain name.
NP: Can you give us details of the negotiations that lead to you agreeing upon a price?
John: As I mentioned, it took quite a while for the negotiations for claims.co.uk. The seller was a domainer himself and so he knew the value of the domain. I think I opened at about the £30k mark, and he was in the low 6 figures. After several emails back and forth over the space of months, with me trying not to seem too keen, we finally agreed at £100k.
NP: Do you think the domain is worth more than you were willing to pay for it?
John: Given our situation at the time, I don’t think we’d have been willing to pay any more for it. I think it was a good deal for both myself and the seller at the time. However, given the knowledge I have now, and the actual difference it has made to our business, I’d be willing to pay a lot more now than I was back then.
Setting the authority and doors it has opened aside, we’ve earned back the investment in the domain several times over with higher CTR’s resulting in reduced PPC costs, more organic traffic, and better conversion in both organic and PPC. Being able to compare it against our other ‘brandable’ type sites in the same sector give us a great yardstick to measure its performance against.
The value of the domain nowadays is always difficult to tell as it’s not for sale. Given the business we’ve built upon it, it is definitely worth a lot more than we paid for the domain alone. However how much of that extra value is based upon the development is difficult to say.
NP: How do visitors to claims.co.uk usually find you? Is it mostly type-in traffic or search engines?
John: Initially, most of our visitors came through organic search, but as we’ve honed our conversion rates, we’ve been able to successfully diversify into PPC. Claims.co.uk has also definitely helped with creating profitable advertising campaigns with higher CTR’s, conversion rates, and trust factor. With organic traffic, it’s more difficult to judge growth, as we want to do things the right way and organically grow in a white hat manner.
Currently, we’re seeing revenues of over £1 MM/year, great growth, and a healthy profit margin for our industry, so we’re happy with where we are and very optimistic about our future.
NP: In your initial email to me, you also revealed you own c.co.uk and c.uk. Can you tell us how many visitors you receive per month to these domain names (and why you receive so many visitors)?
John: C.uk receives over 110,000 unique visitors per month. The vast majority of these are through wildcard sub-domain typos, e.g., someone typing in physics.c.uk instead of physics.co.uk. C.co.uk does receive a bit of traffic, but nothing of the level of c.uk.
NP: It's great to see that you have created a charity website on c.co.uk and c.uk. Have you ever considered developing them into more than they are or parking the domains to profit from the traffic?
John: We’ve always had charities close to our hearts, even before the acquisitions of c.uk and c.co.uk. As such, we’d had a few ideas thrown about at various stages for the domains related to charitable causes. During this time, we did send the domains to PPC for a few months, and it did reasonably well (to the tune of $600-800/month, which we donated to various charities).
In the long run though, we thought they could do a lot more to raise the visibility of some smaller charities than just a bit of PPC income. So our current version of the site gives rotating visibility to some of the UK’s smaller charities, which don’t have the budget to get their message out there as effectively as the larger charities. We seem to be getting a lot of really nice feedback from visitors to the site, which is always a good sign.
NP: Will you be buying more domain names as either personal or business investments in the future?
John: I’m always on the lookout for other domains that I think are well priced, but I don’t spend as much time domaining now as I used to. Nowadays, I would consider myself more of a business owner now than a domainer, but I still just can’t pass up on a good deal.
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Thanks to John for taking the time to answer our questions. It's great to see someone with experience in domain investing actually using a premium domain name to build a business. I find it interesting that John has noticed the domain claims.co.uk improves the conversion rate on advertising over other brandable domains in the same industry.
Yet another very good reason why any business should consider buying the best domain name possible for their industry.
Inside Interviews is a blog series profiling the buyers of high-value domain names. Find out their motives, negotiation tactics, and their opinions on popular domaining topics only on the NamePros Blog.
Do you own a high value premium domain name that's being used as part of a business? Contact me to be a part of the Inside Interviews series.
The domain name was acquired by John for £100,000, but this wasn't his first domain name investment. Before buying claims.co.uk, he owned domains such as Inside.com, Diseases.com, Lapland.com, and Toddlers.com - all of which he has successfully flipped.
In a DNJournal article, John mentions that he bought Inside.com for $9,000 and a week or two later, he sold it for $90,000 - the type of deal that some of us only dream about!
Now, John's focus is on claims.co.uk, but that doesn't mean he has sold all of his valuable domain names. Among his small portfolio are the domain names c.co.uk and c.uk.
In the interview below, John shares details of why he bought claims.co.uk rather than sticking with a brandable name, how he bought the domain, and gives us some interesting details about the domain name c.uk and the amount of type-in traffic it receives.
NP: Can you give us a brief description of Claims.co.uk and what you do?
John: Of course! We’ve developed resources that give people in-depth information on the process of making an injury claim. If after reading through the information, people would like to talk to a solicitor, we put them in touch with one who deals in their specific area of claim.
NP: You bought Claims.co.uk for £100,000. Can you tell us whether you actively sought out the name, or was it a domain name that was offered to you?
John: I’d actually been after the name for quite a while. I had a few sites in the personal injury niche that had more ‘brandable’ type domains, but to launch us to the next level, we needed a brand that was more professional and carried more weight. I’d been in contact with the owner through a uk domain forum, and we had a few people we knew in common, but even with that, it took months before we both came to a deal we were happy with.
NP: How did you determine the domain was worth £100,000 to you?
John: To be honest, I knew it was end-user level pricing that I was paying but given my experience in the sector, I knew I would be able to put it to good use. I knew with the competition in the space, and the high cost of advertising, a domain like claims.co.uk would give us a much better ROI than a purely brandable domain name.
NP: Can you give us details of the negotiations that lead to you agreeing upon a price?
John: As I mentioned, it took quite a while for the negotiations for claims.co.uk. The seller was a domainer himself and so he knew the value of the domain. I think I opened at about the £30k mark, and he was in the low 6 figures. After several emails back and forth over the space of months, with me trying not to seem too keen, we finally agreed at £100k.
NP: Do you think the domain is worth more than you were willing to pay for it?
John: Given our situation at the time, I don’t think we’d have been willing to pay any more for it. I think it was a good deal for both myself and the seller at the time. However, given the knowledge I have now, and the actual difference it has made to our business, I’d be willing to pay a lot more now than I was back then.
Setting the authority and doors it has opened aside, we’ve earned back the investment in the domain several times over with higher CTR’s resulting in reduced PPC costs, more organic traffic, and better conversion in both organic and PPC. Being able to compare it against our other ‘brandable’ type sites in the same sector give us a great yardstick to measure its performance against.
The value of the domain nowadays is always difficult to tell as it’s not for sale. Given the business we’ve built upon it, it is definitely worth a lot more than we paid for the domain alone. However how much of that extra value is based upon the development is difficult to say.
NP: How do visitors to claims.co.uk usually find you? Is it mostly type-in traffic or search engines?
John: Initially, most of our visitors came through organic search, but as we’ve honed our conversion rates, we’ve been able to successfully diversify into PPC. Claims.co.uk has also definitely helped with creating profitable advertising campaigns with higher CTR’s, conversion rates, and trust factor. With organic traffic, it’s more difficult to judge growth, as we want to do things the right way and organically grow in a white hat manner.
Currently, we’re seeing revenues of over £1 MM/year, great growth, and a healthy profit margin for our industry, so we’re happy with where we are and very optimistic about our future.
NP: In your initial email to me, you also revealed you own c.co.uk and c.uk. Can you tell us how many visitors you receive per month to these domain names (and why you receive so many visitors)?
John: C.uk receives over 110,000 unique visitors per month. The vast majority of these are through wildcard sub-domain typos, e.g., someone typing in physics.c.uk instead of physics.co.uk. C.co.uk does receive a bit of traffic, but nothing of the level of c.uk.
NP: It's great to see that you have created a charity website on c.co.uk and c.uk. Have you ever considered developing them into more than they are or parking the domains to profit from the traffic?
John: We’ve always had charities close to our hearts, even before the acquisitions of c.uk and c.co.uk. As such, we’d had a few ideas thrown about at various stages for the domains related to charitable causes. During this time, we did send the domains to PPC for a few months, and it did reasonably well (to the tune of $600-800/month, which we donated to various charities).
In the long run though, we thought they could do a lot more to raise the visibility of some smaller charities than just a bit of PPC income. So our current version of the site gives rotating visibility to some of the UK’s smaller charities, which don’t have the budget to get their message out there as effectively as the larger charities. We seem to be getting a lot of really nice feedback from visitors to the site, which is always a good sign.
NP: Will you be buying more domain names as either personal or business investments in the future?
John: I’m always on the lookout for other domains that I think are well priced, but I don’t spend as much time domaining now as I used to. Nowadays, I would consider myself more of a business owner now than a domainer, but I still just can’t pass up on a good deal.
--
Thanks to John for taking the time to answer our questions. It's great to see someone with experience in domain investing actually using a premium domain name to build a business. I find it interesting that John has noticed the domain claims.co.uk improves the conversion rate on advertising over other brandable domains in the same industry.
Yet another very good reason why any business should consider buying the best domain name possible for their industry.
Inside Interviews is a blog series profiling the buyers of high-value domain names. Find out their motives, negotiation tactics, and their opinions on popular domaining topics only on the NamePros Blog.
Do you own a high value premium domain name that's being used as part of a business? Contact me to be a part of the Inside Interviews series.
