As somebody who has spent the last couple of years examining opportunities arising from expired domains, I feel confident that I can point out the glaring inaccuracies in Ewen Chia’s $97 product which he has named “Expired Domain Empire”.

Domain name trading has become a bit of a hot topic recently and so we have seen complete novices jumping on the bandwagon to try and make some quick money.

In the internet marketing industry that usually means writing a low-quality ebook and then selling it on using a hype-filled sales letter.

Let me get to the point – this ‘Expired Domain Empire‘ course by Ewen Chia, has some very misinformed content in it.

I’m being kind, here’s the truth – it’s so out of whack that I seriously wonder whether Ewen has done any research into the domain business whatsoever.

Let’s start with the sales letter:

“I’ve been quietly building up my domain name empire for the past few years with certain underground domain methods, ‘stealing’ hundreds of highly-profitable names many will ‘kill’ for… check out a few of the domain names I own… LoseFats.com… StrikeTheLottery.com… PinkOfHealth.com…”

Personally I wouldn’t go out of my way to call LoseFats.com and PinkOfHealth.com “extremely catchy, descriptive and brandable assets that fetches huge sums of money if sold”.

I’d be more likely to consider them worthless domains, especially ‘LoseFats.com’ which is a phrase that doesn’t actually make sense.

And what does the phrase ‘strike the lottery’ mean?

Still, I suppose somebody who falls for hypey sales letters may be impressed. I’m certainly not.

And so the sales letter continues, and Ewen ventures in to my area – short domain names.

“Other domain extensions like .org, .mobi, .net etc. will never have the power or profitability of a simple .COM.”

In most cases I agree, Ewen, good point.

“You can still get these domain extensions if you want to, and in 2 to 3 letters (for example I own l3l.net), it’s entirely up to you.”

l3l.net? That’s probably worth about $8. A short venture onto any domainer forum would clear that up for you in seconds. I thought we were talking about making money here?

3 character dot net domains are pretty much worthless – an appraisal would say “reg fee” meaning it’s worth the cost of registration, no more.

The sales letter isn’t impressive, what about the product?

The pdf is 21 pages of introductory-level theory – nothing even remotely advanced here.

The first two pages contain adverts for Ewen’s other products.

I found page 16 to be the most amusing – and it was this page that cemented in my mind that Ewen Chia knows very little about expired domains (and domain names in general).

Direct quote:

“The software also has the ability to search for all two, three and four letter domain name combinations… For the two letter combinations there are 676 possibilities. I’m just talking about .com’s [sic] here. All registered as of this writing by the way, but they could expire. You never know.”

No, we do know, Ewen. In fact, it’s one of the first things a domainer learns. Two letter dot coms do not “expire” in the sense you are talking about.

If someone decides to drop a two letter dot com, that’s it – it’s gone forever. You won’t be able to grab it from the registry, it is just deleted and consigned to the history books.

It’s a complete waste of time even monitoring two lettered dot coms because you will never get one, unless you pay somebody $100,000+ to take ownership of theirs.

If a 3 letter dot com drops then yes, that’s worth a lot of money and it would be a good idea to grab it. But if you think you’re gonna get it by popping down to GoDaddy on expiration day and registering it, you’re in for a shock.

There’s a whole industry set up to grab these domains because they will go for a minimum of $6,000 as soon as they go to auction. Thousands of servers are set up to hammer the registry as soon as an LLL.com drops – all hoping to grab it and sell it on.

As a single person, on one browser, chancing his luck with GoDaddy or NameCheap – you’ve absolutely no chance.

I’m embarassed that someone in the internet marketing industry would sell something of poor quality like this and try to pass themselves off as a domain name expert.

Please, do some research before releasing this stuff.

For those who are looking to get into domain trading, please don’t look at it as “easy money” no matter what you are told by hypey internet marketers.

There is an opportunity to make money, providing you are willing to invest real money and put in some hard work.

You’ll do yourself a favour if you steer clear of Expired Domain Empires, it isn’t a recommended read.

If you’re looking for a good introduction to domain name trading, try http://www.DomainProfitGuide.com – which is written by two UK domain traders who walk the walk. They know their stuff about domain names.

To get an idea about domain names and their worth, try browsing the NamePros forum at http://www.NamePros.com – people will give you good advice in that particular forum, and set you straight if you go in asking how to grab an expiring two letter dot com!