By Jay Finnan, Portfolio Sales Manager at Sedo

I’m frequently asked about the latest trends in domain investing. Where are the pros putting their money? What are the new, ground floor opportunities only a select few know about? What are the secrets, tips and tricks of the successful in this industry? With those questions in mind I asked some of my favorite clients, colleagues and peers (a mastermind of domainerati if you will) what they thought are the best opportunities in the domain industry right now. I got a lot of different responses but several were echoed throughout my conversations. Here I’ll discuss the four best opportunities for domainers in 2007.

CO.UK Domains

What’s the best buy in domains at the moment? Of all the top-level domains (TLDs) we discussed .CO.UK came up the most. Why are the pros so excited about the United Kingdom’s top level domain? A well wired, well educated population of some 60 million English speaking people, who do business all over the world, lies behind an extension that has seen its share of good sales and is still due for many more. .CO.UK is the TLD of choice for most UK developers since it provides the inherent filtering they’re looking for and it has become a sufficiently well branded extension to compete with the .COM. This combination means a lot of natural, type in traffic for generic .CO.UK domains. What’s even better? The root advertiser pays in Sterling.

Spanish Language Domains

More than a couple of the people I spoke to considered Spanish language .COMs at the top of their buy list at the moment. There are still gems left to be registered here. Or so claimed one of my favorite clients, who even went as far as saying he could periodically find generic Spanish .COMs with considerable type in traffic available to register and many more on the secondary market at fair prices. As good as the sales have been for descriptive Spanish domains, its definitely a space where deals can be found with a lot more regularity than their English counterparts. Though they’re excited about the space, all cautioned that a good command of the language was a prerequisite to finding the right deals.

Financing

Among the many things my mastermind group was especially excited about was the ability to finance domain purchases. Thanks to companies like Domain Capital, which offers domain financing for small, medium and large scale domain purchases, more buyers are in the market. Prices are getting more competitive and deals are getting done. Even for domain investors, this is becoming a preferred way to lock up key investment opportunities that they don’t immediately have the cash for.

Lucrative Sales Opportunities

That brings me to our most discussed opportunity. Most of my mastermind group weren’t as excited about what to buy, as much as they were about the prices their domains could fetch now. There have never been as many buyers in the market as there are now and more are entering the market every day. Of course many are new to the market and are uncertain of value. But the money is there to make some great sales on an individual and portfolio basis. The latter is especially interesting as more aggressive buyers have entered the portfolio market. The old model of using a base multiple of parking stats is being trumped by more aggressive buyers that are willing to consider resale value and all cash flows.

Turning domains into cash can lead to much bigger opportunities with the right plan. Such is the opinion of John Reese, founder and CEO of income.com. I got the chance to chat with Mr. Reese the night before he delivered his keynote speech at a recent domain conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Reese attributes the sale of ship.com early in his career as the vital key he needed to invest more heavily into the market, which eventually led him to millions. Similar statements were echoed by all the investors I spoke to. There’s no better time to negotiate than now. A lot of new buyers are in the market and they’re prepared to invest for endgame purposes of the domain. The key of course is having a plan for the revenue once you’ve sold. If you’re selling to buy into a more lucrative opportunity then there’s no worry to be had about leaving money on the table.