herbalgreentea.com

Born December 2001. This name has been bought and sold 15 times over the past 8 years. It’s currently being handled by the house of Dotster.

Although this name is pushing my boundaries on the number of words (we’ve all seen worse) I generally gravitate towards, but just repeat it one more time to yourself, and you know exactly what this play is going to be like. Herbal Green Tea is like the runt of a 20 member family – the last one out and the baby of the group – that given a couple of years and a lot of tender loving care has the umph to make someone a decent chunk of revenue.

It’s got a lot things going for it. It’s very easy to say and spell. It’s very easy to remember, and very easy to tell others about. Also going for it: it’s a very descriptive product category and practically demands some attention and some follow-up research within the green tea vertical.

The analytics of herbalgreentea.com are abysmal. This name has been around for pretty much the entire decade and nothing has been built up around the domain. I couldn’t get the traffic & revenue stats from the seller so I’m defaulting to Google amongst a few other tools.

Currently the face of herbalgreentea.com is another pathetic MFA site. So again, similiar to yesterday’s stats, this domain currently doesn’t have any pagerank, there are zero backlinks, and it’s absent from the top 100 search engine results. And if it wasn’t for the saving grace of a developer’s big idea coupled with the necessary flawless execution, then this name really wouldn’t even be worth the reserve price. Asking anymore than that minimum after the amount of time this name has been in circulation is equivalent to a completely new form of masturbation. There’s just no other word for it.

Traffic rallied in January 2005 and then spent the rest of that year oscillating up and down between peak levels. In mid-2006 we saw the level of traffic stagnate and has pretty much remained at that level to this day. However, there is a nice up-tick in search volume going on right now which began during the month of August and most likely will continue throughout the rest of the year.

Big G is returning about 33,000 pages of the phrase match. I’m putting this in a micro-niche category. There are quite a lot of established players in this market already. For one you’re going up against Pappa Green, a.k.a. greentea.com.  They bounce around in a market of about 12,100,000 competing pages and seem to be well-rooted as a major online presence.

Keyword: “herbal green tea”
Avg. Current CPC: $1.82
Local Volume: 2900
Highest Month: July
Phrase Match Search Supply: 32,800 – 33,100
Estimated CPC Range: $1.46 (at a maximum CPC of $2.74)

There have been millions of dollars spent in advertising for green tea. The European green tea extracts market is currently estimated to be worth $44M just by itself. It’s an established global consumable whose presence is just now starting to gain some momentum in the U.S. I think the demand for herbal green tea is going to follow a long-term up-trend, but if you want to rise above the flood of brands already in this space, and already established in the trenches, then you’re going to have to do something remarkable to differentiate yourself.

During 2007-2012, total US sales of tea and RTD tea are forecast to rise 63% in current dollars and increase 38% in constant.  Further, sales in RTD tea in cans and bottles are forecast to increase 94% (and increase 64% in constant dollars).  The market for green tea is also expected to grow about 15% in the next several years.  Why?  The answer is simple: Because green tea has officially been mainstreamed….read full article

If I were going to build a product-based site, I would first test the market with some affiliate offers. Commission Junction has several green tea CPA offers (http://www.adagio.com/) available right now teetering at about $27 for a 7 day EPC. Green tea CPA offers can be found on nearly all mid-to-large ad networks currently in business paying out between $25-$35 per sale. Once you’ve built up some revenue and possibly even brought in your own house blend, you could expand into services. Call up Ching Chow Y’uan in Bejing and tell him you’ve got some people (you are collecting email addresses, right?) interested in possible tea tastings. Hook up with a travel company that offers flights to mainland China and funnel your traffic to local tea shops. Build up a tea tasting tours service. Following that lead, what would come next?

Now the ask price is $79. This name is dropping on Sept. 12, not this Saturday, but the following weekend. If this were the final sale price, I would claw, scrape, and pummel for control of this name. This is going to be one of the more interesting trades to watch this month. I’m very interested in finding out how much traders value this name.

Given that the ask price is a drop – and as low as it is – you really just have to ignore it in this case when you’re dealing with a targeted product category name like this one. I’m going to bring this in around the mid-80s, I think this is one of the better plays so far this month to really build a secure and long-term niche business. I’m going to score this 86 points.

I don’t think I would be far off from expecting a rally well into the mid quad digits. Unfortunately for my taste, I’m not going to see some of you at that level because I’d max out my bid price around $2500 and definitely wouldn’t go beyond $3000.

Even-though the development opportunity has been completely ignored over the years (shame on everybody whose hands this passed through), I still think this name is a fantastic play for anyone wanting to get established within the green tea market. I think there’s tremendous opportunity to become the global go-to-site for herbal green tea and grabbing this name now versus waiting until a shrewder competitor gets it is a very very big mistake. Bid hard, bid first, no mercy, sir!

U.S. Traffic Trend

U.S. Regional Interest

U.S. Keyword Searches