AUCTION MADNESS! OVERSEE CAPTURES THE AFTERMARKET!
January 4th, 2008 Posted in Domain Auctions, Domain Conferences, Domain Conglomerates, Moniker, Oversee.net, Snapnames
Well my domainer warriors, it looks like 2008 is going to be the “Year of the Domain Auction.” In light of this realization, I have a great idea for all independent domainers; Let’s auction off all our domains!
If we domainers, which I estimate to be around 10,000, submit our domains for auction and flood the market, we probably can sell most of our domains for the lowest price possible to a well-funded domain conglomerate or well-respected domain individual.
Yep. That’s right. Most of the buyers of our domains will be other domainers looking for a good deal. “Buy low, sell high” is the correct mantra, and even selling low for many of us is okay because we’ve already bought lower if we bought our domains “out of the basket” (registered).
In these times where some of the most powerful domain names are still not sold to the appropriate corporate buyers, what hope do we domainers have that companies will want our keyword generic domains that market and sell their products and services? We don’t have much hope for that, BUT, if the BIG domain industry buyers have unabashed cash coffers, they can lure us in and suck up our good domains for pennies on the dollar. Their investment probably will triple or quadruple in less than two years, but what do we care if we can make 1000% on a domain we sell? (The math goes like this: If you buy a domain for $7.50, a 1000% return would be selling that domain for $750. If I sold all my domains in my portfolio today for $750, I would pocket around $2,265,000. If anyone is interested in seeing my 3500 domains and can afford this pricing, contact me now! However, my appraisal of my portfolio is three times this amount, but who would turn down this kind of money?)
With the quickly rising stock of Domainfest 2008 (probably the new Big Dawg Domain Conference now) which be held in Los Angeles, California from January 21-23, 2008, there are many questions for domainers to ask. The answers just might tickle our fancy more than we expected. Before the Moniker acquisition by Oversee (by now old news), my guess was that most auctions were already geared towards bidders from the domain industry, and not marketing directors from Fortune 1000 companies. I’d like to see one comment from a domain auction house holding auctions in the next few months that list all or even 10 of the “Fortune 1000 Companies” who will be participating in their auctions. This business market is the domainer’s most important source of buyers — and there is no argument that can deny it.
Just how much money have domain auction services invested in contacting and educating marketing directors from companies who would best benefit and pay the highest prices for our domains? Which domain auction services have taken this extra step? Are they just hoping we’ll lower our reserve prices so that the domain conglomerates and big domainers will be able to pick off our valuable domains for cheap because we might need the cash? Maybe. The domain auction services get their percentage, and it’s better for them to seduce us to lower our reserves, and then sweet talk the big domain buyers into placing their bids to nab the “diamonds in the dirt”. Your diamonds.
Just how many domains in the last year have sold for a price that made the seller REALLY think they got the most from their domain’s value? It’s a hard fact to compile, but I have a feeling that there are a lot of domain sellers out there who wish they didn’t put their domains into any auctions in 2007. Take the domain, Dine.mobi. At the Domain Roundtable Conference 2007 auction, it went for only $5,000. FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS? Just one bidder. For a high popularity, four letter, perfect mobile location reference domain? That, my secret readers, was highway robbery. The problem was that there weren’t enough quality bidders outside the domain industry involved in the auction. That problem is a huge nasty tornado to tame.
That’s only one story. I’m sure there are hundreds more. Kudos to those who bought cheap from these auctions. Condolences for those who sold cheap at these auctions, expecting more but really getting less because the facts are this: The domain auction houses are NOT reaching the markets YOU need to reach to increase the bidding prices on your domains. As far as I know, only Monte Cahn and Victor Pitts from Moniker have taken the time to contact outside business conferences to hold live domain auctions at their events in an attempt to educate (and sell) valuable domains relevant to other internet services, like adult and dating sites. Now, Oversee will control the Moniker Marketing Monolith and the Snapnames Superior Systems of auctioning off domains. They seem to be our only hope now for selling our domains for reasonable prices. Will they step up to the plate and hit a home run for all the domainers out there who are selling? Or are they hoping to satisfy the few big power players ready to snap up domains on the cheap?
I don’t mean to be the guy who bums out the party guests, but who will deny me my opinion? Good luck for those with domains in any auctions this year. I will see what my domains selected for the Domainfest LDA will sell for, and then depending on the outcome, I’ll write an article with love in my heart or bitterness in my gizzard. Domains of mine that were selected to be auctioned at Domainfest are LeakPrevention.com, AirlineFares.net, RacingDogs.com, and HeavyDutyBattery.com. Please, those of you with big cash, go bid on those domains and help the “Stephen Douglas Legal Fund”.
Peaceout for 2008!
5 Responses to “AUCTION MADNESS! OVERSEE CAPTURES THE AFTERMARKET!”
By Bill (Joe ) Bloniarz on Jan 4, 2008
You’ve raised some interesting points, but the .mobi tld is pure speculation at this point. Until mobile browsers automatically default the .mobi extension when a users types in “dine”, it’s a total crap shoot if .mobi will pay off. I think the price 5k is probably pretty fair, since the domain has been developed which takes quite a bit more effort than just pointing it to a parking page.
If you get the minimum bid for any of your domains:
LeakPrevention.com, AirlineFares.net, RacingDogs.com, and HeavyDutyBattery.com
TAKE IT! RUN and CASH THE CHECK immediately and don’t complain! It’s hard to imagine any ecommerce taking place for those domains, or any company being branded around those names. I would bet that they don’t make squat in the PPC realm!
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Thanks Joe for the comment. Actually, most of my domains up for auction make enough rev for me to happily hang on to them without worry, but I’m testing the system with domains outside my main niches. I really dig your interpretation of .mobi value upgrading once cellphone web access searches replace “.com” with a default “.mobi” extension. Heck, we should pound Verizon, Sprint, and the rest with this idea. “Hey, make your cellphone website access services hit the cash ceiling by making .mobi domains the default web locations for all mobile device searches! Or create an “ad service” for advertisers who want their products to default to a .mobi domain name on all browser or SE search results!” I know that last idea is very ambitious, but so was making light come from a glass bulb with a little thread filament 100 years ago.
Excellent comment, Joe.
SD
By Domain News on Jan 7, 2008
I had one domain picked for the acution freeloanfinders (dot) com personaly if I had the time and money to develop this domain I know this domain could make me alot of money alot more money then it will sell for but at any rate any ideas from you are anyone else on here about what you think is a decent price for the domain name only
By ASN5 on Jan 7, 2008
Good article. Your sarcasm helps drive home the otherwise boring details of market manipulation taking place in the “industry”.
Today’s entire family of auctions - and its getting more like a family every day - is inbred with insider dealers. In fact, its a lot like an auto auction. I don’t know anymore, but end users weren’t even allowed at auto auctions back when I was hanging out with a car dealer friend.
If you’ve ever gone to many of those, you’ve seen the same old crowd pushing their product and talking down the competition.
And another thing; I think it was $100 plus a percentage of any sale, but at least you could run a car through with whatever reserve you wanted.
The whole idea of price-fixing your domain name before it goes to auction is a scam. You should be able to set your own reserve. The auction house has a right to start the bidding anywhere they want, but pressuring prices down and locking you out of the auction if you disagree is lame.
More importantly, we need sales data. The data resulting from the auctions of today is generally considered proprietary - and for good reason; if they showed you the historic sales data, you’d never go along with their reserve prices.
The bottom line is that domain dealers and investors need an organization to create a market of their own; one that is transparent and that shares the aggregates sales data with its members.
I for one intend to devote a great deal of effort to this end in the coming weeks and hope that enough of us will be concerned about the issues that you and others have raised to actually participate in the effort.
BTW, I’ve never been to a race, but I feel safe in saying that if RacingDogs.com doesn’t go to a breeder (which it probably won’t), I think you’re going to prove your own points, getting shorted on that one in the process.
I mean, it’s arguably the second best name in the category (I’m thinking RaceDogs.com would be better?), and with race dogs selling for anything from $2K to $20K, I can’t imagine that auction will bring what its worth. But good luck all the same.
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Hi ASN5,
Sarcasm? Sir, I know not the meaning of this word.
I’m actually not being sarcastic, or attempting to be sarcastic in my post. At least not in the overall sense of the topic. I have already been told and warned by many of my associates and my grandma that my writing tends to be “sarcastic”, so I’m aware of that problem. I’m seeing a shrink about it, but she seems to think that my sarcasm is a wart I cannot remove without my head falling off my torso.
As far as Racingdogs.com, it’s a more natural phrasing than “racedogs.com”. If you wanted to know about dogs that race, you wouldn’t search up “race dogs”, but the present tense adjective “racing”, which describes what the dogs are doing as opposed to doubling up on the nouns “race” and “dogs”. Additionally, with “racedogs.com”, you could be searching up whether the dogs are european, African, Asian, Australian, Indonesian, etc. for their ummm… heritage. I would suppose in that context and racing that “racedogs.com” would be a good domain tho.
Thanks for your comment!
SD
By jeff schneider on Feb 25, 2008
Stephen,
There are many behind the scenes venues for domain sales. We all agree with you when you say,” The domain auction houses are NOT reaching the markets You need to reach to increase the bidding prices on your domains ”
Where are these elusive corporate buyers? One hint may be they prefer to make their transactions under the heading of non disclosed sales or private transactions.
The fact is, many of the most valuable domain names never reach public auctions.
People like Rick Schwartz have been very instrumental in trying to make the private market transactions more transparent by refusing deals unless they are made public.
We as domainers need to follow his lead and insist of our buyers that our sales be publicly disclosed. If we all do this they eventually will come to the auction tables.