Over 5,000 “Premium” Domain Name Listings on Ebay

How do you know that the word “premium” is overused in reference to domain names? You can have a look at Ebay’s domain names for sale listings for an illustration of this issue.

At the time of this post, there are over 15,100 listings on Ebay for domain names. Some of these may be websites and some listings may simply mention a domain name in the listing. Of those 15,000+ listings, there are more than 5,300 of them that contain the word “premium” in the listing. Just taking a look through some of these premium listings, and you can see how absurd the premium designation is.

Unfortunately, it’s not all the fault of the sellers’ when it comes to describing their domain names as premium. I investigated a bit further and saw that when a seller selects the domain name category, they are allowed to select the “type” of domain name from a drop down list. There are two types: “domain name” and “premium domain name.” I suppose we should be appreciative of Ā 2/3 of the domain listings whose sellers were honest about their listings.

I think Ebay should consider changing the drop down menu options under Type. Visitors might be better served if the types were options such as numeric, 3 letter, 4 letter, geographic, ccTLD, IDN, and other meaningful options. This would actually make sense rather than basically asking people if their domain name is worth a lot or a little. It’s no surprise that 1/3 of the listings were given the “premium” designation.

In my opinion, a premium domain name is one that has significant value. I think the premium term is overused, and that has made it meaningless.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

14 COMMENTS

  1. It’s not the easiest platform to even list a name for sale. Have You have you thought of doing a tutorial on it as a future post? Good luck on rebrand. I think you’ll end up selling it one day for a nice number.

    • I haven’t sold (or listed) anything on Ebay in many years, so I wouldn’t be the right person to do that. I suppose I could figure out how to do it and share a tutorial, but most people should be able to do the same without a tutorial.

      Thanks for the feedback on the rebranding!

  2. This could be another example of domain investors talking to themselves. While it has a specific meaning for them, the general public and Ebay shoppers are, in general, not hip to domain name jargon – premium or otherwise. The phraseology in most cases is used as another advertising tool as in ‘best-selling’ and ‘luxury’ or ‘valuable.’ A lot of this, like most things in the domain name business, is in the eyes of the beholder. I use ‘valuable’ and ‘useful’ a lot in some of my ads. Like everything else here – you be the judge. I have been reading a lot and I can see that a lot of domainers miss the way it used to be. Join the club. Everything changes, but I’m sure that smart advertisers will be able to compensate for the overuse of the word ‘premium’ if in fact anyone but them care one way or the other.

  3. The ‘Premium Listing’ domains that are placed for sale at some registrars are listed as ‘premium’ regardless of the quality of the domain. This can also cause confusion for end users.

    The Ebay sellers that list their domains that range from ok to absolutely horrible at millions of dollars ($21 million???) are really something as well…

  4. In the domain industry, the word “premium” has become almost meaningless, when a domainer looks at the word “Premium” from a seller, does he think he’s going to see premium domains or domains the owner thinks are premium? which usually are NOT.

    BTW Elliot, how do I go about uploading my avatar?

  5. Today I went to the eBay home page, clicked on show all categories and could not even find domain names.

    Once, years ago, I sold a domain name on eBay. Back then I got the idea that buyers browsed the domain category. If today you can’t find the domain category to see what is for sale that might limit sales.

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