Sedo’s Great Domains monthly auction closed this afternoon, and the auction netted around $85,000 in sales. Withdraw.com sold for a bit over $10,000 while Shopping.me sold for just under $10,000 (the sale was in EUR).
The auctions that met their reserve prices and sold are listed below. Since the auction just closed today, most of these are still in escrow.
withdraw.com 10050 $US
shopping.me 7600 EUR
yrn.com 6600 $US
hausfinanzierung.de 6300 EUR
anniversaire.com 6150 EUR
This is a guest Post by Andrew Rosener, CEO at Media Options. Andrew’s company has sold millions of dollars worth of domain name assets in the last few years. I asked Andrew to write about the differences between working with a large domain name brokerage and an independent domain broker.
It seems that the pool of domain brokers is getting bigger every week, which can only be seen as a good sign that the market still has a lot more meat on the bone. But as more newcomers, both brokers and investors alike, come into the domain market it becomes ever more important to analyze the various characteristics that make a good fit between you, your domain name (or the domain you want to acquire) and the domain broker; sometimes good things come in small packages!
There is a very clear distinction between a large corporate domain brokerage firm and an independent domain broker. Both can be great and highly effective, but from my experience they are effective for different things and purposes.
While a larger brokerage firm may have a great reach or larger general audience, that reach and audience may not be touching the niche places that your domain name needs to go. If you are targeting the domain investor and small business market with a domain that is probably not worth the time and effort necessary for a domain broker to actually reach out to end users by phone, mailing and other forms of personal contact, then a large marketplace is probably the right fit for you and your domain.
If you have a premium domain name that you absolutely want to hold out for a super premium price on and you have no problem with waiting and have no financial need to sell, then a large marketplace is probably the right fit for you – that’s a timing game. It’s important to remember that you will almost always get a higher price when a buyer comes knocking on your door then you will in a proactive sale and that is something to keep in mind when thinking about and discussing the value of your domain name with a broker.
Your domain might be worth $50,000 market value, but that doesn’t mean that a buyer who has made up their mind to use that brand wouldn’t perhaps pay $100,000 under the right circumstances and if they approach you to buy your domain instead of you approaching them. But one price provides liquidity (broker) and the other is like a lottery ticket (large marketplace).
Where an independent and professional domain broker plays a critical and valuable role is with high value domains which need to be brought to the attention of specific qualified and potential buyers. That requires spending a lot of time on each individual domain taken under brokerage agreement. At MediaOptions for example, we are a boutique brokerage firm with limited resources that need to be used to their maximum efficiency to give our clients the highest possible chance of selling their domain name for the best possible price. That means that we want to spend our time working on high value domain names which are priced accurately and we feel confident that we can sell them for $100,000 or more in order to use our time and resources efficiently.
We can only manage 10 – 20 high value brokered domains at any given time, but each of those is given personal attention by an independent domain broker and presented directly to the decision makers at the appropriate end users. A large marketplace will have hundreds, if not thousands, of domains under brokerage contract at any given time; it’s a numbers game (albeit, one that works well). That gives their in bound leads more variety and choice, but it may not put your domain name in front of it’s best and highest purpose buyer.
One more thing to take into consideration when choosing between a large domain brokerage firm and an independent domain broker is flexibility. Sometimes it takes some bobbing and weaving, wheeling and dealing to get a domain deal done. Whether it’s co-broker partnerships, creative financing, alternative deal structures or reducing the brokerage fee under the right circumstances, these are all things that can mean the difference between a deal or no deal. An independent domain broker can make those spot decisions where a larger entity has to run it up the flagpole before moving ahead.
The domain industry is still a bit like the wild wild west and sometimes it pays to be a cowboy!
Escrow.com announced that the company would begin accepting Euros for payment beginning at the end of April. Knowing that the domain industry crosses borders, I am wondering what other currencies Escrow.com should consider adding to help with your business.
One issue of course is that it’s far easier to transact in a foreign currency if both parties use the same currency. For instance, it might be expensive for me to complete a deal in Yuan since I will then have to convert to US Dollars, costing me a few points on the transaction.
Feel free to share what other currency Escrow.com should consider adding. If you’re like me and are happy with US Dollars, there’s no need to cast a vote.
I’ve never attempted to buy or sell a domain name at Flippa before, but it seems that the company continues to churn out sales. I visited the site this morning, and there is a banner at the bottom of the home page announcing $98,928,932 in overall sales.
I don’t know if they only tally paid sales or total sales regardless of payment status, but achieving nearly $100 million in sales in just a few years is quite astounding. Just yesterday, the HealthSupplements.com domain name appears to have sold for $395,000. A SEO company appears to have sold for over $1 million a couple of days ago.
I have a few underperforming domain names / websites that seem to be ripe to be sold, and Flippa might be a good venue to sell the,. For instance, I think the concept on BabyRegistries.com is solid, but I haven’t spent any time marketing or updating the site, so the revenue is small. Perhaps that would be a good candidate for sale on Flippa.
I’d be interested in knowing your experiences with Flippa if you care to share. How easy is it to get started, and how smooth is the sale and transfer process?
Congratulations to Flippa on its success. Judging by some recent sales, including the aforementioned sale of the HealthSupplements.com domain name, I believe the domain investment party is still alive and well.
If you are similar to me, I bet that the majority of the inbound offers you receive are really low. I have found that most offers are either made by people trying to lowball me or people who are uneducated about domain name values. The result is that they offer tens or hundreds of dollars for valuable domain assets.
Early last year, I won a name inexpensively on NameJet. The cost was less than $500, and I thought it was worth a few thousand to the right buyer.I went prospecting, and I came up empty. I offered it for a couple thousand dollars on a few venues, but I didn’t find a buyer. It was a name I thought I was going to hold for a while.
At the end of the summer, I received an unsolicited offer for the domain name via the Voodoo landing page. The offer was for $20,000 and it came from a legitimate source.
At first, I was stumped about how to respond. I didn’t want to risk the offer by asking for more, especially because it was clear to me that this domain name was not really worth $20,000. I also didn’t want to immediately accept the offer fearing that the buyer would think he offered too much out of the gate. In all my years buying domain names, I’ve probably only bought a couple for my initial offer. Everybody counters, and I didn’t want to give him the idea that he would be overpaying.
I decided that my tact would be to call the buyer and ask him what his plans would be for the domain name figuring he would sell me on his idea and I’d agree to the deal. His idea was pretty fascinating, and he had the background to make something big happen. I agreed to sell him the domain name shortly after that. I think a personal conversation helped with this negotiation because I didn’t risk losing the $20,000 offer and I also didn’t immediately accept it either.
The end of the story isn’t nearly as good as the beginning. Unfortunately, the buyer didn’t seem to receive the funding he was expecting, and he put the purchase off until January. Since then, I haven’t heard back from him and I assume the deal is off. Easy come, easy go.
What tactics do you find effective when you receive an offer that is well above your ideal sales price?
I want to share a piece of advice with you that can benefit you in two ways. When responding to an inquiry on one of your domain names, always set a deadline on your price quote.
The first reason for doing this is because your financial situation may change from the time you price a domain name until the time a buyer agrees to buy it. For instance, you might be more motivated to sell a name today and would give a better price than you will be in 6 months. Why create a potential problem with rescinding an offer that was given months prior.
The second reason you should set s deadline is because it creates a greater sense of urgency for the buyer. Much like those infomercials that encourage viewers to act now, your deadline will create more urgency. It may also help hasten a decision when multiple domain names are being considered.
I don’t really see a disadvantage to doing this aside from potentially putting off a buyer who isn’t ready to transact. Even if the buyer comes back after the deadline, you can always agree to sell the name for that price if you want.
I like to use either a week or until the end of the present week when I set a deadline, depending on circumstances related to that particular negotiation.
Do you give buyers deadlines when they ask for pricing, and if you do, what amount of time do you typically give.
