Three Reasons I Won’t Accept Bitcoin to Sell a Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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27

Adam Dicker recently opened a subforum at DNForum for people to sell domain names for Bitcoin (I wrote about it here). At the time, I said “I would accept any form of spendable and reportable currency for a domain name if the value was right and I could use or convert the currency. You can pay me in US dollars, gold, Bitcoins, or even a luxury watch if you wish.” After careful consideration, I do not think I would accept Bitcoin for three reasons.

For speculators, the large swings in Bitcoin values can be a good way to make money. It’s probably a high risk trade, but for people who are experts in that space (and/or use algorithmic trading perhaps), there is money to be made – and probably quite a bit of it. In addition, there are massive price differences at trading exchanges such as Mt. Gox and Coinbase. On Mt. Gox right now, a Bitcoin is worth around $150, and at Coinbase, a Bitcoin is worth about $590. I wouldn’t want to sell a domain name for $5,000 in Bitcoin only to find out that it is worth much less when I try to cash out.

As far as I am aware, Bitcoin isn’t

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JD.com: Was it Acquired for $5 Million USD?

Elliot Silver
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13

jd.comAccording to a SEC filing shared with me and highlighted by George Kirikos, the JD.com domain name may have been acquired for around $5 million US Dollars in 2012. JD.com is one of the largest Chinese online retailers, and the company is in the midst of prepping for a very large initial public offering.

George Kirikos shared the following information about why he believes the JD.com domain name may have been acquired by the company, which is also known as Jingdong Mall but is now JD.com, Inc.

According to Kirikos:

“I was browsing through EDGAR,

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Can a New gTLD Registration Identify a .Com Buyer?

Elliot Silver
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11

I was chatting with a colleague last week, and he mentioned that some of his keywordGTLD.com domain names have been receiving more offers now that the matching new gTLDs have become available to purchase. The new gTLDs will likely lead to people and companies trying to buy the matching .com domain name to prevent confusion and leakage. This will likely mean that it should be easier to determine who is inquiring about the domain name.

If the owner of a  keywordGTLD.com receives an inquiry on his domain name, the first thing he or she should do is perform a Whois search for the keyword.GTLD. Most Whois providers (maybe all) can check the Whois data for the new gTLDs. Instead of having to spend a lot of time trying to investigate who wants to acquire a particular domain name, that information can be found simply by looking at who owns the keyword.GTLD domain name.

For at least the near term,

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Why I Like Valuate.com and Estibot

Elliot Silver
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50

Domain investors tend to be critical of Estibot and Valuate.com (which uses the domain appraisal algorithm from Estibot). These two websites offer free automated domain name appraisals, and in my experience, the appraisals aren’t all that accurate. In most cases, the domain appraisals tend to be beyond retail value, but that’s just in my opinion.

That being said, I think a domain appraisal service like Valuate and Estibot can actually be good for domain investors when it comes to selling a domain name.

When you do a Google search for “free domain appraisal,” Valuate and Estibot

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Why I Don’t Like to Share Stats

Elliot Silver
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10

When I purchase domain names, I almost never ask the owner about stats. I’ve come to find that analytics are different for parking companies and for different stat trackers. Aside from this, I don’t find stats particularly interesting to me because I am buying domain names based on quality rather than traffic and revenue.

I am often asked for a domain name’s stats when selling domain names to other domain investors. On occasion, I will share them with the potential buyer, but I usually just tell them to assume there is no traffic. Sometimes I have stats available on my parked domain names, and other times, I don’t have them available on certain domain names where I haven’t enabled Google Analytics or Stat Counter.

On the infrequent occasions that I have shared stats, I have never received a reply “oh wow, that is a lot of traffic” or anything close to that. More often than not, the potential buyer uses the stats I provided as a means of negotiating a lower price. Perhaps the buyer did think there was more traffic than there really is, but I think it can hurt a sale more than help it, unless the traffic and revenue numbers are legitimately very high.

When selling to end user buyers, I am not often asked about traffic numbers. Most of the time, the buyer is looking at the domain name to either start a new website, use it in addition to the current website, own it for defensive purposes, or buy it for a future project. I am asked on occasion, but typically, this information hasn’t been used by end user prospects as a negotiation tactic (in my experience).

I like to buy and sell domain names based on the inherent keyword value of the domain name. Although having some traffic is good, I don’t look at the amount of traffic as something that would be a dealbreaker.

Know the Former Owner’s Asking Price

Elliot Silver
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2

I received an inquiry on a domain name a couple of weeks ago through a  DomainNameSales.com  broker, and I priced the domain name at $75,000. In the course of the negotiation, the prospect mentioned to the broker that he had seen the domain name listed for sale on Sedo for $30,000 about 6 months ago, and he made a $30,000 offer to the broker. He also wanted to know why the price increased by such a large margin in a short period of time.

Prior to this experience, I hadn’t really thought about tracking down a domain name’s price history before buying it, but perhaps it is a good idea.

When you are buying a good or service at a store, the price rarely changes by much over the course of a year or two. If the price does change, it’s not generally drastic unless there is a reason that most people would know about (shortage, storm, illness…etc). With real estate, there are price fluctuations, but they tend to be more gradual unless the seller wants to move a property quickly, and the changes tend to be more publicly known and go with the market conditions.

The domain name resale market is a dynamic market

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