BabyPhotographer.com Goes on Sale

Elliot Silver
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A couple of weeks ago, I hosted a contest on my blog, with the winner being the best domain name at the best price. The winning domain name by quite a large margin was BabyPhotographer.com.

Shortly after the winner was announced, a buyer agreed to acquire the domain name but didn’t send payment. Today, the domain name has been listed for sale in a thread on DNForum. The price is $5,900, and I think the price is very fair.

If you want to purchase this domain name, please visit the DNForum thread ASAP and post “sold” to start the sales process. LeadRefs.com shows around 250 potential leads, and I think that number is on the low side.

Marksmen CEO Shares Domain Valuation Techniques for Buying and Selling

Elliot Silver
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1

Ken Taylor is the CEO of Marksmen, a company that bills itself as “a world leader in trademark investigation services, including domain acquisition and online brand protection.” Many domain investors have done business with this company that generally acts on behalf of trademark owners in domain negotiations, but also represents domain investors in sales to its clients.

Mr. Taylor was a speaker at DomainFest last month, and I thought his discussion on domain valuation would be interesting to watch if you weren’t at DomainFest (or missed this panel).

Can You Help Me Find a Buyer?

Elliot Silver
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20

I receive quite a few emails asking something along the lines of, “can you help me find a buyer for my domain name?” I don’t broker domain names, so I generally try to get people to think about how they can find a buyer on their own. This is one of those things that if you can do it successfully once, you can replicate it. I want to share some advice on how you can try and find a buyer for domain names you want to sell.

My first piece of advice is to take the keywords from your domain name and plug them in to Google. See what companies advertise for those keywords and see what companies rank organically. Try to find a contact on the website to pitch the domain name or use the contact form. If there is no contact form or if finding the “right” person to contact is difficult, do a Whois search for the company domain name and contact the Whois contact. Many times, that person is either the contact or will forward your email to the appropriate person.

My next piece of advice is to evaluate how the  domain name can be used and by what type of company. Think about what type of companies may be interested in buying the domain name, and visit the websites of the obvious buyers (or do a Google search to find companies in those industries).  One tip with respect to this is that if you have to come up with some convoluted or tangential reason a company would want to use a domain name, you’ll probably have a tough time selling the domain name. In my experience, some companies are open to buying domain names but don’t want to hear an idea for a marketing strategy that is possible with certain domain names.

My third piece of advice is to use a domain name lead generation website like Lead Refs or Estibot to contact buyers. Be 100% sure you haven’t contacted the same person/company already. I am sure it’s annoying to receive multiple emails from the same person about a domain name, especially if the name is not of interest. I would likely remove obvious domain investors from those leads since your hit rate will likely be lower and it will annoy people who may label you as a spammer.

If your domain name is superior, you may want to have a domain broker at a company like Afternic,  Sedo,  Aftermarket.com, or Domain Holdings do outbound lead generation on your behalf. Mind you, they will likely only do this if the domain name is valuable and the price is reasonable since they only get paid for this if they close a deal.

If the domain name doesn’t have obvious commercial appeal, selling it via outbound sales channels may not be possible or will be very difficult. For brandable names, it’s more likely that you’ll close a more favorable deal when a buyer comes to you. I recommend listing them on various aftermarket websites and making sure there’s a “for sale” notice on the landing page.

Yoga.com Goes on Sale at Domain Advisors

Elliot Silver
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23

DomainAdvisorsDomain consulting and brokerage firm Domain Advisors scored a nice exclusive brokerage listing today, Yoga.com, which was announced in a press release. The company didn’t announce the asking price in the release. I would assume it’s a six figure price tag though.

I don’t know how popular yoga is where you live, but here in New York, it seems that there is at least one yoga studio on every street offering a full schedule of daily classes. People also spend a considerable amount of money on yoga clothing, mats, and other related gear. I think the name has a lot going for it.

It appears that Yoga.com is somewhat developed, although the 2005 copyright at the bottom of the site may be indicative of the last time it was updated. It does appear on the first page of Google for “yoga” for me though.

The press release is below

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Big Week in Domain Aftermarket

Elliot Silver
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32

Both Sedo and Afternic posted big numbers in the domain aftermarket this week. There were also several mid to large sales I followed that closed on NameJet as well. Close to $5 million in domain sales were reported at Sedo and Afternic, not including any sales that closed in private.

According to an email from Sedo, the company closed $3.5 million in sales last week, with over 1,200 transactions reported. 31% of the sales on Sedo were buy it now listings.  At Afternic, the company closed just under $1.4 million in total sales last week. From what I can see, there weren’t really any blockbuster sales reported.

I don’t want to make a prediction that we’re in the midst of a recovery, but I do want to point to the IDNX. The stock market is touching highs dating back to the financial crisis, and the domain market seems to be recovering in the same pattern. I am seeing the same with my own sales, as I detailed last Saturday. Hope you are seeing similar things.

Here are the top 10 sales from Afternic last week:

apartmentlistings.com $87,500.00
TECH.pro $25,500.00
acuto.com $13,000.00
medicals.com $9,000.00
BathSheets.com $9,000.00
seedbed.com $8,800.00
languageclasses.com $8,500.00
askalex.com $7,900.00
aboutmeditation.com $7,500.00
webbuilding.com $7,288.00

Here are the top 10 sales from Sedo last week:
kboing.com 150000 USD
landmarkgroup.com 50000 USD
e-liquid.com 25000 USD
romeapartments.com 15000 USD
tev.de 15000 EUR
medlaser.com 14000 USD
tanga.de 13599 EUR
graniteworktops.com 10500 GBP
sucre.com 10000 USD
cdnreviews.com 10000 USD

Contest Results

Elliot Silver
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21

Whether you submitted a name, made a comment, or logged a vote, thank you again for participating in the contest. I was surprised at the number of submissions, happy that three sales have been reported so far, and hopeful that the additional exposure from a Domaining.com sponsored headline will help the winning name sell.

There were nearly 300 votes cast for the top ten domain names, and one name was the winner by a pretty solid margin. The winning domain name received about 24% of the total votes cast.

I thought it was pretty cool that the votes were pretty evenly spread out for the remaining names, which indicates that none of the names selected were “bad.” I posted a screenshot of the vote distribution so you can see how evenly spread the voting was. I could come up with a reason why each domain name has value, but I think the winning name is pretty solid and will likely sell.

Anyway, without further adieu, the winning name was BabyPhotographer.com, with a price of $5,900. I think there were likely a few reasons contributing to its win.

There are thousands of baby photographers across the United States, and it’s a profession with many independent contractors. There can only be one company that uses the exact match “BabyPhotographer.com” domain name, and it’s a status symbol, good for SEO, and a level of authority with a name like that. A baby photographer can make several hundreds of dollars for each photo shoot, so these professionals wouldn’t have an issue paying the asking price.

Incidentally, I sold BirthPhotography.com to a photographer a couple years ago, although the price is confidential.

In addition to these intrinsic factors, I also thing the fact that HyperbaricChambers.com and WritingBlog.com were sold during the course of the voting caused those two names to receive fewer votes than they may have had they not sold.

Thank you all for participating. I will be in touch with the winner to determine a listing date. If you are interested in buying it, of course you can get in touch with him prior to the sale listing.

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