Over the past few years, GoDaddy has built one of the top domain name portfolios. The company doesn’t report internal sales publicly, but I would imagine it sells a higher volume of domain names than almost any other portfolio owner. The company also sells domain names on behalf of domain investor clients via Afternic and GoDaddy Auctions.
Put simply, GoDaddy has the most and perhaps the best domain name sale data that could be helpful to others, including investors who sell via Afternic and GoDaddy. Reportedly because GoDaddy is a publicly traded entity, the company does not publicly share domain name sales data or information about its sales.
With that being said, I think it would be beneficial to domain investors and GoDaddy customers if the company would be willing to share some of its data, even if it does not reveal information that could be used to infer anything about earnings.
Here is some of the information I would find helpful and why:
- % change in # of private (non-expiry) domain name sales compared to the prior year to show current market conditions. For instance, it would be interesting to see the number of sales in October 2018 vs. October 2017. This data, without the dollar amount, would be helpful in seeing how strong the aftermarket is compared to the prior year without revealing earnings info. A month to month comparison is ok, but comparing January to December might be apples to oranges, but comparing December 2018 to December 2017 would be more helpful in seeing trends.
- Show the percentage of .com sales vs other TLD sales would be helpful in seeing any shifts in consumer behavior over time. It would also be helpful to see if this ratio changes over time.
- Share the change in median sale price quarterly or monthly for private domain name sales. I presume this is unlikely because of the potential for too much revealing information, but I am sure it can be done in a way that doesn’t offer too much insight. Because the expiry stream makes up a large and unknown percentage of the overall aftermarket, the median sales number alone shouldn’t be enough to make assumptions about revenue. In addition, if outlier sales are excluded from the data, it would provide less data that could impact the company valuation while helping customers.
- Provide commentary on the types of domain names the company is selling and/or receiving purchase inquiries about.
- Offer commentary about what its brokers are noticing when it comes to offers and inquiries. It would be interesting data to know if counteroffers are coming in higher – perhaps a sign that people are becoming more educated about domain name values.
- Commentary on what buyers are doing with their domain names and how long it takes them to begin developing their domain names.
Domain investors may be able to observe the market by seeing publicly reported sales on DNJournal and NameBio, in addition to their own sales. Many sales go unreported, and individual observations are open to interpretation.
If GoDaddy were to publish a monthly or quarterly aftermarket newsletter, it could share data that could help domain investors with their portfolios. I think GoDaddy has the most domain name sales data – even more than Escrow.com – especially when it comes to low to mid value domain name sales. Sharing its data with its customers can help us with pricing and portfolio management, and I think it can be done in a way that doesn’t reveal too much information.
Great suggestions. Even a small amount of data could be very helpful to the industry. When Afternic stopped reporting weekly sales around mid 2014, just prior to their IPO I believe, they were reporting at least a million in domain sales every week. I don’t recall anyone else consistently reporting that volume of sales, although Sedo was close. Losing that data was definitely a bummer.
I miss those days. I feel like there has to be some sort of happy medium.
Elliot…i have a presentation due i’m working on for Tuesday so I may not be able to get to this until after Thanksgiving. I promise i’ll get to it though. Gobble! Gobble!
As an fyi, Go Daddy’s stock symbol is GDDY, and some of this info is probably in their financials. When I find the time I’ll dig a little into their financials to see what I can come up with. Verisigns sympol is VRSN, and at 19B their market cap is twice that of Go Daddy’s. Afternic is another one of those stupid names like Sedo that no “end user” has ever heard of, and it goes hand in hand with Seadoo the jet ski company.
With my business model/plan evolving around Go Daddy, they may just want to talk with me about DaddyoDomains™. Besides, I have a much bigger project I need to introduce them to, that if it were to come to fruition, it will rock the domain world.
LOL
I do not understand why they can’t show even prior years sales as presumably this is way past earnings and is not revealing anything too earth shattering for Wall Street but would definitely be helpful for the domain world. For instance, perhaps release 2018 name sales sometime in March after their 2018 Q4 earnings call in Feb. I understand not releasing weekly like Sedo but it would be very helpful to have this data to have a more robust picture of what is selling and for how much.
Mike
Most of you don’t share your own sales data, why would you expect Godaddy to share their data, or that of their customers?
Fair question.
To be clear, I don’t expect GoDaddy to share but would like it. A few reasons I would ask them to share even though I don’t share my deals are:
– I am a customer of theirs. They already have access to my portfolio data on GoDaddy registered names and names on sale at Afternic. They can see what I buy, what transfers out, and what I sell via Afternic.
– GoDaddy sharing could help me and others buy and sell via their platform, which would add revenue for them.
– My deal flow is much smaller than theirs and is not reflective of the overall market like theirs is. My deals may be great for my business but a drop in the bucket compared to theirs.
– it is unlikely they would be negatively harmed by sharing sales data, but my business could be more easily harmed since I have a much smaller portfolio by a huge magnitude. For instance, if I announce I sold five similar domain names in the last quarter, other people will use that info to compete with me to buy similar names.
– The overall GoDaddy business is much more than private aftermarket sales. The vast majority of my income is from domain name sales. Put simply, I have much more to lose by oversharing than GoDaddy.
If they did what you asked, then they would have to show all the bad things they are hiding. They are getting as bad as NJ.
Bumping this up. Did Paul Nicks or anyone ever respond to this idea ?