Buy your snake oil here

[rob]

Rob, I'm not picking arguments and more than most I can back up my arguments with actions.

Likewise

I know when I see value and I know when I see greed.

At what point does value become greed though? It will always be opinion based and unless they match up something will always be overprice or a bargain. It could be you are undervaluing your domains compared to the rest of the market.

Market is the key word there

 

[yesterday]

Value of a domain is limited only by the price of close useable alternatives.

It's not commercial blackmail.

My gas bills and taxes are commercial blackmail. I have to pay them.

I don't have to pay for a domain.

yesterday

 

[rob]

The reason why people pay top dollar for domains isn't because they see value. The domain name business survives in the main because of what amounts to nothing more than commercial blackmail.

That is why I differentiate between end user sales and domainer to domainer sales.

You are faced with a take it or leave it attitude probably because the seller knows he will get £4.5k in the future again so is not that fussed about selling it. Much like if you go to Tesco and buy some baked beans they wont alter the price as they know in the future they will sell to someone else.

It's not a business you can feel proud of and there's certainly no great business acumen needed.

Why have you spend several thousand pounds on generic names? If you do not see value in it and making profits is greedy what is the motivation ?

 

[yesterday]

r u sure!

(about the tax and gas bills argument!)

yesterday

 

[grantw]

Your gas bill isn't blackmail, you know what price/terms you buy under, you have the option to grow trees in your back garden and buy a wood burner. Likewise with tax, if you dislike paying it you can go on the dole and let the country keep you.

You don't have to pay 4.5k for that domain, pick something else for a fiver............

Grant

 

[FC Domains]

Ho hum.
I'm thinking that I am not really cut out for marketing and that's what this business is really all about now. I've not really put any effort in to it for nearly a year. (Hence the drop catching script isn't really working)

I think my real interest was back when the tactics changed almost daily and you seemed to be able to sell them on immediately. None of this holding portfolios and worrying about traffic.

So I've got something over 300 domains (just the ones listed here.). Anybody want them for a real bargain price?

 

[yesterday]

Yep, you decide that you want to cook with gas and earn a certain amount of money. Tomorrow morning you can call the gas company and tell them you no longer wish to have a gas supply and go buy a wood burning stove or similar. Likewise you can choose to, give away your investments and lie in bed until noon for the rest of your life and never pay a penny of tax.

You know the terms under which you enter the game and you choose to play, at any point you can stop, just say the word.

Your just playing with me.

yesterday

 

[yesterday]

edit: I thought it was more pithy before! oh well!



yesterday

 

[rob]

But by employing the same tactics on another person. If you're so clear that this is market forces at work, how many of you would agree to binding valuation's by a PANEL of experts. Why don't people put a price on their names?

To be fair any deal over £5k I have been involved in I have paid for an appraisal as it is a data based industry and you need all the information out there. Every time it has been close but usually 10-25% out on the final selling price.

The interesting aspect to domaining is there is only one domain.co.uk yet there are substitute goods eg. domains.co.uk edomain.co.uk idomain.co.uk or domain.be etc.

As pointed out before, you dont <i>have</i> to have the domain for £4500 by your own admission but I bet you could have it in some obscure extension for a couple of quid. However, I doubt that will happen as .co.uk is a good one to have as it enhances a company / product / user due to its awareness in the UK and that is where the difference in value is.

 

[retired_member9]

Of course I can but I don't want another name, I want this one so I have to pay an over inflated price because it stands that person at £5 and they have nothing to lose. If I asked the seller to agree to a third party valuation they wouldn't agree because they know they have me by the balls.

now I don't understand that.

How did you reach 4,5K price? You blame sellers for not putting price tags on their names, so you must have got it after negotiation?

What stopped you to go lower if you reckon domain's value is there?
Seller must have indicated this is the lowest acceptable.

Thus, he realizes name potential and not worried to lose you as a buyer.
(unless seller knows you want this name so badly to pay inflated. If he knows that, then you need to hire a good broker I guess).

 

[yesterday]

I'm not really playing - I think that inertia rip offs (you've got gas installed and running so they up the charges, you don't need a bank account but all business is done through banks, so actually you do, so they charge whatever they like etc) are commercial blackmail.

Whilst .co.uk are definitely a monopoly, it is not as strong as any of the above, and many not mentioned - e.g. your telephone supplier, your place of residence, your skincolour, your birthplace (ok those really don't have any alternatives so aren't comparable)

.co.uk is only a brand.

yesterday

 

[rob]

If what you say in your first paragraph is true and I'm not saying it isn't then my comments aren't aimed at you.

I do think it is important to do several things when brokering a name - if it is as easy as telling A that B has x.co.uk for sale there would be no need for brokers.

So when then man you're buying from isn't worried where his next meal is coming from you have Hobson's choice.

Or - if that man has spent several tens of grand developing a system to catch domains, his time (or employing someone) and effort to create lists, hundreds a month to run the servers the system runs on he might be looking at his bottom line

 

[retired_member9]

So when then man you're buying from isn't worried where his next meal is coming from you have Hobson's choice.

I guess this exactly states your attitude towards purchasing domains.
You prefer seller to be hungry for cash and swallow it together with the
hand, when you offer such a generous amount (compared to reg.fee).

But in reality, it doesn't work like that and you start to blame market, which has nothing to do with your expectations to deal with 'desperate sellers'.

 

[Edwin]

You can buy a painting that looks very much like a Picasso for anything from a few pounds to a few thousand pounds. Thing is, it's not a Picasso. Want the real thing? Then you're talking millions.

Did the paint he used cost him 1,000x as much as the paint used in any of the other paintings? No. Did he take 1,000x as long to paint his paintings as any of the "substitute" artists did? No.

But try going into an art gallery and arguing that you deserve to get a Picasso at a knock-down price on those grounds and you'll be laughed out of the room (or they may call the police fearing they have a nutter on their hands).

Art is valued according to whatever people are willing to pay for it - as are domain names.

If a domain name can be sold for 4,500 pounds (or 10,000 pounds or 100,000 pounds) then - forgetting about the buyer as they are ultimately irrelevant - why shouldn't the seller get "full price"?

After all, the important part is "can be sold" - no buyers at that price, no deal. Buyers at that price, deal.

Simple business, really.

There are thousands of .co.uk domains being sold every month (Nominet's transfer figures back that up). So selling a few "cheap" will certainly hurt the specific seller selling those "cheap" domains, but it won't do anything at all to change the dynamics of the market as it's just a drop in the overall sales bucket.

Very high-value sales might have a (slight) impact on the market - as long as they're publicized - as they represent a yardstick that other sellers can point to when dealing with end-user buyers to explain that domains "can" be worth big money. But cheap sales will have no impact whatsoever on the market, but only on the seller's wallet.

 

[rob]

My post wasn't about selling ALL domains for BIG money, it was about selling shite for BIG money. Some people put silly prices on mediocre names. Your use of the art world is actually a great analogy because it too is pretty seedy and cheap below its glamorous high gloss over-priced exterior.

It is very much like art as one persons shite is anothers classic domain name.

would you pay

$135,000,000 for that?

What is coming across in this thread is the theme that you do not agree with some peoples prices for domain names - but that is the joy of a free market - you are not forced to buy or sell at those prices

Joy... unless you are some kind of communist / anti-capitalist type

 

[Edwin]

My post wasn't about selling ALL domains for BIG money, it was about selling shite for BIG money. Some people put silly prices on mediocre names. Your use of the art world is actually a great analogy because it too is pretty seedy and cheap below its glamorous high gloss over-priced exterior.

Surely you mean "TRYING to sell shite for BIG money"? After all, the value of a specific domain name is set by the market (= "how much is somebody willing to pay for it?") so if somebody was actually willing to buy what you are calling junk at big money prices, then it wasn't junk.

Again, it's like art in that respect. You can go to eBay any day of the week and see rubbish artists trying to sell their daubs for millions. But are any of those artists actually succeeding in SELLING anything? No.

The very act of receiving an offer at a given price-point for a domain name cements its value at that moment in time, at least as far as a "minimum value" floor price is concerned. It may only have that degree of value to one person in the whole world - beauty is in the eye of the beholder - but it is still "worth" that much, at least until/if the seller refuses the offer and ends up never seeing a similar offer again.

There is clearly healthy business to be done picking up OK domains at regfee and flipping them for a few hundred pounds. Nice little money-spinner, if the volume is there and the domains are good enough to "sell themselves" (not much overhead built in for sales). Waiting for deep-pocketed buyers is also a good business model, so long as at least some of the domains in a portfolio attract such buyers.

At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself one thing: are domains a business or a hobby for me?

If your answer is "they are a business" then it's best to proceed on that basis - successful businesses don't in general make irrational pricing decisions because a particular potential buyer doesn't understand the real value of what they are offering. No, they wait until the next buyer comes along who actually understands that value - or they do a better job explaining it. At the end of the day, a potential buyer not willing to pay the going rate for something was never really a "potential" buyer in the first place, but only a time-wasting tire-kicker.

If on the other hand domains are a hobby for you, that's great. You can relax, have fun and earn some cash at the same time - maybe even some really nice cash - without ever having to worry too much about the grubby capitalist aspects of the thing!

 

[FC Domains]

Exactly. I've decided that it is a hobby, which I'm not really cut out for.
I did try to do things based on a very simple model, but it really does need a more professional approach and a proper business model.

But I'm an engineer and have never been comfortable with marketing and proper business strategies. So why give myself grief. So I'm selling up all my portfolio.
I'll probably still tinker with drop catching, but not get too involved.

 

[Edwin]

BTW, domainprices.co.uk lists 407 domain sales in 2006. The average sales price was £1838.80 (the 407 names fetched £748,393 total). Sure, there are a few big sales pulling the average up, but it's still an intriguing statistic.

 

[retired_member9]

As I have already said, selling any domain is about how much the buyer wants it.

exactly!
buyers dictate domain prices. otherwise there is no sale.

I wanted the domain and that was his price, I think it's £2000 more than it's worth but I've bitten the bullet.

No. It's value is each and every penny you paid for it

 

[Edwin]

My point is that the market doesn't set the price, the seller sets the price and leaves the buyer with no option but to meet it or walk away and it's too simplistic to say that if they didn't think it was worth it they wouldn't buy it.

Ahem, that's how a free market works. Again, they're not a buyer if they're not buying. They only graduate to "buyer" status if they actually bought - and at that point, the pricing decision was just vindicated.

Let's ask another question, how many of you would let your names go to Sedo auction without reserve on the back of a £100 bid confident that it would meet the price you would push for ordinarily.

Why would any business person make such a stupid "bet"?