Smoke and Mirrors

[FC Domains]

I do occasional get concerned that I'm selling domains too cheaply.
On the one hand my site gets plenty of visitors, so if they were too cheap surely they would be all snapped up. This doesn't happen. They just seem to sell at a nice steady rate.

Then I look at Sedo sales and see improbable domain names selling for £xK++

So I looked into where these sales are going. Mine are mostly to companies, for their own web sites.
Almost all major Sedo sales seem to end up nowhere or on poor affiliate sites.
I just don't see where the return on the investment is. Anybody care to explain?

I'm still wondering what makes debtconsolidation.co.uk worth more the a couple of hundred.
chainreaction.co.uk £11K?
Even onlinepharmacy.co.uk which at first glance isn't a bad name, but is it worth anything like £10K, when all of the following are reg. fee?:

webdrugstore.co.uk
webmedication.co.uk
webcure.co.uk
onlinecure.com

 

[aqls]

For every domain sold on Sodo, there are probably half a million that don't.

Alot of those half million are better.

You sell alot of domains relative to how many you are offering ;-)

-aqls-

 

[aquanuke]

Everyone knows affiliates make all the money.. even poor ones.

 

[Nigel]

Hi Colin,

I've bought a few from you and the prices were very reasonable. They're not high traffic domains but should pay for themselves in approx 3/4 years on pay per click income. The domains are also ripe for development. So they fit well in a portfolio giving a good return and the outside prospect of someone knocking on your door some day. But to make steady sales on sedo you really need a very large portfolio and a pay per click income that means you're not desperate for sales. If you're holding a very small portfolio the statistics show that chances of regular sales are very small.

But it's getting harder to build a decent portfolio and I'm amazed at the quality of some of the names being reported as being registered on the drop at deleting.co.uk - Some of our cast-offs (mainly hyphenated domains with little or no traffic and very poor sale prospects) have being registered by very successful catchers and some days you can read through a list of most peculiar registrations (with no Overture traffic stats). It seems some oufits are building huge portfolios but why on earth do they need to add poor hyphenated, non traffic, unsaleable domains to portfolios that include some of the best .co.uk domains caught in recent years. Very strange - perhaps somebody has some answers to this :???:

In my opinion debtconsolidation.co.uk is good value at £14k because it is an enormous search term (see overture stats) and with the right SEO it should pay for itself very quickly. Even if it was simply parked it would give a very healthy return on investment - far, far, higher than any savings account.

 

[Rich]

But it's getting harder to build a decent portfolio and I'm amazed at the quality of some of the names being reported as being registered on the drop at deleting.co.uk - Some of our cast-offs (mainly hyphenated domains with little or no traffic and very poor sale prospects) have being registered by very successful catchers and some days you can read through a list of most peculiar registrations (with no Overture traffic stats). It seems some oufits are building huge portfolios but why on earth do they need to add poor hyphenated, non traffic, unsaleable domains to portfolios that include some of the best .co.uk domains caught in recent years. Very strange - perhaps somebody has some answers to this :???:

If/When Nominet introduce an electronic transfer process the sale of low value domain names (£10-£100 region) should explode

 

[Nigel]

Hi Nismo

The types of names I'm referring to are not low value domains but 'non value domains' (i.e. worthless)

 

[aqls]

Maybe, and its just an immediate thought, these droppies are taking all the 'near associates' to their main names, so it puts the value up of the main name.

e.g. say you had the domain cheapflights.co.uk for instance (I wish I did!). If you try to sell it the client may opt for ch-eep-flite-s.org.uk instead (bless him!) as the difference in price would be an order of x,xxx,xxx .

So the worse the available alternatives then the more chance of a good sale, and also they could bundle in all the near associates to increase the total value.

Just a thought, but it seems that .com has already gone that way, with double hyphens the lot.

-aqls-

 

[Nigel]

Maybe, and its just an immediate thought, these droppies are taking all the 'near associates' to their main names, so it puts the value up of the main name.

e.g. say you had the domain cheapflights.co.uk for instance (I wish I did!). If you try to sell it the client may opt for ch-eep-flite-s.org.uk instead (bless him!) as the difference in price would be an order of x,xxx,xxx .

So the worse the available alternatives then the more chance of a good sale, and also they could bundle in all the near associates to increase the total value.

Just a thought, but it seems that .com has already gone that way, with double hyphens the lot.

-aqls-

Maybe this is the case on some occasions but I get the feeling it's more to do with the addictive nature of domain catching and the fact that some days there's not a lot dropping and it feels good to bag a few domains even though, in reality, they're only hauling in dead wood.

 

[tifosi]

agreed, looking at the 'who got what' is perplexing sometimes.

domainaholics anonymous... 0800 DOMAIN

 

[denchomsky]

Ta!

webcure.co.uk taken, thanks,D

 

[Nigel]

domaincure.co.uk is still available (probably be gone in a couple of mins though )

 

[texidriver]

It seems some oufits are building huge portfolios but why on earth do they need to add poor hyphenated, non traffic, unsaleable domains to portfolios that include some of the best .co.uk domains caught in recent years. Very strange - perhaps somebody has some answers to this :???:

DOMAIN MANIA----AGAIN

INTERNET DOMAIN NAMES are a hot commodity
again. But unlike in the '90s, many of
today's purchases are aimed at cashing in on
the boom in online advertising.
Firms are snapping up scores of generic domains
known as "direct navigation" sites because
they attract visitors searching for information by
typing an address, such as NewYorkRealEstate.com,
directly into their Web browsers,
rather than using a search engine and
loading them with, pay-per-click advertisements.

Visitors to these Web sites see little more
than a list of text ads for products or services
related to the domain name. The domain owners
are paid each time someone clicks on an ad
placed on one of these sites by ad brokers like Google.
And that is attracting new types of investors,
including venture capitalists, wealthy
families and public companies.

Revenue from the text ads on these sites will
total $400 million to $600 million world-wide this
year and may reach $1 billion by 2007,according
to estimates from Susquehanna Financial Group.

Pay-per-click advertising is prompting increases
in the number of domain-name sales
and the dollar value of deals, according to two
of the biggest brokers of domain sales in the
secondary market. The surge in online ads also
is contributing to a big increase in the number
of registered Web addresses, a boon to domain-name
registrars and companies that manage databases
of domains.

-David Kesmodel WSJ.com/reports

Is this happening to dot.co.uk ?

 

[aqls]

As browsers develop:-

Google is now a full on corporate and not the net loved groupy that it was.
Microsoft controls IE
Yahoo and Miva are different again.

All very competitive.

Not all of them want you to go to google for your search.

I am sure too that alot of influence is being peddled on the makers of Mozilla and Firefox as to what search engines they choose as defaults and what default actions they set e.g. my Mozilla adds www. and .com to beginning and end of one word type-ins on the url box by default, others have different defaults.

And as these peoples various browser and search offerings mature, they are more and more likely to favour sites which reflect the exact query given, and that includes containing at least parts of the query in the domain name as long as it has good natural serp behind it. (Google I feel lucky is an example).

And from bottom up, as we develop sites to reflect these queries, we will more and more buy a domain to more specifically address that query.

I reckon that as browsers mature even more they will be more reflective of location and eg UK browsers will default to uk domains.

All of this may (or may not) lead to higher and higher values placed on direct navigation and less on one particular search engine or browser.

And as search solutions proliferate, the most common denominators between search engines results will probably remain the content and domain name.

Also:

With each click through on some search terms on Google being as high as £100 or more and increasing. Buying search term domain names becomes as good a plan as any given that one direct click in 30 years may pay you the equivalent of an ad in google.

Food for thought?

-aqls-

 

[Admin]

Do you know what search terms are at the £100 mark?

 

[ratboy]

I reckon that as browsers mature even more they will be more reflective of location and eg UK browsers will default to uk domains.

I think this is more true now than ever. At some point about 8 months ago I found .co.uk domains out performing badly optimised and brand new .coms.

Now Google is apparently prefering sites that have history to prevent abuse of the system.

 

[aqls]

Do you know what search terms are at the £100 mark?

No, sorry. It's just heresay for me.

I've seen $40

and just checking the usual suspects, it looks like mesothelioma has come down a bit! Now $25.10.

-aqls-