UK based after market site?

[aZooZa]

Simon and I are interested in exploring development opportunities here. Maybe a co-operative might work where the commissions are very low and the system is designed and policed by a small group of trusted domainers.

 

[suzi]

Maybe a co-operative might work where the commissions are very low and the system is designed and policed by a small group of trusted domainers.

Sounds good - but would that achieve the ultimate goal of taking on Sedo? It ultimately needs to be big enough and robust enough to attract wide interest and exposure - not just a(nother) domainer to domainer platform.

 

[aZooZa]

Sounds good - but would that achieve the ultimate goal of taking on Sedo? It ultimately needs to be big enough and robust enough to attract wide interest and exposure - not just a(nother) domainer to domainer platform.

I don't think my suggestion limits the ultimate scope of the project. In my view it would need to start small so that the system can be tested - rolling it out to a wider audience wouldn't be technically challenging.

 

[cvs]

Simon and I are interested in exploring development opportunities here. Maybe a co-operative might work where the commissions are very low and the system is designed and policed by a small group of trusted domainers.

I'd be interested in helping out where possible, as I am sure many would be on here.

 

[Brassneck]

If somebody could get this off the ground then surely a win-win situation all around.

Stephen.

 

[j13]

I'd be glad to help do any of the graphics for the site (Wouldn't be hard to out do the stock image smiling women of sedo )

 

[Skinner]

If it starts as domainers, those who have posted on this very thread, must have inexcess of 5-10k domains to seed the site, which would give is a pretty formidable start.

 

[suzi]

those who have posted on this very thread, must have inexcess of 5-10k domains to seed the site

and that's just Edwin!

 

[Edwin]

The software's about 1% of the issue. The bigger problem is putting together a credible, stable, reliable and trustworthy end-to-end service that will take care of both parties to a transaction while safeguarding their interests and guaranteeing that transactions take place and payments get made. And that's going to take real money, and lots of bums on seats since you can't do decent customer service without a decent customer service team.

Not to mention that you're going to need formidable business banking services with all sorts of ring-fenced safeguards so that the funds people pay in are protected no matter what happens to the company. You're going to need to be able to take in and pay out huge numbers of transactions from a few hundred to potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds. This brings in all kinds of new issues and wrinkles.

A "collective" is NOT the way to go about dethroning the Sedo king.

 

[tifosi]

What kind of investment would it take from us, to fund a software build of this size?

It took me ~4-6weeks to do DACr from start to finish. This I'd estimate - if it includes payment gateways 3-4x that, otherwise 2-3x that.

For all its complexity sedo is still basically an offer/message/list system. The db wouldn't be massively complex. Sedo's issue is multi tld & server loading.

S

 

[foz]

I do think it has to be a Registrar in the top 10 UK market. They have the resources and customer base already in place to build on.

Fundamentally my only wish is that the site accepted .uk only. That's the point of difference. Quality is not an issue, staff can pick what to display front of house.

 

[Edwin]

Fundamentally my only wish is that the site accepted .uk only. That's the point of difference. Quality is not an issue, staff can pick what to display front of house.

Actually, quality is THE issue. The ONLY issue.

If they accept every domain name, no matter how junk, then it's never going to overtake Sedo (Sedo's lead is too great and their coverage too comprehensive).

If 100% of domains listed on the hyphothetical new sales platform are generic descriptive domains exact-matching a particular product/service/business then suddenly visitors have a totally different experience: no matter what searches they do or what listings they page through, they will only ever see "commercially viable" domains. Even 50,000 decent domains will look better than Sedo's 20,000,000+ random assortment of mush.

That requires a hard-nosed resolve to systematically deny attempts to upload junk to the system, and probably a willingness to err on the side of caution and be exclusionary rather than inclusive. If somebody has 300 names and they're all junk, then they get to list... NONE! Any other answer is just pandering.

There are probably 150,000-200,000 commercially relevant, meaningful domains in the UK market. We can argue about the exact figure all night and day and never come to a consensus - but there clearly aren't millions. So any sales platform that can pick up a significant minority of these commercially relevant domains while filtering out ALL the junk will have a huge competitive advantage that Sedo won't be able to match: they simply can't go back and delist 95% of domains on their platform i.e. they're already committed to that particular route.

The above must exclude "brandables" for a start. There are plenty of other places (Sedo, Afternic, eBay, here on Acorn etc.) where those can be listed for sale. And all the sub-regfee no-hopers that seem to appear in appraisal threads with alarming regularity. But I'd even go further and exclude pure dictionary domains with no obvious commercial value: just because it's in the dictionary doesn't make it valuable.

If you want to beat them, do something truly DIFFERENT. The above is one very valid differential that will be easily visible even to casual visitors to the platform. Something like "faster customer service" on the other hand, while essential, can never be communicated to somebody simply browsing the listings.

Some keywords:
- Exclusive
- Hard to get listed (exclusionary by design)
- Top quality domains
- Premium sales prices
- Exemplary customer service
- .co.uk only. No other extensions, period. This is the gold standard, and in the UK market everything else is a poor second cousin by comparison. Again, there are PLENTY of other venues for listing .org.uk, .me.uk and other second-tier extensions.

Remember: no amount of customer service, cool software, exciting presentation will sell junk names. Ever.

 

[foz]

The problem at the moment (with Sedo) is customer service, processes and the fact .uk is not at the forefront of Sedo.co.uk.

I could look at your portfolio and question "quality" and in turn you could do likewise with mine.

The market platform doesn't decide what's "quality", the buyer does.

 

[Edwin]

Then the new platform is GUARANTEED to fail if you insist on including everything.

Continuing the theme, it's probably going to be most effective to limit listings to fixed price (no auctions, no reserves, no "offers over"). That makes for a single simple, compelling proposition for buyers: they can page through the listings and know with 100% confidence exactly what it would take to secure Domain A or Domain B, and make a real apples-to-apples comparison between different domain options.

Let's face it, Sedo and Afternic do what they do pretty well. They may have customer service glitches from time to time, but partly that comes from trying to service tens of thousands of customers and transact thousands of sales a month. They are a perfectly workable solution for the low end of the market, and they have the size, market presence and revenue stream to continue to support being king of the mass market hill basically forever. Like them or hate them, Sedo did over £48,000,000 in sales in 2009 - so they have the mass market sewn up.

What's missing - the yawning gap in the market - is the truly HIGH END marketplace: a sales venue dedicated purely to selling the better domains.

Will that offend some people? Absolutely. Does it make 100% commercial sense? Absolutely. Will any other approach succeed? Absolutely NOT.

 

[foz]

What nonsense. Staff aren't going to spend 100's of hours interpreting and approving what is or is not quality. It's just not feasible.

 

[Edwin]

What nonsense. Staff aren't going to spend 100's of hours interpreting and approving what is or is not quality. It's just not feasible.

Sure they can. With a 10 pound non-refundable listing fee per domain name, they can spend quite a while checking each domain name and still be quids-in.

Another alternative to a listing fee would be to track rejections for each user, and once they hit the first 10 rejections, that user can't upload any more names for a month. That would certainly slow the flood of junk down to a trickle. After a month, the count resets and more names can be submitted. A refinement would be a "3 strikes and you're out" policy i.e. trigger the block 3 times (at ANY time) through uploading junk, and all your names get delisted and you're barred from using the sales platform in the future.

The only way this sales platform is going to work is if some of the major UK portfolio holders get on board with it. Without them, there's too much missing from the market. Most don't participate on Sedo either - they just sell privately. So how to persuade them to join? One way is to build the kind of tip-top-quality focused platform I've been outlining above. That may not be enough to sway them, but it's a good start...

 

[foz]

The new site will need listings, putting barriers of £10 per domain will scuttle that. List for free is the only way to get inventory fast.

Again, if you start interpreting quality who is to say the interpreter is getting it right? Domain quality is subjective and time consuming in volume. The buyer usually decides what they see as quality.

 

[Edwin]

The new site will need listings, putting barriers of £10 per domain will scuttle that. List for free is the only way to get inventory fast.

Again, if you start interpreting quality who is to say the interpreter is getting it right? Domain quality is subjective and time consuming in volume. The buyer usually decides what they see as quality.

Listings are not the key. QUALITY listings are. Better 10,000 top-quality listings than 200,000 blah quality listings. Sedo already does the latter so well...

What commercial reason would somebody with decent domains have to list with this new platform if it accepts every domain? Absolutely none! They already don't list with Sedo - and like it or not, they're the market leader - so they're certainly not going to list with some unknown would-be Sedo pretender...

 

[retired_member12]

It's a difficult one really, given that some consideration needs to pass over to form a contract. Maybe an automatic 1p part payment via a direct bank account of the seller upon completion of the auction might be enough to establish a contractual basis between the parties.

I hereby claim all rights to this idea for any domain transaction worldwide, so Sedo cant copy it,

 

[foz]

Nothing to lose and gaining another sales channel.

Current portfolio owners that don't list currently is more to do with, I can sell my own domains and I don't want to part with 10% commission. That mentality will always be an undercurrent.