UK based after market site?

[Edwin]

Nothing to lose and gaining another sales channel.

Please understand that having 1 sales channel or 100 sales channels will still not sell junk domains. Nobody wants them, period. If they did, they could type the name in directly (assuming that it points to a for-sale page) and contact the owner. So having an identi-Sedo won't sell any more of those names.

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.

I would be astonished if the 10% is the deterrent to larger portfolio owners. Why should it be - the names in their portfolios command premium prices, and if a Sedo listing proactively brought more interest and more prospective sales, why wouldn't they use it. Far more likely they're just tired of wading through the dross, and have no intention of diluting their premium list by mixing it with other people's junk... It's also possible that they don't see Sedo's value add into the process as being worth their 10% commission - that's a different argument entirely from saying that they flat-out baulk at paying 10%.

As I've said, the DDN fee is 20%-35% and plenty of people are willing to pay that because of the automated, instantaneous nature of the sales system. It's not about what you lose, it's about what you gain over the situation where you had nothing.

Looking at the 10% as some kind of massive burden is short-sighted at best. If anything, the new platform should charge much MORE than Sedo - 20% or 25% might be a good amount. That would give them much more ammunition to spend on marketing and promoting the names, since in turn their own "take" is much higher. More effort = more reward.

 

[Edwin]

BTW, if you're after "more sales channels" then if you're not already doing so, why not list on:-

http://www.sedo.co.uk/
http://www.afternic.com/
http://www.namedrive.com/
http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/
http://www.domainstate.com/
http://www.cctlds.com/uk-buy-sell-trade/
http://www.dnforum.com/f361/
http://www.namepros.com/cctld-domains-for-sale/
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=59
http://www.affiliates4u.com/forums/domains-websites-sale/
http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/categories/domain-names
https://auctions.godaddy.com/
http://impressivedomains.com/members/member-login.cfm
http://www.webmaster-forums.net/community-centre/market-place/domain-names-and-websites-sale
http://forums.ukwebmasterworld.com/domains-websites-sale/
http://www.webmasterserve.com/domain-names/
http://www.webmasterground.com/website-domain-sale/
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=55
http://www.urlmerchant.com/
http://www.bido.com/
http://flippa.com/buy/domains
http://auction.names123.com/

And so on, and so on, and so on. There are thousands of places you COULD list your domains and NONE of them have any kind of effective filter system to separate the wheat from the chaff. That's the one competitive advantage that's not yet been claimed by one of these sites.

If your reaction is "well, I've never heard of 90% of those sites" that's exactly my point. For every genuinely successful domain marketplace, there are several hundred limping along in relative obscurity or teetering on their last legs. Why? Because they tried to out-Sedo Sedo i.e. offer exactly the same thing as Sedo does yet somehow (magic?) beat them at their own game.

 

[foz]

Sounds like your a domain snob.

Most of those sites are forums, so they are not a vehicle that targets end users.

Namedrive is primarily a parking company that's trying to do after-market. The site is hopeless. I tried to find details on their escrow service, can't find a thing. U.S. based.

Afternic and Godady targets the U.S. market. They couldn't care less about .uk.

.uk Registrars (the large ones) target end users (that's their business), so being one and building out an after-market site sideways would bring nothing but additional benefits and cash flow.

 

[Edwin]

Sounds like your a domain snob.

Hardly - I'm a realist... Realistically, any new sales platform WILL fail if it opens the floodgates to all-comers, for the same reason that most of the other sales platforms have failed.

Sedo has succeeded because they have managed to aggregate the mass market, but just like you wouldn't (realistically) dream of starting a brand new auction site to compete against eBay without having a strong "angle" (b2b only, local auctions only, whatever) so it makes no sense at all to think of replicating Sedo's business model only with a bit more attentive customer service.

In the wider world (from which your end-user customers will be drawn) absolutely nobody cares about such a trivial distinction. All they will see is one sales platform with 20,000,000 domains and a prominent track record (Sedo) and a scrappy contender with far fewer listings and no track record of any kind.

The only way to counter that is to push to the extreme "edge" of the market, in one direction or another, and the single most obvious "edge" is the Quality one.

BTW, I haven't gone through 1-by-1 to check, but at a guess I'd say at least 50% of my own portfolio wouldn't make the cut for listing on the new marketplace I've been outlining - and that's despite the fact that I generally start with the keyword tools and check for commercial relevance before registering anything (I don't do "brandables").

 

[Skinner]

I think the quality content aspect would need some looking at, Denys appears to go a little nazi, which is a good thing, since lots of nice domains go thru there, but it excludes people.

One of the sites I do alot of work with, has a "moderation queue", where by new submissions go to a queue, where a group of "known" members, maybe 100 of them, vote on submissions, with comments and corrections etc. Once a site gets to A, A set time in the Queue it gets promoted to "Admin Approval", where the top person ok's or denies it based on the votes, B, there are X number of votes, I'm sure there are other options too, but I don't have code access.

This moderation system also includes categorization, keywords, etc.

Anyway such a moderation system would be massive benefit IMO to separate the truely diabolic from the awesome.

 

[foz]

I have observed and been rather impressed by the .au market sine their restrictions have been lifted and netfleet.com.au seems to have gained traction for .au.

In the past 10 years or so what has the .uk achieved? Come on guys.......

 

[Edwin]

I think the quality content aspect would need some looking at, Denys appears to go a little nazi, which is a good thing, since lots of nice domains go thru there, but it excludes people.

Why the obsession with not excluding people? The new service should be excluding people (or at least, excluding domains) left, right and centre!

After all, this isn't some social club for domainers we're talking about. I presume the service would be set up on a commercial footing, with the prime motivation being TO MAKE MONEY. Anything less and it's going to fall flat on its face before it picks up any momentum.

As such, if somebody comes along with 10,000 junk domains then the logical business decision is to let them list NONE of them. Ouch, that's going to hurt their ego big-time, but so what... The intention is not to make friends, but to build a business. And as such, that's absolutely the right commercial decision to make.

A brilliant parallel would be the Olympics. There, you have a hyper-exclusionary sporting event watched by billions. Why does everyone watch the Games? To see the very tip top athletes, the best in the world, compete to outdo each other. For every athlete that makes it to the games, there are probably hundreds who tried but failed to get through the selection stage - and millions who know they're not even good enough to try. Now imagine some kind of "inclusionary" Olympics which lets everyone in regardless of athletic ability or physical condition so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. How many people would watch that? Approximately zero.

 

[foz]

Who is deciding what's junk?

Would these be allowed in, so to speak:

theblackbook_co_uk

constructionsupport_co_uk

 

[Skinner]

I'm not saying don't exclude people. I'm saying YOUR idea of what to exclude will differ to mine, and everyone elses.

My point in case, is Sedo's great domains, how many people piss and moan about being rejected, and how much dire trash is accepted ?

1 person, should not bare the responsibility of this choice, since opinions vary.

I am all for excluding domains, but I want said exclusion done properly, not because it has less than 1,000 exacts, or because the person doesn't like it, or because you're an ass, or whatever other reason.

 

[Skinner]

Edwin, present your case, How would you determine what is accepted and what is denied ?

I presented my idea of the moderation queue system, allowing for a balanced, even, and fair queue system (where people can't vote on their own names), as being a possible and workable solution to weeding the trash.

 

[Edwin]

theblackbook_co_uk

constructionsupport_co_uk

No. Not if I was judging, anyway (which, perhaps fortunately, I won't be).

blackbook/co/uk would make it in, but the "the" kills it.

constructionsupport/co/uk only has 28 exacts and no companies seem to be competing over the term if you scan through the organic SERPS, so it's not commercially significant.

 

[foz]

No. Not if I was judging, anyway (which, perhaps fortunately, I won't be).

blackbook/co/uk would make it in, but the "the" kills it.

constructionsupport/co/uk only has 28 exacts and no companies seem to be competing over the term if you scan through the organic SERPS, so it's not commercially significant.

1st is under offer and the 2nd has been sold. Both over £450+

And that's just for today.

 

[Edwin]

Edwin, present your case, How would you determine what is accepted and what is denied ?

Is the domain name the category killer in its niche, or at an equivalent (or, at the very least, commercially viable) level if several category killers exist?

Cars/co/uk - category killer for "cars"
UsedCars/co/uk - category killer for "used cars"
SecondHandCars/co/uk - acceptable alternative to category killer, based on keyword numbers, advertisers, SERPS competitiveness etc.
CheapUsedCars/co/uk - already getting into the "qualifiers" so borderline. Certainly no category killer, but a case might be made for inclusion.
---
GreenUsedCars/co/uk - far too specific a qualifier, commercially minor, nobody's going to pay big money for it. Out.
UsedCarTube/co/uk - "brandable", so automatically "out"

and so on.

Basically, some qualifiers (colours, sizes, materials, etc.) may be ok depending on the specifics of the keyphrase. Others automatically push the domain into the "too specific for its own good".

NOTE: a domain can be a category killer for a small niche and still be potentially relevant, as long as that niche is itself commercially significant AND the domain really is the best for that niche.

 

[Edwin]

1st is under offer and the 2nd has been sold. Both over £450+

And that's just for today.

Proves nothing. The sales charts at DNJournal every single week show that names can sell that nobody would imagine could ever sell - and certainly not for the amounts they ultimately realise.

Doesn't mean that it makes sense for some startup trying to best Sedo and Afternic at their own game to list them... because for every "outlier" success story of that type, there are 10,000 names that don't sell and never will.

Sedo has succeeded so far precisely because they don't know what will sell - so they've aggregated 20,000,000 lottery tickets and they only need a few to pay off for them to start coining it, because entering the lottery (= getting people to list their name) costs them essentially nothing.

But the new startup won't be operating in a vacuum. Sedo already exists, and they pretty much have a de-facto monopoly on "piling up any and every domain name, and see what sticks" approach. So an entirely DIFFERENT approach is needed.

 

[Skinner]

So looking at the first 20 names on your text list.

memorabledomains.co.uk/domlist/alpha.txt

How many and which of those would you accept ?

Why would you not go with the moderation queue to get multiple 'selected' peoples opinion ?

 

[Edwin]

Probably 16mmfilm/co/uk (it's the category killer for people who need that particular film format) and maybe a couple of the caravan ones. I'd have to check the Google exacts to determine which, and also look at what they sold for and how many advertisers were competing for the term.

 

[Skinner]

I'm not sold on your idea's of selection Edwin, I think it should be a group who decided almost like a Jury but thats just me.

 

[foz]

I know what sells in volume and its not SEO loaded keyword domains (for me).

 

[Edwin]

I'm not sold on your idea's of selection Edwin, I think it should be a group who decided almost like a Jury but thats just me.

As long as the people picked to go on the "jury" had the backbone to turn down domain after domain after domain until they came across something truly worth listing, I don't see why your idea wouldn't work! It certainly makes sense to spread the load, that's for sure.

Maybe set it up a bit like the computers in the Space Shuttle. From memory, I think they have something like 5 different computers, and each transaction is computed in quintuplicate. There have to be 3 identical answers (or 4? anyway, it's the principle that counts) for the output to be acted upon.

Similarly, if for example 5 people voted (anonymously) on each domain name, then it would take 3 (or 4) "yes" votes out of 5 to keep the domain name, and only 2 (or 1 if you want to be really cautious) to exclude it.

The voting itself should be quick, decisive and final. If a decision is open to "appeal" suddenly the whole process bogs down in a quicksand of recriminations and accusations from which it will never escape.

The jurors could themselves be (automatically) policed: if a juror consistently votes "the other way" from his/her peers (e.g. takes the contrarian view 30% or more of the time, or whatever quality threshold is deemed appropriate) then they are automatically barred from further voting until their situation can be reviewed, and an alternate juror gets thrown into the mix.

Combine that with for example automatically and anonymously forming random groups of 5 jurors for every single domain name, drawn from a larger pool (e.g. 20 jurors total) and you have a rather nicely self-policing system. Each domain name is judged by a different set of eyes, and no juror will know (nor will any end-user) who else is voting on a particular domain nor how they voted.

 

[Skinner]

I don't think an appeal process is required either, I think just a time limit 6-9-12 months until resubmission would be a better idea, which allows time for the domain to come into fashion for emerging tech names for example.

I would go for a larger number than 5, I'd aim for a group for 20-40 people, which would mean on any given day 10+ would be available to moderate. If you went with 5, and 1 goes on holiday or whatever your going to have troubles, so a larger group is the way.

The voting system on the other site, had a consistency rating, which weights each jurors pull based on past performance, so people who vote against the norm carry less weight than those who vote to the norm.

I like the kinda double blind voting option of 5 selected per name from a larger pool, but I think doing that, you would need to factor in how active the decision makers are, so you don';t end up with 5 people who login weekly.