EggZap

We are inundated with Auctions, have you ever seen so many auctions in a 30 day period then right now?

Top Down: : ” The sky is falling ” : Too many sellers!

Latonas is launching their 1$ auction, BargainDomains.com switching to an auction format, Snap, Moniker, Bido, & ebay all have auctions in tow. What is happening and why now? IMHO, The old domainers are fatigued, now that they have seen a slight pickup in the Domain market there is a drive to put portions of the portfolio up for grabs, especially their semi-premium domains. If you look at all the conferences and domain auctions competing, it’s only going to drive prices down, only in the crazy domain world you see this kind of thing. Can you imagine any other business en mass switching to an auction format and selling their product with no or little reserve? There are just too many Sellers!

Bottom Up : “Getting in on the bottom” : Too many buyers!

Competition for the domain drops is heating up. Not only has GoDrops.com and Epik.com launched websites that educate domainers and give them the tools to catch good drops. But even backorder companies like Snap, Pool, Enom are getting more backorders and competition for those names is driving the price up. More and more old domainers are starting to take the rust off their swords and come back. NameBright and Epik.com are buying an enormous amount of the drops, they are perfecting their scripts and grabbing more names. It’s getting harder and harder for me to pick up good drops, but I am more pleased with the drops I caught in the last 3 months. I will never forget the odd day that NameBright had their script turned off, I caught some big fish with little bait. My little fishing rod can’t compete with these massive trawlers now. There are just too many buyers!

When will these two forces meet?

I have started getting better bargains at these auctions, then I can get at the drops. Now is the time to painstaking look through all these auctions and grab some real bargains (something scripts can’t do!). I got a 4K (estibot domain) for 40$ this week at Latonas 1$ auction.

Once these two forces meet, I predict the young visionaries at Epik (Get some tail!) and Namebright will have managed to have gained control of enormous portfolios and they will be the ones that will change the face of this industry. I know I am biased, but I think the forces of demand will rise up from the drops and consume the large forces of supply from all the auction houses. How long will it take? 1 quarter, 3?

The five stages of Domainer Death!

Denial

I don’t care what Estibot says my domains are Epic!

OMGTHISDOMAINROCKS.com is very cool and some rock band or domain registry will buy this for like 10K

X7W9.com is an awesome 4 letter domain, you cant get these anymore. (only cost me 19.95 on Ebay: 28$ on Bido, 59$ on Snap)

TheGuitars.co.timbuktu is awesome, still cant believe I got that one.

Anger

WTF, Sedo, Afternic, sucks, I cant believe I did not get an offer in the last 9 months.

Bargaining

Crap, only 2 months before I have to renew 40 domains, that’s going to cost me $320.
I better put all this up on Ebay or Bido and get some money back.

Depression

WTF, I cant believe that no one bid on my auction on ebay!
WTF, I can’t believe that no one voted for my domain on Bido!

Acceptance

Screw it, let ‘em expire, I don’t want to pay ebay any more fees, and Bido took too much of my time.

The average sale of a domain on ebay 2$ (often domain lots go for .50 cents a domain)
The average sale of a domain on Bido 62$ (my estimate: of 50 domains listed only 1 gets voted for sale, out of 25 voted for sale, only 1 sells)

I think most domainers start like this, I know I did. The key is to stick with it, don’t spend too much money at once. Set yourself a spending limit and use Estibot as your guide.

Estbot is not 100% accurate and if it says you can sell a domain for 100$, I don’t think that’s going to happen, but as a rule if estibot says its worth less then 200$, I would not waist the money on the domain.)

Once you become an Epic domainer you can bash estibot all you want (a lot do), but think of them as your training wheels, especially in the years of domaining.

Algorithms (Estibot) although not always accurate, are more objective then our brains.

This post inspired by the following article!

Domaining.com

I have two anecdotes that have relevance to it.

Around last Halloween I decided to sell one of my developed Halloween costume sites/domains on Ebay. Why ebay? You ask! I know it’s not the best place for a domain, where the average price for a domain sale is probably 3$. Here is my thinking, there are about 100 different stores and individuals selling costumes on eBay at that time, and since I listed the domain in the Halloween costume category I knew a lot of end users (costume sellers checking competition) would become aware of this opportunity. I also contacted any website I could find selling costumes and everyone who was bidding on those keywords. I put up the domain/website for a 1$ with no reserve, and much to my chagrin bidding was very heavy by about 7 different bidders all of which had a history of selling costumes. The price rapidly rose to about 20% estibot value, then stopped. In the last hour/minutes of the auction, bidding picked up again, but this time it was domainers. It sold for about 50% Estibot value to a Domainer in asia.

I was surprised that people who sell Costumes on Ebay and online costume selling websites would let this opportunity go by, but to the outside world, they do not understand how a keyword domain would sell for so much when they can simply hand register a domain and start selling their wares.

I have a client starting an online business based on the European spelling of word that 80% of the world spells differently. In his mind he paid a hefty price for this domain (mine too), and he asked me what the common American spelling of this domain would go for. He thought I was crazy / incompetent when I replied its a 6 figure domain. He would not pay more then 5K for it.

Ok, So most of the world thinks domainers are crazy, when I see discussion groups where people buy and sell four letter domains like
zxth.com zqqg.com, ppqz.com for 20$/50$, when I see every and any 4 letter domain that drops is picked up by someones algorithm and bought immediately, I am inclined to think most of the world may be right.

As the above article underlines, domainers are Nerds, who talk in terms of key words searchs/month PPC, type-ins, parking. I think every big company will have one of these nerds of staff eventually in their growing web marketing department. The little companies and the average joe will continue to undervalue domains and their relevance to their business model.

Their are garages out there, where one smart guy sells a heck of lot of unavailable.com because he was smart and was at the right place at the right time to buy the domain. Eventually, there will be a knock on the door by a bricks and mortar who sell the same product, hopefully the bricks and mortar will have a domainer nerd on staff to advice the exec on what to offer!

IMHO, I think the domain market value is 95% domainer set and 5 % end user set, maybe 99%/1%, and due to that fact, values will fluctuate wildly based on hobby domainers disposable income.

Price / Earnings Ratios for dnjournal‘s top domains reminds me of the stockmarket in 1999/2000.

But with that being said, you can still go to GoDrops.com buy a domain for 7$ that brings in 5$/month parking, shows there are still great opportunities*.

*(getting a domain that brings in 5$/month requires they eyes of a hawk and rubanesque physique)

I am just an Egg.

Ok, so I put up my 1st domain for auction on Ebay in 8 years.

http://www.eburl.net/bc9771

I have come to terms with the fact that I will probably not get much for it. I have contacted anyone and everyone who bid on the keywords in google and yahoo, and all the tweets selling costumes. I can tell some of the bidders are domainers by their handles, but I am hoping that some of the 6 watchers are end-users. With Halloween coming and the global interest in Costumes, I thought this would be a good domain to start with. Anyone who is reading this blog knows It is less then a week old, and I am not new to this, but not exactly fresh either. I am impressed with how much this industry has changed while I have been traveling with my family, and the new crop of domains are sharp and social marketing savvy. I have spent the week catching up with a facebook, twitter, digg, reddit, and the associated pluggins and feeds associated with them. Wait a sec this is supposed to be about sniping! I digress!

I have been aware of sniping for a long time, but back in the day there were no apps for it, and now it seems much more common, then it was when I set up my ebay account in 1998.

So I decided to read up on it now as I know I have 6 watchers on my domain and was wondering how the final 3 seconds are going to play out.

I found this article from 1996, but it is very well written

http://ideas.4brad.com/ebay-sniping-good-or-bad-or-just-change-balance

I guess I am going to have to get one of those sniping programs, if anyone can leave a comment with a recommendation I would be grateful.

Thanks again to all who are reading this blog, fresh out of the box. and also those who are following me on twitter or facebook. I will definitely return the favor and remember the help I received as I reentered this domain. (pun intended)