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?

Now anyone can use this site to watch live drops as they become available at 2PM EST.

Domains that Drop Red are usually grabbed by the TOP Three Snapnames, Pool, NameJet.

Domains that Drop Green are available to the 1st person who can hand register them.

There is a chat room where some of the most experienced domainers discuss the quality of the domains dropping. To me, this is GoDrops.com biggest asset, as nothing improves your domaining skills that listening and watching some of the best in the business.

This is FREE

There is a premium membership where you can see all sorts of important stats on each domain as they are dropping.

Exact Searches, Frequency, CPC, Estibot Value, and the Age of the domain

For just 19.97

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.

Drops are over for the day, A lot of Jobs domains dropped!

Good day for me I grabbed quite a few, easy part is over, now I have to develop them!

Some good conversations and advice in the chat window as well, Jesse provided a great info for Geo Tagging domains, very valuable for people that develop Geo Domains.

Below are domains that caught my attention, but I had reached my quota for buying domains today, so I let them sit.

Hopefully some of you developers out there will see something you fancy. The last post I did like this, half of them were gone within 12 hours.

Also impressive was seeing the work of other developers:

http://hobartjobs.com/ Geo Jobs Development
http://luggageauthority.com/floto/ Product Development

Domain Foreclosure!

Sex.com is in foreclosure. And Elliots blog has a great article about it.

Why did I bring this up? Because on a smaller scale every day 50k+ domain properties are re-released to the public because no payment was made to renew them. Sometimes they are spectacular like macaroni.com and at other times they are just good like honeyflowers.com, prettypens.com, & muffincakes.com. (all of which dropped and were re-bought today)

I find the word drop doesn’t encompass the same opportunity as foreclosure, hence I played a typical promotional trick of putting it in the title to attract more attention! Bad Egg!, but you’ll forgive me when you read the next part of this post.

GoDrops.com Beta!

Last night just before I went to bed I got an email that kept me up another hour and a half, and today is the day we lose an hour to daylight savings time. doh!

The email informed me I had been selected to be included in the Beta for GoDrops.com. I’ll take a quick peek before heading off to bed. Not! After I logged into the new site, I was overcome with mathematical excitement with all the new data attached to each domain. Like most of you who watch drops, I tend to have about 10 browser tabs opened to manually data mine on the fly when a particular domain tickles my fancy. GoDrops.com has now made three quarters of those windows obsolete!

Wow, not only do you get to watch the domains as they drop (available again for register) but, now there is abundance of data attached to each one.

“Domain, Searches, Frequency, CPC , Value and Age”

honeyflowers.com 44 148k $0.05 $290 9yrs.
prettypens.com 319 11k $0.05 $830 2yrs.
muffincakes.com 209 50k $0.05 $930 4yrs.

If you click on a domain, it automatically goes to name.com to buy the it for 7.99$

If you enter “chefpatrick” in the promo code you are entered to win up to 750$ in prizes

During the drops there is a chat windows to the left where about 10+ other experienced domainers give their two cents on the domains of the day, and also suggest tools and other resources that can help domainers.

The issue of copyright came up today for a particular domain, and Richard suggested a valuable link for domainers who want to make sure they don’t accidentally stumble onto someones Trademark!

If you develop domains this is an incredible opportunity to get land to build your project around with a track-record on searches and availability of the subject matter you are developing.

GoDrops.com opens to the public on April 1st, so please add it to your Calendar, and hopefully I’ll see you there at the launch.

Disclosure.

I have no relationship, financial or otherwise with GoDrops.com other then being a volunteer beta tester. This recommendation is based on nerdy goodness alone.

Hopefully this company can now save my domain from the evil Hong Kong Da Tai Co out to steal my Internet Brand.

Stay tuned!

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 12:04 AM, brian wrote:

Dear Manager

We are Shanghai Information Technology Co.,Ltd, an Service organization of Internet in China. Yesterday our registration department received an application form from Hong Kong Da Tai Co.,Ltd, They have to register internet brand ( gullible.com ) and some in China and Asia’s domain name.

But we found that Hong Kong Da Tai Co.,Ltd is not the original owner of the brand and trademark, and we realized that the brand and trademark belong to your company after confirmation. I need confirm a question with you that whether you authorized Hong Kong Da Tai Co.,Ltd to register these domain name. If you had done that, We will work procedures in accordance with the company to help them complete the registration, If not authorized, the registration of these domain name will bring your company some confusion, conflict of the market.

Please let me know whether you need protect these domain name, I need your answer to do the next step work.

Thank you with my work.
Brian Wang

Registration Department Manager

Tel:+86-21-6296-2950

Fax:+86-21-6296-1557

Email:brian@ygurl.cn

Internet:www.ygurl.cn

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Hello Mr. Wang

OMG OMG This cant be happening!

I want them back that company cant have them!.

Waaaaaaaaaaa.
(fall on floor kicking and wailing)

Spucatum Tauri
Manager
gullible.com

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Within 15 minutes I got the following email back.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Spucatum,

Hong Kong Da Tai Co.,Ltd want to register the following domain name:
www.gullible.cn
www.gullible.com.cn
www.gullible.hk
www.gullible.com.hk
www.gullible.asia
Internet brand: gullible

If your company did not authorize them to register, so the action of Hong Kong Da Tai Co.,Ltd belong to grab your company’s internet resource. According to the procedure of registering openly, these domain name have not been registered. So Hong Kong Da Tai Co.,Ltd now can register them. But your company is the brand’s original owner. So you have a priority right to register.

In priority of time before the end of, if your company do not want other to register them, you must register them. And i will send you an application form to fill out. Our disputed department will use it to reject Da Tai’s application and help your company to register it firstly.

If you think that they are not important, and want to give up the right, we will do the rest of work according to working procedure. help Da Tai company to finish the registration.

2010-03-11
Brian Wang

Registration Department Manager

Tel:+86-21-6296-2950

Fax:+86-21-6296-1557

Email:brian@ygurl.cn

Internet:www.ygurl.cn
发件人： Domain Administrator
发送时间： 2010-03-11 13:01:02
收件人： brian
抄送：
主题： Re: gullible

_____________________________________________________________________________________

How much do you intend to squeeze me for?

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Spucatum,

The attachment is an application form, which include the registration time and fee, If need to register it, please fill out and send me back. After we have received your completed form, our registration department will finish the registration for you according to the information on the form.

2010-03-11
Brian Wang

Registration Department Manager

Tel:+86-21-6296-2950

Fax:+86-21-6296-1557

Email:brian@ygurl.cn

Internet:www.ygurl.cn

◇Shanghai Yi Guan Information Technology Co.,Ltd◇

Internet Brand & Domain Name Application Form

Internet Brand

gullible

口 69$USD/years

Domain Name

www.gullible.cn

口 19$USD/years

www.gullible.com.cn

口 19$USD/years

www.gullible.hk

口 39$USD/years

www.gullible.com.hk

口 39$USD/years

Domain Name

www.gullible.asia

口 49$USD/years

Corresponding Website (URL)Http://

Registration Period

口5years 口10years 口15years

Reason for Application

Promote company trademark or name on the internet 口

Protect company trademark or name on the internet 口

The Administrator of Domain Name:

*Admin Name

*Name of Company

_____________________________________________________________________________________

I like how they sell the Internet Brand separately from the domains.

I didn’t know you could buy an internet brand!

Also Notice the Registration period only has the option of 5, 10, 15 years.

Anyway I hope people Google before they buy!

March 15,

Came across this article as well documenting this problem

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.

Today though I left the window open after the drops and lucky for me the sites creator Jason dropped by (sorry for the bad pun), after everyone else had left.

I had a question for Jason. godrops.com. After pleasantries were dispensed of, I got to the question I had been meaning to ask.

Wasn’t the Launch supposed to be February 1st?

He explained that his partner in this new launch Chef Patrick had been very busy (for some reason Playboy came to my mind) and there was still work to be done on the “Lander Page” before they could officially launch.

He did give me a sneak preview by posting a screen shot of the new GoDrops.com interface, which I wanted to post here but Jason explained to me that it is bad luck to see the Interface before the wedding day.

I didn’t manage to get a new Launch date, but the screen grab definitely got my interest, now along with the Domains we will be able to see CPC, a score system, and 3 other sources of data per domain as they drop.

I look forward to the launch!

I am just an egg.

Where was I?

WhyPark.com was my latest experiment, and I now with a couple of months under my belt, I can add my 2 cents.

The Revenue I find is comparable to both sedo and parked.com, but I haven’t seen any jump in traffic, although I think I am going to need at least 6 months before I know for sure.

I picked up a good two word domain at godrops.com last month, It got more then usual type-ins then the others so I migrated it to whypark.com, where the monthly total went from .89/month at sedo to .88/month at whypark, so again I just have to keep watching.

So far I am not that impressed, but I am in this experiment for at least three months.

The revenue being generated so far is only about half of what I would have made with parking. I assume that will change. One of the sites I set up was a site that was regularly visited by googlebot. I wonder if google bot will visit whypark servers and what will be the results.

We’ll see

So far I only have about 5 days of data, so everything is still way up in the air.