Make an Offer

[Sway]

Today I added a LN com.au domain to netfleet and in the process just checked out the existing domain competition.

During this I found 318 domains in the same category 'Two Letter (LL)' but with only 92 (28%) of them actually listing a price. Adding to this the currently listed prices range from $250 - $100,000.

Don't get me wrong, I'm completely aware that prices can drastically differ depending on the value of the characters, combination or a buyers desires but the disappointing thing is that so many of these domains are heavily overly priced or with the listing of 'Make an Offer'.

It may just be me, but when I see this I instantly get the feeling the owner has large numbers in mind and don't really bother pursuing a potential

Perhaps the reasoning behind this is as simple as the owners who list with 'Make an Offer' are in two minds about the value and to be safe leave it up to any one interested? Although I would be more inclined to believe they see the other domains listed in the same category at way over priced figures and believe their own hype and dream up that only the equivalent value of a yacht or Porsche would be a fair price to part with their domain.

Of course this is not limited to only the Two letter category, but since I was already researching it, it was my primary focus.

I have thought about how to solve this and simply removing the ability to list a domain as 'Make an Offer' could work as it would weed out the dreamers and leave only those serious about selling. Although the flip side of this is perhaps we would see an even bigger increase in the asking prices as owners wouldn't want to short change themselves.

So how about an option to 'ignore' make an offer listings. I know this is already somewhat possible by filtering asking prices, but with the ignore feature in place and with perhaps monthly alerts from netfleet advising listers that their domain was not shown in xxxx searches last month due to its status could motivate people to put real asking prices in.

The advantages of people putting in real prices far out way any negatives and not only would it get potential buys more interested in domains, it would also encourage buyers to actually BUY the domains. This of course would probably increase demand which overtime would increase prices.

Any one else have opinions/experiences about this?

 

[Lorenzo]

I think there are 2 options:

1) sellers should land on this planet because they clearly are living in another galaxy with some prices or

2) they sit and wait, with the risk of drop them all because they chase a lottery ticket basically


So, in short, I lost any interest lately in many of the domain aftermarket platform, not just towards the .com.au

There is a big GFC in the World and money is just scarce. But some people would just keep doing what they were doing like nothing happened.

I see the same thing with car sales.

Everywhere I drive, I can see plenty of cars parked on the roads ( I'm talking about private sales) for months....and they won't lower their price. Eventually rust and time lost and value depreciation and missed % interest on the cash will just make the difference.

Selling is a skill, not everyone has it.

 

[Data Glasses]

i made an offer on a name discussed here once and a over year later they found the email i sent them in their junk folder (who keeps junk that long) they accepted what i offered but i didn't have the spare cash when they replied, i recently considered it again and now the opening offer is $20,000 , and it's a .net.au ,but in fairness a good one

 

[DavidL]

Sway, it is a real issue we've laboured with over the years.

From the outset we've tried to encourage people to list (competitive)target prices.

We've done things like:

1) If you don't specify a target price, your listing's Quality Index is penalised
2) The closer your target price to the Netfleet valuation the higher your QI
3) Only names with specified target prices will show up on our partner sites following unsuccessful domain registration attempts (Netregistry, Planet Domain, Hostess, MD Webhosting etc)

However people still do leave it blank or put in crazy prices. I guess they are worried that by setting a price they are setting a ceiling for their name. However people need to realise that there is a ceiling set anyway by the market - and it's usually a LOT lower than the domain owners expectations.

It does hurt the sales though - imagine a car sales site where nobody listed any prices!

However I do like that idea, Sway - that is a practical thing we can do to encourage change. Thank you.

 

[Shaun]

It's extremely difficult to value a domain for someone who is not a "domainer" and without any strong unbiased valuation advice available, who is to say what is the real value?

Of course the real value is only going to be what someone is willing to pay for it.

Perhaps someone can put together the definitive guide to "Valuing a domain", I'm sure whoever does it would get lots of juicy backlinks...

NetFleet - you could send this out in a newsletter?

 

[montecristo]

Great idea Shaun.

I read somewhere a while back where someone had done just that, although (as you could imagine) it wasn't exactly sharp though did give a ballpark range moreso than an actual figure.

It may be how the value-bot programs work but it was set up as a quality index type thing where points were awarded for certain things taken in account eg: how many characters, generic words, search matches, extension etc. Points were either given or taken away depending on each outcome. Once you had your final score eg: 35 out of 50 you just needed to look up the 35 points estimate which (complete example here) could fall between $2,500-$5,000.

Like I said, it wasn't super sharp but was interesting.

Something similar geared towards local extenstions could be a good call.

 

[Sway]

It does hurt the sales though - imagine a car sales site where nobody listed any prices!

Excellent example mate!

The current market is the way it is because sales just aren't happening enough. As there are limited (public) sales taking place, actually placing a true value on a given domain is particularly hard for sellers thus resulting in people having to put their own values on their own domains.

The question I normally ask myself when trying to put a value on a domain for sale is 'How much would I buy it for'. Generally speaking, doing this gives me a fair enough price to at least get a few inquires.

The people who have domains listed for $100,000+ I'm guessing would openly confirm they would never buy it for their listed prices.

Overall of course the current domain transfer fee isn't helping as it's really preventing people from looking to make small profits from domain flipping but the lack of realistic prices is also a great contributing factor to the number of sales taking place which at the same time is preventing standard(ish) domain values from being established.