I just don't get this business

dcristo · Sep 3, 2006

TheLeatherFactory.com was reported to sell for $6K this week on DNJournal. Is this one of those names where an enduser HAD to have the name, or what? I just dont get this business.

Andrew Shaw · Sep 3, 2006

Its all about finding those very few end users that are interested in buying your domain name. This forum is fantastic for trading, but I've found that I am much more successful putting my domain names in endusers faces outside the forum. TheLeatherFactory.com is a straight forward, generic domain... Would it have sold for 6k here? prob not, but to the end user, its well worth the pretty penny that was paid for it. Same goes with any enduser.

dcristo · Sep 3, 2006

How do you put the name in front of endusers faces so to speak? Cold calling?

Andrew Shaw · Sep 3, 2006

No, find domain names associated to your domain name that is less appealing. Make sure they are an established business, or they have an appealing website. Do a simply whois search and locate their email address. I have more success when I go to the potential buyers, rather then letting them come to me.

ShaunP · Sep 3, 2006

dcristo said:
TheLeatherFactory.com was reported to sell for $6K this week on DNJournal. Is this one of those names where an enduser HAD to have the name, or what? I just dont get this business.

LeatherFactory.com 109 OVT with extension

TheLeatherFactory.com 97 OVT with extension, so probably has some traffic.
$6,134 at snapnames.com

Sounds like a reasonable price ....

Shaun

insomnia · Sep 3, 2006

I could see a brick & mortar store with the same name wanting this domain.

eq78 · Sep 3, 2006

I just don't think one can base the understanding of this industry on sale of one name or even a couple names This is a subjective business that does not work on any Exact Guidelines. Maybe traffic buyers have certain universal practices and standards but I think everything else is so subjective

dcristo · Sep 3, 2006

Thanks for the feedback. It appears the value for this one is in traffic, so bad example.

dr00t · Sep 3, 2006

Another example of this would be a domain I sold a few weeks ago... I was going to let it expire and drop...but I accidently renewed it along with several others.... ConsumeThis.com

Apparently, some lady who ran a business in NYC was keeping her eye on it and when she saw I renewed, she called me to beg for it.

I bought it at Reg (9$ via Godaddy) and sold it to her for 2500. Just another example of how lucky you can get sometimes. It's a very fun and exciting industry if you ask me. There are soooo many dynamics to this business, its insane! I love it!

Hope this ads some inspiration to your outlook on this business.

warnerms · Sep 3, 2006

Well as an end user, at the time:
I paid: $900 - SeattleLinux.com
I paid: $1400 - Seattle-Linux.com
Took nine months to get both.
But If you got to have it? You got to have it!
TheLeatherFactory.com - is very generic, and I bet a quick Web search would turn up several
companies with that exact name. $6134 would be nothing to a leather furniture company, IMO.

dcristo · Sep 3, 2006

Thanks for the words dr00t. I have confidence in this industry, it's just too darn difficult to comprehend at times though

warnerms - Are endusers using Snapnames though? I wouldn't call that a generic name with the prefix addon. Sure $6K could be chump change to a large corporation, but I'm sure you could grab a fresh reg which sounded just as good for next to nothing. Again though, I've picked a bad example because traffic is probably the biggest factor here.

DNjet · Sep 3, 2006

If your sole intention is to sell a domain to an end user it helps a ton if the domain lands on a "for sale" page with information instead of a usual parking page, the for sale links on parking pages are just not prominent, end users will look to see whats on a domain most of the time.

jazzpetals · Sep 3, 2006

I think you cannot consider snapnames auctions as "end users", mostly overzealous resellers. I wish I could auction off all my names on there, I'd probably be able to retire.

Bill Roy · Sep 3, 2006

This business is definately divided into seperate 'niches'. The problem that faces the domainer is identifying the 'niche' that s/he is selling to.

It is obvious that 'end-users' are the preverbial 'pot of gold' buyers as far as we domainers are concerned, in general they pay the most for a domain name. However it should also be recognised that some domain names have an inherent value due to natural traffic that to a 'domain parker' makes it valuable, sometimes this value can far exceed the value an 'end-user' would put on a domain, here the most obvious example is Sex.com.

To confuse matters further we now have a plethora of domain suffixes (gTLD's and ccTLD's), some domain names are percieved as having a value no matter what the domain suffix is, to date this has mainly been seen by domainers, even though there is no natural market (or extremely small market) for the domain in the suffixes geographic location. A good example of this is of course Poker.??.

As domainers we use different tools to identify the possible value of a domain, Google count and Overture count being the two most prominent. The Google count shows the number of pages associted with the search term, usually in the multy-millions and the Overture count gives the number of times a term was searched for on the internet in the previous calender month, the higher the Overture the higher the percieved value of the domain name.

Just so as not to make things too easy in finding a domain name that may be of value we then have IDN's. These domain names use 'local' alphabet (non A-Z letters) and the domain names are targeted towards a specific written language. Some of these command very high prices, mainly depending on the language and the type-in traffic they recieve.

All of this then leaves us as domainers with a problem, how are we meant to understand the business? All we do is either to try and track the market and hope we react quickly enough so as to profit from it, or seek out areas that as domainers we see as a future market and invest in that. In the meantime big money has moved in and we as individual domainers are constantly being sidelined in the market.

This is a great business to be in that I love, and I am sure most of you feel the same, but again please don't ask me to understand it!

Avensen · Sep 3, 2006

dcristo said:
TheLeatherFactory.com was reported to sell for $6K this week on DNJournal. Is this one of those names where an enduser HAD to have the name, or what? I just dont get this business.

Just ignore these SnapNames ''sales''...

Onward · Sep 3, 2006

Avensen said:
Just ignore these SnapNames ''sales''...

What do you mean by "Sales" (in quotes)?

I tend to ignore the snapnames sales to a certain degree, because most of those names on the open sale market (non-expired acution market) would not go for a tenth of what they sell for on snapnames...I believe over-zealous resellers is the reason for that.

By "sales" do you mean something different than that?

Avensen · Sep 3, 2006

Onward said:
What do you mean by "Sales" (in quotes)?

I tend to ignore the snapnames sales to a certain degree, because most of those names on the open sale market (non-expired acution market) would not go for a tenth of what they sell for on snapnames...I believe over-zealous resellers is the reason for that.

By "sales" do you mean something different than that?

Please read http://www.dnforum.com/thread128095.html very carefully and think about SnapNames' business model from their point of view. How ordinary domainers do the dirty work by selecting gems from the large, every day domain dropping hype and how it's easy to overprice any auction via bid scripts.

droplister · Sep 3, 2006

Im almost positive i visited The Leather Factory while in Italy.

Jacksplat · Sep 3, 2006

Avensen said:
Please read http://www.dnforum.com/thread128095.html very carefully and think about SnapNames' business model from ther point of view. How ordinary domainers do the dirty work by selecting gems from the large, every day domain dropping hype and how it's easy to overprice any auction via bid scripts.

Thats a good little thread, I made a post there eight months ago and made another today.

britishbulldog · Sep 3, 2006

Onward said:
What do you mean by "Sales" (in quotes)?

I tend to ignore the snapnames sales to a certain degree, because most of those names on the open sale market (non-expired acution market) would not go for a tenth of what they sell for on snapnames...I believe over-zealous resellers is the reason for that.

By "sales" do you mean something different than that?

Spot on !