is this for real? halfprice.com on ebay

[namedropper]

Originally posted by draqon
i am certainly not an expert at this business, but if you ask those people who are, they will agree with me.

If you admit you aren't an expert, how the heck do you know they'd agree with you?

 

[draqon]

i'm telepathic.

 

[namedropper]

Originally posted by draqon
halfprice.com is too vague to be worth that kind of money.

Vague? There's nothing vague about it.

There are many other similar names that convey the same idea. For example, LowPrices.com. Do you think that lowprices.com is worth $150,000 as well? Its certainly not much weaker than halfprice.com.

The problem with that one is that LowPrice.com and LowPrices.com are equally fitting and could confuse potential customers... and there's no chain store company out there called Low Prices.

 

[draqon]

why is it that no one here thinks its worth big bucks ( > 100k) except for you and RealNames? Its cuz in my opinion, its not a very strong name at all. Its certainly not a tier-1 name in the same category as jobs.com, music.com, etc. Trade.com only got up to 20k on ebay, and Media.com was bought for less than 100k. Are you telling me halfprice.com is worth twice as much as media.com or trade.com?

When I said it is vague, I should have said that it is untargetted. It will get little to no type-ins.

 

[namedropper]

Why is it that nobody thinks it's weak except you and "Sir Alex"?

Honestly, you can think it's not strong, that's your choice, but I don't think you are talking from the same sort of experience I am. Beyond that, you were completely out of line to believe that only retards would think it was worth that much.

Prices depend upon a lot on factors. The fact that trade.com and media.com didn't get into the six figure range *when they sold* does not mean they wouldn't get six figures some other time. Honestly, the person who let Trade.com go for $20,000 should have been whacked upside the head.

And halfprice.com definitely *would* get type ins, not only because of the company of the same name, but because of the popularity of the term in marketing. I don't know how you can possibly it wouldn't get type ins, unless you grew up in a country that spoke a language other than English and just aren't familiar with the term.

 

[draqon]

well, i can guarantee you the auction on ebay was a total sham. I bet there wasnt a single genuine bid received. If trade.com only went up to 20k, i doubt halfprice.com is getting 5 times that.

 

[namedropper]

The bids are probably fake, as that's rampant on eBay (tangent: I had four people bid on something of mine recently and so far the high bidder, second highest bidder and it's looking like the third highest bidder all have no intention of paying me), but that doesn't mean that the owners of halfprice.com couldn't really get that kind of money for the name.

 

[namedropper]

I am emailed the owner listed in whois records, and he says that the name is, in fact, for sale on eBay. So that end of it at least is for real.

Whether the bids turn out to be real or not is another question entirely. There are three possibilities: 1) genuine bids from interested buyers, 2) fake bids from people wasting the seller's time, 3) fake bids by the seller. There's no way of knowing what the situation is until later, but it's certainly not impossible that they are completely real bids. There are several big companies who use the term quite prominently and would love to have the name.

It's too bad we don't have a way to verify the results once it's over. If Barnes & Noble, Half Price Books, Half.com or some other big retailer ends owning it shortly after the auction is over I think that'll be a good sign though.

 

[draqon]

well Barnes and Noble are being sued for using the name half price books on their website, so it would be a questionable purchase for them to say the least. Half.com has already been branded as half.com so I question the logic of them buying it too. Halfpricebooks is certainly a potential buyer. My personal opinion is that this private auction is quite fake.

 

[David G]

Originally posted by draqon well, i can guarantee you the auction on ebay was a total sham. I bet there wasnt a single genuine bid received. If trade.com only went up to 20k, i doubt halfprice.com is getting 5 times that.

The sales price does not mean trade.com or any other name was not worth much more (or less) than that price. Luck and Timing are huge factors in it, though many domainers will not admit it, thinking the sales price proves the value.

Much of the success at selling a name is based on luck as far as the right person coming along at the right time. Perhaps 2 days later a buyer would think triple that price was a good deal. Or if the $20,000 buyer did not see it was for sale, perhaps 1 day later the seller would have had a $10,000 buyer he may have accepted.

It also depends on how anxious the seller is, who in the case of trade.com he wanted to sell it asap it would seem.

Timing and luck or lack of it, are major factors in selling domains, sometimes the main or only factor.

 

[krisblade]

Look into Overture Suggestion Tool...

4700+ results for "Halfprice.com", that´s a great amount of type-in traffic with a very powerful target, moneymaker in the right hands.

 

[kingdon]

I was the first one to say this looked like a real auction, and I still stand behind my statement. I personally think HalfPrice.com is better than Half.com, I also predict this will be an e-bay site. Here's why I say this, one week after PayPal went public last year, e-bay said they weren't going to allow people to use PayPal for their auctions any more. This sent the stock crashing (luckily I sold my IPO stock the day before) And now E-bay owns PayPal. I wasn't surprised, in fact I called it to straight up back then and my accountant is still kicking himself. E-bay will pick up anything that they can associate with their products and services. And anyone here who doesn't see the half in HalfPrice.com should be tested for extra chromosomes.

So listen when I say this, it's January, everybody's got a new budget. Including E-bay, and they can get more business with a name like HalfPrice.com than they could with their stagnant going nowhere Half.com. If I asked you a question like, "where would you get a better deal, Half.com or HalfPrice.com" what would you answer be. Now I know some of you guys will bend logic to fit your position, but the average person on the street would look at you and scream, "What the flying F**K is Half.com, that should be named HalfPrice.com, HalfPrice.com makes sense, I wanna shop at HalfPrice.com" I will bet my entire DNF bankroll that e-bay will walk away with this one. This is as clear as daylight to me, come on guys, even the blind can feel the sun on their face.

Save This Thread, Mark My Words and Remember the name HalfPrice.com, IT WILL BECOME PART OF E-BAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Tombot]

I'm no domain expert. Not by a longshot. But there is no damn way I would let trade.com or media.com go for $20,000. And I'm flat broke. I think $60,000 is the bare minimum I would take for either one of those names, and I would have to homeless and carless to do that.

 

[draqon]

trade.com sold for 7.5k...long story...tragedy of my life that i missed it.

media.com is obviously an extremely sexy name, but that sold for much more. im thinking more like 80k or 90k.

 

[kingdon]

E-Bay doesn't have a service called trade, if they did it would have been snatched up by them. Sorry to hear you sold trade.com for 7.5k and are still kicking yourself draqon. That's a tough one to brush off, sounds like you're still healing. And I can see why it's harder for you to understand the value of something like HalfPrice.com, when Your Trade.com only pulled $7.5K I'm pretty sure if you had gotten your due on that name, lets say $150-250K You would be a little more open to the idea of HalfPrice.com commanding such a high figure.

I didn't realize that you had this experience with trade.com, and anyone who says to just move on, probobly had 10 million from Grandpa sitting in their bank when they turned 18. There is a song you should listen to, called "The Roses of Success" from "Chity Chitty Bang Bang" As childish as the movie is, the lyrics hold true for those of us who've experienced failure.

"From the ashes of destruction, grow the roses of success"

 

[namedropper]

I don't think draqon sold Trade.com, I think he's kicking himself for not getting it at the bargain basement price.

The fact that he knows it was a bargain basement price should be a clue to him that the true value of the name was much higher and that he shouldn't use it as a baseline in order to predict sales of other names.

 

[draqon]

to clarify, namedropper is correct. i didn't own this domain, i simply contacted the owner a couple days too late, they had already sealed the deal for 7.5k.

Trade.com was put on ebay by the current owner, where it reached only 20k. The reserve was not met. But halfprice.com is currently at $300,000 which would make it the highest priced domain sale on ebay in the history of ebay i believe. So...thats why i don't believe its a real auction.