Unplain

Here’s another story on the dot whatevers…

See Here

I had a recent post up about an auction sale on the name “BusinessCardMarketing dot com”.

I had deleted the post since the sale was over and successfully sold for $600, I’m happy!

The question I want to ask everyone is, was I wrong to post to “goad” those domainers in the business of domain flipping or reselling for more?

I was quite happy with the sale.

For those who can remember that post, what was your reaction?

Was I doing the right thing to try to promote the auction to those who may want to buy to resell or flip for more?

However I had an anonymous comment posted which I had saved from that deleted post which was:

“Why would any domainers want to bid on this name?  So we can win it and then try to resell it to the one company that wants it and is bidding on it?  This has to be the worst attempt to try and lure someone into bidding on your auction that I’ve ever seen.  Very unprofessional.

If it’s such a valuable domain name, you shouldn’t have sent it to auction for cheap - you should have negotiated with the buyer on your own.”

Aren’t auctions designed to capture bidders with all kinds of motivations for wanting the domain name?

To the anonymous poster, I apologize if it was offensive- I really hope I didn’t come off as a cheesy, sleazy, unethical seller. I think I should have had my wife proof that post to be sure it wasn’t that way…

I don’t know, I feel as if I had mentioned an ugly unmentionable that domainers don’t like to talk about. That is some domainers don’t like to think we are in the business of selling domains for more to those that really want it, especially companies.

Hasn’t it occur in our thoughts that when we bid at auction, that we could be bidding against a company that really want the name? And if we win the name, we could sell it for more, shhh, don’t say it, to that company? Maybe we don’t come out and say to ourselves “I’m buying this name to resell it for more to someone who really wants this name”, but I assure you, whatever motivation is lurking in your subconcious for your reasons for buying a domain name, its there. That is, to either resell for more OR develop and get advertisers to pay more to be allowed to advertise on our domain names.

I came right out and said if you were to bid in this auction, you’ll be bidding against this “company” for the name. I even mentioned that company’s name for your research purposes. My thought was maybe others thought it could be a shill bidder so I gave some details. 

What are your thoughts?

Check this article out: It’s all in your head, the effect of metaphor on web navigation.

Sure we can have a visual location in our heads. How about domain names as a  ”physical address” in our heads for those visual locations?

Domain names are the “address numbers” over the doors.

Namepros has an upcoming domain chat auction starting at 6pm EST today (6/19/08).

The great thing I like about the Namepros chat auction over all other auctions are:

1- YOU CHOOSE the names to be in the auction. You have up to 3 lots of names with unlimited names per lot you can submit. About roughly $4.00 per lot. This helps keep some junk submissions out, not much but some.

2- Your domain names go to auction 4 days later.  That means your names are not tied up with an exclusive agreement with a auction house for months at a time.

3- You can be present during the auction to help “sell” your names when it comes up. A comment or two here and there but no more.

4- You can lower or drop the reserve during the auction of your names if it bids up to a price you can walk away with. No more auctioneer saying “pass” if the bidding comes really really close to the reserve you’ve set.

5- Transactions between the buyers and sellers can commence immediately even while the auction is not over. Paypal and domain name pushes are pretty quick unless you make some other payment arrangements. Do paypal if there is a reasonable amount of trust between the buyer and seller like decent trader ratings.

This auction consist of just domainers, so don’t expect million dollar sales

BTW my names up for auction are under the screenname of “Louddrums”. Real bargains!

Okay I’m gonna do something interesting - I wanna get all your thoughts and postings on this blog subject. This posting should hopefully provide an insightful view into the somewhat private and secret world of domain sales.

This sale is not with a domainer, but an enduser.

This enduser is now currently bidding on my name “BusinessCardMarketing dot com” at Afternic.

Here’s the story:

On May 17th, I received the first email:

“Hi John
 
We’ve been looking to purchase a domain name and businesscardmarketing (.com) is one of the ones we’re considering.
 
Can you let me know if you’re looking to sell it and if so for how much.
 
thanks
Mike       “

I replied almost verbatim a suggestion I had read on one of the domain blogs LOL (let me know who you are!):

“Hi Mike

I may consider selling, If I were to receive a serious offer for this domain.
I would run the numbers and possibly enter negotiations for a sale.

If not sold, I would continue development plan for this name “businesscardmarketing (.com)”.

Let me know.
Sincerely,
John
512-913-4487 “

They replied:

“Hi John
 
Thanks for the info,  I am willing to pay $500 for the businesscardmarketing.com domain.
 
If you want to accept the offer, please let me know before the end of the day on Wednesday.  After that point, I will have used another name.  I’m not interested in a counter-offer, as this is the extent of my budget.  Please simply let me know if you are willing to accept it.
 
Thanks!
Mike “

 Then he tried to contact me long after the wednesday deadline imposed on me lol:

“Hey John
Played phone tag a few times last week. :)  Are you around tomorrow? I’ll give you a shout.
thanks
Mike ”

A few days later I received a call from “Mike”. I has asked how he found me for which he replied that it was from a whois lookup and had been considering this name for a while. I noted the number on the caller ID and when I did

some research on the phone number, I’d discover it was a printing company based in Canada.

Couple of things worth noting from my research:

They’ve been in business since the 90’s.

They’re successful (Their product lines are in Staples).

The person I spoke with is the founder and has a business partner.

Lastly, which gave me pause, was that on their website,

they bragged they have a mid $xx,xxx piece of furniture in their lobby (*tongue in cheek*)….

I spoke with this person for a while and while it was very cordial, they explained that they would spend no more than $500 because

They’ve spent so much money developing their business card products, that they cannot spare more for the domain name.

Okay, in a way that’s like saying I’ve spent so much frigging money for nice furniture and stuff to decorate the house I want to buy, that I can’t give the asking price for the house I want to put the furniture and stuff in! Or because I’ve spent $3000 for custom rims and tires that I can only give you a couple hundred dollars to buy your car…

Anyway I had said my asking price was $2500. He said they couldn’t do that and that they were looking at other names.

I had explained, that when I bought this name, I wanted to develop a site to showcase my successes on building businesses with business

cards alone and logically this was the best name I could find out of the other junks I’ve seen.

I went through the whole spiel about generic domain names and their values. He was actually familiar with the concept and the value of quality names. He just couldn’t spare more than $500 (wonder how much they’re gonna spend for an upcoming trade-show they’ll be showcasing…)

Here’s the unique situation.

I’ve been trying to raise a small amount of funds. At the moment, I do not have the luxury as some domainers to sit on their names forever. However you guys are more than welcome to outbid or BIN the name to continue the dance with the company. (be sure to let us know the final outcome!)

Here’s what I did:

After more phone calls from him. I had said I will put it up on Afternic with a reserve price of $560.00 ($60 for basic fee) with the BIN price of $2500 to end the auction. He said he wasn’t going to spend more than $500.

He bidded $600 right from the outset when I put the name up.

Any thoughts? What would you do?

Note: I will not be publishing any future sales details. I only wanted to show others what one aspect of a domain sales process would look like which is what could happen when contacted by an enduser from a whois lookup…

Okay, lets take a step back here.

Aged domains. Hmmm.

If the domain is old , does it make it more valuable? No.

If it was the first name ever registered on the net, sure, because its historical - If you can buy it - buy it

and then give it to the Smithsonian’s. They might even put the name up on the computer monitor and stick it in an exhibit.

SEO-wise old domain names do not do any better then new domain names. I’ve seen names registered for a few days zoom to the top displacing old incumbents. I’ve specialized in SEO work for years. I’ve seen it all. Its good update-able content and linking strategies that does the trick and a few tactics to rush your name into the search engine indexes.

If you’re buying domains for age, well that’s nice. Maybe it’ll create “value” for the newbie buyers and hopefully they’ll bite.

I’ve read weird nonsenses, such as regging names then holding onto them for a while so it’ll have more value. Names are names, they are not antiques, they are not old paintings.

The actual bytes stored on the hard-drives of Verisign do not “get older”.

If the aged domain is a turd - the age of the domain does not make it “more edible” like old cheese.

Domain names could “age” if you print it on parchment paper and let it turn a little yellow. (Don’t forget to show a screenshot of that yellowed paper when you post it up for sale)

Do yourself a favor.

When you see a name up for sale somewhere, don’t use domaintools just to check the age of the domain. Look at the domain name itself.

What does it tell you?

Is it sensible? Is the value readily apparent? Does the name tell you what “it is”?

There’s a lot more to it when it comes to buying domain

names. I’ll post some common sense domain buying stuff when I get a chance…

Got a domain you’ve just regged only today? That’s okay, post it up for sale in the forums, I’m always looking for good names and there’s a lot more stuff I factor in before buying a name. Domain age is not one of ‘em.

NOTE: This post was not meant to show disrespect for domainers that place a value on domain age. I’m just trying to step outside and make sure we don’t treat domain names like wine tasting. Maybe this’ll help us rethink (I did). Who knows

Here are some things that make domainers a mental mess

 1) If a name is owned by a domainer , nobody wants it - unless its an expired

name listed at snapnames, namejet, etc. - We would rather fight and overbid for something

not owned by anyone and may not win…

2) If a domainer finds out what you’ve paid for a name, lets say $xx - $xxx because you got lucky

and you wind up offering the name for $xxxx or $xxxxx (if the name is really worth that) - that domainer wanting your name will chafe and respond with the same indignation as the enduser with no domain knowledge.

Note: We spend time educating and blabbing how much our names are really worth to the endusers when we ourselves act the same as the cheap enduser when we want to buy a premium name.

3) Domainers will rush in (Wal-Mart black friday style) screaming, kicking and bloodying themselves over

quad letters, old aged crap domains, all numerical domains and etc. while passing over high-value obviously good generic names listed everywhere.

4) Domainers buy names and those names will keep getting sold and moved up at ever higher prices till the last domainer buying the name

become the sucker or bag holder of that name, not being able to sell it for more. Duck, duck, goose!

5) Due to #4 above, we’ll wait around till the last seller of that overpriced name become seriously desperate to sell it. We’ve all talked up the price to move it during #4 but now we’ll talk down the price of that name in order to buy it cheaper again to sell it to the next sucker. Got it?

6) Here’s a strange test - If a name’s for sale by a highly esteemed domainer, we want it and at full price. If you take that same name and mentally pretend its being sold by the domainer that you see in forums always selling names for 5 bucks, all of a sudden that supposedly high value name is not worth much any more…. 

7) About #2 above, Domainers will try to sell names at so call “fair prices”, talk about the merits and high value of those names while downplaying the stats. Those SAME DOMAINERS will demand stats and justification from a seller when it comes time to buy names themselves. Whats the deal?

8> Domainers will attempt to try to devalue a name THEY WANT on forums by asking questions about that name, then actually posting, “Sorry, I’ll pass” rather then sending a private PM. This is to send a mental signal to all other domainers that the name is not worth anything while secretly PMing the seller a lower purchase price. You’ll see this behavior in auctions as well. Don’t be fooled.

 Feel free to add to this list of strange behaviors and the games we play…

The offers for the names from my previous post were close but not close enough.

How ‘bout this?

I’ll throw in two more names, which makes it a total of four names to make this a ridiculous no brainer.

Ready?

Its:

SalisburyLawyers.com (Big English City, Largest MD eastern shore city nearby Ocean City MD and a City in North Carolina)

SalisburyAttorney.com (same as above – be sure to see wikipedia for Salisbury)

Along with:

SmyrnaLawyers.com

SarasotaDivorceLawyer.com

I might even throw in a cat that doesn’t drop dead despite eating all the plants in my house…

Now the price is $2900 or OBO. Note: This low price is in no way a reflection of the actual higher value of these types of Geo names, but due to time constraints, these names will be sold to someone who have the time to present them properly to end users, or for auction. I would recommend developing them to generate leads or for selling them for much, much more.

Okay, here are two great Geo lawyer names for quick sale (personal reasons) - I’ve priced them low enough to allow for liquidity or it can be kept and developed. Some lawyers spend tens of thousands of dollars in advertisement and are usually looking for an edge to get more business.

Ever seen the crazy stuff they’ve put out?

 Okay here they are: 

SmyrnaLawyers(.com)  - Affluent city of Georgia and a town of Delaware

SarasotaDivorceLawyer(.com) - City of Florida

They’ve never been for sale nor were intended for sale but were to be developed.

Packaged for low $2900 or best offer - (respond quickly - sale could end any moment if circumstances change for me)

Paypal mass pay is fine if at least 10+ trader ratings on Namepros and I’m comfortable with your rep…

Contact me: louddrums at g-m-a-i-l dot com -you can figure that one out :).

I’ve created a new category called “Obscured Domain Tidbits” to find domain nibbles that may have missed the big headlines. There will also be postings of unknown blogs, domain news and announcements. Some of you may have seen it, some of you may not have.

Read about Discovery’s acquisition here.