Optimizing Value Of An End User Domain Name Purchase

When selling a domain name to an end user you need to approach the valuation much differently than when selling at wholesale prices between domain investors. Our domain properties are key real estate properties and need to be treated as such when working with a possible end user.

As domain investors we tend to have domains that span many industries and as such do not necessarily think about the true value our names may have to the business acquiring our domain. When the real estate industry is in good shape commercial real estate agents can look at getting the top price for their property, we are no different with our "domain" property.

Earlier this week I had a contact from an end user looking to acquire one of my domains, it was a geo targeted .NET name in a hot tourist area in a very strong niche. So from the beginning I knew that there was solid value in the domain, but now it was time to evaluate what the true value was to the buyer.

First step was I noticed they indicated they wanted to buy my "website", this is something I have been noticing from buyers that have came from my minisites, they want to buy my website, not my domain name. This is key, they are viewing it as more than just a name, this adds value.

The other thing I noticed is that they person had their logo, title, etc in their email signature. This validated them as a company and what was really nice is I am familiar with their location and their business from visits to the area they are in. This also allows me to focus on speaking the value to their business since I know they are a real business and not just someone looking to buy a name on the cheap.

Before sending though I did some quick searches to determine if they were buying Google Adwords ads or if they were showing up in search results for the name they were looking to purchase. They were not...

After all of this I was able to set a price, although we all like to make the other side make the first move in many cases I find it more productive to set a price and negotiate from there. That is what I did in this case. The person is now taking the offer to the owners of the business (which is a nationwide firm).

Now, to make sure you get the most value it is time to start a bidding process, I went to Google once again to determine the Google Adwords customers targeting the related terms. I was able to determine the top companies that would be interested based on that. I was lucky enough to know the area and business they are in so that helped me focus on on several that I know are considered top players in their field. I then either sent emails or made phone calls to these businesses (asking for the Director of Marketing in most cases) to inform them that offers have been made for my "website" and I wanted to allow them the chance to bid on this property as well.

At this point negotiations are ongoing, but based on all of the above, and selling like a website instead of domain I have been able to increase the value and number of betters which increases the chance of success. Hope one of these tips helps you in some way.

UPDATE: Teendomainer also wrote a great post that you should read concerning selling to end users who have contacted you.

iCarly.com Episode Focuses on Domain Drops and Cybersquatters

After a long day catching up after being out of the office for the past couple days I come home tonight and my family is watching one of my daughters favorite shows, iCarly. iCarly focuses on a teenage girl and her friends that run a web show on her domain name iCarly.com. As a domain name investor its always been interesting to watch a show that was created on the plot line of a teenager having a website named iCarly.com and then the TV show was named after the web show.

Well tonight, the first thing I heard when I walked in was that the plot to the show tonight was that one of the crazed fans of the show had picked up the domain name iCarly.com after it dropped due to the stars brother canceled the credit card that it automatically renews on.

After the fan agreed to transfer the name back it was then transferred to their biggest hater in error.

OK, so I know this is not real domainer news but I thought it was funny nonetheless. To see domain drops and cybersquatting on a show that focuses on tweens was a bit strange.

.ME Call To Action Domain Auction Favorites

Although most of my .ME investment is around geo domain names I also think certain verbs and call to action names work very well with the extension. I was just browsing through the 15 call to action domain names that are headed to the exclusive auction at Namejet.com and noticed that several were already over the thousand dollar mark and one over two thousand dollars. Not bad considering the auction has not started yet.

Here is the list of names that are headed to auction:

Chat.me

Photo.me

Monitor.me

Protect.me

Rescue.me

Answer.me

Drive.me

Rate.me

Know.me

Free.me

Review.me

Host.me

Link.me

Fix.me

Friend.me

Out of these, Link.me, currently has the highest bid "pre-auction". Although I think they are all great I personally like Photo.me, Answer.me, and Friend.me. There is obviously quite a bit of interest in the auction, many of these names have over 60 bids currently and I expect that to increase before the backorder deadline for the auction is here.

The deadline for backorder at Namejet for the first group of names is September 24, 2009 at 8am Pacific. Good luck to the bidders!!!

Canceling Domain Names – Thinning The Herd With Domain Drops

As with many people over the past few years I have managed to acquire a collection of domain names that includes some that I plan on doing business development with, some domain names I plan to sell but many others that at the end of the day may have value but the return on my time invested to sell may not be worth the effort. Based on this, over the last year or so I have been thinning the domain herd that I have. Many of these domains have been acquired either through a transaction where I acquired several domains at once and they came as part of the package or were pickups I made myself through other means as individual domain names.

But, although they may be of some level of quality from an operational perspective they still can be a distraction and I would prefer to focus on a core set of domain and development investments to allow me to get the most bang for my buck/time. To give you an idea over the past year I have went from 1,300 names to somewhere around 650. Guess what, that is still too many. Over the next few months I am going to be moving to decrease the number of names even further. I preach against being a domain collector and for the most part I feel I have decreased the number of domain names that I had a few years back that I had continued to hold just based on emotional attachment (i.e. I bought it so it must be good....).

One thing that may surprise people though is I do not necessarily wait for the domain to expire. I prefer to simply cancel the name at whatever registrar it is held at and let it drop. Why not let it sit? Well as it sits it can end up being a distraction or for some reason I may decide that maybe I should keep just that one, well maybe two. I would prefer to limit the distractions and focus on the names that I feel can be developed or sold into something more profitable.

I recently sat down and did a bit of an informal review of what I had bought over the last several months compared to the few years before. Although I had managed to get some good pickups a few years back the better quality (as a percentage of names bought) really has come in the past year or so as the domain collecting stopped and domain investing and domain business development began. Sometimes you know what is right, you know the names are really worthless or not worth the effort required to sell it (50 dollar names), but it takes sometime to pull the trigger to get rid of them. What it takes is sitting down and determining what your real goals or, is it to be a profitable business or is it like baseball cards where you may have 10s of thousands that you collect but the real investment maybe in core few. Domain investing can be much like that if that is how you choose to do it, and to be honest that is ok if that is what you want. Personally I would like to focus on the profitable domains only.

Give me your thoughts, does it make sense to drop a distraction or just let them ride?

Quit Paying High Prices for Domain Related Names

Why do domainers continue to overpay for domain related names or names that start with DN, or even the word domain when they have no plans to develop or brand them?  The reason why, emotion. People are basing their buying on an attachment to their hobby (if you are just collecting and hoping  someone buys its a hobby) rather than what they know to be right.  Now to be clear, we have all done it, I have bought domain names based on an attachment to something but I did it knowing that. But when you are within the industry that the attachment is too, well not sure that it is a great idea to continue to buy based on that.

I initially had written this post on the way back from the trip to West Palm with good ole Chef Patrick (He has a blog if you did not know, ChefPatrick.com). During the trip we had witnessed something that we immediately caught as something rather obvious and somewhat concerning. Solid product domain names with immediate end user value (not domainer) and development potential selling at prices below names that had no potential outside the domainer world.  As domainers we cannot keep being as incestuous as we are. The ability to continue to sell names inside the same group of people on Twitter, Facebook, Namepros, DNforum or other domain related sites at high prices is gone. We will not receive the value for our online real estate assets if we continue to do this.

Why do you keep doing it?  When I first wrote this post I had pointed out the specific domains but I would prefer not to call out specific purchases because I think the point can be made without pointing out an invidual persons purchase. This is something that our long time industry leaders have been pointing out yet people ignore the advice.

Rick Schwartz has been successful selling domains at high prices based on his willingness to look out side our industry, a good portion of the top domain sales go to end users not other DOMAINERS.  Continuing to put more value in slapping two words together and having the word domain, domaining, dn, or something to that effect and then paying more for that than solid keyword product names is not good. Yet it happens everyday. We all know that product related or service related names are the valuable ones, but we continue to overpay for domain related names.

Sometimes a little tough love is required to help people. For years while I followed the domain industry in the background I would read the forums, etc and see people giving advice but it was obvious they were diverting from the truth or simply were being taken as experts when in reality they had no more experience than the person they were trying to give advice too.

Well, I would prefer to help people rather than trying to hide info. I am sure people will disagree with this post, probably post a few comments that there is value in blah blah blah brandable 5 letter domain related made up word, thats crap. Unless you plan on actually developing it into something there is no value. IF you plan on branding it an developing it then you are no longer selling a domain but a business, there is a difference.

Morgan at Domainvestors.TV is a great example of branding, but guess what, he did not go buy your made up domain word, he was (and I am guessing here) able to hand register another made up word and has made it into something. That is why buying mixed up words with DN in them or others is not the most effective way to spend your money. Someone passed up the chance to own a product name with thousands of exact match searches a month to buy a name with exactly zero searches and no real end user potential so in otherwords, no true enduser value.

As I made clear on the bido video chat/interview on Friday I think it's a mistake to invest in made up words that sound cool, or just brandable word combinations in general. Now as I say that I am the first one to say you can build a brand on a name but this post is about domain reselling and potential fo resell or ease of resell to end users not other domainers.  If you are developing to build a brand and then sell a website that is selling a business and once again, NOT selling a domain.

At the end of the day the most valuable names are product, service or geo specific keyword domains. watch the domain sales lists. I am pretty sure, but from a resell and domain value perspective the product name should of went for more than the domaining branded name. Tell me I am wrong here, have you witnessed the same thing?

Live Video Chat on Bido.com with Chef Patrick and Myself Today at 1EST

Packing up and getting ready to head to Bido.com for a live video chat today at 1EST. After a great trip to the West Palm Beach area I head home late this afternoon and could not think of a better way to finish it off than a trip to Bido.

We had a great local domainers meeting last night and enjoyed a nice dinner at Ruth's Chris, and determined domainers must all really like creme brulee.  In reality one thing that was great about last night was the mix of long time domainers and new blood coming into it now. Brian Diener is a great example of someone digging in and learning the ropes and between him and his friend Alex there can only be good things ahead.

Here are the people who attended:

John Holland

Stu Malloff - StupendousDomains.com

Brian Diener - TeenDomainer.com

Scott Alliy - FindASeminar.com

Bruce Marler

Patrick Ruddell - ChefPatrick.com

Well, headed off, if you look at the twitpics on the right side of my blog you will see a few pics from last night. It was a great time and we managed not to get arrested or detained:)

A Few Days Away, A Couple Domains For Sale and A Busy Week Ahead

I took an unplanned few days away from the laptop (well not 100 percent but close). After driving up to meet my business partner Friday the family and I decided to keep it going and spend sometime with some family in that part of the state and disconnect a bit. Good times, even if talk does turn to business more than planned. When you are excited and having fun it seems like somehow or another even when disconnecting you can get back to business.  Sorry to a few of you who I had planned on connecting with over the past couple days but had to put the calls off until tomorrow. Appreciate the understanding....

I have a couple names currently either headed to auction or in auction right now, here they are:

Smartphone.ME - With the current auctions for .ME continuing to do well you might want to grab this one while you can. Smartphones.com sold for $95,000 not to long ago to give you some idea of interest in this term. The auction ends in less than 12 hours at sedo. Smartphone.me Auction

StilettoSandals.com - This name will be on auction at Bido August 11th. A very solid product term to say the least. Heres a link to the auction: StilettoSandals.com auction.

Well, after getting a little breather its a long week ahead. I expect this week to have some interesting outcomes and to maybe have some announcements unrelated to Missouri.me coming out of the meetings to come that may interest many of you.

Back to my take a breather weekend. Hope yours was great!

Begging for Mobile Interfaces for Domain Auction Sites

I have been a bit quiet on the blog front lately due some crazy travel schedules. When traveling I try to use all the tools available to stay connected and productive and have carried both a Blackberry and and Apple iPhone together for sometime but in the past week or so I killed the Blackberry and moved solely to my iPhone.

The iPhone provides a great platform for browsing and in most cases I prefer the full version of websites when browsing on it, but find when using sites that perform some sort of application (auctions, stats view, etc) I really would prefer a simpler, more iPhone (mobile) optimized interface for those times when I am not sitting in an airport and am actually running through the airport or walking from meeting to meeting.

So, all that brings me to the title. In most cases when entering an auction I like to set my bid at the amount I am willing to pay and move on. But in many competitive auctions or in days I am in multiple auctions at the same time on names that could go into the $X,XXX category I prefer to monitor and react to auctions based on the overall auctions I am in that day.

Considering that the Internet user in general is starting to perform more and more of their browsing from mobile devices and that many domainers in general seem to be a pretty mobile and tech savvy bunch I would think that the auction platforms would focus a bit of development effort into providing an optimized interface for those connecting to their site through mobile devices.

If Namejet or Snapnames either has a mobile interface I sure have not been able to find it when browsing on my iPhone. If someone reading knows of one feel free to correct me.

If the mobile interface was available I would not of missed out on somewhere around $5K of purchases I would of made this week. I am sure I am not the only one that would appreciate a mobile optimized platform for making and monitoring bids on names I am already in auction on, it really doesn't have to let me make backorders, simply monitor and bid on names I am already in auction with.

Anyone else wish for the same?

Sedo .ME Premium Auction Ends Tomorrow

Being a believer .ME domain names I have been watching the Sedo premium .ME auction which is currently running and ends tomorrow at 1PM EST. There are some premium .ME names in the auction that fit the extension well and I think with the current economic situation can be picked up at what will end up being bargain prices.

As I have mentioned before, outside of .COM and .NET the .ME extension seems to resonate the most with people outside the domaining world. As has been mentioned many times .ME really is the most brandable "alternative" cctld. With the net being more and more about personalized and localized content there are many possibilities to play off .ME.

Now, I am a realist and am not saying .ME is taking over .COM , please do not start screaming that I am nuts and dotcom is king. I get that. But I do think that .ME is going to do better than many domainers may expect (or want....).

Take a look at the list of domains being auctioned, might be your time to get a name at a bargain price:

pay.me
bet.me
book.me
download.me
compare.me
tell.me
print.me
film.me
rock.me
add.me
employ.me
sell.me
locate.me
test.me
join.me
pick.me
support.me
order.me
reward.me
message.me
manage.me
drink.me
power.me
discount.me
remember.me
market.me
clean.me
ring.me
promote.me

Sell Your Domain Name For Free

Ok, thought I would give people the chance to try something a little bit different.

There are many different avenues to sell your domains but I hear people complain all the time that their name is buried in the thousands of other names on the various auction sites or forums.

Also, many people want to be able to give a direct pitch to their prospective buyers, really give a sales pitch rather than just typing a few lines of stats but really not being able to verbalize in a forum post why they think their name is something someone should buy. Well now is your chance to change that.

For the first 5 people that are interested in trying this I will give you the chance to showcase your domain name here on BruceMarler.com for free. The video can be up to 2 minutes long, you can have anyone you want do the pitch, the 2 rules outside of that are no nudity (obviously) and no cussing.

There really is no downside. Many people are better in front of people than behind a screen typing, this is your chance to show that (or let someone else show that).

The video will be posted to youtube.com and have an embedded link here on the site. Each post will have its own contact form so all interested buyers will be able to contact the seller directly.

If you are interested in selling you domain here please contact me by selecting contact me in the menu bar above.

I do reserve the right to reject a name depending on content or extreme adult nature.

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