Great points. I agree asking all the questions you have posed is very important and fair game that shouldn’t be taken negatively.

I just hoped to bring a little clarity to why NameMedia’s sales appear weighted much heavier on their owned portfolio than customer brokered domains.

Hi,

I don’t consider my statement negativity.

I wasn’t making any accusations…just wondering.

Jamie Zoch has brought this topic up on his blog more than once and there was thought behind it.

What Andrew, Ocean and Domain Investor said is valid and may indeed be true.

NameMedia has often said it’s important to price your domains including putting a floor
price.

It’s true that Namemedia owns lots of domains.

An individual Seller may not have as many domains but when you aggregate all the domains together that are NOT NameMedia’s,
wouldn’t that be a significant number?

I don’t know what that number is, does anyone here?

Has it ever been revealed?

When NameMedia sells a domain that’s not theirs, they get 10% or 20% of the selling price.

When they sell one of their own, they get 100% minus whatever commission they pay their staff.

Would NameMedia push their domain over another Seller’s similar domain to get that bigger payday?

Would NameMedia manipulate (lower) their pricing to get a selling advantage over a similar domain not theirs?

I don’t know.

I’m only asking, not accusing.

The problem is the lack of transparency not the questioning of the lack of transparency.

I don’t think it’s negative to ask questions.

I think it’s smart to.

However, I believe what the seller is assuming is happening – why put your domains with NM and let them use your domains to help sell their own.
I guess the seller doesn’t want to be used as a comparison.

‘NM sales person’
NameMediadomain.com#1 is for sale for $ 4,000. but we will sell it today for $ 2,200.
Or, you could buy something similar like
SomethingClose.com#1 for $ 3,000. I believe that is their lowest price and I assume it is still for sale. I will have to ask the seller and get back to you.

The irony is that the domainer probably would have sold it for $ 1,200. if the buyer contacted him directly.

I really don’t know. I don’t have any of my domains with NM.

I’m only going by what I hear from other domainers.

Personally, I believe NM does an outstanding job of moving a number of keyword rich .com’s in the $ 2K to $ 5K range.

I think domainers need to understand a few things about why BuyDomains/NM is selling a huge volume of domains that they own and not an equal amount of domainer owned names:

1. NameMedia/BuyDomains has a HUGE portfolio of domains, many HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS more than most domain investors own. As a result the odds of an NM owned domain sale are likely much higher.

2. Quality! I don’t want to suggest that many domainers don’t have great portfolios, but many of them just don’t stack up to the quality and volume BD has. The BD portfolio is on another level in an elite class up there with the portfolio’s of Frank Schilling, Yun Ye (Marchex), Oversee, etc. The BD portfolio was built by Mike Mann and team years ago and expanded in recent years by NM. A lot of the great names in their portfolio were acquired many years before other domainers got in the business.

I just don’t see the fuss and frustration about needing to understand their owned sales vs domainer owned sales…

On the other hand it would be great to see NameMedia sales broken down into NM owned vs. customer owned. If they can show they sell customer names at a rate competitive with Sedo and other aftermarkets it would make their service look that much more attractive…

I think there are two reasons most of the domains sold are NM’s.

1. Most of the domains on BuyDomains are owned by NM. The others are from Afternic and must have expanded promotion set. Also, until recently only NM’s domains were listed with registrar partners. This is changing somewhat, as now you can list domains as ‘premium’, but they need to be registered at NetSol.

2. NM’s domains are priced, whereas many Afternic customers don’t price their domains. The sales people are on commission, and I don’t know if they get the same cut for a NM domain versus a customer domain. But, if they have a customer on the line and you haven’t set a ‘floor’ price in Afternic, they’re going to try to sell a NM domain which they can negotiate on the spot for.