You probably want more money for your domain names than they’re worth.
This weekend I was at the mall waiting “about an hour” for my new eyeglasses. With time to kill, I turned to Twitter and saw this tweet from Elliot Silver:
Elliot is not one to be over critical, so I had to click through to see what all of the fuss was about.
Here’s the background.
Recently Elliot started doing a weekly post with a handful of top listings from various domain brokers. It’s a nifty idea, gives some love to the brokers, and hopefully gets a transaction started now and then.
But this past week the haterz showed up and started blasting the prices attached to the listings. Perhaps some of them are a bit on the high side, but at least most of the names themselves look pretty good to me.
So Elliot apparently had enough and asked people to put their money where their mouth was. His exact offer was:
Feel free to post your best domain names that you would like to sell at the best prices, and we can see how they stack up against the names the brokers listed yesterday.
The results proved Elliot’s point.
Not only are 99% of the domains posted not priced well, but very few of the domain names are good at any price. If these are people’s “best” domain names, they don’t stack up anywhere near the brokers’ names.
This led to some uncharacteristically sarcastic comments from Elliot; the type you’re inclined to make after people gripe about something and then have nothing to back it up.
At this point I’m still in the eyewear store, sitting on a chair laughing out loud.
There’s a hard truth out there. We think that what we own is better than it is. It’s a play on the endowment effect/divestiture aversion. You see this a lot with homeowners as well; everyone thinks their home is the best and worth more than market reality.
There’s at least a small bit of good news from Elliot’s post: it seems that at least one person who posted found a buyer for his domain name.
DR.DOMAIN says
Truth hurts…but it’s still the truth.
RaTHeaD says
tooth hurts… but i hate the dentist.
Acro says
Hi Andrew, I have a few important questions.
1. How much did you pay for your new eyeglasses.
2. Why lenses and not contacts?
3. Do you believe glasses make domainers appear more sophisticated?
On the subject of Elliot’s post, we already knew in advance Elliot has the best domains but people feel compelled to spam their assets regardless. Elliot should not have felt “depressed”, the list was quite entertaining.
adam says
fun post. glad he (and now you) took the suggestion and shined a light on this a little.
Monarch says
Respectfully, not because your the top bloggers or have been domaining for many years does not make you right.
A buyer will buy a domain quicker if its cheap (no brainier). They will be much more hesitant if the domain price is higher obviously.
Who sets the market? Buyers do….and they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Domains have no set market level because anyone can choose another name at anytime which will kill the million dollar purchase.
Well like to think our domain is better than the next guys and then go as far as comparing previous sales. At the end of the day, end users will pay what they can afford. Saying domains are priced incorrectly is bold and far from the truth. Its an open ended market that fluctuates and their is no set pricing level for any name. If they want it they will buy it for whatever price they can afford.
All this and Elliot’s post confirm is that everyone, even the veterans, think they have the formula for selling domains. The simple fact that lowering the price makes it more appealing to buyers doesn’t mean your somehow giving the industry a indication on what their prices should be.
I am a fan of all your posts but come on guys, posts like this are futile and only creates opinionated rants like mine. But im sure if you think about it, you can see im right.
-Monarch
deano says
Monarch you are not remotely close to right. Most of the prices on Elliot’s post were not priced low, they were bad regs that were not worth $10 that were priced at $5000. So Andrew was right and you were wrong.
Andrew Allemann says
The impetus behind Elliot’s post was people were getting on him for the names he posted in his broker article. He wanted someone to show a great domain (like most of those from the brokers) at better prices. Some of the domains listed the comments were OK for their price (and that’s a small percentage), but it pretty much proved Elliot’s point.
Todd says
The domain market is fascinating to me right now in this weird state.
scott alliy says
Hasn’t any read or do you rememer Rick’s S advice?
the buyer sets the price
the seller sets the value
you have neither won nor list money until you drop or sell any domain name.
scott alliy says
sorry for the misspelling. joys of using ipad while traveling
Nic says
Excellent post. Personal, colourful, informative, insightful, topical etc.
Doc says
From what I’ve read, it seems that Elliot believes the only domains with real value are those of the highly searched variety (i.e. generic keywords). As Mike Berkens has pointed out numerous times this year, the future of domaining is in “brandable domains”. The proof is in the pudding; we’ll see who’s right over the next few years.
Is it just me, or does Elliot come across as a know-it-all a-hole much of the time?
Elliot Silver says
@ Doc
I can only advise on what I know, and I don’t invest in brandable names. Mike has done well with them and that’s great. Mike also owns tens of thousands of names and I own fewer than 500. I invest almost exclusively in keyword .com names, and selling them is how I earn the majority of my living.
If you come to my blog to get my advice, you should assume I am going to have opinions based on my experience. There are many ways to make money in this space, and I would be the first to admit that I don’t know all there is to know about everything with respect to this business. I can only advise on what I’ve been successful at and what I’ve failed at, and I think that’s what I do.
If you think I come across as an a-hole, my apologies.
trital says
how do you think invest in 3 letter domains?
i saw http://www.ukc.com is at the greatdomains aution now. recently there are some LLL.com sold pretty good