When will domain sellers wake up. Or will they?

[MrSavage]

Most people are slow to adjust to changing times. It's 2017 and those "business" folks who hold domains and hope to cash in, will reality every come into play? Okay, $1000 asking price. In today's world, what is your Google organic traffic looking like? How about Adsense revenue. Oh, Amazon changed (reduced) their payouts. So would anyone thinking that $1000 for a domain makes any sense? Invest a $1000 in that domain and take 2, 3, 4 years to recover those costs, if you're lucky? Even then the downward trend for organic traffic isn't going to go in the other direction.

I know that scalpers don't sell low because they would rather eat it than do that. Places like Sedo are funny. People apparently have little clue about the "business" that once supported these kinds of purchases. Value in domains? Honestly, the ship has sailed. The question is whether the "sellers" will wake up or is being ignorant par for the course? The model of keyword domain, adsense and affiliate earning heaven along with organic traffic stream is as dead a hit (missing the s).

Wake up, Your domains are worthless except to the few ignorant people setting out for the promised land. 90% dead, with 10% of domains that might have some worth. So the question is, will people who sell domains ever wake up?

[LifeinAsia]

There was a domain that I was interested in that had a $60 min. bid. I really had to debate whether it was worth that much to me. (Yeah, I'm a cheap *ss, but it's not something I have the resources to develop right now, but wanted to have for future development.) I eventually placed a $60 bid. The auction ended and was immediately extended. That extension ended and it was automatically extended again. I contacted the company and withdrew my bid. Months later, it was still going on with the $60 min. bid. Went to the Wayback Machine and saw that it's been parked with no content for many years. Dude, if no one's been interested in it in all these years, maybe you should jump on it when someone finally offers you your min. asking price. (This was about 2 years ago. For fun, I just looked up the domain again- now the min. bid is $90.)

Later, another domain that I was interested in had expired, but the registrar was holding on to it and had a $80 min. bid. Contacted them and offered $40, but never head back. Several months later, saw that the domain had gone back into the wild and I scooped it up for the regular registration price.

So yeah, I completely agree with you.

[lucy24]

I looked it up. For auctions-in-general--not specifically domains--there's almost never a requirement to disclose the reserve, or even to say that there is a reserve. And then you get into long discussions about whether having an undisclosed reserve is ultimately beneficial to the seller, or not. If this argument has been going on for centuries, it's hardly a surprise that domainers--who think they've invented a whole new business--haven't settled on an approach.

[MrSavage]

Well I can speak for my own reality which is this. I really don't give a damn about the many domains and or sites that are expiring in my account. I would say I ran a pretty common (and dying) business model of monetization. It's called the forecast. I'm not smarter than anyone else. I will say that I know the lay of the land and where this is trending. I would not want to be GoDaddy or Sedo. I would not want to be a clown who thinks people are going to pay even a hundred or two hundred dollars on a domain name that has a use for the dying (dead) business model. I would not want to be a server company or an affiliate company. All of these companies are dependent on a dying business model. The people holding domains thinking that somebody in 2017 is going to "kill it" on Google organic traffic which they can monetize is clueless. In a sense the death of that business of holding domains for no apparent reason deserves a slow death. I hope I'm still alive to see that crumble. I mean perhaps people are banking on there being another access to the web outside of Google. There may be a Google alternative in the future, but to that I say good luck.

[keyplyr]

A couple years ago one of my web design clients paid $8k for a TLD name. She said the seller said it would help her get higher ranking.

Point is, the sellers might be out of touch, but there are customers just as clueless.

[engine]

I agree, the idea of hanging onto a domain for a profit is long gone, unless you have a real choice domain.
I cleared out almost all of my early acquisitions, retaining only a few that do have some potential. All of my EMDs are now gone, and only a few have been picked up, and have a holding page.

A couple years ago one of my web design clients paid $8k for a TLD name.

If that was a choice name, fine.

She said the seller said it would help her get higher ranking.

Ouch!

[Webwork]

In a competitive business landscape it's wise to leverage every advantage, especially those that cannot be duplicated. In markets of millions, tens of millions, or even billions there is a multiplier effect of small advantages. Hotels.com.

If, in order to build an association between a Web address and a brand, one must spend $$$$$, over and over, what's the advantage of a built in association? If you've already built a brand then owning an industry defining domain can still be prophylactic, depriving an upstart from eating away at your existing brand equity. Loans.com is owned by BankAmerica.

A robust Web address is not be a "game over" competitive advantage. Pets.com proved that circa 1999-2000. Yet, given the financial resources, many businesses opt for the advantage of a simple, self-evident, industry defining domain. PetsMart owns Pets.com.

Is it a good decision to pay $,$$$,$$$ to own Data.com? Some bright minds at a very successful organization concluded it was. SalesForce bought Data.com recently for $,$$$,$$$. In a data driven world what's the small advantage to a large corporation?

Maybe the value of a keyword domain fell a bit when search engines declared they would reduce the weighting of keywords in domains.

Then social, as a source of traffic, took off.

Is owning a robust keyword domain advantageous when it's humans, not machines, who are the actors, the decision makers? When it's humans who are recalling and creating the address references, trying to remember the associations, who are creating the links, the mentions, citations, etc.?

Lastly, with SERPs space continuously continuously losing ground to ads and owned properties discovery optimization is becoming as relevant, if not as important as, rank in SERPs. In such a reality it can only help to be discoverable intuitively.

In such a world even a small advantage, when multiplied by all the channels - search, social and otherwise - that small advantage can add up to an advantage that can build, sustain and secure a business's place in memory and the market.

[tangor]

What's the discussion? Is it dumb to hang on to domains hoping for a better price when selling or paying too much for a domain that won't make a difference?

A domain name is what you make of it. Webwork outlined the many advantages of SOME domain names over others, but just as accurately a nonsense domain can become a brand beyond compare (try google or bing as examples) simply by pushing it.

Those who hoard names in hopes of making a killing are operating a business. Do I think it will make them a fortune or leave them forever in the hole? Who cares.

The only domain names I am most concerned with are mine, my clients, and the ones that are easy to type and remember THAT I USE. Anything else doesn't mean a thing to me.

[zulu_dude]

I think there's a definite distinction between two types of domains... generic, super keyword domains that people think are going to define an industry (e.g. pets.com).

Then there are the thousands of domains sold every day that have real value to the buyers because they're directly linked to their business... and the catch here is that although the domains probably aren't worth anything to anyone else (e.g. how many Joes are there that sell bikes who would be interested in JoesBikes.com?) they are worth a lot to that particular person/business. For the right business, paying $1,000 for this kind of domain is absolutely worth it. I've sold similar domains for more than $1,000 for precisely that reason. The more businesses the domain would appeal to (without becoming too generic as that then devalues it), the more it's worth.

And the second type of domain ties in to what Webwork said about social media playing an ever larger part in discovering sites... it's all very well telling your friends that you bought a great bike from Joe, but if his domain is joes-bikes-indiana-is-the-best.com, how many customers is Joe going to lose purely because his website is so hard to share?

It's almost coming full circle back to domains being more important than they were 10 years ago, not because of search engines, but because of ease of sharing... who woulda thunk it ;)

[ChanandlerBong]

we bid $700 for keyword1-keyword2.com in 2007. Guy replied "won't take a penny less than 12k". I tried to make him see sense, we went elsewhere, basically came up with our own invented one word domain that we loved more than the one we'd try to buy...forced us to use our brains, basically.

In 2009, said domain was sold for $130.

I'm very sorry to admit that, yes, I am petty enough to have penned him an email saying "bet that $700 looks good about now".

I will go to petty email hell, already all packed and ready to go.

[bwnbwn]

The key to a domain selling is looking at future trends. I made the mistake of buying some really good domains in a market that has since gone south. Sure the ones I have are still good but nothing like 8 years ago. Do I hang onto them or sell them for 20.00 I don't know but I do know they are not worth much now.

Most emails well all are Hey I see you own this domain are you interested in this domain. I reply back no but are you interested in mine.