BuyDomains.com hasn’t announced it anywhere yet, but I have confirmed that they will no longer report sales of their owned and operated domains.
BuyDomains.com has reporting its domain name sales for quite a while and Ron Jackson has included these sales on DNJournal.com
Also in a change of policy I’m told that brokered domain sales will be kept private upon request of either the Seller OR Buyer.
Unlike Sedo.com which charges 3% extra not to disclose the sale, there will be no fee or charge for keeping the sale private.
There was no explanation given for the change of policy.
However my personal feeling is that the sale of the Blackpad.com domain, which BuyDomains.com sold back in May for chump change, may have something to do with the change of policy.
Personally I think it may actually help the aftermarket as BuyDomains.com usually reports a Lot of low priced domain sales.
At least they aren’t charging extra to keep it under wraps. Sedo charging 3% to keep details of a private transaction confidential is ridiculous. If buyers and/or sellers want to fly under the radar with their purchases and sales then Sedo should respect that, not penalize them for operating their business in a non-public manner.
I think it’s because of a low turnover of domains. Afternic just does not come through for me like Sedo does.
Plus, there is dubious system of inquiries that very rarely seem to lead to sales. My personal feeling is the inquiries are fabricated as the prices I put on domains never lead to sales or even a simple counteroffer.
Domaining
Buyers and Sellers of domains have a choice where to sell or buy their domains.
One of the factor is fees.
While Sedo.com charges an extra 3% to keep a transaction private they only charge 10% commission on sales while BuyDOmains.com charges 20%.
Personally I would prefer to see more sales disclosure as it gives domainers a gauge as to what buyers are willing to pay for certain keyword domains. Of course what gets reported tends to be the higher-end sales but it still serves as a reality check to see reports of median domain sales prices by TLD, etc.
If sales and growth are strong, disclosure and transparency are beneficial. The move raises some questions.
How have your aftermarket sales been holding up?
Might be due to some earlier digging that I did that showed Afternic/Bd selling about 96% of their own domains in a week and only 4% of member listed. A second time I checked it was 85%.
Considering 28% of domains listed on Afternic at the time were NameMedia owned…. one would think member listed domains would be selling at a bit closer rate to the domains they owned since 72% was member listed.
At the time, Pete L was the man who defended it and his statement was because “sellers often asked for their sale to remain private”. I find that really hard to believe considering it is the Buyer who will likely ask, not the seller!
Stronger promotion of their own domains BEFORE member listed was always my thought.
As a domainer, I love seeing domain sales. It gives us all a guide and helps in pricing our domains. As a businessperson, I would never want anyone to know what price I bought or sold an asset. It’s a private transaction and if I want everyone to know I’ll tell them.
Look at GoDaddy sales and see who owns the names. They do. I’ve wondered if they lie about their sales too.
Mike I talked to a couple folks at NM a few months ago and they told me that they felt they were giving away valuable information that was being used by services that compete with them (on appraisals). It seems short-sighted but I can see the competitive advantage of keeping that info in house. It’s valuable
@domain exper “Look at GoDaddy sales and see who owns the names. They do.”
examples please.
BuyDomains.com is still around?
Each person and company’s experience with listing their domains in a marketplace is going to be different, but I can tell you for sure that the best thing *we* ever did was list our domains on Afternic/BuyDomains. Every day, all day long, our domain names sell on BuyDomains and via their distribution channels, and yesterday *alone* we did tens of thousands of dollars in domain sales through them. And that was just one day of sales!
My favourite day of the week is now Monday because we get an email on Monday morning reporting the domains that were sold *over the weekend*. Talk about starting of the week with a bang.
Of course, we also list our domains in other marketplaces, but so far no marketplace can come close to delivering the sales volume for our domains than Afternic/BuyDomains.
If you haven’t tried listing your domains with them, give it a try. Otherwise you may be leaving money on the table.
Make BuyDomains a simpler process to list and I might. Plus this lower your price emails are bunk…
Good
Now all the delusional fanboys can stop mentally masturbating after reading DNjournal every Tuesday evening, when they mentally adjust their fantasy net wealth upwards when they see high sales prices similar to what they have.
Funny thing is that many point to DNJ & say reported sales prices are good for the market, sales transparency blabla.
And sellers often use DNJ sales prices as a benchmark when setting their sales prices.
BUT majority of sellers themselves never disclose their sales prices (private sales) for the “better of the market”. Of course it’s always we have NDA or such..
Double standards.
I sell 5-10 of my own domains a month, and I report all the sales on my blog at
http://www.impulsecorp.com/domain-names-i-recently-sold-august-2010-update
Once in a great while a buyer will ask me to keep a sale private, and I do, but I have no problem with disclosing my sale prices. I have had a few buyers point out some of my low priced sales and try to compare the domain they want with that low price, but i tell them each domain has its own value and just because one domain sells cheap does not mean another one will. I also usually refer buyers who make a low offer to dnjournal.com so they can see the high prices many domains sell for, to adjust their perspective.
It was so obvious this was a sham company.
You list your domains and they get great leads.
They tell their sales reps to lead the buyer to a ‘better’ domain , one they happen to own.
That is what many people spotted immediately.
So nobody is selling domains and they leave.
Now we see buydomanis sending out an email saying sign up for no yearly fee.
So i can help you sell you domains while screwing myself, no thanks.
The fact I paid for it is stupid. The site is a joke.
Its a shame as they were often sales to “endusers” most of the time, whereas most the sales listed on DNjournal over the last few years were from snapnames & namejet drops which were more likely buys…not sales.
Why did snapnames stop listing all their ones on dnjournal, any idea ?
A corporation is always working for it’s stockholders. Customers are the revenue source. Upselling to their own domains is only smart business practice for them. The other domains are bait.
Go in as a buyer and you will see for yourself how the other side of the company works. You have a right as a listing broker to know how they handle things. If you do not know how it works for the buyer you are operating in the dark.
I’ve suggested a new poll just to know if someone (and not only the “bigs”) REALLY makes money selling domains… 😐
Exactly, and it is working. If Sedo does this I will be out of Sedo as well.
As for now I will never do business with buydomains, and Sedo should do well in the long term if other domainers realize buydomains is just upselling.
>> Upselling to their own domains is only smart business practice for them
@Andrew
Bob Mountain from NameMedia here. Really good points. Also – the names need to be priced fairly. We see all too often people overvaluing their domains and as a result they don’t sell. Good quality domains that are priced fairly and listed on our Premium Promotion Program invariably sell at a very high sales velocity.
Bob
Can you share with us the reason why NameMedia made the decision to stop reporting its owned and operated domain sales?
Bob – and correct me if I’m wrong — to use Premium Promotion you either need to a) have domains at partner such as NetSol, Register.com or b) be a large client with API access.
As far as I am aware, you are correct Andrew. Maybe Bob was speaking of the Expanded Promotion.
Andrew, It doesn’t bother you that a company takes over names like that and then brags about the tens of thousands of dollars they sell ? Great. If that’s your idea of a wealth of knowledge, I’ll pass. It bothers me.
Who is Bob to say whether they names are fairly priced. Gimme a break… When did buydomains become an authority on every single industry.
Bruce
I think Bob is just saying that the domain they have sold are priced fairly as evidenced by the sales.
@Bruce We use the same algorithm to set our own pricing and to validate 3rd party domain pricing. If something is too far out of range we decline to list it, keeps boston-premium-local-hosting.net (which I’m sure somebody somewhere is in love with) from listing for $1.2M. We’ve been using and enhancing this system for over 5 years and after many millions of dollars of domain transactions it actually works pretty well.
Thanks for clarifying Jamie, the impact of fair pricing on sales applies to all promotion levels, Basic, Expanded and Premium. Premium gives you exposure to more of our reseller network but the same principals apply. Premium does require the domain to be with one of our Premium Promotion registrar partners which means it won’t work for everyone but the customers who have switched have seen a pretty good lift in sales velocity.
@Bob… No offense intended here, but the process at Afternic is too cumbersome. No one else charges a membership fee also. If you were number one in the world, I could see it bt asking for a membership fee then telling people to lower their prices doesn’t work for me. I listed a name on your site 9-months ago and it was at $5,000 for a one word .com. I received an email asking me to change the pricing to $1,800. At $1,800 I could ell it in a heartbeat on any domain board. A a customer in the passt, I am telling you why I left Afternic. The voice is the cutomer is all that should matter to any domain dealer. That doesn’t happen to often and that is why fewer and fewer domains are sold at these site. When you see hundreds of sales that’s great but when there are 3-million domains, the sales are small in comparison.
@Bruce No offense taken, appreciate the feedback! Always room for improvement, would be interested in specifics, feel free to email me offline mtn at namemedia dot com. Thanks!
@Jamie,
Dude, you probably love conspiracy theories like I do. Probably because if the potential exists for chicanery and business strategy, and doing whatever to stay at the top, it will be done and kept secret.
I am writing a blog about this. It’s a whole different way to look at what’s going on in the domain aftermarket sales industry. Things are going to be blown wide open in the next few months. Domain investors are going to fight back. Groundswell. Justice. Getting the piece of the pie we deserve. (I love playing the common man!)
Like you said, Afternic is selling about 4% of their domain listings, and the rest are from their own inventory. Conflict of interest? An interesting position to ponder… more later. Maybe Em-Bee’s post on this info is just… well, a coincidence – and Name Media is only trying to consider their client’s “feelings”.
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