Comments

1. windy_city says

   September 23, 2014 at 6:21 pm

   …seriously, it appears as though the complacency the staff had for so long drifts them to underachieve yet again…

2. Chris Brennan says

   September 23, 2014 at 7:39 pm

   you may be right i may be crazy
   but…
   fontism.com $4999
   activitycloud.com $5000
   lumikids.com $5000

   are people buying useless domains because they have english words, or because they have money and they have to buy something or because they have money and they are stupid.

   looking at the list of sold sedo domains i (who am no one) feel that a lot of people are shelling out major bucks for some pathetic domains.

   good for the sellers, good for the industry sort term, bad for the people with money buying stupid no end user domains long term.

   • cmac says

     September 23, 2014 at 8:00 pm

     how do you know its not end users buying them?

     • Chris Brennan says

       September 23, 2014 at 10:33 pm

       i don’t, ———–just expressing an opinion, i am not a n expert, but i do have eyes and ears and some intellect.

   • Louise says

     September 23, 2014 at 8:43 pm

     @ Chris Brennan hello! Do you not read Techmeme and see how brandable names are favorite of new companies? Names such as:
     twittr
     google itself a misspell of googol
     pinterest
     hootsuite
     vimeo
     instagram
     tumblr

     The above are so mainstream they seem institution! Some new ones I never heard of:

     Wanelo – shopping app
     Clinkle – mobile wallet
     Prss – digital magazine

     If you go over to Brandbucket and study those, brandable dot coms on offer there, you see $5,000 is not too much for a company or product brand. Fontism could easily be a website featuring fonts for the graphics industry, and lumikids, lightup wear for tots? I like it. AcitivityCloud, most the cloud domains are taken. $5,000 is not too high, from what I have seen.

     But, I don’t know anything, either. Just I wanted to point out to you that a good brandable seems more popular among startups than a meaningful dot com!

     • Chris Brennan says

       September 23, 2014 at 9:15 pm

       it’s nice to here from a point of view who at least proffers to know as little as me.

       i really appreciate your “i don’t know anything either”

       the truth is that who knows best describes the sage.

   • DanielBallardP says

     September 24, 2014 at 8:35 am

     You may not see the value in activitycloud.com but that does not mean that others don’t either.. i for example feel it was even a bit of a steal, as i can easily imagine this pretty general cloud name to be a solution for storing or sharing all kinds of activities.. it must not even have been an enduser to shell out these $5000 usd, some domain investors would easily pay more for it..

3. Michael Berkens says

   September 23, 2014 at 8:51 pm

   Chris but fair to say if any of those “crazy domains” that sold on Sedo were yours you would think the prices the buyer paid were more than fair

4. Chris Brennan says

   September 23, 2014 at 9:04 pm

   once again i am not criticizing or in any way looking at domain name sellers, get the best price you can.

   just wondering where the buyers are looking and where there perceptions are in regards to keyword value.

   some of the $ 5k sedo keywords are to me infantile.

   i would rather a 4 word meaningful keyword domain to a two power word meaningless domain name.

   this is only my interpretation, but who are you to think that i am stupid, isn’t it enough that i have proclaimed it myself.

5. Chris Brennan says

   September 23, 2014 at 9:10 pm

   vodooo.COM could be a good brand-able domain

   it is available for reg fee

   the point here is that a tiny portion of so called brand-able domains will ever be picked up by end users, yet this is what domain investors are chasing.

   while every meaningful (regardless of length) keyword domain will eventually have value. and yes this is my humble opinion.

   • Domenclature.com says

     September 23, 2014 at 10:08 pm

     @Chris Brennan,

     Let me first first state that I am on your side, in this. Yes, it’s perplexing to see the weekly sales, even daily ones, of these aftermarkets, Sedo, Godaddy, Afternic, etc. To add injury, these sales are parroted by loquacious bloggers many times a day, without questioning anything about their propriety, or impropriety; domainers (bloggers) have much better names, languishing in the same aftermarkets, where every shenanigans abound to keep the cycle recurring. Strangely, the domainers themselves will check you, if you raise any issues on this; you are lucky Berkens, and Louise, went easy on you. That’s probably because, you had only pointed out the physical factors concerning the names, rather than a holistic view of domain aftermarkets; that would have taken into account mental, social, perhaps more sinister factors, as I see it.

     Unlike you, I do not accept the process as natural. I think there’s something going on. No, I don’ think people will choose good or better. People, in my opinion, are rational actors. The better domain names are often at the same venue as the poor ones; most times cheaper, yet these phantom buyers, on a weekly basis, NAY! daily, choose trash over gold…

     There is something more sinister going on in these markets.

     • Lennard Bouma says

       September 24, 2014 at 4:30 am

       and coneheads secretly rule the world….
       

6. Kenn Wagenheim says

   September 24, 2014 at 1:12 am

   Chris Said: “vodooo.COM could be a good brand-able domain”

   If that’s what your basing your pricing “thoughts” on, I’ve got to highly disagree. No marketing person in their right mind would try to brand “vodooo”. I’m even fighting with autocorrect to type it. It corrects it to voodoo as soon as I hit space. No one would be happier about someone blowing ad $$$ on that name than voodoo.com. Just type “vodooo” (auto-corrected 3 times just now) into Google.

   In general, I think it’s not nearly as easy to “generate a brand” on a .com than tossing some letters up like your example. You can not possibly be serious trying to place “lumikids.com” and “fontism.com” in the same school as “vodooo.com”, let alone the same class. In fact, IMHO, your example of a name that’s totally worthless sheds some light on those short other names being worth “something”.

   Lumi Kids is a decent brand, especially for $5k. There’s a facebook page for that one; if they’re serious in any way, $5k for their .com is a no brainer.
   https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lumi-Kids/381903761935025
   … IF this turns into their domain or something like it.

   “Fontism” is actually a “thing”. For example:
   http://www.pinterest.com/karenpercelle/fontism/
   … So for a font designer or creative firm that focuses on the use of fonts, again, $5k is a pretty cheap toss out for the .com.

   But yes: I’ll grant you that if these stay undeveloped for a long period… there’s some high levels of “I’ve got extra money, so I’m going to speculate on some wild stuff” going on. 😉

   • Domenclature.com says

     September 24, 2014 at 8:13 am

     The chief point is that once something has a page on the internet, or a Facebook page it’s valuable?

     I think it’s harder to point to a thing that’s not mentioned on the internet, than what are. Surely that can’t be the standard.

     • Kenn Wagenheim says

       September 24, 2014 at 12:10 pm

       Once someone takes the time to setup anything it by nature has some value to them … or they wouldn’t have invested the time to set it up. Value to them then depends on how they value their time.

       To the example I replied to, vodooo isn’t mentioned on the Internet… thank goodness. But in that case, I’d argue that anyone who’d invest time in setting a vodooo page on Facebook was an idiot. 😉

7. Ramahn says

   September 24, 2014 at 12:19 pm

   Thank you. I’ve been screaming this for a while now (this blog, Ricks blog..). Every week the most random (usually two word) names that have zero meaning selling for mid 5 figures on Sedo. Every week their reported sales always seem to be around the same amount. What’s going on. I don’t ever remember seeing “crap” or meaningless names selling on DNS (for example, along with Godaddy or even namejet), and they don’t put out bogus sales reports that magically match the previous weeks sales either.

8. Louise says

   September 24, 2014 at 4:07 pm

   On Archive.org, Lumikids.com was an established brand from 2004-March 2005. Maybe the original owner took back his brand.

   The problem with domain names is how easy it is for the brand builder to lose the domain to a Registrar and on to the aftermarket, after his hard work to create an online reputation. These domains with genuine backlinks are in demand.

   • Louise says

     September 24, 2014 at 4:08 pm

     Finnish brand. Here is the link:
     https://web.archive.org/web/20050325092130/http://www.lumikids.com