For your other points :
1) I’ve known very few domainers who’ve needed to liquidate the 5-6 fig names they hold. It’s just not usually a problem for a domainer to need to do that. The ones I’ve seen do it (Cleaning.com, Trumpet.com, etc) have been successful so it’s something that domainers with this level of name should look to as an example of how domains can be liquidated through an auction.

2. I can’t answer that question but I’m going to say I know several put a great deal of effort in to promoting the high dollar domains from what they’ve told me. Again this is their job so if they aren’t doing it than they’re negligent imho. If I auction a domain I do my own level of marketing yes, but again one of the most important jobs of an auctioneer is to get the crowds to the venue. It’s what they’re paid to do. If they’re doing a 1/2-assed job then you’ll see the results and the market will gravitate toward the company doing it right.

3. Yes. I agree it’s mostly the lower tier names that get grumpy about their name not being featured or promoted but I already agreed that they shouldn’t have an expectation that their $100 domain is going to get the same effort as the $1m domain. The reason why a person would sell a domain for 6fig+ at auction is because they know it will sell (it’s priced right) and they trust the company the are working with is going to drive in more bidders so that the price is maximized.

4. I think the auction house would welcome a joint effort on promotions. In fact it should be encouraged and all promotions should be transparent. Again I can’t speak for others. I have helped in promotional efforts for several auctions and I believe the efforts were all made public.

I think we’ll see a flood of people doing these sort of DIY/white-label auctions in the near future and the ones that will be successful will be the ones who can do the best marketing.

True, true, and true.

I say they are here to stay. They obviously are taking the long term approach.

By not charging a commission they got a lot of good marketing and good will out of it.

If the complainers think it’s all automatic and an easy way to make a buck… start your own auction house. But than they would be complaining about domainers and their overly optimistic values on their shit names; about how they can’t make a living on 10% or 20%; blah, blah, blah.

Andrei hit it with “most auctions are won by domainers, let’s keep that in mind”. We sell names to end users quite often but one must keep in mind who an end user is.

Most domainers believe an end user is a Coca-Cola or GM however this is rarely the case. Many of the end users at this moment in time are developers and small business where average selling price is somewhere around 5-10k (an area where Name Media and Fabulous have excelled for years).

We are also at a point in time where many “domainers” (where I use this term to define only those domain investors who park domains and/or genuinely have had little skill in development) have already collected great portfolios and no longer have to pay 10 or $20,000 for a domain since market conditions exist where really good alternate names can be found at great prices.

The landrush or race for expiring domains is not a “take anything we can get” mentality anymore since the largest portfolio owners have what they need and many middle tier domainers are feeling crunched by the size of the portfolio coupled with their inexperience at monetization outside of Adsense and/or parking. These two elements alone have caused the most drastic decrease to domain values over the past couple years, then factor in the global economy. We will see the domain market improve and domains are very worthy investments but people can not expect $100,000 for a second tier name. This is like winning the lottery. Some will but most will dream.

Every domain owner thinks a GM, Ford, Microsoft or Google-like company should buy their name but in reality most of the domains people are suggesting these companies buy are usually poor to begin with. If the name was really that good and the price fair an end user, even within the domaining world, is not that hard to find.

When we requested submissions we received somewhere around 5,000 domains and what we choose was the best of what we got (of course, subject to our valuation methods). Out of those 5,000 there may have been a few hundred worth considering with the remaining 80% +/- containing terrible keywords, trademarks, celebrity names and more. This math is not unique to us. Every auction house gets the same level of quality when you break down the numbers.

So think … if auction houses are getting 80-90% terrible submissions containing domains which have trademarks, typos, horrible keyword structure and more what does this tell you about opportunity in this industry?

It could mean that only 10-15% of domain investors actually know what they are doing so the question of “how can so many people complain about not selling a name to an end user where only a very small percentage can register or buy names with meaning” could also be asked. This is not an opinion but a theory for thought.

What makes a good name is one of the largest obstacles in our industry moving forward imo since so many variables exist which makes it harder and harder to judge domains as a group versus quantifying them individually for value.

You can only move one mountain at a time but end users are all around – they just might not be GM or Coca-Cola.

D

Now I understand where you’re coming from with the “only pitch gems which are priced to sell to end users” part. In theory, it makes perfect sense but let’s face it:

1) How many domainers are actually willing to go with a low reserve model when auctioning their gems (5-6 figure domains)?

2) How many auction houses are actually willing to invest 5+ hours per (reasonably priced) domain? Would you rather take matters into your own hands and do things by the book or take a pretty important risk by letting an auction house which may end up doing a half-assed job take care of everything?

3) The folks who are auctioning top dollar domains are usually NOT the ones who end up complaining, as strange as it may sound. Again: why would a person who wants to sell a domain for 6 figures rely on the auction house when it comes to all of (or most of) the work? Wouldn’t it be too much of a risk?

4) Let’s assume that you want to work closely together with the auction house in order to make sure that you won’t be contacting some of the same end-users and so on. How many auction houses are actually willing to be 100% transparent by sharing their approach to contacting end-users?