… and by amazing domains, I mean for example solid one worders priced to sell and not priced in an “I don’t really want to sell so I’ll ask for a price that covers my retirement when pitching it to domainers” manner.
On the one hand, there’s less liquidity on the reseller market than in the past but on the other hand, it’s not like the market is flooded with quality inventory. Quite the opposite, in fact.
It’s flooded with let’s call them “wholesale” domains (and therefore, selling such inventory is getting harder and harder) but when it comes to genuinely amazing domains priced to sell… totally different story.
As someone who follows the reseller market closely, just thought I’d write about this state of affairs. Pretty interesting but at the same time, not surprising if you understand the fundamentals behind this development.
August 24th, 2013 at 12:32 pm
There are only several hundred domains quality of white.com. Domainer priced inventory is pretty much at zero. Once the expectation of being able to buy a name like that at domainer price goes away, more sales will start happening at end user price, and that often means ten-fold price premium.
Right now a lot of end users feel stupid paying ten-fold premium for something that they still have a small hope of buying at domainer price. That hope needs to go away so end users can start feeling good about buying at ten-fold premium. We are almost there.
August 24th, 2013 at 1:31 pm
@J: hmm, you’re basically saying that you think the reseller market will disappear.
Even if the price argument you mentioned has its merits, it’s important to understand that without a reseller market, there’s no liquidity.
Right now, if you need some quick liquidity, you can sell a LLL dot com for example and bam, problem solved. Without a reseller market, you’d have to wait until the right end user comes along and even for great domains, that takes time.
August 24th, 2013 at 2:03 pm
There are some nice one word dot coms being built upon lately:
avenue.com
path.com
conduit.com
square.com
zeal.com
amazon.com
match.com
besides stalwarts like:
frost.com
dow.com
delta.com
so, the value of a brandable dot com is known for prestige and authority. Maybe that’s why few appear at market any longer!
Media Options has a blog post how it invested in white.com to wait for the right buyer, because of the rarity of one-word brandable dot coms.
That said, I am surprised how many one word dot coms sell at reasonable prices on Sedo and Afternic, as reported at theDomains, such as:
meaning.com $20,000 June 25th
hippies.com $13,000 June 11th
clams.com $12,500 August 13th
and the like.
August 24th, 2013 at 4:41 pm
stop being cheap. if I owned white. the price would be 3,000,000 the buyer would be corp not a “domainer” .
August 24th, 2013 at 8:30 pm
Andrei,
I think when it comes to the very top quality domains like white.com, future pricing issues will be similar to high-end paintings or license plates –
http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1086447_a-kahn-design-founder-rejects-9-35-million-offer-for-f1-license-plate
Supply of white.com peers probably shrinks by several percent every year; and we are close to zero supply already. So future price increases can be very volatile similar to F1 license plate example above. I do not see any future liquidity for white.com peers. Just like there is no liquidity for license plates like F1.