I’ve written about LLLL.coms yesterday and since there’s been quite a bit of interest in LLLs over the past 24 hours after a ~10k CHIP LLL price drop (blog as well as forum discussions), I think it’s time to discuss LLL.coms from an end user perspective.

I’ll do my best to make this post shorter than yesterday’s.

The conclusion of yesterday’s LLLL article has been that unfortunately, most LLLL.coms just don’t have all that much end user potential.

What about LLL.coms?

Well, let me just say that yes, the likelihood of selling to an end user is higher with LLLs because:

1) they’re one letter shorter (Captain Obvious, I know) and therefore tend to have more acronym potential, only having 3 vs. 4 letters helps more than you might realize

2) they’re more memorable and as such, can be bought as brandables rather than acronyms by end users; sure, such an end user is probably less motivated to make substantial offers than if your LLL represents the perfect acronym but still, it’s good that this possibility exists

As great as all of this is, there’s just one problem with a business model which revolves around the idea of buying LLLs with the intention of holding until the right end user comes along: they’re too darn expensive!

In other words, prices went up so much that I just can’t see such a business model working.

I mean seriously, let’s assume a deep-pocketed investor buys 100 CHIP LLLs at an average price of $35,000 each, spending a grand total of $3,500,000.

That’s a huge amount and the investor obviously wants to make money.

Easier said than done!

Anyone who has been involved in end user negotiations knows that even large companies can be very tight when deciding how much they’re willing to spend on a domain.

Now go to Domaining.com’s list of top domain sales ever by clicking here.

What do we notice?

We notice that if the investor were to sell a LLL.com for $150,001, then that would represent one of the top 500 recorded sales of ALL TIME… position 466 at the moment of writing, to be precise.

Now divide the $3,500,000 total investment by $150,001 and you’ll realize the investor would have to sell 23 out of his 100 domains (23%) at $150,001 each just to break even.

In other words, he’d need 23 sales that make the top 500 all-time list just to break even…

Guys, this is ridiculous.

I really don’t think I need to continue this post.

The bottom like is that common sense tells us something simple: with reseller market values so high, you’ll fail if you buy LLL.coms with the intention of selling to end users. The acquisition price is just too darn high right now.

As with LLLL.coms, the conclusion is therefore simple: LLL dot coms are a reseller market play at today’s prices.

If you think the reseller value will go up, buy some.

If you think it’ll go down or stagnate, don’t buy any.

Buy buying at today’s prices with the intention of selling to end users is just bad business IMO.