A Look at Results of the recent Domaining.com Newsletters

The newsletters mentioned in previous posts, containing domains contributed by bloggers for the recent Domaining.com sales blast has some interesting results.

There were 9 domains sold for a total of $20,789 with just over $2000 commissions, so each of the 24+ bloggers who promoted the newsletters should receive something around $100 each from the commission pool.

Francious writes with the following take-aways from it:

• It’s allways the same who purchase in the domain aftermarket, newsletter, marketplaces and auctions (a very small pool).
• Established domainers don’t flip and rarely want to sell ar reseller price (even for great causes, even if they own thousands names) so they did not submit names.
• Unfortunately most of the ones who listed names were mainly new domainers who registered low value domains priced as their best name (at a moment I was afraid with Shane to not find 100 decent names).
• Domainers rarely buy over 10% Estibot appraisal suggested names, I have seen this for years now, they will not pay thousands dollars if they cannot hope x10+ times the acquisition price one day.

And personally I was surprised by all the work required behind the scene, it was really much more time of dedication, negotiation, … I initially planned but well, it was for a great cause.

So, it’s an interesting result, given that it’s mostly a domain blogger driven event. Regardless of whether you see it as a great success or an interesting experiment, I look forward to the next one.

My view is that very few would be willing to submit their highest quality domains for assured wholesale prices. The economic realities are harsh for the casual or average domainer. Those who are managing to make good headway during this period are doing something right, so it pays to see what that is and see how close you can get to that market space.

Overall, exceptionally good domain names are hard to come by. I submitted a domain worth at least $1000 to an end-user but nobody else saw the value at $549. It wasn’t sexy enough and I knew it wasn’t my best deal. But, did I want to let that one word domain go for less than $500? I actually didn’t plan to offer it at all but did so because of Francois’ positive energy.

I hope the next newsletter brings better domains and better prices – it might just do that after people have taken a look at the details. Again, thanks Francios, it has been interesting to see it unfold.