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Appraisals and NameBio - Wrong Resource?

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I have been looking at Namebio and their sales. They report all the sales from platforms across Sedo, Godaddy, Flippa etc. which includes both end users and reseller sales from platforms like DropCatch.

Now many of these sales are domainer sales(reseller prices). And hence, the prices that have been registered there are only reseller prices which is not a true indicator of the real value of the domain name sold.
Wouldn't you agree?

In that aspect, don't you think taking NameBio as a reference for a particular keyword or a domain name, may be misleading at times, given the reseller pricing included on the platform, while we as domainers, target the end-users?
 
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Not all reported sales at NameBio are genuine because some sales end up not paying and are either re-auctioned or goes to 2nd highest bidder to pay. In both cases, the final selling price gets changed.

But NameBio tries it's best to keep records as updated and accurate as possible. I consider NameBio a good indicator to look up sales to have a general idea.
 
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I don’t look there for pricing, Just to check keyword popularity if I am unsure.
 
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I have been looking at Namebio and their sales. They report all the sales from platforms across Sedo, Godaddy, Flippa etc. which includes both end users and reseller sales from platforms like DropCatch.

Now many of these sales are domainer sales(reseller prices). And hence, the prices that have been registered there are only reseller prices which is not a true indicator of the real value of the domain name sold.
Wouldn't you agree?

In that aspect, don't you think taking NameBio as a reference for a particular keyword or a domain name, may be misleading at times, given the reseller pricing included on the platform, while we as domainers, target the end-users?
If you’re pricing for retail use the retail comps, if you’re pricing for wholesale use the wholesale comps. If there aren’t enough comps of the type you’re looking for apply some kind of multiplier.

I don’t understand the logic behind ignoring all the data because we have a mix of both. You’re one step ahead of most people in realizing there’s a difference and being able to tell them apart. Now use that :)

That said, I would argue that there is no such thing as a retail appraisal. It depends more on who the buyer and seller are, and their respective financial positions, than the domain itself. That’s why retail sales are all over the place.

A domain in my hands will retail for significantly less than it would if it were held by the “greats” of the industry because I can’t afford to say no as long as they can. A domain would retail for more if a Fortune 500 was inquiring vs a mom-and-pop.

It’s not like wholesale where a reasonably efficient market with a lot of participants sets the price. It’s just two random people at a random point in time.
 
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Not all reported sales at NameBio are genuine because some sales end up not paying and are either re-auctioned or goes to 2nd highest bidder to pay. In both cases, the final selling price gets changed.

But NameBio tries it's best to keep records as updated and accurate as possible. I consider NameBio a good indicator to look up sales to have a general idea.
Absolutely! Valid point Abdul. In fact, I have been thinking and looking at this, and I realize that that you have to make two categories in Namebio when doing your research. Ones that happen at Godaddy and DropCatch etc. And the others at Afternic, Sedo, Uniregistry, BuyDomains etc. to differentiate the end user and reseller sales.
What do you say?

I don’t look there for pricing, Just to check keyword popularity if I am unsure.
Credible resource in that aspect.

If you’re pricing for retail use the retail comps, if you’re pricing for wholesale use the wholesale comps. If there aren’t enough comps of the type you’re looking for apply some kind of multiplier.

I don’t understand the logic behind ignoring all the data because we have a mix of both. You’re one step ahead of most people in realizing there’s a difference and being able to tell them apart. Now use that :)

That said, I would argue that there is no such thing as a retail appraisal. It depends more on who the buyer and seller are, and their respective financial positions, than the domain itself. That’s why retail sales are all over the place.

A domain in my hands will retail for significantly less than it would if it were held by the “greats” of the industry because I can’t afford to say no as long as they can. A domain would retail for more if a Fortune 500 was inquiring vs a mom-and-pop.

It’s not like wholesale where a reasonably efficient market with a lot of participants sets the price. It’s just two random people at a random point in time.
Valid point! But still, getting an idea on what to retail for, not generalizing it, would help.
In that case, we should segregate at our end and see that we are looking at the right set of data.
I am talking about a use case where you are putting it for BIN. You need to put up a price and for that, you need a reference, isn't it?
 
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Valid point! But still, getting an idea on what to retail for, not generalizing it, would help.
In that case, we should segregate at our end and see that we are looking at the right set of data.
I am talking about a use case where you are putting it for BIN. You need to put up a price and for that, you need a reference, isn't it?

The easiest way to find the retail sales after you select your filters is to just sort by price descending instead of worrying about the venues. You'll miss a lot of random sales from domainers/brokers only looking at certain venues. Although you're right that some venues are predominantly one type or the other.

Pricing is different from appraising though. You can fairly easily do a wholesale appraisal because there's an established market with lots of data. I still don't think it's possible to do a retail appraisal, if you want proof of that watch the older DomainSherpas where they used to play the "Name That Price Game" and guess what price a retail sale went for. The guesses were all over the place. You can obviously come up with a retail price to put on your names, but it's a spectrum not a science.

There's not really a right answer when it comes to retail pricing, it all just boils down to this: the higher you price it the lower the chance it has of selling and the longer it will take. It's about finding a balance that works for you. If you owned Cars.com and you priced it at $1k it would be sold in seconds, if you priced it at $2m it would be sold in a matter of weeks, if you priced it at $15m it would probably take several years, and if you priced it at $10 billion it would never sell. The same applies to any domain.

It depends a lot on your own personal strategy and cash flow needs. Lets say, for example, that you mostly used comps from BuyDomains to price your names. Well they own a boatload of domains and have a churn-and-burn strategy, so they're pricing low and making up for it on volume. They can do this both because of the size of their portfolio and because they're exceptionally good at replacing inventory on the cheap. But if you own 100 names that are solid quality, and you have trouble replacing them, following their lead on pricing would be a mistake. You would want to emulate someone who has a similar model to you.

I think if you look at enough retail data you'll just end up pricing everything in a fairly standard way. Low quality names that are easy to replace in the $2k - $5k range, good names in the $5k to $25k range, and great names left as "make offer". And where you lean in the range would depend on your own strategy.

Yes, I guess if you're trying to price for high velocity, and most comps are in the $2k range and a couple of outliers are in the low five-figures, that would give you a pretty decent idea of where to price it at. Or if you're feeling spicy and want to shoot the moon you could aim towards those outliers. But again I think most people will just end up towards that standard anyway.

I think retail comps are most useful in negotiations, not pricing. Although it would be a good idea to look at the comps first to make sure you can justify your price if you get called out on it.
 
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Absolutely! Valid point Abdul. In fact, I have been thinking and looking at this, and I realize that that you have to make two categories in Namebio when doing your research. Ones that happen at Godaddy and DropCatch etc. And the others at Afternic, Sedo, Uniregistry, BuyDomains etc. to differentiate the end user and reseller sales.
What do you say?

Yes, that's the right way to understand clearly.
 
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Does comps mean competitors ?

Also im not sure if i got the final verdict, so on name bio if a domain is sold on Godaddy auctions = Wholesale prices. Whereas if it's sold through brokerages = Retail price ?
 
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Does comps mean competitors ?

Also im not sure if i got the final verdict, so on name bio if a domain is sold on Godaddy auctions = Wholesale prices. Whereas if it's sold through brokerages = Retail price ?
The word "comps" is short for "comparable sales", meaning they share similar characteristics to the domain you're trying to appraise.

Wholesale vs. Retail is not quite as simple as looking at the venue, because some of them like Sedo and Flippa are mixed. Others like Park are mostly wholesale, but do have some retail mixed in. It's rare but two end users could also duke it out on a mainly wholesale venue like DropCatch or NameJet.

I would summarize it like this:

If you're looking for retail sales, just sort by price descending.

Mostly Retail: BuyDomains, NamePull, Uniregistry, DomainMarket, Afternic, DAN, Efty, Epik, Private, Brokers & Portfolio Sites
Mostly Wholesale: Park.io, Sav, Register.to, Docky, GoDaddy, NameJet, DropCatch, Dynadot, Catched, SnapNames, Whois.ai, NamesCon
Mixed: Sedo, Flippa

But you also have to just look at the data and figure it out. For example if there are a lot of sales in the $5k neighborhood and they're likely retail venues, and then you see a sale in the $xxx range at Sedo, it was probably an auction and thus wholesale.
 
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Great explanation ! Thank you Michael, exactly what I wanted to know.

And when you mean to sort them by ascending, this will show me domains sold at retail, but they're if they're not too comparable for what I'm trying to acquire or sell ... won't really matter.

So instead perhaps if I find say michael.com on namebio sold on Godaddy auctions for $20k, and that's the only sale in the history of it. Then we can assume that wholesale price = 20K, and retail = (10X) $200K , seems about right ?
 
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