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news Will you be signing up for a paid Namebio membership?

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Namebio rolled out memberships today, Michael Sumner announced it on the Namebio blog. A lot of new features: Sales Below $100 Search In Bulk Export Your Search Results Saved Searches With Email Notifications There are three paid membership categories Collector $10.00/Month 500 Results Per Search 2,000 Bulk Search Results 5 Saved Searches 10% Off Featured … [Read more...]
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
The question I am trying to get by is - what do I do with 10 pages deep of past sales of "similar keywords" - how many years back do most find useable data - in terms of current pricing? It it certainly interesting to see what (keyword) crypto sold for 10 years ago even 5 - but does data more that 3, 4, 5 years lose relevance? Just trying to wrap my head around the - potential - massive amount of info to process. Curious as to what others use in terms of historical, how far back do find relevant - more important do customers?
 
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For those who just flat out said no, is it that you think the price is too high, the benefits don't interest you, or you just don't want any more (or any at all) monthly subscriptions? More specific feedback would be helpful in shaping the future of the tool. Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

Just answering for myself (obviously!) [although I did not flat out say no but more a maybe] it is more the price point. The benefits definitely interest me. I particularly like the increased number of sales, export features, and sales data for less than $100 sales in the higher two plans.

The saved searches feature I can see being great for some, and have already seen such comments on social media, but for me it is nice but not essential. For me personally I don't see using the promotion for auctions (at least often) so the discounts there don't mean much to me but I can see others would like them. I also don't care much if there are ads or not.

Thanks for a superb product @Michael and these make it even more powerful for those who can afford it.

Thanks for being active in NPs!

Bob
 
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It appears that namebio makes money from advertising. With adblock technologies becoming de-facto standard for surfers, paid subscription (preferably with zero ads) is a natural development. It would be great.
Should namebio become 100% paid service, it would also benefit all domainers who are selling to endusers (as it would be harder for an average enduser to obtain unnecessary info - how much this or that domainer paid /wholesale/ for domain they are trying to purchase /retail/).

Imho, if namebio and np's auctions were paid sub only, your method would work. But, np's auctions are more of a danger in terms of end users trying to surf for prices.
 
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The 500-750 would for sure be too much for most domainers, but another monthly subscription fee is also a pain. I was thinking more of a smaller one time fee for all the light users of the service.

You have to be careful though because I can name numerous situations where someone started to charge for services and a competing site ended up on top. Heck you can even look at namepros as being one of those sites.

As long as there are some free services you will probably do alright but as soon as everything becomes paid some smart guy is going to figure out how to harvest information and toss up a competing site.

I've seen that happen over and over again so the trick is to hit the sweet spot where you can monetize the site yet not make it advantageous for a competitor to come along and undercut you.

Personally I see enough sales reporting that I don't visit namebio often enough to warrant paying a subscription fee. I think I may visit the site 3-4 times per year because I follow all the blogs. So for a super light user it would not make sense to pay. People that use your tools every day should but I guess the magic question is how much before the shift away starts.

I wish namebio lots of luck because it's a great service, I just hope this does not start a shift away to a different service., that would be a shame.
Understood, that's why we not only left the site exactly the same for anonymous users, we allowed people to register for free and get a 50% bump in results per search. The service is the same or better even if you never pay us a dime. But if you do pay, it's way better. Of course it would be impossible for us to create a membership plan that someone who visits only 3-4 times a year could justify :)

We just added annual plans with a 50% discount because of the overwhelming feedback. We also made a few other changes, the full announcement is here:

https://namebio.com/blog/save-50-with-annual-memberships-other-changes/

Thanks for the feedback everyone, please keep it coming.
 
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We just added annual plans with a 50% discount because of the overwhelming feedback. We also made a few other changes, the full announcement is here:

I much prefer annual plans, I know for my online stores the annual plans have a significant savings to them and as a business it is much easier to account the cost once per year instead of 12 times.

I can see the annual plan becoming the most popular (y)

Once in a while you get a company that will offer a lifetime plan and I have gone for a couple of those and they ended up being a bargain in the long run.
 
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I have thought a bit more about the issue that @MapleDots made re one-time vs annual plans, and the response of @Michael.

If only one option can be offered, I think the monthly subscription is best. Serious domainers would probably want to always have access but for example scholarly researchers or brand experts might have interest in subscribing for a few months while they are working on a specific project.

That being said, I see virtue in offering both options if feasible. Leanpub, a publishing platform I am familiar with do this. They offer a certain level of service free, just as NameBio does (everything formerly available for free still is). They also offer a subscription plan that is what most serious authors on their platform use. But for those who want to just pay once, they (at least from time to time) offer that option too. I realize the one pay plan would need to be fairly expensive, kind of enough that investment from that would cover annual fees minus a bit, but still to some just paying once might be attractive.

In a way the lifetime registration Epik are promoting is a similar choice for domain registration - pay once or pay each year options on certain TLDs.

Bob
 
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Thanks for all the feedback everyone.



Just out of curiosity, how would a one-time fee help evaluate the cost vs. value? In my view it makes it even more risky for you, because instead of getting to test drive it for $10 or $25 you'd probably have to pay $500 to $750 or more up front.

Plus it shouldn't be that hard to determine if NameBio data helps your business make an extra $120 in an entire year by having so much data at your fingertips, or by saving you time not having to watch all marketplaces all day every day to be in tune with pricing trends.

I think the domain industry is too small to offer a one-time fee. That pricing structure is ideal for something like a training course that is largely "build it once", or for an industry that has a very large and constant flow of new entrants. I don't imagine that is something we'd ever be able to offer.



Spotting trends before they hit the mainstream. Everything that gets big has to start somewhere, and that's usually below $100. Think crypto, 5N, etc. Seeing sales under $100 would let you see those trends forming before everyone else notices. Also just being able to see more data on what people are paying in auctions.



True, but there is also a huge leap in the benefits. There's a big difference between being able to go 25 pages deep at 100 results per page, and being able to go unlimited pages (thousands) deep. Also there's a big difference between being able to export 10k and 50k search results per month, the latter would let you export all sales $100+ in a little over a year. Since we generally add around 7k new sales a month above $100, with the Domainer tier it would take you something like 18 years to export the entire database.

Honestly I don't expect anyone except full-time domain investors or brokers to go for the Business tier. But we had to have tier with practically unrestricted access for people who do this for a living instead of a side hustle. The first two tiers are for the individual investors.



I updated the Collector tier to also be ad-free, and then I also changed the definition of ad-free to remove the featured listings bar at the top per user feedback. So no paying members have ads any more making for a much cleaner interface. This doesn't apply to the blog though, just the main part of the site. I don't expect we'll ever go 100% paid.



I'm not sure what you mean. The search results are the same regardless of how many you get to see, it's just a question of how many pages deep you get to go. They're all only as relevant as you are good at using the myriad of filters available.

We didn't change the limits for using the site anonymously without registering, it is still 100 results per search. And if you register for free we bump that to 150. The subscriptions are pure value add, not pay to keep what you already had. So more results per search, bulk searching, saved searches with email notifications, searching sales below $100, discounts on featured listings (which could pay for the membership alone if you use them enough), and no ads. I feel like those perks are worth the cost of admission if you are a power user, but people will obviously let us know with their wallets.

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For those who just flat out said no, is it that you think the price is too high, the benefits don't interest you, or you just don't want any more (or any at all) monthly subscriptions? More specific feedback would be helpful in shaping the future of the tool. Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

Thanks for the detailed reply.
 
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Namebio is great in featured listing i m going to buy 600 usd package per year calculation is if i take 4 featured listing for one month i m going to save 240 usd each month if i pay without membership i have to pay 480 usd so i will do def...
Imo any package for shoutout is great and namebio is great shoutout
 
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No, I don't plan to be signing up for any paid plan. May be something changes in future so I don't know about that. But right now, surely not. Because I don't benefit a lot from NameBio as I occasionally check latest and/or relevant sales.

Thanks!
 
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Has the membership plan changed? I see only $5/month on Collector plan. I find the site being very generous by offering 100 search results for guests and 150 for registered users. Currently, my search results are below 150 but close. Once this number is exceeded, I do plan to get the Collector plan. Thanks Michael for the superb service. One of the uses of the data is to help me find popular keywords in domains sold.

Suggestion: I'd like to set the search date to the latest so that I can check the latest sales data everyday matching my criteria. Currently, permalink does not allow me to set the search date to be the latest date. I have to select a specific date such as "January 24th".
 
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Nope, the free one is more than enough for me
 
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...Personally I see enough sales reporting that I don't visit namebio often enough to warrant paying a subscription fee. I think I may visit the site 3-4 times per year because I follow all the blogs. So for a super light user it would not make sense to pay. People that use your tools every day should but I guess the magic question is how much before the shift away starts.

I wish namebio lots of luck because it's a great service, I just hope this does not start a shift away to a different service., that would be a shame.
Agreed.
 
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The question I am trying to get by is - what do I do with 10 pages deep of past sales of "similar keywords" - how many years back do most find useable data - in terms of current pricing? It it certainly interesting to see what (keyword) crypto sold for 10 years ago even 5 - but does data more that 3, 4, 5 years lose relevance? Just trying to wrap my head around the - potential - massive amount of info to process. Curious as to what others use in terms of historical, how far back do find relevant - more important do customers?
Also curious, as to how far back others find relevant historical data. IMO, using real estate, as example; when I’m buying or selling a house, and looking for comparable sales, looking at year over year sales are useful, to help get an idea of long term trend, but when determining current value, going back more than 3 months is not necessarily relevant.
 
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Entering Namebio.com/[domain] in the browser address bar is very useful. When incorporated in a program, I can check the price history of a domain. However, the current design includes additional domain as well even though I want to see just the exact domain. Try CallTrucking.com as an example and it gives two results of the domain plus calloption.com which is not related. Can it be fixed, Michael?
 
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@Michael. Can you comment on following suggestion?
Suggestion: I'd like to set the search date to the latest so that I can check the latest sales data everyday matching my criteria. Currently, permalink does not allow me to set the search date to be the latest date. I have to select a specific date such as "January 24th".
 
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Also curious, as to how far back others find relevant historical data. IMO, using real estate, as example; when I’m buying or selling a house, and looking for comparable sales, looking at year over year sales are useful, to help get an idea of long term trend, but when determining current value, going back more than 3 months is not necessarily relevant.
I think it depends on the category of domain, and whether you're looking for wholesale or retails comps. For example LLLL.com wholesale data more than a month old probably isn't very useful, other than tracking longer-term trends like you said. But for determining a current price it needs to be very fresh, which isn't really a problem because they sell with very high velocity.

Retail sales are pretty much evergreen as the landscape (unfortunately) hasn't really changed that much over the decades. But retail sales have limited predictive value anyway because it kind of matters more who the buyer and seller were, and their financial strength, than the domain itself.

But for most other domains that aren't super-liquid, I think historical sales even five or more years old have value even for wholesale pricing. You might have to adjust the prices to account for the time lapsed, but your only other alternative is to work with only a few comps in a lot of cases.

Entering Namebio.com/[domain] in the browser address bar is very useful. When incorporated in a program, I can check the price history of a domain. However, the current design includes additional domain as well even though I want to see just the exact domain. Try CallTrucking.com as an example and it gives two results of the domain plus calloption.com which is not related. Can it be fixed, Michael?

It looks for domains starting with "call" or ending with "trucking", with similar search volume and advertiser competition. I get that "call option" is related to stocks and not a phone call, but I'm sure you can imagine that an automated comps engine can't be that smart to understand the context and be 100% accurate all the time :) We have the most advanced comps system out there, including comparing it to GoDaddy's AI appraisals (we're more advanced at short domain matching), but it can't be perfect.

@Michael. Can you comment on following suggestion?
I'm not sure I understand. The "Date Range" filter always has the latest date that we have sales for, so on today (the 26th) the first possible selection is "January 25th" which is the latest sales data. The filter is referring to the date of sale not the date of publication, so the latest is always yesterday.
 
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Thanks for all the feedback everyone.

For those who just flat out said no, is it that you think the price is too high, the benefits don' t interest you, or you just don't want any more (or any at all) monthly subscriptions? More specific feedback would be helpful in shaping the future of the tool. Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

Hi Michael

glad you started charging

now maybe there will be less posting of uncomparable - comparables, to compare. :)

cuz domainers will run any good 'free' thing into the ground, like what happened to overture tool
and i'm sure the load on nb is heavy, considering every newbie and their mama hears about it sooner or later.

so, in that respect....I ain't mad at ya

imo…..
 
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Hi Michael

glad you started charging

now maybe there will be less posting of uncomparable - comparables, to compare. :)

cuz domainers will run any good 'free' thing into the ground, like what happened to overture tool
and i'm sure the load on nb is heavy, considering every newbie and their mama hears about it sooner or later.

so, in that respect....I ain't mad at ya

imo…..
Sorry to break it to you, but the site is unchanged for anonymous users, and you can get 50% more results per search just by registering a free account. So I don't expect anything will change in that regard... might actually get "worse" now that users can get more or even unrestricted access to the data :nailbiting:

People will always stretch when it comes to quoting comps, that's just salesmanship... don't let it get you down. I hope people aren't stretching like that when they're researching to make a purchase though. I've said it many times, don't sell yourself when buying a name. Instead try your best to convince yourself why you shouldn't buy it, and if you still want it at that point then it's probably a good deal.

I know you're not a fan of comps in general though, you've been very outspoken about never using the site. It must be nice to have gotten to the point where you can value any domain without research. I still haven't gotten there yet... it seems like there is always something new to learn. I bet you would dominate on our mobile game, give it a try some time.

Thankfully all the newbies and their mothers have a way to learn what sells and how to value a domain, without having to pay the "tuition" of figuring it out through many years of trial and error. Imagine what they would think their domains are worth if they not only lacked your decades of experience, but also had no way to research historical sales and get a reality check.

Glad to hear you're not mad at me though (y) So far nobody has gotten upset about getting more for free and having the option to pay to get a *lot* more.
 
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I'm not sure I understand. The "Date Range" filter always has the latest date that we have sales for, so on today (the 26th) the first possible selection is "January 25th" which is the latest sales data. The filter is referring to the date of sale not the date of publication, so the latest is always yesterday.
In addition to "Past Five Years", "Past Year", "Past Month", and "Past Week", can you add the option "Past Day" so that once I bookmark the Permlink your site produces, I can come back everyday and get the latest result without having to touch the Date Range drop-down list. Thanks.
 
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@Michael Since this thread starts to be NB feature suggestion thread, here is one from me -

Can you please add a negative filter? Like, i want to search for domains containing "chain" but lot of results will be about blockchain (didnt check actually, it's just for example, but for some of my searches in the past that was really a big problem) cannibalizing result positions, - so i would like to put Contain: chain, Not Contain: block. Thank you
 
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@Michael Since this thread starts to be NB feature suggestion thread, here is one from me -

Can you please add a negative filter? Like, i want to search for domains containing "chain" but lot of results will be about blockchain (didnt check actually, it's just for example, but for some of my searches in the past that was really a big problem) cannibalizing result positions, - so i would like to put Contain: chain, Not Contain: block. Thank you
Thanks, added it to the To-Do list.
 
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Thanks Michael for the post above, that was real cool how you expressed it

I know you're not a fan of comps in general though, you've been very outspoken about never using the site. It must be nice to have gotten to the point where you can value any domain without research.

I still do research, cuz it's a habit

however, i'm not a fan of comps because I feel they have potential, to limit asking price.

but i'm truly a fan of what you've accomplished.

:)


imo...
 
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I got the yearly plan and happy with it, generally I'm not a fan of free services - either you are the product or you are getting someone to do work for free - ether way not something I like/want to be part of. Free trials are ok and fair to get people to see if what they pay for is what they need but that's about it. And it is generally hypocritical to be against paying for a service since nobody would want to themselves work for free.
 
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I use Namebio almost every day so I bought a yearly membership. Even though I could get by with a free membership, I like supporting good software that I use a lot.

I do wish they move some of the better stuff like "Domain Discoveries" behind a paywall to make it more worth it.
 
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