Aged domains question

[Bob Hawkes]

I have a question that I hope someone more experienced in domain investing can provide insight on....

Very frequently I see mention in domain name sales that the domain is aged or how many years old it is, as though this is universally a good thing.

I understand completely how if the domain has been used in a website in a positive way, has received meaningful links from other websites, etc. that being aged is a plus that will make the domain more valuable.

However, what if the domain was first registered say 12 years ago, but has essentially sat parked for most or all of that period? In this case I don't see how being aged is positive, and maybe even it could be negative if an unsuccessful attempt has been made to sell the domain over years. Of course, you may have new ideas for promotion and hope to find success where others have not with the domain name, but I still don't see why per se being aged is always positive and meaningful.

Or am I missing something? Thanks for any insights.

Bob

 

[shorterwinters]

Some of these super valuable one word domains have been nothing but parked (including with PPC links) since the beginning.

baseball.com

 

[DaveX]

"An aged, parked domain could be valuable or could be worth very little. Odds are, worth very little." --- that's a very wrong statement, to imply that being parked equates to less desirability. Whether it was used for anything or parked may often have nothing to do with its value today one way or another.

Consider...a classic Rolex Cosmograph, say a 6239, or a 6241. You or your family have had it since say, the early 1980s. In the 1980s it was worth maybe a thousand dollars, no one wanted those things, they wanted the newer ones. By 2000, worth about ten grand. By 2007, worth about 25K. Today you see them being sold as high as 75K.

All along the way you or whoever in your family passed it on to you, kept getting offers for it, but would not sell. It was "parked" all that time, occasionally on your wrist, but mostly in a safe.

That watch has increased in value, the same as the identical Rolex that was bought and re-sold ten times over the past few decades. You cannot say that the Rolex that was parked that no one ever bought over a thirty year period is less valuable than the Rolex that changed hands many times. What matters is the watch, its condition, etc. - not whether or not it changed hands or was even ever taken out of the safe other than to wind it every now and then, to keep it running smoothly.

Same with the domain, saying that "Odds are, worth very little" is implying that the domains that were not sold, whose owners refused to let them go during the entire period, did so because no one wanted them. Not necessarily!

Some of these super valuable one word domains have been nothing but parked (including with PPC links) since the beginning.

I did not say that parking makes any domain less desirable. The point was that there are aged domains with very little value today. There are new names that can bring good roi. Age is good, but names are bought for many reasons.

The "Odds are" part was me pointing out that more domains with little value even today, were registered back then, than were ultra premium domains.

 

[Michael]

Really? Surely you've met a collector or hobbyist before..

I said end user specifically. If someone finds the right domain for their project and they fall in love with it, they're not going to walk away from it because you just registered it last year. And someone who is in search for the right domain for their project is not going to have their main criteria be "I want it to be old". They care about number of words, length, the feeling it gives, how memorable it is, etc. You should care about what the end user cares about.

Sure, domainers/collectors/hobbyists care about age. But they shouldn't, it is silly noise. If you find a good domain and it isn't old, go ahead and pass on it so I can have it. And buy up every crap domain just because it is old so you can blow your budget and not spend it competing with me on good names. Please

I get a fair number of emails where people ask me to appraise domains. Many times I tell them reg fee because the names are genuinely crap, and they reply "But it has age!" I can't help but shake my head. Yes, most good domains are old and most new regs are crap. But a LOT of old domains are crap, and a small number of new regs are good. It's that last statement that proves that age doesn't determine value, it's just a decent predictor of value, but the only thing that really matters at the end of the day is demand. Plain and simple.

Basically if I'm selling an old domain, i say age matters.
If l'm selling a newer domain, i say age doesnt matter.
Depends on what I'm selling.

Exactly, lol.

 

[poweredbyme]

What would be the final verdict on age ?
On the one hand, It seems as though you first extol the virtues of getting older (manifested by small children wanting to grow up faster), but later, age appears to be a liability seen in older people wishing to revert back time ?

It could be so that age is good only in small quantities, up to a certain point - as if to say 'you may go here but no longer' - but in higher dosages it can become toxic, and quite detrimental

We have to consume (demand) time even when we don't need it (remember hopeless patients waiting to die in hospitals) or when we want the time to pass faster (when we were children or when we are bored or when we are waiting for something to happen). We don't control time in both demand and supply. We usually control what we demand. But the time is an exception. You may drink only 1 beer in a bar if you don't want 2. Noone can force you if you don't want to demand something. But you have to demand exactly 24 hours everyday, neither 25 hours nor 23 hours. In supply side, we can't produce time, can't add 1 day to a week or 1 hour to a day. 1 day is 24 hours we can't change it to 23 or 25 hours, neither the future days nor the past days. Time is an ultimately solid measurement. When we call something as "x" years old, it's a universal measure, is same everywhere, everytime. Probably the most universal measure is time. So time is included in all measures including value measuring. Time is integral part of everything. So, age isn't just a number. Some posters wrote age is just a number. I don't agree with them and shared my arguments. Age changes value of all commodities. Age lowers the value of a food (meat, egg, tomato, fish) while raising the value of scarce things (gold, bitcoin, domain, land). When you hold something scarce its age will raise its value mainly because more people will demand it as population raises over the time. This is the main reason of why land and gold value don't decrease in the long term. The same mechanism applies to domains. If you have a 3L domain, its value should only increase as more people will want to buy it in the future because the more population in the future.

 

[HotKey]

You should care about what the end user cares about.

Sure, domainers/collectors/hobbyists care about age. But they shouldn't, it is silly noise.

I am the end user, as well as the collector. I know what I care about. What's silly noise to you might be exactly the noise a person like me is trying to hear.

Having blanket beliefs, one can cut out an entire niche of folk..thereby losing potential sales.

Now, a couple of comments have been made regarding to a lot of aged domains being "crap". I think we should define what we mean by aged..5 years, 10 years, 15 20 etc? Personally to me aged is 15+. But that's as a collector. Others might find a 5 year old domain suits them just fine for the age factor. I don;t think we're going to see many 20+ year old crap domains. Why? Because mid-90's, thousands upon thousands if not millions were available for reg still, eliminating the need to warp a strong one or two worder.

 

[xynames]

Very old, very rare....

 

[namelancer]

Very old, very rare....

Is it very old because it's rare, or is it rare because it's old ? Is rarity here a byproduct of old age or advanced age is a byproduct of rarity ?

 

[namelancer]

The fact that people renewed it over and over is also an indication of perceived value.

Let's imagine one is running an art agency, or a studio of designers each of whom shares a public profile with a potential contractor, displaying a ranking metric consisting of information om how many commissioned works they have had in the portfolio since the beginning of their employment at said studio . Any future client who'll consider the prospect of hiring anyone among the candidates will get a chance to review their initial drafts made by each artist, before assigning a job to the chosen contender, To facilitate the ease of selection they'll be granted full access to the stats stating how many times an artist was chosen by previous clients. So, if the company started with only one employee or a couple, they are almost guaranteed to be able to secure more picks than the later additions join the company. How can a client do a good job of choosing the artwork or a logo from a specific artist for their business, using the number of times the artist has been chosen as their only contributing, external reference point ? How reliable is this peer authority system if the client lacks the resources or staff to make an informed decision himself ? In this case, how fail-safe could be their decision-making ability if they are shown to put trust in judgement of others in vetting the right applicant for the job ? If every consecutive client were to chose only the client with positive past approval rates (by having been chosen for another job in the past by a different client), it builds a self-referential chain of trust that only would have the legitimacy of choice stemming from the very first client. For example, if the client number 2 (all other things being equal), would be swayed into choosing an artist with a previous track record of commissioned work, it would create 2 assignments in the portfolio of the artist. So, when a new, client number 3, arrives, he is even more likely to be persuaded by the judgement vested by others in aptitude of the same artist whose only fortune was being selected as first in line to perform. This chain of authority building could only create a false ranking model with all but the first being misleading values.

 

[poweredbyme]

Is it very old because it's rare, or is it rare because it's old ? Is rarity here a byproduct of old age or advanced age is a byproduct of rarity ?

Rare because it's old. Age doesn't need anything. Age comes first. But rarity needs time to exist. Because some time period has to pass and "similar" things should appear to call the oldest similar things "rare" or "rarest". If something is unique, it can't be rare. The first registered domain was unique but was not rare. Second registered domain made the first domain old and rare. After several thousands registered domain, the first 100 registered domains became very old and very rare. After several millions of registered domains, the first 10,000 domain became oldest and rarest. After several billions of registered domains the first registered 1,000,000 domain will become oldest and rarest domains.

Rare usually means something that is seen 1 time in 1,000 or more instances depending on industry or statistical event.

 

[HotKey]

https://www.namepros.com/threads/do...der-total-budget-50-000.1046617/#post-6414527https://www.namepros.com/threads/do...der-total-budget-50-000.1046617/#post-6414527
Another one. No real criteria, other than age. There is a market. More so even now, with thousands of new extensions means many of the aged domains in the classic extensions will be the holy grail. Presenting a domain to a buyer with a good "bottling" date is that much more appealing.

 

[Sinh]

aged or new, it doesn't matter for the endusers. To get a good selling price, the quality of the domain is the most important thing and the second thing depends on your luck, just my opinion. I am negociating with a buyer about my aged domain (1992) that is over 10k but we don't mention about it is aged or new

 

[namelancer]

There are 100 2N.com's, 1,000 3N.com's, 10,000 4N.com, 100,000 5N.com and so on. It's obvious 2N.com will be always more expensive than 3N, 4N, 5N ... domains...

3N has been always more valuable than 4N domains regardless of trends.

It's a general rule of a thumb that's proven to carry some weight, but how does it test in practice ?

That there are exceptions to the rule is curtsy provided by the actual sales data:

According to the above, an 8N./dot./com is expected to be less valuable than a 7N./dot./com, etc: however the sales figures digress from the theory telling a variation of a well-known story. As per namebio's records, 88888888./dot./com was sold at around 150, 000 usd - far greater than its more scarce 7N./dot/.com counterpart would have. At this point you are probably going to object asking me to use better and fair comparisons. I'll comply by claiming that not only did 88888888./dot./com possessed a greater value than a random 7N./dot./com, but it would have surpassed in value a 7N./dot/.com like 8888888./dot./com or, to take it a step further, even possibly a 55555./dot./com. I am using these examples for demonstration purposes as I lack actual data on other sales having mostly estimates . So values defined by scarcity, under certain conditions, are going to be over-ruled by other factors such as peculiarities of the leading market segment showing a taste for symbolism-laden domains.

If we look a bit closer at the realities of the market today, we need to seek no further than the DNJournal's account of sales all being reported for the current year. The market feedback we'll focus on are a couple of sales that are of relevance for our discussion, namely, those of Eth./dot./com and SW.com. Despite being a 3 character domain, Eth./dot/com sold at 2,000,000 usd,while a 2 character SW./dot./com garnished a paltry 660,000 usd by comparison.

 

[poweredbyme]

@namelancer Exceptions don't break the rule in business. This isn't a natural science.
Another point is you can say "x" will be always "y", to emphasize a business-economics rule, while you mean "usually" by "always". Because when something is usual (if an event or pattern is observed more), it's a rule business. Business, as a science, dictates choosing what most likely will happen, is way different than math, physics where a single occurrence of incompatible outcome or event can break the rule . So, I still defend the rules I stated even after you showed me exceptions (eth, 8888888 ) . To break a rule in business, you should show (should logically prove) incompatible events are the majority or the effect of exceptions (amount of money involved in the exceptions ) are majority (more than 50%).

Total supply of 3N domains are 10 times of 2N
Total supply of 3L domains are 26 times of 2L (number of letters in English alphabet is 26)

Statistically, randomly chosen 2L will be more expensive than 3L. This is the rule I defend. There might be more exemptions than you showed. But the exemptions don't break this rule.

 

[namelancer]

So, aged domains were more valuable in 90's and will be always more valuable. Even in bitcoin domains, the best ones are the oldest domains. The best domains are ALWAYS registered first, before the normal and bad domains.

Regarding all-time highlights and record-breaking domains:

1. The most valuable (at over 200 mil.usd) domain sold, Cars./dot./com, was registered in 1998, years after registration of domains was open to public without restriction. Many 'bad' domains have had a chance to see the light of the day, before the crown prince of all domains (up till now) was created.

2. The fifth most expensive domain sold (without adjusting for inflation),360/dot./.com, was registered even later, in 2000.

The explanation for the delay in foreseeing the extreme value was the difficulty of discerning value at at time when it's still slowly emerging and before there is exists as a consensus of value.

Concerning trends in general and bitcoin in particular, one of the most valuable domains sold for over 40k this year was Bitcoincash./dot/org, with a fresh registration date being just three months old at the time of the sale. By any standards, it wasn't the oldest of domains in the same category.

Does the statement that even with trends the best domains would always be registered first, provided 'always' is understood as 'usually' would be valid for trends in general ? Basically it's a question if the tendencies observed on the macro scale would apply to and still be valid for the micro level.

To answer this, let's take a double-letter trend for inspection, as one example.

The problem with trends is that it takes time for them to gain a momentum, which means that the highest values will start showing up by the time of the peak of the trend. Domain registrations will pick up pace in tandem with a trend gaining its speed. But for all trend watchers, following a trend is a learning process. As the trend develops, accumulation of knowledge defining the milestones of what works and what gets discarded on the way of the evolving trend, is absorbed to produce the final product closely matching the trend. With the double-letter trend, given the relative abundance of names that can be altered by addition of an extra letter and seemingly endless variations that result from it, one wont see uniformity in registrations leaning towards correlations of high age with the highest values. It’s more than likely for the finest specimens of the trend to be born in the summer-autumn season of the trend, blooming as late arrivals.

But this isn’t limited to trends that are without borders of constraints, with finitude or elements of scarcity hiding in its components, as we have seen in the bitcoin trend so far. For now, we should refrain from making the final judgement until it comes of age traveling a full circle as a trend or when it becomes a more permanent fixture of life if it's lucky enough outgrows the former.

As a conclusion, just as the trends break the mold, so can they break the rules of values being tied up to the bonds of primogeniture.

.

 

[xynames]

I couldn't get past #1 because business.com was sold for $345M in 2007:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/ol...-domains-after-the-sale.1044751/#post-6405218

Still, beer.com was 1993, sex.com was 1995 (beer before sex? evidently), in those early days internet was not nearly as widespread, even a laptop in the classroom for note taking was a rare occurrence. So, a few years before 1998 isn't that big a deal not as much was happening in the internet during those three years, not nearly as much activity as we see today. So it doesn't mean so very much if cars.com or business.com were not registered until 1998. 1998 was still before the internet really exploded, remember eBay didn't even go public until Sept 1998, and the biggest year of the dot com boom was 1999 in fact.

But anyway, as far as bitcoin domains getting to be as valuable as business.com I have no objection!
https://www.namepros.com/threads/eth-com-sold-by-sharjil-saleem.1025923/page-3#post-6405249

 

[namelancer]

I couldn't get past #1 because business./dot/com was sold for $345M in 2007...:

Thank you for pointing it out. I must have consulted a register lacking complete information, However, it's a minor detail, and to enable you to get past the number number 1, I would like to change the text retroactively to read as:''the second most valuable domain, Cars/dot/.com, was sold for a staggering sum of money...It outshone its elder 'less valuable' siblings defying the maxim that oldest children do best in life''

 

[WatchDogue]

I have a question that I hope someone more experienced in domain investing can provide insight on....

However, what if the domain was first registered say 12 years ago, but has essentially sat parked for most or all of that period?

In this case I don't see how being aged is positive, and maybe even it could be negative if an unsuccessful attempt has been made to sell the domain over years.

Or am I missing something? Thanks for any insights.

Bob

I've excerpted the part of your post I'll respond to, as the owner of maybe a 75 or so domains aged between 12 - yes, 20 -ish years.

Their value IMO as " aged domains " is their long term unavailability to interested persons seeking those domains over the years.

Many are small niche market EMD or highly descriptive names that could have been or still are desirable in their marketplace.

Realistically many of the early potential name suitors have long since used many other domains or, have retired or relinquished their websites.

And as the years have passed without their availability, should an opportunity to acquire the
" aged names " arise a potential buyer would recognize this is likely their only opportunity to acquire the name or names - hence a perceived value to an " aged domain ".

 

[poweredbyme]

Regarding all-time highlights and record-breaking domains:

1. The most valuable (at over 200 mil.usd) domain sold, Cars./dot./com, was registered in 1998, years after registration of domains was open to public without restriction. Many 'bad' domains have had a chance to see the light of the day, before the crown prince of all domains (up till now) was created.

2. The fifth most expensive domain sold (without adjusting for inflation),360/dot./.com, was registered even later, in 2000.

.

1- past sales aren't very reliable indicator. Some sales are private, there might be domains which have never been sold, there might be special conditions (seasonal, personal, financial) on particular sales.

2- Internet wasn't popular before 2000. I am old enough to remember 1995 and before. The internet was slow and most people was not knowing search engines to find websites. Home connection was rare and was slow dial up. Most people were connecting from public places like libraries or companies. Domain was an unknown concept in 90's even by first internet users (internet surfers . Even computer engineers were not knowing how to register a domain, what are the registrars, how to pay reg fee online (online payment was not existed or was unknown). Therefore the first domains were registered by a very small group of people who have internet connection and payment options. As they are very small number of people, they don't represent anything. So weird, meaningless were registered in 90's while premium domains were available until 2000. You are evaluating the past with the standards of today. This is a very wrong approach. First domains around 1995 were registered by a very small number of early adapters. The same pattern is seen in all new technologies. Everyone would want to buy 1 bitcoin for $1 in the past to sell for $7,500 today. But the conditions in the past were different than today, so only a few persons bought it for $1. Similar thing happened in 90's for domains. That's why age is a major factor. You can't turn back to 1995 to hand register dozens of 3L. You can't judge 1995 with the conditions and standards of 2017. 22 years passed after 1995. Can you guess the price of 3L domains or 1 bitcoin 22 years later? so, you couldn't know the prices of 3L domains in 2017 when you were in 1995.

 

[poweredbyme]

There are some people with special talents which allow them guessing the future:
"Bezos was one of the first shareholders in Google, when he invested $250,000 in 1998. That $250,000 investment resulted in 3.3 million shares of Google stock worth about $3.1 billion today"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos

 

[HotKey]

beer before sex?

Very common. Beer before sex, and than have a cigarette.

beer.com 1993
sex.com 1995
cigarette.com 1999