1. Why would the marketplace-native buyer pool necessarily be fixed?
Agencies grow by adding clients. That is possible if you actually try. There are added benefits for clients that use them. That's why they use them. There is plenty of room for offering more than a flat search box in this space.
There is also plenty of room for disrupting the bloated and inefficient consulting space itself - especially when it comes to names and domains, where "experts" don't know squat.
2. Why would no/few purchases on reagistrar syndication network have originated in marketplace exposure? I see quite a few where marketplace efforts to sell are the likely origin for conversion on registrar.
3. Why would buyers who pay thousands of dollars for a domain not attempt to follow through on the lander if nothing comes up in registration path?
4. Why for that matter would they not follow through outside of Afternic-enabled Godaddy registration path and buy it at another registrar, in which case Sedo syndication could absorb it if active?
I suspect that purchases at the registrar have a combination of causes. The ones that seem most probable are:
1: Pragmatism. Buying at the registrar seems like a shorter, safer distance from purchase to delivery since the vendor is the same. I have purchased hundreds of domains on behalf of clients and I confess that if I have to pick between a shoddy lander and an Afternic listing, I'm picking the Afternic listing. That does not mean that the client would not have followed through on the lander if the Afternic option did not exist.
2. General brand recognition. For registration path, the customer already knew where to search beforehand. They went with what they know. That does not mean that the decision leading up to the name selection did not incorporate marketplace exposure.
Aside from these main causes, the registration path is a monumental hurdle for businesses that do things right and acquire their domain early. You can't brainstorm a good name there. You need input first. Options. Which is where vendors that actually sell domains and not only harvest the customers already decided come in.
Although volatile, the startup numbers in the US, post Covid, is at an all time high development. Startups may be the biggest moneyed buyer pool. Even the ones that fail need a matching domain. They don't want to get stuck for weeks in a search box that offers no solution to name selection. They need (cost-effective) help to professionally find a name to buy in the first place, and to consider all sorts of things in the process. The requirements for rebrands and new launches from established players are similar, although they may opt for more costly alternatives such as naming consultants and trademark consultants. (Who in turn frequent the brandable marketplaces)
As to the idea that it is a lie that naming is a hard problem ("Ah, the old certain words are harder to find argument. The brandable marketplaces love that one and probably have created it.")
I think that the true snakeoil salesman is Godaddy and the registration path in general. They love the idea that domains "sell themselves" and have probably created it, with the gracious help of loyal domainers who conflate the aftermarket with Godaddy.
1. Why would the marketplace-native buyer pool necessarily be fixed?
- This is hypothesis that I made early on when none of those platforms had outgrown their "optimal" size (for delivering the best results for sellers) and the actual performances from them have confirmed it. BB was proudly reporting the number of sales showing 3-4% STR and then stopped. BP at one point reported annual 5 or 6% STR and then stopped. Not sure if SH ever reported overall sales, but the NP threads show where it has headed from the start.
I have also had personal experience with those (and BR before being acquired by BB) and at the peak had around 750 domains with all, so could judge based on my own experience as well.
Now what the hypothesis based upon. Domains are very different from your regular products. Each domain is unique and each of those often have 1 or few unique potential end users. Identifying and targeting them with their ideal name using the traditional media is almost impossible. The "native" repeat buyers that just come to search for A name are rare. Basically, serial entrepreneurs are rare, they don't launch daily (each project might take years) and they might not choose your platform as an exclusive source.
So with the limited ad dollars, SH and others can just increase brand awareness and target the low lying fruits. Anything higher would require prohibitive costs not justified by commission. So you are lucky if you manage to get 500 to 1000 of those sales a year, but can be done, as BB, BP, BR and SH have proven.
Now if the opposite hypothesis were true, there would be no reason for SH going from almost 10% STR at its heyday to 0%-2% for most sellers just in few years. Unless you assume they suddenly became very bad in their service.
2. Why would no/few purchases on registrar syndication network have originated in marketplace exposure? I see quite a few where marketplace efforts to sell are the likely origin for conversion on registrar.
- What do you mean by marketplace exposure? The landers? That is not marketplace exposure, that is basically your own domain doing the job because someone typed it and you choose where it points. If you mean discovery via search, that is literally peanuts spread across 250k domains and factoring in that it takes 10k to 20k unique visitors for 1 sale to happen. The ad dollars? Most name will only see the retargeting spent, so again just those who already looked for your name. The rest of the money will heavily be skewed towards top 2-5% of the names simply because that is where SH would make the best return on its ad investment.
And the few sales that might genuinely come via their efforts, don't justify (at least for me) paying them extra 10%-15% commission for all sales. Basically, double my commission costs.
3. Why would buyers who pay thousands of dollars for a domain not attempt to follow through on the lander if nothing comes up in registration path?
- If you are discussing a type of buyer that just needs that one and only domain, then, unless he feels unsecure with the platform/lander, he will follow through. But, then again, why pay SH extra %? Just use Dan/AN and pay 15% or make your own and pay 3%. If we are discussing a buyer that has shortlisted few names and checks them out on registrar path, he/she will most likely pursue just the ones that show as available with the price on the registrar path and where they will believe pricing is reasonable.
I have been part of a quite few of those brainstorming groups and sessions over the years and I often like to quietly observe unless specifically asked, just to understand how they think. It is very very counterintuitive. It often depends on very subjective views of pretty much any one involved (I don't like that name because it reminds me the name of my cat which was eaten by a coyote in my backyard). The final choice often if baffling.
So, yes, if you remove 1000 decent names from registrar path, you are most likely to lose around 0.4-0.8% of your STR (depending on the names) that is coming SOLELY due to exposure there.
