Hey folks,
Some background and facts for those that may not be aware of BBs history. Everything I'm going to say is public knowledge so I'll provide links here and there in case more details are desired..........
2007 - Brand Bucket is created as a company within a startup incubator called
Boxador. Margot is the co-founder of Boxador (with her husband) and Crunchbase lists her as the CEO of both Boxador
and BrandBucket.
2013 - In June, Margot does an interview with
DNjournal and Michael Krell, who has been selling domains at his keyword based, brandable website (MediaPlow.com), creates a BB seller account. In September Margot is interviewed at TLD Investors and says: " a solid
keyword pair with good linguistic structure and applicability to many possible types of business is what we’d like to see more of in the submissions."
BB's annual sales hit $1 million for the first time (see Domain Sherpa interview).
2014 - In September Margot is interviewed at
Domain Sherpa. During the interview she says: "Up until this year, when we were keeping the marketplace very small, we were really, really strict and our acceptance rate was about
eight percent. We have increased it. Probably on an average week we take maybe
25 percent now."
She also says in the interview that annual sales are on track to exceed $1 million yet again.
In October Michael is interviewed at
Domain Sherpa. He explains that he specializes in
two-keyword brandables and has sold 65 names in the prior 12 months. He says, further, that he buys about 75 new domains per month and has about 1600 names in his BB portfolio.
2015 - Companies often promote from within and Michael's success as a seller and his background in web development make him a good candidate for a BB employee. So in June 2015 he is offered the position
of Managing Director.
Michael's portfolio and BBs total inventory expands dramatically due to the relaxed acceptance standards Margot announced in her 2014 Domain Sherpa interview.
Meanwhile sales increase
to $2.4 million.
Brandable domaining becomes more fashionable and good brandable domains become much harder to hand reg. Prices at GoDaddy expired auctions begin to rise and a vibrant aftermarket is created on NPs for BB published domains. Demand is strong and published domains go for as much as 3% of the BB listed price.
In September, the CHIP frenzy begins and CHIP
prices go up 300% in just 6 months.
2016 - Michael's portfolio continues to expand along with BBs.
From February thru July the CHIP markets crashes. Domainers begin looking for new ways to make money and many of them start looking at brandables. The prices for brandables in the aftermarket continue to increase making it harder and harder to acquire good domains, at reasonable, wholesale prices.
BBs total annuals sales are reported at
$3.1 million.
2017 - BrandBucket's inventory growth slows markedly and Michael's portfolio levels off. Meanwhile, Michael continues to sell brandables at his
MediaPlow website, as he has done since he started domaining several years ago. This is not unusual since many BB sellers, including myself, have brandables listed at our own websites and other sales platforms like Afternic etc.
The supply of brandable names grows increasingly thin and BR and BB boast a combined total of around 70,000 published names. With tens of thousands of additional brandables being held privately by domainers scarcity sets in and prices in the GD auctions are so high that many domainers (including me) have dropped out of the brandable auctions completely.
Meanwhile, new domainers, looking to build a BB portfolio are having a tough time. It's become almost impossible to find quality names to hand reg and they feel priced out of the GD auctions. Many are buying BB published names instead. For this reason, I wouldn't be surprised to see prices for BB published domains rise again on NP in the coming months.
In any case, this market shortage, along with a veteran domainer's normal tendency to let go of some domains at renewal time, is resulting in some previously expanding BB portfolios to becoming stationary or even reducing slightly in size.
Therefore, from my perspective, there is no cause for alarm. The brandable market is changing but it's intact. I would therefore caution folks not to get too wrapped up in narrowly focused speculation.
May all your sales be to end users!
Keith
