BuyDomains - Do they really sell as much as they claim?

[Spade]

Interesting question. I was on the phone with one of their reps (who shares a first name with me) and we were haggeling over the price of a domain name. When I said "If you drop this down to a reasonable price, you could sell a domain today" he countered with "we sell 100 domains a day at an average of $3,000 dollars"... that got me thinking.

100 domains x $3,000 avg price = $300,000 per day x 365 days = $109,500,000 per year .

Does anyone think that BuyDomains makes 109.5 million dollars per year?

Justin

 

[lpxxfaintxx]

I call BS on this one, but its only my opinion.

 

[.jd.]

no, wow.. what do you think? But think about how much money they do make..

 

[VisualArtistFrankBonilla]

Maybe

www.BuyDomains.com and www.Afternic.com are owned by wwwNamemedia.com . They just might sell that much, not that far-fetched.

http://www.namemedia.com/business/domainmarketplace.html


Frank

 

[Spade]

BuyDomains as a seperate entity, I know Afternic sells quite a few every day, but those are customers domains. Im reffering directly to BuyDomains, not the parent or conglomerate.

Justin

 

[The Stealthy One]

Yes, I think they do. With an Alexa rank of < 5k, they have a popular site. They are a pretty big name, too.

The thing is, being a private company, there's just no real way to tell.

 

[Spade]

Yes, I think they do. With an Alexa rank of < 5k, they have a popular site. They are a pretty big name, too.

The thing is, being a private company, there's just no real way to tell.

Of course they get traffic, they have 800,000 domains pointing to "BuyDomains.com"

But the real question is, are they making about 100 million a year? I think thats more fascinating...

 

[SpareDomains]

I'm sure they sell a ton...

http://www.dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm

not sure how much of what they sell they report, looks like they clump afternic/buydomains together though.

Not sure if it's 100 a day but keep in mind you were haggling for a lower price so maybe he was trying to make the point that they sell a ton so 1 lost sale won't hurt them financially and maybe the 100 number was just tossed out there and could be a little high, also I have 400+ domains listed on buy domains myself so they would only get a commission fee on them and not the whole sales price, fabulous also has thousands of domains being marketed with them as well among other companies and domain owners so they would only take in whatever their commission fee is on those sales and not the total price.

 

[matt_bodis]

Calculate the renewal on 800,000 domains.

800,000 x $7 each = 5.6 million per year in renewals.

Also, they can make 100 mil per year revenue, but how much profit? They don't buy everything at $25 each.

 

[fonzie_007]

Also, they can make 100 mil per year revenue, but how much profit? They don't buy everything at $25 each.

Just ask saggydimes...

 

[TheBulldog]

Realistically, they are probably a division of many companies, and all things being equal, the people that answer the phones are shared between the companies. The csr's computer screens tell them the caller's information and site that they are calling about, which likely lists the site where the domain is.

So in the end, the CSR only sees his job, which happens to be several companies all together. And yes, I believe all those combined could easily sell that many daily. What is more important is the profit margin. If they sell 105 million worth a year, but fees, employees, benefits, domain aquisitions, etc etc cost them 104 million a year, then it doesn't look nearly as far-fetched.

 

[AdoptableDomains]

I think 100 is probably a stretch. Maybe on their best day. If you look at last weeks DN Journal sales report, you'll find:

FunCostumes.com $17,400 Afternic/
BuyDomains

xn--80adxhks.com (IDN)
(puny code for "Moscow" in Russian language) $16,000 Afternic/
BuyDomains

HVZ.com kicked in $4,845, Professionnel.com provided $4,800 and ActiveShares.com deposited $4,500. Imgo.com added $4,488, CocoaBeachHotels.com booked $4,465 and PortfolioTracker.com produced $4,400. Two others, Humbert.com and EuroPartners.com drew $4,088 each. Afternic/BuyDomains had another 55 .com sales ranging from $2,000 to $4,000. Those are listed in the table below.

Afternic/BuyDomains has another 184 .com sales ranging from $1,990 all the way down to $488 (the price paid for GlamorousGifts.com).

By my count, that's 249 in a week reported last week. For a 7 day week, that's more like 35 a day, and for a 5 day workweek it's about 50 per day.

I wouldn't probably argue with the average, since the couple high dollar ones bring the average $ per name up mathematically.

However, remember that this number now includes both buydomains and afternic.com. On Afternic domains, they don't keep the whole sale, but only 10-20% of it as commission/escrow.

also, remember that if they have 600k domains of their own, they have renewals of almost $10k per day based on a $6 renewal rate.

Also note that if they own 600k domains and lets say 2/3 of the 249 per week are their own and not afternic, then they're selling somewhere under 2000 per year. That's about 0.3% of the total per year, or about one for every 300 they own. Seeing that number, I don't feel so bad about my own sell through rate. Of course they do get lots of parking income from the 99.7% they didn't sell.

I think the average may be close, but the number per day sounds exaggerated by about 2-3 times.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. - Mark Twain

Figures don't lie...but liars do figure - Unknown

 

[armin]

Domains can get as high in price as possible.

 

[SharonTucci]

It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of BD's sales go unreported because of NDAs. When I used to be aggressive on corporate sales side, almost all clients wanted NDA's regardless of the size of the transaction. The larger the company doing the buying, the more often I found this to be the case.

 

[Devil_Dog]

Haven't seen anyone mention annual parking revenue though; I'm sure that is up there in the hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars a year.

 

[Algis]

But they also get some money from parking of all that domains, don't you think?

Calculate the renewal on 800,000 domains.

800,000 x $7 each = 5.6 million per year in renewals.

Also, they can make 100 mil per year revenue, but how much profit? They don't buy everything at $25 each.

 

[Innercool22]

"we sell 100 domains a day at an average of $3,000 dollars"...
Justin

Maybe they only make 3,000 dollars as in total sales a day.

 

[cache]

it is impressive number I have doubt, but I do want to believe them. Selling domains
does not have much problem as selling cars, especially in a rising market.

 

[Binfus]

Frank Schilling of Name Admin. owns ~300K domains that are of much higher quality than those of Buy Domains (from what I've heard/read).....Anyhow, not too long ago, he posted on his blog that over the last couple of years he's gotten roughly 15 inquires/offers a day for his domains. Now Buy Domains do actively market their domains and that would make some difference but still making 100 actual sales a day is a lot....meaning that they'd be getting over 1000 serious inquiries/offers every single day as generally the inquiry-to-sale ratio is 10:1 or less. It means that for every 600-800 names one should be getting at least one serious inquiry/offer ecery day...and making 3-4 sales a month....Does anyone?

 

[Devil_Dog]

Frank Schilling of Name Admin. owns ~300K domains that are of much higher quality than those of Buy Domains (from what I've heard/read).....Anyhow, not too long ago, he posted on his blog that over the last couple of years he's gotten roughly 15 inquires/offers a day for his domains. Now Buy Domains do actively market their domains and that would make some difference but still making 100 actual sales a day is a lot....meaning that they'd be getting over 1000 serious inquiries/offers every single day as generally the inquiry-to-sale ratio is 10:1 or less. It means that for every 600-800 names one should be getting at least one serious inquiry/offer ecery day...and making 3-4 sales a month....Does anyone?

You gotta remember though, nameadmin doesn't sell and doesn't actively market their names to endusers.

Also, from what I gather, buydomains owns about double of what nameadmin does.