Does GoDaddy Auctions overvalue domains?

[domainhacks-931385]

Is it me or are many of the auctions that go on push the value of the domain to a lot more than the actual value?

Got into a huge bidding war with multiple bidders for a 6L brandable, finished at mid XXX. Yet BrandBucket, and Namerific both rejected the domain, and no offers yet. So why should the domain finish that high if it is not worth the amount?

Are a lot of the closing values higher than the actual worth?

 

[equity78]

BrandBucket and Namerific are the opinion of Margot Bushnaq and Zane Gocha, nothing more nothing less. It is not an elite cadre of experts from around the world. They don't even like the same kind of names purely subjective.

Go Daddy auctions does see a lot of names get bid up higher than you would think, that is partly because people get caught up in bidding wars, its only $5 more goes the thinking. When you have 3 bidders employing this tactic the price rises higher than you would think it would go.

Some of its ego, people think I was looking at this and I am going to get it for $12, then 2 minutes left and you have been outbid, high bid $17, "No way that moron getting my name, $22, suck on that. You have been out bid high bid $27, Oh that ****** well I will bump it by $11 this time, $38. Now its mine. Email you have been out bid, high bid $50, "MOTHER*******" $100, you have been out bid, High bid $105, you bid $135 keep playing with me, you have been out bid High offer $140.

That happens alot, I have spoken to many domainers who said they way overpaid but that bleeping bleep was not going to beat them out for the domain.

Go Daddy says thank you.

 

[johname]

Yet BrandBucket, and Namerific both rejected the domain, and no offers yet.

a) While it seems brandable to you and at least two others, the domain may contain groupings of letters that the BrandBucket, and Namerific people consider already fully overweight on their site. In others words it needs to be better, not equal.

b) People sometimes forget that these auctions can often be the tip top liquid amount a name sells for, period.

c) You have to pre-think these things out before biding. Assume with every bid you will be stuck with the name and tomorrow there will be other auctions. Avoid 'biding wars' unless you decided the names worth it to you and you will be glad to be 'stuck' with it.

 

[domainhacks-931385]

Camshow.com was on my watchlist. It was at around $1000 with 1 day remaining, then it closed at $55,000. Great porn domain, but is it really worth $55,000? I was sure it would close less than $5000. An example of the very high price to acquire a domain through GD auctions.

 

[lennco]

Camshow.com was on my watchlist. It was at around $1000 with 1 day remaining, then it closed at $55,000. Great porn domain, but is it really worth $55,000? I was sure it would close less than $5000. An example of the very high price to acquire a domain through GD auctions.

Yea I watched that one, it actually closed at $52k
Yesterday OrderFlowers closed at $34.5k

I have lost a lot of names recently because they climb to $1000 to $10000

Its getting out of control

 

[Ms Domainer]

BrandBucket and Namerific are the opinion of Margot Bushnaq and Zane Gocha, nothing more nothing less. It is not an elite cadre of experts from around the world. They don't even like the same kind of names purely subjective.

Go Daddy auctions does see a lot of names get bid up higher than you would think, that is partly because people get caught up in bidding wars, its only $5 more goes the thinking. When you have 3 bidders employing this tactic the price rises higher than you would think it would go.

Some of its ego, people think I was looking at this and I am going to get it for $12, then 2 minutes left and you have been outbid, high bid $17, "No way that moron getting my name, $22, suck on that. You have been out bid high bid $27, Oh that ****** well I will bump it by $11 this time, $38. Now its mine. Email you have been out bid, high bid $50, "MOTHER*******" $100, you have been out bid, High bid $105, you bid $135 keep playing with me, you have been out bid High offer $140.

That happens alot, I have spoken to many domainers who said they way overpaid but that bleeping bleep was not going to beat them out for the domain.

Go Daddy says thank you.

*

I'm getting better at NOT doing this, but there are a few names in my portfolio where I later scratched my head, and said, WTF????

Now, I simply set my highest bid and walk away, unless it's a domain I really want or need (very rare).

Allowing some names go to BIN keeps eyeballs away, although I wouldn't do this on a must-have name.

*

 

[alien51]

Yesterday OrderFlowers closed at $34.5k

How many flowers would they need to sell, to break-even on that expense?

 

[lennco]

How many flowers would they need to sell, to break-even on that expense?

Have you ever seen the price of flowers?
A really nice dozen long stem roses can run from $75 to $150 delivered.

I say about 300 to 500 orders should cover it

 

[johname]

I say about 300 to 500 orders should cover it

They dont get the flowers for free and have other bills and labor and not everyone buying long stems, but I get your point Perhaps say 2000 lol

 

[lennco]

They dont get the flowers for free and have other bills and labor and not everyone buying long stems, but I get your point Perhaps say 2000 lol

Ok your right, assuming they run 25% profit margin at an average of $75 an order it would be approx 1800 orders

Once they are up and running at full speed I bet they will do that every month.

 

[alien51]

If i type "order flowers" on Google, the niche is clearly saturated with many other brandables in the same business. And "OrderFlowers" is even too generic to be trademarked.

If you need 2,000 sales to breakeven, and you can only sell 50 flowers per month, it would take you 3 years before getting a profit.

Would it make business sense to just append something to the word "flowers", and make it a brandable website worth just $10 bucks and start profiting immediately ??

This is on the same topic of overvalued auctions where valuations are close to being mindless.

 

[lennco]

If i type "order flowers" on Google, the niche is clearly saturated with many other brandables in the same business. And "OrderFlowers" is even too generic to be trademarked.

If you need 2,000 sales to breakeven, and you can only sell 50 flowers per month, it would take you 3 years before getting a profit.

Would it make business sense to just append something to the word "flowers", and make it a brandable website worth just $10 bucks and start profiting immediately ??

This is on the same topic of overvalued auctions where valuations are close to being mindless.

Dont be surprised if it was 1800Flowers who bought this, if that's the case then they will probably just redirect it.

 

[alien51]

Dont be surprised if it was 1800Flowers who bought this, if that's the case then they will probably just redirect it.

Using my Android, typing "Order Flowers" on the browser automatically plugs that term into Google search, not a direct access to OrderFlowers dot com. I'm not sure if that "redirection" theory was worth $34.5k.

I think we are presuming too much that all high price auction deals, are always intelligent and sensible expense of money.

On several occasions, I try to look at past high value sales and check back on the domains on how they turned out to be. A lot of them have not been developed nor redirected to anything.

 

[lennco]

Using my Android, typing "Order Flowers" on the browser automatically plugs that term into Google search, not a direct access to OrderFlowers dot com. I'm not sure if that "redirection" theory was worth $34.5k.

I think we are presuming too much that all high price auction deals, are always intelligent and sensible expense of money.

On several occasions, I try to look at past high value sales and check back on the domains on how they turned out to be. A lot of them have not been developed nor redirected to anything.

Keep in mind that not all domain purchases are because someone wants the business from that domain, sometimes they just want to keep the domain out of the hands of others.
Big companies do this all the time.

 

[alien51]

The reason why im bringing this up, is because when i price my domain as a seller, i try to look if the the pricing has a "business sense" to a buyer.

Probably the same with auctions, unless of course if you are fighting for a collector's item or sentimental value. If you are simply paying a complete write-off of $34.5k to keep it from being used by a competitor who can easily find another domain to compete with you, it doesn't really make any business sense.

Unless of course he was paying that amount of money because "OrderFlowers" had an enormous parking revenue that comes with it????

I thought parking these days, is practically a dead horse?

 

[lennco]

The reason why im bringing this up, is because when i price my domain as a seller, i try to look if the the pricing has a "business sense" to a buyer.

Probably the same with auctions, unless of course if you are fighting for a collector's item or sentimental value. If you are simply paying a complete write-off of $34.5k to keep it from being used by a competitor who can easily find another domain to compete with you, it doesn't really make any business sense.

Unless of course he was paying that amount of money because "OrderFlowers" had an enormous parking revenue that comes with it????

I thought parking these days, is practically a dead horse?

There was no traffic with this domain, at least Godaddy did not find any traffic with it since none was listed.

All I know us that several people wanted this domain really bad, there were 105 bids. It didn't get to $34.5k with just one bidder. I still think it was several of the big flower companies.
Personally I think its a great domain with lots of potential, all the more reason for someone to either want to use it or want to keep it out of the hands of others.

 

[impulse]

OrderFlowers.com

I bought OrderFlowers.com at auction to expand my online flower business, which already includes CheapFlowers.com, GetFlowers.com, and CheapRoses.com.

I make a gross profit of around $10 per order and currently get 25 orders a day, but I am just breaking even after expenses. It costs me almost nothing to handle more orders, so all orders from OrderFlowers.com are pure profit other than the cost of the domain. I won't redirect the domain, I will setup a site on it and funnel the orders into my existing order system.

If it does not generate any orders for me, I figure I can always eventually sell the domain for close to what I paid for it.

- Eric Borgos
Impulse Communications, Inc,
http://www.impulsecorp.com

 

[lennco]

I bought OrderFlowers.com at auction to expand my online flower business, which already includes CheapFlowers.com, GetFlowers.com, and CheapRoses.com.

I make a gross profit of around $10 per order and currently get 25 orders a day, but I am just breaking even after expenses. It costs me almost nothing to handle more orders, so all orders from OrderFlowers.com are pure profit other than the cost of the domain. I won't redirect the domain, I will setup a site on it and funnel the orders into my existing order system.

If it does not generate any orders for me, I figure I can always eventually sell the domain for close to what I paid for it.

- Eric Borgos
Impulse Communications, Inc,
http://www.impulsecorp.com

Congrats on the purchase Eric :tu:
You have a nice collection of Flower domains there.

Good luck with your new domain

 

[alien51]

I bought OrderFlowers.com at auction to expand my online flower business, which already includes CheapFlowers.com, GetFlowers.com, and CheapRoses.com.

However, all of your mentioned domains are not ranking in Google. Which means Google is not giving you any plus points for having an "exact search domain". So i am assuming you are not getting much sales from organic search traffic. In fact, a domain called "CheapFlowersNow dot com" is ranking higher than you, which i presume is a domain you do not own, but owned by a competitor.

Which means, you merely chose the domains for their "generic brandable" identity. I tried to search for a suitable domain at BrandBucket and Andrew Reberry's prison cells at HugeDomains, and none of their nice flower domains come even close to $34.5k.

So my question is: if you are not getting any benefit from the "exact search" domain, or any extraordinary marketing exposure from having a generic brand, does it make any business sense to buy the domain at auction at a price that is more expensive than a brand new Toyota Prius or an Audi A3?

Would it have made much more business sense, if you just pay Reberry $3,000 for a nice flower domain, and use the remaining cash for SEO and online marketing expenses instead to boost profits ??

I make a gross profit of around $10 per order and currently get 25 orders a day, but I am just breaking even after expenses. It costs me almost nothing to handle more orders, so all orders from OrderFlowers.com are pure profit other than the cost of the domain. I won't redirect the domain, I will setup a site on it and funnel the orders into my existing order system.

So based on your accounting of "breaking even after expenses", it is safe to assume that you practically will never be able to recover that money back from selling flowers.

If your business was a publicly traded stock at Nasdaq, your share price would have plummeted by now after hearing the news of your auction purchase. You have made an acquisition that is pure liability given the amount you paid for it, and the domain having no inherent value.

If it does not generate any orders for me, I figure I can always eventually sell the domain for close to what I paid for it.

I am assuming you are basing your confidence by the amount of money your bidding foes were placing to drag up the price tag at Godaddy Auctions. Could they have lured you into this trap of getting into a wallet quicksand?

Although using historical cases, Sex.Com got sold for millions of dollars just getting passed around from one domain speculator to another domain speculator.

I don't know what Fonzie would make of this, though.

 

[equity78]

Eric told me the domain was renewed.