discuss Domain sales reports

[fihri]

If we look at Namebio there are 4.1 million reported domain sales, What percentage does this number represent from total sales?
Personally, I didn't report 90% of my sales and I think most domainers didn't report 80% to 90% of their sales as well.

 

[Reddstagg]

If we look at Namebio there are 4.1 million reported domain sales, What percentage does this number represent from total sales?
Personally, I didn't report 90% of my sales and I think most domainers didn't report 80% to 90% of their sales as well.

Don't forget, that some of those could have been sold on more than one occasion so it could be 2,000,050 domain names sold twice.

Don't get too caught up with the numbers as you will never figure out the real picture. Some people do. Some people don't. Some people will. Some people won't.

Everyone has their reasons for whether or not they report domain name sales and this is determined by many different factors.

Anyway, good luck on your journey.

Rgrds,

Reddstagg

 

[Samer]

This sounds like a great conversation for @Michael; one of my industry idols; without him; there would be a lot less reported sales. Thank you, Michael for NameBio it’s a seamless tool.

 

[Michael]

There's no way to know how much of something happens in private. Even if you added up all the major marketplaces, you'd still have escrow services. But then don't forget about the hundreds of brokers. And even still you have people doing deals directly through PayPal/crypto/bank transfer/etc. many of which aren't even domain investors. So even if every major and minor industry player decided to be fully transparent you'd still have no clue what the total size of the market is.

As @Reddstagg mentioned, the percentage doesn't really matter. Unless you're a VC and it's critical that you estimate the size of the domain aftermarket, it really has no material impact on you. But if you put a gun to my head I'd say this:

Wholesale

I'd guess we probably capture around half of the wholesale market, give or take. These comps actually have some predictive value, but even so, completeness isn't all that important. If you see 11 NNNN.com sell in the past month you can get a pretty good idea what the liquid value of yours is. It doesn't really matter that another 11 probably wholesaled privately during that same period, as they likely sold for very similar amounts.

Retail

I'm pretty certain that we capture just fractions of one percent of the retail market. These comps have almost no predictive value, so completeness definitely doesn't matter one iota. They're just used for proof that businesses pay large amounts for good domains, to get buyers comfortable with the idea that domains actually sell for more than registration cost. The retail market hasn't really changed a ton over the past couple decades, so I don't think recency is that important either. We have 10s of thousands of retail sales in the database, so you can usually find a few close retail comps for most domains.

Obviously the more data the better, but I don't think the percentage of completeness really matters much other than as a curiosity that we'll never know the answer to. Of what is possible to know/observe we capture an overwhelming majority of it. The rest is up to the community to share.

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I'd be interested to know why you don't share 90% of your sales. Surely they can't all be underappreciated niches/keywords that you're still trying to mine, and don't want to tip others off and have more competition. Doubt there are many NDAs preventing you. Lack of time and/or incentive?

Common reasons people share private sales are:

1. Credibility for brokers or portfolio sites.
2. Owning other similar names and wanting to establish a public baseline.
3. Reciprocating because they benefit from other people sharing.
4. Just general kindness and wanting to lift all boats.
5. Pride of making it on the charts.

If those don't resonate with you, what would?

I also find it interesting that many people share on Twitter and NamePros, but then don't report them to us or DNJournal. So it's not an issue of the time it takes to do a screenshot or type up the details. They're willing to do that, but then are reporting in a way that benefits way fewer people and is quickly forgotten.

 

[D Haynes]

The worst is when folks report a sale without telling you what the name is. Happens a lot on LinkedIn. Waste of everyones time so they can blow smoke up their own ass.