marketing what we got
How does putting more names in Afternic create more traffic?
If that is true, when Afternic had only one million names for sale, they would have sold many less a day than today as they have over four million names listed for sale now.
I don't see any increase of names sold from the extra millions of domains imported over the last three or four years. Adding another million or two won't increase sales for others, it will only dilute sales in my opinion.
I agree names need to have a certain quality to them. But the real truth is millions of names that buyers may buy are and have been sitting in auction houses for years. We get all tingly feeling because we read about a few dozen names selling thru the Journal. The biggest auction house's report a dozen or so a day being sold. Domainers forget that the public can be buyers too. Tap into that and see the difference in the quanity of names sold.
I don't see the current names to sales ratio as satisfactory myself. I see alot of names being sold to other domainers, not to the names potential, as the end users know what the ultimate price of a domains worth to be. I see some speculation from corporate buyers. I really don't see many end users finding us. Thats to bad. If end users were bidding up our names and coming in droves to buy them, I would be 24/7 domains.
Is this the real potential for domain sales?
End users are not aware that the perfect name for their business is affordable and for sale in those auction houses. Adding more names will not bring more buyers. Marketing to those millions of people who have little knowledge of buying names will.
Marketing is in my opinion why we do most things, from craving Chinese food to buying that chocolate bar, sometime recently the ad for that item was branded into our minds, knowingly or not. Then the urge builds and we make the "purchase", not even knowing it was because some marketing company targeted us.
Its time for the domain business to see the value of direct marketing.
Ebay and Afternic have not much in common. Ebay is marketing to the end users bigtime. Radio, newsprint, magazines, billboards, direct mail, online marketing, on the sides of buses, in the subway, on monorails, at sports events, on tv. Don't want to bore myself or anyone else as I can go on. But the facts are that not to many people have not heard of Ebay or the success that people have selling items there.
Many domainers do not think Ebay is a good palce to sell domains. Ebay is a different market for domainers and very few figure out how to make it profitable.
But many are very successful selling there. I know one guy who sells dozens of domains a day and his business is steadily growing. he's been doing big business on Ebay for years. You might say his stragety is simalar to how a car salesmen sells. I won't tell how he does it or what his "unique" point of view is, but let me just say he is very successful.
Ebay does millions a day in revenues and that is in just one country. Now if Afternic wants to play in the big league, it will have to "change course" and go after end users in the same way Ebay does.
I guess when auction houses were growing fast they happened upon the "pay Per click" jackpot. Partner with a provider and focus on getting all those names people want to sell into their parking program. Then sit back and watch the money roll in. Maybe sitting back should have taken a back seat to promoting the buying of domains to end users. As they start coming in to buy domains, take a percentage of that revenue and "grow" the marketing program even bigger.
Don't know if this is a interesting concept to Afternic, but I imagine someday, some auction house will swoop in and take that market. The end user market probably has room for only one domain auction house giant anyway.
To grab the money that is available from selling names to end users the auction house must focus on marketing to those end users. If Ebay did not have that same marketing goal, they would today be a nobody.
