.tv How Can Auctions Of Premium Names Possibly Do Existing Premium Owners Any Good??!!

[MillersCrossing]

BASED ON THE FOLLOWING ASSUMPTION.

1. THOSE WITH EXISTING PREMIUMS KEEP THE YEARLY RENEWAL AT THE AGREED TO PRICE STRUCTURE UNDER THE .TV STEWARDSHIPSHIP ARRANGEMENT.

2. ALL FUTURE PREMIUMS ARE AUCTIONED OFF FOLLOWED BY $50 RENEWAL FEES

3. IF ANY EXISTING PREMIUM OWNERS WERE TO SELL THEIR PREMIUMS, THE NEW OWNERS WOULD INHERIT THE PREMIUM RENEWAL FEES.......


ThenI cannot really see this being good for those holding premium names......

Lets say for example Car.TV was available and was upto $150,000 in auction in 2007 and I had Cars.TV that I had bought at $20,000 per annum.premium fee in 2006......am I not extrememly limited in what I could sell Cars.TV for, - any buyer would say to themselves - why buy Cars.TV at $20,000 per annum + (for example)my profit margin of $50,000 when I could get Car.TV at $150,000 one off which is equal to five years for Cars (with my profit margin)......

I can possibly see a situation where an auction may not HURT......but definately not HELP....in a scenario where the domain name being auctioned has no real competition .......so for example, COLLEGE.TV........if it was to go for auction --when the market is ripe, it could possibly fetch 7 figures and there is no real alternative to the name......then the market would have to look if a similar type of name was sold at auction and for how much......for example - assume UNIVERSITY.TV sold in 2007 at auction for $500,000 then anyone going for COLLEGE.TV could guestimate what it is worth...and then the company bidding would need to take into account the renewal fee - which could be priced into the bid.....(say 20 years x $3000 = $60,000) ......

In this sense, an auction may help - where the name has no competition.....but IN MY OPINION, woe to those who have a premium based on a singular or plural and the other goes for regular auction....

Am I right in this assesssment???

 

[*AllThings.tv*]

You must have forgotten to take your chill pills today...

Here is one possible argument and I do not necessarily subscribe to it or will i be bound to it because I like the way MILLERS thinks, but here goes:

You agreed to buy/lease a domain under no uncertain terms (this is arguable considering their failure to secure your agreement to their terms when you are conducting a transaction over the phone).

Now lets assume their inventory is not moving and the the70% discount was not as successful as they had hoped. Also assume they choose to do something more aggressive, like auctioning premium names off with minimal renewal fees (in the manner you suggest).

You would not be entitled to get the better deal under the law, but you would have business grounds to argue it would be in their company's best interest to extend some courtesy pricing to existing premium holders.

From that standpoint, I don't care whether you have car.tv or cars.tv. Either way, whatever prices are locked in are locked in. A lot of people may argue it was not fair they did not know you could register a dot com name when all the good ones have been taken. The same argument could be made by someone about dot tv. You get in at the point you get in and your risk profile could change when the pricing strategy changes.

I hate to point this out but it seems like you fear that you could have made better decisions with your dot tv cash had you expected this. The fact is none of us expected it, quite a few of us got some really good dot tv names, and now we are seeing more and more people buy names that have less potential simply because of dot tv's profile in the media.


Stop worrying until a decision has been made in Q1 when we learn about the new premium pricing strategy. I think you are getting ahead of yourself.

 

[MillersCrossing]

You must have forgotten to take your chill pills today...

Here is one possible argument and I do not necessarily subscribe to it or will i be bound to it because I like the way MILLERS thinks, but here goes:

You agreed to buy/lease a domain under no uncertain terms (this is arguable considering their failure to secure your agreement to their terms when you are conducting a transaction over the phone).

Now lets assume their inventory is not moving and the the70% discount was not as successful as they had hoped. Also assume they choose to do something more aggressive, like auctioning premium names off with minimal renewal fees (in the manner you suggest).

You would not be entitled to get the better deal under the law, but you would have business grounds to argue it would be in their company's best interest to extend some courtesy pricing to existing premium holders.

From that standpoint, I don't care whether you have car.tv or cars.tv. Either way, whatever prices are locked in are locked in. A lot of people may argue it was not fair they did not know you could register a dot com name when all the good ones have been taken. The same argument could be made by someone about dot tv. You get in at the point you get in and your risk profile could change when the pricing strategy changes.

I hate to point this out but it seems like you fear that you could have made better decisions with your dot tv cash had you expected this. The fact is none of us expected it, quite a few of us got some really good dot tv names, and now we are seeing more and more people buy names that have less potential simply because of dot tv's profile in the media.


Stop worrying until a decision has been made in Q1 when we learn about the new premium pricing strategy. I think you are getting ahead of yourself.

Silicon,

I wish you would spend a little time reading my thread and UNDERSTANDING it before you respond.

Nothing you have said has any relevance to the question posed.

I dont give two monkeyss about what I could have , should have waited, not waited, yes waited, 70% 60% 90% etctetcttct....I couldnt care less........

I am not asking out of a sense of injustice.......this is a question as to whether I am reading the cards rights based upon an assumption - HENCE THE CAPITAL LETTERS AT THE START OF THE THREAD ASSUMING.....

This type of question is known as a HYPOTHETICAL question - not an HYSTERICAL one...

I am simply trying to see if there is any other way to view this hypothetical as any other way than bad for premium owners...not who should I be suing......


i hope that clears the confusion up for you...............now I will take that chill pill you offered.

 

[gamehouse]

My take:

Your assumptions numbered:

1. Yes, this might happen, contracts will be honored, so better pricing or same pricing

2. This might happen

3. This has to hold true, otherwise, 'A' can push the name to 'B' and 'B' simply pushes it back to 'A' and now 'A' would get new fees.

4. Assuming that a closely relavant name is auctioned, yes I think that may sway some buyers.

5. No. 4 would not apply to GEO names.

GH

 

[MillersCrossing]

My take:

Your assumptions numbered:

1. Yes, this might happen, contracts will be honored, so better pricing or same pricing

2. This might happen

3. This has to hold true, otherwise, 'A' can push the name to 'B' and 'B' simply pushs it back to 'A' and now 'A' would get new fees.

4. Assuming that a closely relavant name is auctioned, yes I think that may sway some buyers.

5. No. 4 would not apply to GEO names.

GH

Now we are getting a little closer to answering the question, but not quite there yet..


Assumptions 1,2 & 3 are not seperate scenarios, I am saying that let us assume that all three points are how premiums will happen in 07, in my hypotheticaal assumption, 1 cannot be seperate fro two nor two from three nor three from one....

Based UPON the above assummption.......let us consider the scenario.............as stated in my original thread.............................

However, I am glad that you seem to be agreeiing that closely related premium names will SWAY some buyers.......

And I agree, GEO's are the most protected as premiums but least protected as non premiums so for example AZ.TV is a $10,000 ppremium, someone need only go and reg MYAZ.TV to get around that.......

 

[antonis12]

Millers,

I am afraid that I have to disagree with your assessment, particularly as it relates to the types of names most people on this board have regged. (In other words, premium fees for $250 to $3,000 per year)

I can easily make a case for positive, negative or neutral results with the key determinant being how successful the auction is. So, point by point:

1. If you (and I will use you as a generic example) thought education.tv at X,XXX/yr was a good deal a month ago, it is a good deal today. The market value of these premiums in the real world is not impacted by the type of esoteric discussion we are having here. If you convince Kaplan that they must have education.tv, I can assure you that they will not sit and study the details of auctions or not. If you develop yourself, you should be able to bring in enough revenue to cover your reg fees under almost any circumstance

2. As I have said time and time and time again on this board, there is no economic difference between premium regs and expensive sales/auctions. The premium regs are an installment plan and Verisign is playing the role of the bank

3. An good rule of thumb to figure out how much you paid for a domain is to take your annual reg fees and multiple by 5 or 6. That is a fair estimation of the time value of money and your option not to renew every year (one can come up with other estimates but they will not vary meaningfully).

4. So, what does this mean? If you regged a name for $3K/year, then you have effectively said the name is worth $15 to $20K. In other words, that is the Present Value today of the cash flow payments you are making to Verisign over time.

5. You should have only regged the name if you think it is worth more than that or will be in the relatively near future. If the name is really worth $100K, a completely rational buyer would be willing to offer you $80K, knowing that he will have to assume your payments to Verisign as well. I suspect in practice large corporate buyers will consider the amounts we are discussing ($250 to $3000/yr) as basically trivial and effectively ignore them. If your reg fees were $20K/yr as in your example that would be noted, but I have not noticed any of those names among this group.

6. The verisign installment pricing has attracted a disproportionately poorer group to their premium names than it would otherwise have had. While flowers.mobi at a one time cost of $200K might be theoretically the same cost as if it was an annual fee of $200k/6 = $33,000, a smaller group of people can find the cash up front to buy it all at once. So Verisign, by extending credit, has opened the market to folks like us.

7. So, what does this have to do with auctions? well, not that much. Auctions will show what the market can bear (if marketed well) and then it will tell us if the name regged for an effective price of $15K is really worth $100K or $10K. But whether or not you overpaid has already happened - the auction will just pull back the curtain

8. Now, the execution of the auction would be important. if it were well marketed, I think it will produce higher values than if not. I would agree that a poorly managed auction would hurt us, but I think demand media is savvier than that.

9. There is one area where an auction will help. If it is well marketed and therefore sets some nice market prices, it will infinitely help the .tv resale market that is hindered by lack of data and fact that most all domaineers do not appreciate the effective sameness of high upfront prices and high premium reg fees.

For example, the sale of flowers.mobi from the registry to the registrant at $200K (once) caused a huge hubbub that said .mobi would be huge.

At about the same time, the regging of sports.tv from the registry to the registrant at $200K (annually) was by any obvious metric a much bigger win for the .tv registry. In the broader domain community, it went unnoted or scorned. And be certain that I will be flamed again by someone trying to explain to me how paying upfront is fundamentally different than paying in installments. If you are about to be confused, ask yourself what happens when Domain Capital finances domain purchases at TRAFFIC.

Once we have comparables, you will see a lot more sales because people will have a simpler model to understand. So in that aspect, a successful auction will be a positive.

10. There is another aspect as follows: My sense is that some of the best values in .tv premiums have been recently taken by this group. So I would not read too much into silly, super-high fee names not meeting their "potential" when they are so clearly misclassified in the first place.

11. Conclusions:

a) You sealed your fate for good or bad when you regged, regardless of what Demand Media does because ultimately the value is set by the end-user and the market, not Verisign

b) It is all just math - high reg fees and registry auctions are the same thing

c) A successful, well marketed auction would help bring attention and pricing data to the .tv extension. A poorly run one could hurt .tv

 

[RPK]

"2. As I have said time and time and time again on this board, there is no economic difference between premium regs and expensive sales/auctions. The premium regs are an installment plan and Verisign is playing the role of the bank"

I like to look at it as real estate since an installment plan has an end, you eventually pay and own the domain. With premiums you are paying rent. The better the location (domain) the higher the rent.

If you think about it, on a $3000 domain it is more like $250.00 a month for a fantastic peace of real estate. Eventually we hope these names will be developed either by us or the company we sell too. In anycase when any of these are developed properly, paying the monthly rent won't be such a big deal.

Another possible option that has not been talked about and I am just speaking out loud is the possibility of Demand Media putting a cap on the renewels. So if your paying $1500/year, maybe after 5 years they will drop it to regular fee.

 

[*AllThings.tv*]

Silicon,

I wish you would spend a little time reading my thread and UNDERSTANDING it before you respond.

Nothing you have said has any relevance to the question posed.

I dont give two monkeyss about what I could have , should have waited, not waited, yes waited, 70% 60% 90% etctetcttct....I couldnt care less........

I am not asking out of a sense of injustice.......this is a question as to whether I am reading the cards rights based upon an assumption - HENCE THE CAPITAL LETTERS AT THE START OF THE THREAD ASSUMING.....

This type of question is known as a HYPOTHETICAL question - not an HYSTERICAL one...

I am simply trying to see if there is any other way to view this hypothetical as any other way than bad for premium owners...not who should I be suing......


i hope that clears the confusion up for you...............now I will take that chill pill you offered.

MILLERS,

You are in an excellent position vis a vis whatever premium domain strategy is articulated by enom in Q1 of 07. I understand the concern you expressed in this thread and multiple other threads about how premium owners may be harmed by this change over to enom / Demand Media. I can also appreciate your intense desire to analyze every possible premium domain policy that can be put into effect next year. I am personally saving my energy and resources until that time to make a determination as to whether existing premium domain holders are subject to harm as the result of any new policies put into effect by enom / Demand Media. In their defense, I will argue that they have done a good job in the beginning of getting press releases about the dot tv extension into more areas of the public domain than the dot tv corporation has done in the last six months that I have been following dot tv.

Only after the most recent responses to your recent posts do I understand the nature of your question. Unfortunately, it was not immediately apparent upon my first reading and I said to myself, "Millers is at it again." Definitely, exciting threads, all just focusing in on the negative.

 

[equity78]

Millers you make a point if you are comparing apples to apples but except for the domains like Car and Cars Domains are individual meaning if you paid $3,000 a year for IT.tv a LL.tv if TI.tv is auctioned for $2000 and $50 thereafter it does not hurt IT because the end users would be different. Also this is an assumption on this forum and this forum only about auctions I spoke to Scott Higgason who was interviewed by Demand Media but turned them down because he had an offer from Domain Sponsor, I asked were auctionsmentioned? He said NO.

Another thing is if premiums are lowered previous regs are not wronged pricing can always change.

Millers let me give you this one a lot of Premium .tvs owned by some of the biggest owners have had $50 renewals for years. You think your freaking out over ENOM not fixing renewals I am getting people emailing and Imming flipping out.

 

[antonis12]

"2. As I have said time and time and time again on this board, there is no economic difference between premium regs and expensive sales/auctions. The premium regs are an installment plan and Verisign is playing the role of the bank"

I like to look at it as real estate since an installment plan has an end, you eventually pay and own the domain. With premiums you are paying rent. The better the location (domain) the higher the rent.

If you think about it, on a $3000 domain it is more like $250.00 a month for a fantastic peace of real estate. Eventually we hope these names will be developed either by us or the company we sell too. In anycase when any of these are developed properly, paying the monthly rent won't be such a big deal.

Another possible option that has not been talked about and I am just speaking out loud is the possibility of Demand Media putting a cap on the renewels. So if your paying $1500/year, maybe after 5 years they will drop it to regular fee.

I think the rent analogy is good.

Any ongoing stream of payments have a present value....assuming the premium reg fees do not change, then a premium reg is what is known as a perpetuity - which is a series of unchanging payments into infinity.

The value/cost of a perpetuity is calculated by the formula PV = C / i where PV = the present value (the equivalent of a one time payment now), C=the ongoing reg fee and i = the interest or discount rate.

Let's make life simple and say the appropriate interest/discount rate is 10%.

Then the PV of paying $20K into infinity is identical to paying $200K once. In other words, $20K/10% = $200K.

Now of course it is better that reg fees drop, of course there are reg fees that are too high relative to the current/PV value of the name, but there is no "conceptual" reason that a series of premium reg fees can't be valued and looked at similarly to a one-time purchase!

Cheers

Also this is an assumption on this forum and this forum only about auctions I spoke to Scott Higgason who was interviewed by Demand Media but turned them down because he had an offer from Domain Sponsor, I asked were auctionsmentioned? He said NO.
.

And not an assumption based in any real facts! I was just tossing a thought out there. did not want to cause this much speculation!!!!

A

I am personally saving my energy and resources until that time to make a determination as to whether existing premium domain holders are subject to harm as the result of any new policies put into effect by enom / Demand Media. In their defense, I will argue that they have done a good job in the beginning of getting press releases about the dot tv extension into more areas of the public domain than the dot tv corporation has done in the last six months that I have been following dot tv.

i agree. short of them doing something blatently irrational, they will do much more good than harm to the extension and for us.

again, prepare your development engines. the time is now for us...

 

[TLDnetworks]

BASED ON THE FOLLOWING ASSUMPTION.

Come On Millers, you know the old saying - if you Assume, you make an A** of U and Me...

Stop worrying until a decision has been made in Q1 when we learn about the new premium pricing strategy. I think you are getting ahead of yourself.

You cannot do anything about what you have no control over.

You are in an excellent position vis a vis whatever premium domain strategy is articulated by enom in Q1 of 07. I understand the concern you expressed in this thread and multiple other threads about how premium owners may be harmed by this change over to enom / Demand Media. I can also appreciate your intense desire to analyze every possible premium domain policy that can be put into effect next year. I am personally saving my energy and resources until that time to make a determination as to whether existing premium domain holders are subject to harm as the result of any new policies put into effect by enom / Demand Media.

Finally some Rational thinking.

Sorry Millers, but you spend TOO much time focusing on the negative aspects of the turnover, and TOO much energy coming up with conspiracy theories; What if ICANN banned the CCtld for Tuvalu because the island is sinking and at some point there won't be a country of Tuvalu, thus no need for the CCtld??????? :yell:

What if the the COMmies, petition ICANN, and make it so that only .COM is recognized on the internet???????????????

What if, What if, What if.... Take a deep breath, work on your business plan, get your ducks in a row, and WHEN the details are laid out you'll have evereything ready to act in the appropriate manner. Untill then you're wasting time and energy ASSUMING...

 

[MillersCrossing]

Come On Millers, you know the old saying - if you Assume, you make an A** of U and Me...

You cannot do anything about what you have no control over.

Finally some Rational thinking.

Sorry Millers, but you spend TOO much time focusing on the negative aspects of the turnover, and TOO much energy coming up with conspiracy theories; What if ICANN banned the CCtld for Tuvalu because the island is sinking and at some point there won't be a country of Tuvalu, thus no need for the CCtld??????? :yell:

What if the the COMmies, petition ICANN, and make it so that only .COM is recognized on the internet???????????????

What if, What if, What if.... Take a deep breath, work on your business plan, get your ducks in a row, and WHEN the details are laid out you'll have evereything ready to act in the appropriate manner. Untill then you're wasting time and energy ASSUMING...

I GIVE UP!!

Is it too much for people to understand that I really do not give a rats ass?? But that it is a debateable point worthy of discussion...??

I have made my play and am fine with it.....I was thinking aloud on a topic that IMHO is worthy of discussion.......if I was so worried about it, I would have already accepted offers that would have paid off my entire premium collection four weeks ago.... ...........


But no, thinking aloud about different scenarios means I cannot take the heat.....what is wrong with some of you....can't you see this as a discussion instead of a .........oh my god what if .........

So I will keep the real issues on everyone's minds away from the board and take it offline with members whom like me want to face reality and the way things could play out if.............its not callled focusing on the negative......its called knowing the bottom line - if thats too scary for some of you to contemplate......well then....

Anyway...I am in agreeent on one thing - this conversation should come to a close.....

 

[equity78]

if thats too scary for some of you to contemplate......well then....

No offense James the only person scared is you

 

[TLDnetworks]

Is it too much for people to understand that I really do not give a rats ass??

Then why worry about it and keep beating the drum?

But that it is a debateable point worthy of discussion...??

I guess I don't understand debating Speculation and Assumption over and over when there are no facts.

what is wrong with some of you....can't you see this as a discussion instead of a .........oh my god what if .........

Nothing at all. All I can see is that your assumptions and speculation of the negative aspects of DM are "oh my god what if".

So I will keep the real issues on everyone's minds away from the board and take it offline with members whom like me want to face reality and the way things could play out if.............

"I will keep the real issues...away from the board" What? There are too many things wrong with this sentence... Everyone's Minds? Who's?

its called knowing the bottom line - if thats too scary for some of you to contemplate......well then....

Again, it's all Speculation and Assumtion - not the bottom line.

Anyway...I am in agreeent on one thing - this conversation should come to a close.....

Here Here.

 

[Argos]

Governing is anticipating.

 

[TLDnetworks]

Governing is anticipating.

We are not Governing.