discuss My take on brandable marketplaces and why it spells ”Au revoir”

[trelgor]

Hey!

I’m a brandable domainer. I have been at it for years and I have amassed a sizeable portfolio. I am successful. I also love what I do. ”Brandable domainer” to me means that I value names based on their gravitas as a prospective brand. The quality of the name is not derived from past or current usage or readily quantifiable stats, but from a human evaluation of it’s overall applicabilities in form and function.

The question that has been silently fraying my sanity is to what extent this success is derived from my work and to what extent it is related to the connection to buyer crowds that frequent the brandable marketplaces I use. It is a question I have seen posed many times in different forms. The brandable marketplaces themselves mostly dodge it.

I am sure that the boutique modus gets frequent buyers that are captivated by their descriptions and logos. The creative representation of a brand prospect creates a boost of appeal that could mean the difference between sale or not. So the occasional sale is most likely secured on those merits. Browsing or searching the well known site and finding a match that conceptually connects to the venture...

But it is not the occasional sale that suffers the 30%+ commission structure. It is all of them.

Afternic for example charges 20% flat. That is also a lot, but they do offer a connection to an amazing buyer pool through their network. They also do not demand exclusivity. With say Afternic, Sedo, etcetera, You can still have a sweet and individualized lander with a more forgiving commission somewhere else, if you want a logo and a description it might cost you $10 per name. This time as a clean investment that is 100% towards your own success.

Here are the bulletpoints for my decision.

• Name selection. You are not subject to a review process other than your own. For good or for bad.
• Pricing. You don’t need to consider ”accepting” a price that feels wrong.
• Information. You are investing in knowledge about your buyers considerations and in their future business needs.
• Exclusivity. You are free to work with a plethora of sales services.
• Ease of management. You are in charge. You are less likely to not respond in time or to ignore - yourself.
• Learning. You can use the information you harvest to evolve.
• Commissions. Even though you may miss out on the occasional brandable marketplace sale, your commission percentages will be lower.
• Marketing. You would not be setting a marketing budget aside when you pay 30% commissions. You would actually expect that percentage to pay for serious marketing.

My opinion about the brandable marketplaces is that they increasingly find themselves in a downward spiral. They inherently cater first to more or less lottery tickets that get a minor boost by a professional presentation. It is a setup where the house almost always wins, but where the workload from submissions makes those wins increasingly hard earned for the marketplaces.

I think a strategy to tackle this has been to actively recruit more premium names from older portfolios. But the holders of those are not even remotely as ”loyal” as the non-premium type variety, as they are not invested in the marketplace. Sometimes noob loyalty is even promoted by 1% outlaw biker vernacular!

I think that the inability to cater to the portfolio holders that have passed the initial stage of actually selling a couple of names and are in a steady growth mode is something to consider. That is where focus should be. It is regretfully not.

I hope for a fruitful discussion that could fast-track an evolution that builds on two very underestimated facts. The important end user buyers of aftermarket domains are businesses. Businesses want business names. Those two facts in turn pose two critical questions. What is a business name? (I’m definitely not talking about ”JohnsAutoRepairLouisiana”), and how should marketplaces connect fledgling businesses with these names?

It is safe to say that this process today is undeveloped, fragmented, convoluted and inefficient on both buyer and seller end. You can simplify transactions all day long, but if you don’t simplify the process of finding a prospect domain in the first place, you will not have a bigger pie.

A bigger pie should be a priority for any industry.

I invite all leading brandable marketplaces (and every domain sales platform worth the name) to comment on these sentiments. I will interpret no input as a bit offensive as your partnership with me has been lucrative. I would also interpret it as the unability to grab a marketing opportunity. (Abide by NP:s rules though).

2020!

@DAN.COM @Joe Styler @margotb @Jowita Emberton @GrantP @Rob Monster @DomainAgents @Uniregistry

(To the inevitable questions about my sales numbers I will only say that I have made hundreds of end user type sales and that yearly sales are in the 6 digits and growing. My portfolio size is 5k. I currently do not actively list new acquisitions with brandable marketplaces.)

 

[getniche]

Show attachment 140679

I think though that at some point the brandable marketplaces are going to have
to recognize that seemingly comparable portfolios in terms of quality have very different outcome. I have seen many successful peers jump ship. If you think that these portfolios, and their creators, can be easily replaced, you are mistaken. The real profit in brandable domains are in the mid range and the profitable mid range names can only be found consistently by more seasoned domainers.

Lower the quality and STR will kill you. Too much evident market value - too low margins.

So, ignoring this I think will lead to quality polarization on these marketplaces. Hard work low quality submissions increase and the occasional established portfolo will experiment.

I was speaking more to exclusivity, but when it comes to quality I tend to agree with you (love your portfolio btw).

To curate a marketplace at scale like these companies are trying to do is a losing proposition. When I say losing I don't mean profitability or growth, but rather genuine discourse from the hand that feeds them. They're required to meet growing demand all while having an increasingly difficult task of wading through the endless garbage that I'm sure gets put in front of them.

I imagine the initial success of these companies was based on a single individual who had a keen eye for premium domains and as their roles changed to managing a business the task of vetting the domains now falls on people far less experienced at picking out the good from the bad.

I personally sift through around 5k domains a day to identify 10-15 good opportunities and then whittle it down to more like 3-5. The scrutiny I give to each acquisition through all the tools available to me (including my business experience) would be near impossible to teach and is extremely time consuming.

At some point I can see where the culture is forced to shift from becoming less human curated to more data oriented. Look at sales data and keyword sell through and let the robots pick. When that happens the quality inevitably goes down and, as I said before, the opportunity presents itself for others to step in and offer the original version of the finely tuned selection process.

Take your portfolio for instance. You could easily flip the switch and say that you're a brandable marketplace. Redirect your domains to your site, create some "business naming" content and get rid of that pesky commission.

Where the marketplaces and their evangelists succeed is in creating a sense that they're the best (and only) place for brandables. Maybe I'm just biased because I've had success building and selling web properties based on their ability to monetize free Google traffic, but the opportunity is definitely there for anyone willing to think outside the box.

 

[manpreet]

Hey!

I’m a brandable domainer. I have been at it for years and I have amassed a sizeable portfolio. I am successful. I also love what I do. ”Brandable domainer” to me means that I value names based on their gravitas as a prospective brand. The quality of the name is not derived from past or current usage or readily quantifiable stats, but from a human evaluation of it’s overall applicabilities in form and function.

The question that has been silently fraying my sanity is to what extent this success is derived from my work and to what extent it is related to the connection to buyer crowds that frequent the brandable marketplaces I use. It is a question I have seen posed many times in different forms. The brandable marketplaces themselves mostly dodge it.

I am sure that the boutique modus gets frequent buyers that are captivated by their descriptions and logos. The creative representation of a brand prospect creates a boost of appeal that could mean the difference between sale or not. So the occasional sale is most likely secured on those merits. Browsing or searching the well known site and finding a match that conceptually connects to the venture...

But it is not the occasional sale that suffers the 30%+ commission structure. It is all of them.

Afternic for example charges 20% flat. That is also a lot, but they do offer a connection to an amazing buyer pool through their network. They also do not demand exclusivity. With say Afternic, Sedo, etcetera, You can still have a sweet and individualized lander with a more forgiving commission somewhere else, if you want a logo and a description it might cost you $10 per name. This time as a clean investment that is 100% towards your own success.

Here are the bulletpoints for my decision.

• Name selection. You are not subject to a review process other than your own. For good or for bad.
• Pricing. You don’t need to consider ”accepting” a price that feels wrong.
• Information. You are investing in knowledge about your buyers considerations and in their future business needs.
• Exclusivity. You are free to work with a plethora of sales services.
• Ease of management. You are in charge. You are less likely to not respond in time or to ignore - yourself.
• Learning. You can use the information you harvest to evolve.
• Commissions. Even though you may miss out on the occasional brandable marketplace sale, your commission percentages will be lower.
• Marketing. You would not be setting a marketing budget aside when you pay 30% commissions. You would actually expect that percentage to pay for serious marketing.

My opinion about the brandable marketplaces is that they increasingly find themselves in a downward spiral. They inherently cater first to more or less lottery tickets that get a minor boost by a professional presentation. It is a setup where the house almost always wins, but where the workload from submissions makes those wins increasingly hard earned for the marketplaces.

I think a strategy to tackle this has been to actively recruit more premium names from older portfolios. But the holders of those are not even remotely as ”loyal” as the non-premium type variety, as they are not invested in the marketplace. Sometimes noob loyalty is even promoted by 1% outlaw biker vernacular!

I think that the inability to cater to the portfolio holders that have passed the initial stage of actually selling a couple of names and are in a steady growth mode is something to consider. That is where focus should be. It is regretfully not.

I hope for a fruitful discussion that could fast-track an evolution that builds on two very underestimated facts. The important end user buyers of aftermarket domains are businesses. Businesses want business names. Those two facts in turn pose two critical questions. What is a business name? (I’m definitely not talking about ”JohnsAutoRepairLouisiana”), and how should marketplaces connect fledgling businesses with these names?

It is safe to say that this process today is undeveloped, fragmented, convoluted and inefficient on both buyer and seller end. You can simplify transactions all day long, but if you don’t simplify the process of finding a prospect domain in the first place, you will not have a bigger pie.

A bigger pie should be a priority for any industry.

I invite all leading brandable marketplaces (and every domain sales platform worth the name) to comment on these sentiments. I will interpret no input as a bit offensive as your partnership with me has been lucrative. I would also interpret it as the unability to grab a marketing opportunity. (Abide by NP:s rules though).

2020!

@DAN.COM @Joe Styler @margotb @Jowita Emberton @GrantP @Rob Monster @DomainAgents @Uniregistry

(To the inevitable questions about my sales numbers I will only say that I have made hundreds of end user type sales and that yearly sales are in the 6 digits and growing. My portfolio size is 5k. I currently do not actively list new acquisitions with brandable marketplaces.)

Thanks for sharing, some nice points there.

Screening and Classifying a domain as Brandable, is a subjective term and will remain to be. Both the marketplaces as well as domainers need to come to an agreement for the same. Just imo.

 

[boker]

To the inevitable questions about my sales numbers I will only say that I have made hundreds of end user type sales and that yearly sales are in the 6 digits and growing. My portfolio size is 5k. I currently do not actively list new acquisitions with brandable marketplaces.

I wonder if anything has changed in your view regarding brandable marketplaces, in the last two months.

 

[trelgor]

It's still very much the same. It's always a trade-off between liquidity and independence the way this works unfortunately.

Some marketplaces treat sellers like cattle. Even though the businesses are built on their backs, they get sneers, silence and secrecy for their efforts. Some, as you may have noted, will not even engage publicly and answer legitimate questions. That strategy is not going to be successful, thank god. (Unless you really, really want to be the market leader in digital snake oil.) It will only create a merry-go-round of decreasing seller and domain quality I'm afraid.

For transparency, and to not have less successful sellers in my niche try an unsustainable model, I will say that I have decided to buckle down for yet some time before I can do my own marketing and eventually start a next generation domain sales business. Incidentally, I chose to list with the one site that felt the need to engage in this thread.

That can always change though. And generally should more often. It's beneficial to innovation and competition at large to re-evaluate your options.

 

[boker]

It's still very much the same. It's always a trade-off between liquidity and independence the way this works unfortunately.

Some marketplaces treat sellers like cattle. Even though the businesses are built on their backs, they get sneers, silence and secrecy for their efforts. Some, as you may have noted, will not even engage publicly and answer legitimate questions. That strategy is not going to be successful, thank god. (Unless you really, really want to be the market leader in digital snake oil.) It will only create a merry-go-round of decreasing seller and domain quality I'm afraid.

For transparency, and to not have less successful sellers in my niche try an unsustainable model, I will say that I have decided to buckle down for yet some time before I can do my own marketing and eventually start a next generation domain sales business. Incidentally, I chose to list with the one site that felt the need to engage in this thread.

That can always change though. And generally should more often. It's beneficial to innovation and competition at large to re-evaluate your options.

I've noticed that you have listed lot's of new names with one of the players and I was curious about the thinking behind it.

 

[SOLR]

Having read this thread up to this point, I really don't care about traffic to a brandable site since the vast majority of traffic is going to be domainers.

The only thing I care about is the sell through rate.

The traffic is going up, but so is the number of domains for sale and probably the number of domainers.

And it appears STR is going down on all of the brand-able marketplaces.

At what point it becomes unprofitable to list at them is up to each of us and gets reached based on our own perceptions and patience.

One thing that I have to really wonder about is if exclusivity is even beneficial to the marketplaces?? Sure, they might have a few times where it gets bought somewhere else and its awkward. And the $5 logo fee. But just let the potential customers know up front that someone at another site could buy it, giving a sense of urgency to buy something quickly, because it might be gone tomorrow somewhere else and it should balance out by getting buyers to commit more rapidly without overthinking and deciding no.

 

[trelgor]

This is my opinion. At this point in time domain name sales for this high potential niche is inefficient. Domain sales systems in general are geared towards oldtimer domain preferences, keyword-ridden and one dimensional domains. For me, these domains have been nothing but bad investment. Still these are the kinds names that get preference in search boxes for domains anywhere. It is bad judgement.

The conundrum is that you need an inventory that is geared towards the target buyers and you need a presentation that makes these target buyers interested in navigating the inventory. There is most likely a better solution for the innovation-driven that can tap the sales potential for brand name domains and still not limit inventory. I'm confident that inefficient things tend to become more efficient.

The concept of the "digital brand" is on the rise, in direct relation to the rise in trademark applications worldwide.

 

[SOLR]

This is my opinion. At this point in time domain name sales for this high potential niche is inefficient. Domain sales systems in general are geared towards oldtimer domain preferences, keyword-ridden and one dimensional domains. For me, these domains have been nothing but bad investment. Still these are the kinds names that get preference in search boxes for domains anywhere. It is bad judgement.

The conundrum is that you need an inventory that is geared towards the target buyers and you need a presentation that makes these target buyers interested in navigating the inventory. There is most likely a better solution for the innovation-driven that can tap the sales potential for brand name domains and still not limit inventory. I'm confident that inefficient things tend to become more efficient.

The concept of the "digital brand" is on the rise, in direct relation to the rise in trademark applications worldwide.

Of course,

So here you are saying that blends/made up words are better for you than two keyword brandables? How much better? Has this always been the case of have you been noticing a shift? Is this in terms of sales or in terms of average sale price or profit?

Has it been your experience that shorter (4-8 letters) made up words are the sweet spot?

Are the brandable marketplaces still suitable for names such as these 4-8 letter non-keyword brandables? But not for the double-keyword names? In your experience/opinion?

As to innovation, I think minimizing the amount of domain names per page that a potential customer sees is crucial. It would also really be best to have them fill out a very long survey that can accurately narrow down exactly what names they are searching for so that everything else could be filtered out.

Also, if someone could make a VR marketplace for domain names, that would also be sweet.

Finally, I suppose any innovation really needs to ask the brandable customers what it is that they want and need and are looking for, or else it will all fall flat.

 

[trelgor]

There are different kinds of word based names. Some can fly because they are brandable. Others are stale because they evoke nothing but their direct representation. Historically, these stale and unflexible domain names have been preferred because of the search benefit. They are the opposite of the ”brand” notion. It’s like marking your cattle ”cattle”. It’s like calling your cornflakes brand ”cornflakes”. It’s non functional in brand terms. And in trademark terms for that matter.

 

[SOLR]

Thanks and you've got a great portfolio on NextVenture.com!

I'll be using this alongside BrandBucket to analyze potential purchases.