discuss Soft sales in 2017, anyone else?

[bazabizo]

Do you guys have the same experience?
I have like 1/2 the rate I used to have in 2016! Anyone else?

 

[Houssaine]

I'm on to my second year of domaining. The first one was successful as I sold two domains for a total of $5,000+.This year despite a few offers I'm yet to make any sale as I'm reticent to sell for under $1,000.

 

[Branko Jovanovic]

Domain sales can be expected in emerging industries - health and wellness, 3D printing, sharing economy (like Uber), biotechnology, drones, water ... 2016 was election year in US so was a bit slow, some rebound can be expected though it is summer vacation season. September should pick up.

 

[Nikul Sanghvi]

I know that Namebio data isn’t perfect but here’s the topdown view of the data that is available...

I took this snapshot at the H1 interval for 2017 (a couple of weeks ago), and doubled both the sales volume and revenue for a simple extrapolation of 2017. Unless Q3 and Q4 contain a heavier weighting of the overall annual transactions, it looks like:

- 2017 will be slightly down when compared to 2016 and 2015 in terms of total recorded sales.
- However, this year will be marginally above 2016 in respect to average transaction value.

A couple of other notes:

- The average deal size of any year can be skewed by a handful of super-sized sales.
- [Long-term trend] The average sale size is shrinking (or potentially more smaller sales now reported).
- [Long-term trend] The volume of transactions is increasing (or again, just more data feeds available to Namebio). The recent rise of 'liquid' transactions is the most obvious driver of this trend.

Below, I’ve also broken down the Top 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 transactions of each year. This hasn’t been extrapolated for this year but shows the position as at close of H1 of 2017. The Top5 sales this year account for almost half of the total $ for 2017. Most years, the Top5 sales equate to between 20 to 40% of the Top100 sales. This could be bad news if it means there's compression in the rest of the ‘tail’ (sales 6 to 100) in terms of overall ($) value.

The years 2011, 2012 and 2013 look unusual in both graphs. Either this is a fallout from the financial crisis or has been mentioned to me that its most likely to be missing sales data from one of the major marketplaces.

A potential reason for lower liquidity in 2017 could be short-term investors pushing money out of domains and into crypto. The remaining sales hopefully contain a higher proportion of ‘end-users’ and thus a higher sales price. It would also be cool to know the composition of the sales by domain type (brandable, premium one-word, liquid, etc). I've only used public facing data for the graphs above but someone with access to the full data set could answer this in more depth.

Personally, 2017 has been slower than 2016 - but the few sales that I've had, have mostly been to end-users who've paid close to or above asking price. Not statistically significant but backs up the hypothesis above.

Not an award-winning analysis but hope it's of some use to the thread.

(One last bonus graph below, couldn't help myself. Looks like 2004/2005 might be incomplete datasets?)

 

[Asfas1000]

Thanks @Nikul Sanghvi for the analysis and charts. It is not easy to draw conclusions because so many variables are changing at the same time.

It would be interesting to have the average sales price without the blockbuster sales, or even without sales above say $100k , as they are not too common.

 

[Nikul Sanghvi]

Thanks @Nikul Sanghvi for the analysis and charts. It is not easy to draw conclusions because so many variables are changing at the same time.

It would be interesting to have the average sales price without the blockbuster sales, or even without sales above say $100k , as they are not too common.

Agree. I'm not too familiar with the quirks of the dataset so there's still more unknowns than knowns.

Regarding Average Sales price excluding the blockbusters, please see the last bonus graph. The easiest way I could trend this was to calculate the average sale price of all the domains excluding the Top100 sales.

 

[Asfas1000]

Namebio mentioned that sometime in 2015 they started recording sales from more feeds.

 

[frank-germany]

I took this snapshot at the H1 interval for 2017 (a couple of weeks ago), and doubled both the sales volume and revenue for a simple extrapolation of 2017. Unless Q3 and Q4 contain a heavier weighting of the overall annual transactions, it looks like:

are you kidding?

Q3 and Q4 always has higher values
as companies need to spend in Q4 in order to avoid taxes



so if you want to compare 2017 and 16/15
use the same Q1 and Q2 of 15/16 and double it ( or not )

 

[Arca]

Anyone care to share their summer 2017 sales experience?

Personally I did really well in June, and July was outstanding, with 22 end-user sales. All inbound.

However, as soon as August came around, I've seen a significant drop in sales, only had 13 end-user sales in August, fewer inbound offers, and average sales prices decreased as well. Total sales for August are down about 70% when compared with July. My sales in 2017 have been pretty consistent until August came around, so I find this sudden and significant drop in sales somewhat disconcerting. September is off to a slow start so far.

How were sales for you over the summer? What are you expectations for fall/winter?

 

[mpls]

Anyone care to share their summer 2017 sales experience?

Yes, 1 inquiry, accepted his offer, disappear.
0 sales.

 

[bazabizo]

Anyone care to share their summer 2017 sales experience?

Personally I did really well in June, and July was outstanding, with 22 end-user sales. All inbound.

However, as soon as August came around, I've seen a significant drop in sales, only had 13 end-user sales in August, fewer inbound offers, and average sales prices decreased as well. Total sales for August are down about 70% when compared with July. My sales in 2017 have been pretty consistent until August came around, so I find this sudden and significant drop in sales somewhat disconcerting. September is off to a slow start so far.

How were sales for you over the summer? What are you expectations for fall/winter?

How many domains do you have in total? How much is your average selling price?

 

[Arca]

Yes, 1 inquiry, accepted his offer, disappear.
0 sales.

Ouch. Hope your sales results will improve this fall!

Regarding people making an offer and disappearing after you accept their offer, this has become a huge issue in 2017.

In 2016, I had 2 non-paying buyers, so it was a non-issue. In 2017, I've probably accepted 15-20 offers where buyer ended up disappearing/not paying.

 

[Matrix1976]

Mid 6 figures in 'buyers' disappearing after placing 4-5 figure offers or accepting bins, in 2017 alone. 9 out of 10 seemingly promising leads leading to zip.

 

[ResoluteDomains]

2017 Soft?

TONS of offers, no bites tho.

Everyone wants names for under $100 these days it seems.

 

[joro001]

I identify with much of what others have said here.
I've had my strongest year of domain sales in 2017 since I started but it's no thanks to end users, most of my sales by a huge margin have come to selling to domainers via Namejet, Flippa, godaddy etc. If I was holding out waiting for end user sales only this year i'd be so badly in the red it would be crazy.

 

[bazabizo]

I identify with much of what others have said here.
I've had my strongest year of domain sales in 2017 since I started but it's no thanks to end users, most of my sales by a huge margin have come to selling to domainers via Namejet, Flippa, godaddy etc. If I was holding out waiting for end user sales only this year i'd be so badly in the red it would be crazy.

I do know that there is a lot of money in flipping. I might be wrong, but what I always get afraid of is : I buy a lot of quality names, the ones that I found dirt cheap, are the ones that I can flip for 200-400% more easily, but these are increasingly harder to find everyday. This makes me think that flipping will only get harder as we march foward. However on the other hand, I increase the asking price for my quality names to end users every year, which makes it harder as I march forward. Any thoughts?

 

[joro001]

I do know that there is a lot of money in flipping. I might be wrong, but what I always get afraid of is : I buy a lot of quality names, the ones that I found dirt cheap, are the ones that I can flip for 200-400% more easily, but these are increasingly harder to find everyday. This makes me think that flipping will only get harder as we march foward. However on the other hand, I increase the asking price for my quality names to end users every year, which makes it harder as I march forward. Any thoughts?

From the last 2 years of experience i've noticed competition on the drop increase significantly, no question about that. In terms of which names to pick to resell that takes a lot of experience and frankly mistakes to learn what sells well on which platform and even then you won't get it right all the time. It is far from easy what i've been doing, but it's working well for me and if I just had to buy waiting for end user sales i'd be in trouble, no doubt about that.

 

[Arca]

I identify with much of what others have said here.
I've had my strongest year of domain sales in 2017 since I started but it's no thanks to end users, most of my sales by a huge margin have come to selling to domainers via Namejet, Flippa, godaddy etc. If I was holding out waiting for end user sales only this year i'd be so badly in the red it would be crazy.

I bought a few of the names you were selling on NameJet personally I think it makes more sense to hold out for end user sales on those.

I'm surprised (and impressed) to hear that you've had your best year in domaining by way of flipping domains to other domainers. The margins tend to be quite slim when flipping names, and when it's time to replenish you inventor, you are faced with the same market prices you got when selling your names. So while reseller prices have reached unprecedented price levels in 2017, which I suppose has made flipping of names bough in earlier years at lower price levels more profitable, if you want to reinvest into more names to flip, you also have to pay current market prices to buy new names. How do you deal with this situation?

Personally I've not had any success flipping names to other domainers, and 99% of my sales go to end users. I've tried flipping names, but since you usually get around 10-30x more from end-users, I just never managed to get anywhere near the sales results I get from end-user sales.

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

Anyone care to share their summer 2017 sales experience?

Personally I did really well in June, and July was outstanding, with 22 end-user sales. All inbound.

However, as soon as August came around, I've seen a significant drop in sales, only had 13 end-user sales in August, fewer inbound offers, and average sales prices decreased as well. Total sales for August are down about 70% when compared with July. My sales in 2017 have been pretty consistent until August came around, so I find this sudden and significant drop in sales somewhat disconcerting. September is off to a slow start so far.

How were sales for you over the summer? What are you expectations for fall/winter?

That looks impressive! But how many names you have in your portfolio?

 

[joro001]

I bought a few of the names you were selling on NameJet personally I think it makes more sense to hold out for end user sales on those.

I'm surprised (and impressed) to hear that you've had your best year in domaining by way of flipping domains to other domainers. The margins tend to be quite slim when flipping names, and when it's time to replenish you inventor, you are faced with the same market prices you got when selling your names. So while reseller prices have reached unprecedented price levels in 2017, which I suppose has made flipping of names bough in earlier years at lower price levels more profitable, if you want to reinvest into more names to flip, you also have to pay current market prices to buy new names. How do you deal with this situation?

Personally I've not had any success flipping names to other domainers, and 99% of my sales go to end users. I've tried flipping names, but since you usually get around 10-30x more from end-users, I just never managed to get anywhere near the sales results I get from end-user sales.

I've done very well for years reselling to domainers, I accept it doesn't for 99% of people but for me it's working as well as ever. Some names I hold for end users but most of the time if I can get the ROI I want i'll let a domainer buy it to hold and resell.

 

[Arca]

How many domains do you have in total? How much is your average selling price?

I mainly sell names in the $1000-8000 range at BIN, but also accept many inbound offers in the $500-1000 range. My average sales price is $1750.

That looks impressive! But how many names you have in your portfolio?

My portfolio size is in the 1000-2000 range.

 

[DomainVP]

Personally I've not had any success flipping names to other domainers, and 99% of my sales go to end users. I've tried flipping names, but since you usually get around 10-30x more from end-users, I just never managed to get anywhere near the sales results I get from end-user sales.

1000% agreed.

Even if I have a domain that will be a $5k+ sale at some point, couldn't get $20 from someone here on NP.

Just look at the story of uglydork. Got a 1 word on the cheap and was desperation selling here on NP looking for a $1k profit, or to recoup his investment.

Then he finds the right end user, via miracle, and sells for $150k.

Point being, other domainers have a hard time seeing value unless its blatant. Even then they want to pay $100 USD for a domain that should be selling for $10000.

It's a harder road to target end users only, but a much more lucrative one.

 

[Arca]

Point being, other domainers have a hard time seeing value unless its blatant. Even then they want to pay $100 USD for a domain that should be selling for $10000.

While this is very often the case with domainers, there's also an emerging trend where you often see domainers not only pay up, but imo seriously overpay for names (if re-selling to an end-user for a profit with a decent margin is their end goal).

At venues like GoDaddy, NameJet, and DropCatch, while prices are increasing significantly across the board, there are certain sales that really stand out by (surprisingly) selling for what I would consider to be close to, or even above, end-user price for domains.

And I personally sold a name for mid-high $X,XXX not too long ago, and throughout negotiations, I was convinced that there was an end-user on the other end. To my surprise, it turned out to be a domain investor, who bought the name as an investment.

So while the majority of domainers are not willing to pay up for quality names, as you pointed out, there is also a growing group of investors out there, both individuals and domain investment companies, who are ready to put down serious money for any domain they are interested in for future reselling. If only two parties like this are present in an auction, a name that would otherwise have sold for low $XXX might be bid up to $1500... So in auctions today, competition is often determined more by WHO is bidding on a name, rather than the quality of the name.

 

[bazabizo]

My portfolio size is in the 1000-2000 range.

How do you sell 22 names in a single month when you have an average 1500 domains? thats like 1.5% of your domains in a month to end users? Dude, thats impossible. I believe you might have mistyped something here?

 

[Arca]

How do you sell 22 names in a single month when you have an average 1500 domains? thats like 1.5% of your domains in a month to end users? Dude, thats impossible. I believe you might have mistyped something here?

Why is that unbelievable? Guys who do outreach turn over even a larger % of their portfolio. No typos there.

 

[bazabizo]

Why is that unbelievable? Guys who do outreach turn over even a larger % of their portfolio. No typos there.

So you sell only outbound? Can you please give us an example of a name you had/have? Interesting you have such a fantastic rate that's all