discuss The perfect domain marketplace

[kjakanflow]

What is missing from DAN, GoDaddy, all domain marketplaces to make it the perfect domain marketplace?

 

[kjakanflow]

I can start! Crypto payments!

 

[Damand]

I believe there are some important things a domain marketplace could do to be even better. For example, they could make it easier for users to find domains by adding fancy search filters. These filters could let you look for domains based on stuff like how long they are if they have certain words, or what type they are. Plus, it'd be awesome if they were really clear about how much everything costs, including any extra fees or how much it'll cost to renew. That way, you know exactly what you're getting into from the start.

 

[Adrigan]

What is missing from DAN, GoDaddy, all domain marketplaces to make it the perfect domain marketplace?

For me, what needs to change to make domain marketplaces better is for marketplaces to stop determining the prices (or price range) that your domain(s) should be priced at. Plus there is the initial and ongoing burden of domain owners having to do most/all the work in adding domains to a site and then managing them in all the various ways that are needed. The commission charged is also too much, for providing very little.

Some domain marketplaces act as if they are the supreme arbiters of value and that their “extensive experience” with selling domain names provides them with a “track record of proven results” (or some such management speak statement).

First of all, all domain marketplaces are just that - a market.
But when you have the ‘“market stall holder” determining what names can be included and on what terms, you end up with false results and therefore false data.

The marketplaces which control what price you put on your domain name(s) for sale for, are not interested, at all, in understanding the true value of a domain name. No, instead, what they do is make up a “value range” which they are confident that many domains will sell for and demand that you list your name within that range. They will usually fluff up their language to make it seem that they know wheat they are talking about and that they are “professionals”. Afternic is particular bad operator with this behavior and when they tried to this on me, I told them where they can go, complete with an appropriate well-known hand gesture which I emailed to them.

Such operators are only interested in one thing - turnover. The more domains they sell, the more commission they make and so they are happy. They couldn’t give two hoots what your domain’s real value is.

In this sense, controlled domain marketplaces behave like real estate agents, who encourage you to accept their value of your home, which is at an amount they are reasonably confident your house will sell for. That agent’s recommended price may not be what price the home could achieve, but it is what the agent believes can be achieved in a reasonable amount of time, through their efforts. Like domain marketplaces, they are only interested in volume, not true values.
They also don’t want a home staying on their books for too long. Ditto domain marketplaces.

Many years ago when I started to look at how to sell my domains, I often found repeated garbage been written and spoken by “domain name experts”, despite the fact that domain names were still in their infancy and so the claimed expertise was a bare-faced lie, or at best arrogance. I chose to ignore those people and subsequently, I managed to achieve sales for some of my early registered domains, just from my whois info being public. I later created for sale landing pages for my remaining domains and which led to 2 nice priced sales ($00,000s).

So these fake value domain marketplaces achieve an artificial record of what domains are worth from their phoney data and use that to persuade/convince domain name holders to price their domains as they say/suggest. If you go along with their suggestion, sure you might sell 1, 2, some, or many of your domains. But will you have sold them for too low a price?

I partly understand why some of these marketplaces behave this way, which is to ensure that holders of domains such as “www-justclicknowtomakequickmoney999.org” or “1000bestpricedeals.com” aren’t putting such domains on their site for $500K and the site looking like a junkyard & getting a poor reputation.

But beyond such obvious garbage, there are many 4-8 character .com names for which the true value will never be known if the name doesn’t spell out something obvious. We might learn what the “current” value of such names are, if someone makes an open offer to buy such a domain, but the offer must be open, not contrived by arrogant, self-obsessed, delusional people, setting artificial values, based on very little to nothing.

Over time, the value of a domain name may also change, depending on trends/fashions, new developments and whatever the business climate is like at any moment in time.

We all know of examples of modern companies with entirely made up non-dictionary words as their company name (Twitter, Skype, Spotify, Shopify, Etsy, Google, Zillow, Pinterest, Groupon, and many, many more). Can you imagine if you had registered one or more of these names, or other now well known names and took the advice of the alleged “experts” controlling some of the domain marketplaces, to sell them for a few $000s? You’d probably want to commit suicide once you saw what the new owners did with the names and what their businesses went on to become. If you are creating and registering domains in this space, I urge you to decide on a value and stick to it. Don’t share the value with anyone and hold the domain until you get your value or close to it, and hold it for as long as you can.

I have other issues with domain marketplaces, such as these sites expecting you, the customer, to do all/most the work in adding names to their site and then manging them. Plus, the added burden of having to deal with numerous emails each time you log in, requiring you to enter a OTP, or other code for each login, “security” emails saying “We didn’t recognize this login location. Was it you?”, etc., etc. Then having to confirm this, confirm that, provide this or that info to the site, setup and then managing the various elements and minutiae of having domains on their sites, parking keywords/criteria, etc., etc. Not a problem if you have one or a handful of domains, but if you have more, it can becoming increasingly time consuming and burdensome the more you have. And then what if you want to make changes...

These sites also expect new customers to know how their site and system works, without any help or guidance. Some elements are often not obvious as to where they are or how to set the options. As is the case with most medium-large companies now (or most internet companies), their “Help” options are often of no help at all, or the help is so general that you have to submit a ticket for your situation and then hope someone actually reads what you wrote and does actually subsequently help you, something which is not a given.

Plus the sites I have seen are woefully out of date visually and function irritatingly too. Sedo’s site looks like something made in 1998 and Afternic’s site, well, seemingly every move of your mouse brings up some drop down panel or menu, of different shapes and colors which is annoying, and searching for names on their site is quite poor. I could go on, but I don’t want to.

I don’t see any of these marketplaces being OK, never mind good or that they even care about domain holders. Most now are far too big to provide any form of perceptible service, never mind actually “do” anything for their eye-watering levels of commission. Their claim of “marketing/promoting your domain name across all our partners” amounts to nothing more than your domain appearing on other sites, something that does not have to be done manually by the staff, as it will have been done by the domain holder when the domain was added. So what are all the staff actually doing day to day? Is there more than just a few staff at these seemingly large marketplaces? Perhaps there are just 4-5 boys in dishevelled clothing & flip flops, picking their noses while watching funny YT videos.

If your domain is perceived to be very valuable (say $500,000 and higher), at 1 or 2 sites, you may get an account manager, through which a custom approach to selling your name may be provided. I also wonder if some staff at these companies have secret arrangements with people outside their employer and who will approach a domain holder without telling the domain holder of their contact and making you an offer that they have been told would appeal to you. Clandestine/sneaky/crafty behavior occurs everywhere and always has done.

And so, as many people have said over the years, “If your domain name is a good one, it will sell itself”. So now, I just have my whois info public and I wait for inquiries or offers. I get maybe 10 spam emails a year, but I am fine with that given the unappealing alternative of domain marketplaces. I don't get any phone calls despite my real phone number showing in the whois too.
I know how to use escrow.com and I have a couple of initial emails ready to send once a potential buyer approaches, depending on the nature of the approach.

I also think that a good domain may have more appeal/value when it is not openly offered for sale.