.mobi Value of names

[Kate]

if it's fairly easy to launch a new TLD, some people may ask why spend seven figures on one domain when the same investment could buy an entire TLD?

You could indeed buy a whole new TLD to yourself but you would spend a lot more on promotion, cause initially nobody knows that it even exists. Or the conservative approach: you stick to established TLDs and you are more visible (and more trusted).

One day, a colleague of mine received an E-mail from a .aero address and he was convinced there was a mistake. He just didn't know about .aero :lol:
BTW he is in the computer business like me, he's not a domainer but he's not an Internet newbie.
Masses are not familiar with the 200+ TLDs so they tend to be suspicious when they see 'unusual' domains :talk:
As usual it all boils down to critical mass.

 

[mjnels]

I'm not all that convinced about the ultra high-end, if it's fairly easy to launch a new TLD, some people may ask why spend seven figures on one domain when the same investment could buy an entire TLD?

its something to ponder i suppose... still waiting to see if this ICANN relaxed TLD thing actually happens the way its expected to. from what i recall, a good majority of the public comments by companies were against the idea.

but labrocca was trying to say that new TLD's just strengthen the originals (.com, .net, .org) and i just cant see how that would be true except in domainers' heads. especially if the floodgates are ever opened up completely like people expect.. its very possible there would be sort of a rough "ceiling" set for values if that ever happens.

One day, a colleague of mine received an E-mail from a .aero address and he was convinced there was a mistake. He just didn't know about .aero :lol:
BTW he is in the computer business like me, he's not a domainer but he's not an Internet newbie.
Masses are not familiar with the 200+ TLDs so they tend to be suspicious when they see 'unusual' domains :talk:
As usual it all boils down to critical mass.

this is true.. i still occasionally get this type of response from old-school people when i hand out my email address, which is a .info

although, if the floodgates are ever really opened the status quo may change a bit and people will realize "anything can be a TLD" and seeing something different after the dot might not look so strange anymore..... but by that time ill be as old as you anyway, so who cares.

 

[snoop]

You could indeed buy a whole new TLD to yourself but you would spend a lot more on promotion, cause initially nobody knows that it even exists. Or the conservative approach: you stick to established TLDs and you are more visible (and more trusted).

I don't really see buying a new tld as creating much value of itself for an enduser. Golf.com versus .golf? From a domainer perspective an entire tld might sound good but where is the obvious benefit to a golf company of spending a huge amount getting the .golf tld, they could call themselves www.golf? That is going to be totally confusing to the average web surfer. Even for brand names like .google I wonder if there really is an obvious benefit. mail.google? search.google? Most people (everyone except domainers) would think their is something wrong with those web addresses.

One day, a colleague of mine received an E-mail from a .aero address and he was convinced there was a mistake. He just didn't know about .aero :lol:
BTW he is in the computer business like me, he's not a domainer but he's not an Internet newbie.
Masses are not familiar with the 200+ TLDs so they tend to be suspicious when they see 'unusual' domains :talk:
As usual it all boils down to critical mass.

Agree about the .aero stuff. I remember before I got into domains seeing a whole lot of links to .cc sites at one time, I was too scared to click any of the links because it sound like some sort of scam.

where does this notion that .mobi sites can't be used by PC users come from?

Probably from the name of the extension. This extension is not designed to be viewed on pc's, that isn't to say it is not possible.

With all the "regular" people I've shared .mobi with I have yet to hear such a reaction so I'm convinced this view is held in the domain community alone. Everyone I've talked with simply accepts what .mobi is about and they like the idea, especially if they are mobile web users (and most of those have seen or heard of .mobi on their own at some point).

Probably because you just told them you bought a whole lot of them. Personally of the people I have told about .mobi, most think it sounds like junk. If you really want to get honest views (rather than just a reflection of what you think) a proper survey would be needed. Compare it to buying a new pair of jeans, very few people will tell you "gee they look terrible on you". :lol:

 

[verbster]

As to auction prices in general, remember that the final price of any domain in auction isn't the highest value the winner placed on it, it's the highest value the loser placed on it. So even in auction we're not finding the real value of a domain, even in the speculator community.

I guess that's a matter of perspective depending on the final price and who the bidders are. What you say may be true when the price is lower than expected, but what about when higher? I'll judge the outcome based on my last offer, which I'll reveal after the auction. (Yes, this is my domain.) The real problem is tht Bido hasn't really shown a domain worthy of a couple heavyweights duking it out. I'm guessing that won't happen for techsupport.mobi either. But it's still a litmus test as to the state of mobi, even if the price is low. That would show that even mobi lovers aren't bidding...and that measures the demand...and the state of mobi.

I'd planned on hanging onto it, as I get an offer once in a while, but quite frankly, my curiosity got the best of me for the following reasons:
1) Wanted to see some great debate between mobi lovers and haters.
2) Wanted to see if mobi defenders would actually put up or shut up...or that a mobi hater might secretly bid on it (which is a real stretch, but ya just never know when it comes to money).
3) Was simply curious as to how a decent mobi would do.
4) I got tired of NP members, including myself, bitching about no one willing to risk a decent domain....and, yes, I know it's a mobi, but it's a decent domain...one that really works with the extension.
5) Was willing to try Bido just to see how things went. I'd like to get somewhere near what my last offer was, but if not, that's my tough luck. I'm not going to cry about it. On the other hand, you never know; if the word gets out, maybe there are a couple of well off developers out there that have a real plan for it and will pay for the chance to put it to work for them.

 

[snoop]

I guess that's a matter of perspective depending on the final price and who the bidders are. What you say may be true when the price is lower than expected, but what about when higher? I'll judge the outcome based on my last offer, which I'll reveal after the auction. (Yes, this is my domain.)

The thing is market values are not determined by the highest price a buyer would ever pay, it is determined by both buyers and sellers, and for a market to exist there must be more than one buyer.

You could say that the flip side of that argument is that market price is the lowest price the seller would ever sell at, which obviously doesn't work either.

The highest price the second highest bidder would pay is a good judge of the market in my view, because at that point you have two willing buyers ie a real market. You could say "but hang on one buyer would have paid more", but under what circumstances would they have paid more? At auction only if someone else was willing to pay as well. Via private sale, they could have paid more, they also could have paid less, which is why private sales are poor judge of market value in my view, private sale price data is very prone to errors by both buyers and sellers in evaluating the name.

The real problem is tht Bido hasn't really shown a domain worthy of a couple heavyweights duking it out. I'm guessing that won't happen for techsupport.mobi either. But it's still a litmus test as to the state of mobi, even if the price is low. That would show that even mobi lovers aren't bidding...and that measures the demand...and the state of mobi.

Probably a litmus test, but in my opinion a liquid market does not exist at Bido. It doesn't have enough participants.

 

[verbster]

The thing is market values are not determined by the highest price a buyer would ever pay, it is determined by both buyers and sellers, and for a market to exist there must be more than one buyer.

You could say that the flip side of that argument is that market price is the lowest price the seller would ever sell at, which obviously doesn't work either.

The highest price the second highest bidder would pay is a good judge of the market in my view, because at that point you have two willing buyers ie a real market. You could say "but hang on one buyer would have paid more", but under what circumstances would they have paid more? At auction only if someone else was willing to pay as well. Via private sale, they could have paid more, they also could have paid less, which is why private sales are poor judge of market value in my view, private sale price data is very prone to errors by both buyers and sellers in evaluating the name.

Well, you've argued that private sales don't set or represent a domain's market value mainly because both buyers and sellers don't know what they are doing when it comes to prices (despite a meeting of the mnds in a negotiation). And you've argued that the winning bid in a public auction doesn't set a market value, but the second highest bid (the losing bid) does. So if the losing bid is $990 and the winning bid is $1000, $990 is somehow a better indicator than $1000? Hmmm...

Probably a litmus test, but in my opinion a liquid market does not exist at Bido. It doesn't have enough participants.

Is what I said, but begs a question: Up above you said two willing buyers in an auction make a real market, but here you say a "liquid" market doesn't exist at Bido, because there aren't enough participants (bidders). How many bidders does it take to make a liquid market in an auction?

 

[mjnels]

Is what I said, but begs a question: Up above you said two willing buyers in an auction make a real market, but here you say a "liquid" market doesn't exist at Bido, because there aren't enough participants (bidders). How many bidders does it take to make a liquid market in an auction?

simple.

you should almost always use the largest, most active venue...which in the case of domain names is Sedo. everyone is always trying to come up with some new venue to auction domains off. fight the power, man. heh.... "we can do better than sedo... blah blah blah"... "someone should start something new" :lol:

this is like when ebay first got popular in the 1990's... there were all these sites trying to do the exact same thing but at the end of the day - it was to your benefit to use the venue with the largest audience. Sedo is like the eBay of domains..especially since they've had auctions for the last few years. there really is no comparison.

 

[scandiman]

Sedo is like the eBay of domains..especially since they've had auctions for the last few years. there really is no comparison.

Sad but true.

 

[verbster]

simple.

you should almost always use the largest, most active venue...which in the case of domain names is Sedo.

Nice plug for Sedo, but it's neither simple nor true. Quantity of domains, observers and/or bidders doesn't necessarily mean the quality of bidders is the highest (in terms of $ to spend). If it did guarantee the highest prices, there wouldn't be any competition . . . no other auctions would survive, including those like Traffic, snapnames, namejet, specialty niche auctions or by invitation only. It may simply mean that many domains are low cost domains that a larger segment of people can bid on, whereas some domain auctions are more discriminating and won't accept any domains under $1000 (or whatever), which weeds out 50% of bidders. Also, if quantity meant the highest prices, it would mean 100% of all the premium names would be auctioned at Sedo to get the highest prices. The fact that the majority of truly premium names aren't auctioned with Sedo is a strong indicator that that their bidder prices aren't the best, no matter the number of bidders.

 

[snoop]

So if the losing bid is $990 and the winning bid is $1000, $990 is somehow a better indicator than $1000? Hmmm...

There is no real difference in the two prices, in fact that only reason why it isn't 990.01 is because of the bidding increment of the auction house.

Is what I said, but begs a question: Up above you said two willing buyers in an auction make a real market, but here you say a "liquid" market doesn't exist at Bido, because there aren't enough participants (bidders). How many bidders does it take to make a liquid market in an auction?

Hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands? There is no rule, but Bido is far too small, it doesn't really have liquidity. I would call Sedo, Snapnames and Namejet liquid markets at the moment, a large number of people know and use them including bigger buyers.

 

[scandiman]

Given the way you generally post about this extension (ie extreme cheerleading) I probably present it in the *exact opposite* way to you. :sold:

:lol: figured you'd respond something like this.

That doesn't make sense. If the auction respresnts a liquid market your inital valuation of 20k was too high. The auction may or may not have saved you 10k but that doesn't mean you got it for less than it is worth.

Sure it makes sense, my valuations of a domain I plan on buying has nothing to do with auction prices, but has everything to do with my development plans for the domain. I've won names in auction at $100 that I would spend $1000 for. I am confident in my valuation in relation to my plans, no one else watching the auction had such plans.

 

[snoop]

Sure it makes sense, my valuations of a domain I plan on buying has nothing to do with auction prices, but has everything to do with my development plans for the domain. I've won names in auction at $100 that I would spend $1000 for. I am confident in my valuation in relation to my plans, no one else watching the auction had such plans.

"Your valuation" is not the same as "market value".

 

[000]

I'm accurately expressing the facts of any auction. If I am willing to spend $20k on a domain and no one else in the room is willing to spend over $10k, I'll win the domain for one bid increment over $10k because no one is willing to bid higher except for me. So I will be able to buy the domain at 1/2 of its value.

That doesn't make sense. If the auction respresnts a liquid market your inital valuation of 20k was too high. The auction may or may not have saved you 10k but that doesn't mean you got it for less than it is worth.

Sure it makes sense, my valuations of a domain I plan on buying has nothing to do with auction prices, but has everything to do with my development plans for the domain. I've won names in auction at $100 that I would spend $1000 for. I am confident in my valuation in relation to my plans, no one else watching the auction had such plans.

"Your valuation" is not the same as "market value".

I don't believe he's saying that they are equivalent. I know that's how I feel.

Back in September I bought a .mobi for $2500 at auction. Apparently at that time, $2500 was the current "market value". But I saw greater value in it than my $2500 winning bid. Was I right or was I wrong? Well I later sold the domain for $4000, so you tell me. Not a huge profit but $1500 is a decent sum of money, for me anyways.

Just because I bid $500 more than anyone else doesn't mean my valuation was off. Did I get the domain for less than it was worth? I believe so. I believe that even at that time the domain was worth more than $2500. Perhaps not in a "quick sale" sense... but with a little patience I scored $1500 profit.

I guess what I'm getting at is, the word "value" has multiple meanings...

 

[snoop]

I don't believe he's saying that they are equivalent. I know that's how I feel.

Back in September I bought a .mobi for $2500 at auction. Apparently at that time, $2500 was the current "market value". But I saw greater value in it than my $2500 winning bid. Was I right or was I wrong? Well I later sold the domain for $4000, so you tell me. Not a huge profit but $1500 is a decent sum of money, for me anyways.

Just because I bid $500 more than anyone else doesn't mean my valuation was off. Did I get the domain for less than it was worth? I believe so. I believe that even at that time the domain was worth more than $2500. Perhaps not in a "quick sale" sense... but with a little patience I scored $1500 profit.

I guess what I'm getting at is, the word "value" has multiple meanings...

Making a profit on the name does not mean domains have "multiple values", anything could have happened,

eg,

-Original auction at a poor venue
-2nd sale was non auction and buyer overvalued it

Still selling it at 62% of what you think a name is worth is a world away from what scandiman is talking about with auctions ending at 10% of what he claims the name to be worth.

Let's face it though pretty much everyone buying at auction probably thinks they are getting a good deal because their maximum amount is likely higher. Whether they really are is another thing entirely. Sometimes people on sell for a profit, sometimes for a loss.

In how many other industries would people tell you that something is actually worth two different amounts though? Market value can only mean one thing.

 

[000]

Domains are different because they are unique. Say I'm looking for a domain for a specific project I'm working on, and I find the perfect domain. I might be willing to pay 10x the "market value" to obtain it (by the way, to me, "market value" means what a domain would fetch in a relatively "quick" sale). Let's say someone has the domain that I want listed here at NamePros for $100 with no takers after a week... so, the market value could easily be determined as "$xx", correct?... but that doesn't change the fact that to ME it's worth $1000. If it came down to it, I would pay $1000 no questions asked. So what's the 'value' of the domain in question? $xx or $1000? Depends who you ask.

It's ridiculous to insinuate that domains have a fixed value.

Perhaps I'm missing something though; I haven't read this whole thread, and I'm rather drugged up at the moment, as I'm battling a cold.

 

[scandiman]

In how many other industries would people tell you that something is actually worth two different amounts though? Market value can only mean one thing.

Stocks bought and sold in the stock exchange are examples of liquid pricing of an asset, there is no equivalent in domains. A good friend of mine buys and sells cars, even in this crappy economy he flips cars for a profit. Why? Because he knows how and where to buy low and how and where to sell it for more in a couple of days. What is the value of the car, what he bought it for or what he sold it for? This isn't a case of wholesale/retail where consumers can't gain access to wholesale pricing, he will do this with used cars bought from and sold to the consumer. The car isn't magically worth $1,000 more in two days, he just knows how to carve out a profit flipping cars.

I've bought domains for a fraction of what I've sold them for days later. What is the value of the domain? The seller I dealt with decided one thing, the buyer I dealt with decided something else. I was happy to collect the difference. This is nothing new in the domain world as you well know.

 

[-REECE-]

The thing is, there's just no way someone can know what that winning bidder would otherwise have been willing to pay so it seems pretty foolish to use a hypothetical unknown as the value of a domain.

The domain might be worth $X,XXX+ to that one person -- maybe he has development plans, greatly overestimated the value of the domain or got caught up in the moment and bid more at auction than he should have, bought the domain to protect a company trademark or to keep the domain away from a competitor, he might be a noob domainer, he might not have been willing to go any higher than his winning bid, and just maybe he's a shill bidder.

A domainer buys domains hoping to someday resell them at a profit -- what domainer is going to pay the "enduser price" for a domain? That one hypothetical buyer may or may not be interested in that same domain at a different point in time or under different circumstances at that same price. Many endusers are hesitant to spend large amounts of money on a domain if they have no clue what the value of that domain is -- an auction shows them that other people are interested in this domain at these prices as well and might make them more confident (and likely) to make that winning bid.

Way too many variables imho to consider the hypothetical maximum someone would be willing to pay to be the value of that domain. I've always considered the value of a domain to be what it could likely fetch relatively quickly on the reseller block -- to say that your domain is worth more than that is wishful thinking. I received an offer of $500 on 3 of my LLLL.infos last year, all of which I accepted without even making a counter -- sure, maybe they would have went higher, but if these people wouldn't have bought them, chances are I would have gotten $1 (or less) selling them on Namepros. Despite all the great names out there, there aren't near enough enduser sales for people to start pretending that a domain is worth what an enduser will pay for it.

It'd be ridiculous to assume all LLLL.info are worth $500 under the right circumstances because I sold three for that price. Unless you have a generic dotcom, chances are the number of potential endusers for your domain is rather limited or nonexistent. If you know there's probably only 1 or 2 people interested in your domain or if the last time you received an offer on it was years ago, chances are you're not going to sell the domain for the hypothetical maximum because you aren't going to be too aggressive in negotiations or the buyer just isn't willing to pay that price at this time for one of the reasons mentioned above.

Domains are different because they are unique. Say I'm looking for a domain for a specific project I'm working on, and I find the perfect domain. I might be willing to pay 10x the "market value" to obtain it (by the way, to me, "market value" means what a domain would fetch in a relatively "quick" sale). Let's say someone has the domain that I want listed here at NamePros for $100 with no takers after a week... so, the market value could easily be determined as "$xx", correct?... but that doesn't change the fact that to ME it's worth $1000. If it came down to it, I would pay $1000 no questions asked. So what's the 'value' of the domain in question? $xx or $1000? Depends who you ask.

It's ridiculous to insinuate that domains have a fixed value.

Perhaps I'm missing something though; I haven't read this whole thread, and I'm rather drugged up at the moment, as I'm battling a cold.

 

[snoop]

Stocks bought and sold in the stock exchange are examples of liquid pricing of an asset, there is no equivalent in domains.

The equivalent in domains is names sold via auction, that is all the stock market is, a continuous auction for stocks. The same is true for just about any item you can think of, unique or non unique, a piece of artwork, a piece of land, a barrel of oil, 1000 pork bellies. Auction data is what people rely on.

A good friend of mine buys and sells cars, even in this crappy economy he flips cars for a profit. Why? Because he knows how and where to buy low and how and where to sell it for more in a couple of days. What is the value of the car, what he bought it for or what he sold it for?

Quite possibly neither. The value of the car is what it would get via an auction with a large number of buyers. His private sales aren't necessarily market value, as I have said in this thread they are often way under or way over, that is how your friend makes money.

This isn't a case of wholesale/retail where consumers can't gain access to wholesale pricing, he will do this with used cars bought from and sold to the consumer. The car isn't magically worth $1,000 more in two days, he just knows how to carve out a profit flipping cars.

In the domain industry often "endusers" are people who will sell a name way below its value, because often they aren't famililar with what it would get in the open market. I'm guessing when the lady down the road sells her old car that she never uses for $100 when it is worth $1000 it is much the same thing at play.

I've bought domains for a fraction of what I've sold them for days later. What is the value of the domain?

What it would get at auction.

 

[000]

What is the value of the domain?

What it would get at auction.

I disagree.

There are too many factors involved for this to be true. People missing out on an auction, current economic conditions, the auction venue, etc.

Like I said before, I see domains as having two separate values: everyday market value, and end user value.

Agree to disagree on this I guess.

 

[snoop]

Let's say someone has the domain that I want listed here at NamePros for $100 with no takers after a week... so, the market value could easily be determined as "$xx", correct?... but that doesn't change the fact that to ME it's worth $1000. If it came down to it, I would pay $1000 no questions asked.

Why would you pay $1000 for a name that is listed for sale at $100? This is most likely an example of someone overpaying rather than the name having "two values".

It is a bit like the guy who pays too much for a condo or buys a jumper at the shop when the next shops downs sells them for half the price. The value "to you" is a meaningless concept when that isn't "market value", unfortunatly when you want to sell you can't sell it to yourself. You might be happy with the sale when you sign the paperwork or hand over the credit card but that doesn't actually mean you paid market price just because you think it is worth that.

I disagree.

There are too many factors involved for this to be true. People missing out on an auction, current economic conditions, the auction venue, etc.

Timing and auction veneue are important factors, as I have said the venue needs to have a large enough number of liquid buyers, eg sedo versus bido. "Current economic conditions" are reality however, that isn't a factor that would make auction prices wrong.

Like I said before, I see domains as having two separate values: everyday market value, and end user value.

Agree to disagree on this I guess.

I think perhaps most dominers think along these lines so I understand that you think like that, personally though I just think the concept is a lot of baloney.