Which LLLL.com Camp do you fall into?

[-REECE-]

From what I've seen, there are 5 rather common LLLL.com camps here:

1. There are those who believe all LLLL.coms are worthless.

2. Those who believe that people who bought in pre-buyout got a good deal but are uncertain about what the future holds for people paying multiples of that original regfee for LLLL.coms.

3. Those who believe that only premium LLLL.coms and perhaps triple premium LLLL.coms will ever be worth much more than prices today (renewal fees must be taken into account here).

4. Those who believe all LLLL.coms will eventually appreciate in value (taking into consideration all renewal fees paid).

5. Those who believe LLLL.coms will follow the path of LLL.coms and that soon every LLLL.com will trade for $XXX+.





Number 1 isn't really an opinion -- it's an outright lie to oneself (or clearly the sign of a very inexperienced domainer). If one thinks that all LLLL.coms -- premiums, VCVCs, and CVCVs included are worthless, I don't have much to say to you... Other than to perhaps find another hobby :lol:

I can agree with all other views here and when represented with facts or reasons, all can reveal a certain "truth".

Those in Camp 2 are aware of aftermarket LLLL.com prices. They see that prices are always in excess of registration costs and acknowledge that those who bought in pre-buyout made a good decision. They're not necessarily certain what the future holds and are divided on this issue -- some suggest selling enough to cover your initial investment, some suggest selling names each year to fund next year's renewals, and some aren't quite too sure what's best to do and are perhaps waiting until a later date before selling their names or making their opinion on this matter known.


A person in Camp number 3 recognizes the success pre-buyout domainers achieved. Nevertheless, they're not confident about the long term outlook of names containing several bad letters and are skeptical about whether values can increase at a rate faster than annual registration fees will eat up. Such a person could point out that premium LLLL.coms (esp. CVCVs) have a long history of appreciation and that this is unlikely to change... Perhaps they feel that as LLL.coms continue to appreciate, premium LLLL.coms may eventually become the choice of small and medium sized companies... If they look at LLLL.coms this way and see their value as being tied to enduser potential, it's hard to discount this opinion... There are clearly far more endusers for your average quad premium than your average anti-premium. That's a given and this LLLL.com camp, while perhaps playing it a bit conservatively, certainly have a firm grounding in reality.

A person in Camp 4 (I consider myself in this group) looks at LLLL.coms as a long term investment. They believe that various factors (increasing number of domainers, decreasing quality of new registrations, increased demand for short domain names, increased prices on LLL.coms caused by corporate investors,...) will eventually contribute to higher LLLL.com prices. They're not confident enough to say with certainty that LLLL.coms will hit a certain price at a given point in time, however they're fairly confident that given a long term (2-5 year) outlook, prices will be sufficiently higher than they are today for not only renewal fees to be compensated for, but also lost opportunity costs.

A person in Camp 5 usually believes that all LLLL.coms are currently underpriced substantially and that the market will eventually (some here would even say soon) awake a sleeping giant. They use as evidence continuously increasing demand for LLLL.coms, the fact that all drops are picked up almost instantaneously, the fact that LLLL.coms are already selling for 100-500% ROI over prices even a few months ago,... Much of their reasoning is based on events which have already occurred. The big difference here from a Camp 4 domainer, is that the Camp 4 domainer believes it may take several years (possibly 5 or even more) before the worst LLLL.coms hit $XXX (however he believes they will be a profitable investment, regardless of how long they take to get there), whereas a Camp 5 domainer believes that LLLL.coms will all hit $XXX+ within 2 years or less -- many believe it will happen in 1 year or less. While a Camp 4 domainer regards rapid appreciation as a possibility (granted the various factors they have analyzed could indeed rapidly increase in their favor), they're more than willing to wait for it to happen.

Your thoughts? Did I miss an LLLL.com Camp here?

 

[-REECE-]

I think it was a "collector's item", so to speak.

No?

The Russian didn't purchased Vodka.com for $3M to expand in the US market? This is something new to me.

So what was the reason of the purchased then?

 

[xman]

I think it was a "collector's item", so to speak.

LOL

I guess I better contact "Mikoyan-Gurevich" and tell them I have one of their collector's item Mi.gs (wishful thinking)

 

[Andrei P.]

Buying vodka.com even for 3 millions is INVESTMENT
But I think this domain will be used for expanding to US market and moreover this was great PR!!! He paid just 3 millions but got such huge publicity!

No. Vodka is international word and though we don't know real price of vodka.ru I think vodka.com was still more expensive than vodka.ru

No?

The Russian didn't purchased Vodka.com for $3M to expand in the US market? This is something new to me.

So what was the reason of the purchased then?

 

[-REECE-]

Yeah, he got huge publicity. Just visited Vodka.com... Somewhat surprised... I'd have thought the name would at least redirect somewhere useful (or even parked) if it wasn't going to be used.

It almost looks like he's trying to resell it?

Buying vodka.com even for 3 millions is INVESTMENT
But I think this domain will be used for expanding to US market and moreover this was great PR!!! He paid just 3 millions but got such huge publicity!

 

[xman]

Yeah, he got huge publicity. Just visited Vodka.com... Somewhat surprised... I'd have thought the name would at least redirect somewhere useful (or even parked) if it wasn't going to be used.

It almost looks like he's trying to resell it?

Interesting!

 

[bricio]

My friend bricio I don't think you have crappy LLLL.com so it doesn't exist in your portfolio :hehe:

I've seen most of your LLLL.com and they are pretty solid investment.

i have some "Q" in my portfolio and sometimes 2 premium letters + 1 U, J, etc + 1 bad letter
i really think there arent bad letters; you just didnt find the right people/business to sell your name... there are other languages, other words we just dont know/understand as we speak our mother language and (or) english but there are some people speak many languages

At least from my scans on the super-premium letter A, there seems to be as many developed sites with X's and Q's as with A's... With how fast China is growing economically, we might have to rethink this whole "premium letter" thing rather soon

those LLLL.com owners that have this names need to search for the LLLL.com(.cn) to find potential end-users... if these sites were built for huge companies that can expand their business a .com would be perfect and it means this LLLL.com found an end-user for his "crappy" (i prefer ordinary) LLLL.com

 

[namewaiter]

And what about this random crap letter ---> qzxj.com a well developed site in China.

granted, but the market will never support tens of thousands of these type of sites .... since there currently is not that many out there, they kinda stand out and have a uniqueness to them, but flood the market and that goes away.

 

[thetruman]

between 4 and 5... 5, I am an optimist

 

[filter]

granted, but the market will never support tens of thousands of these type of sites .... since there currently is not that many out there, they kinda stand out and have a uniqueness to them, but flood the market and that goes away.

you might be right, but "never" is a pretty bold stance ... and are there actually tens of thousands of QZYX "slouching towards VeriSign, waiting to be dropped" ...?

(Just now realized something interesting and ironic - pure "anti-premiums" are actually among the rarest of all LLLL combos ... Even including J, K, U, and Y in the mix along with good old Q, V, X, and Z would yield only 8^4 combinations - that's 4096, less than 1% of the 456,976 LLLL.com universe!) :lol:

Taking the long view, it may be more a question of "when" rather than "if" the vast majority of QZYX will find happy end users. Still an important question given the impact of renewal fees for long-term holders. And I won't be surprised if several big waves of these "questionable" QZYX critters hit the market over the course of the next year or two - but I think there is also a good chance that they'll be soaked up relatively quickly as many other people take advantage of the opportunity to buy on the dips (for better or for worse). Might not happen that way, but seems like a reasonably likely outcome to me at this point.

(Keeping in the tradition of posting "ooopsy" counter-examples, should note for the record that QZYX.com has actually been regged since 2002 - seems to be going strong as a Chinese-language forum site).

Here's a page with a good list of classic predictions -> http://wilk4.com/humor/humore10.htm

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981

"$100 million dollars is way too much to pay for Microsoft."
-- IBM, 1982

 

[italiandragon]

granted, but the market will never support tens of thousands of these type of sites .... since there currently is not that many out there, they kinda stand out and have a uniqueness to them, but flood the market and that goes away.

I`m amused by these kind of statements.

Have a look here...if you understand it:

http://www.webnews.it/news/leggi/5775/litaliano-e-la-4a-lingua-della-blogosfera/


especially this sentence:

8 milioni di blog nel 2005. 35 milioni nel 2006. 72 milioni nel 2007

.


8 millions blogs in 2005 , 35 millions in 2006 and 72 in 2007. 72 MILLIONS.

Are you getting it? The internet grows at rates that 456K LLLL,com won`t be even enought.

Let`s see their value in 5 years

actually, here get it in English

http://technorati.com/weblog/2007/04/328.html

:imho:

 

[namewaiter]

I`m amused by these kind of statements.

8 millions blogs in 2005 , 35 millions in 2006 and 72 in 2007. 72 MILLIONS.

Are you getting it? The internet grows at rates that 456K LLLL,com won`t be even enought.

domains use letters for a reason ... they create words (real or made-up), which has been proven easier to remember than random letters or numbers. take a look at the top 500...
http://alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none
even in native languauges, 99.5 % are readable/pronouncable words ... not random letters thrown together.

as a test .. there have been a couple of random letter domains brought up in this thread as sucessful random letter sites ... do you remember what they are???

i really never see these type of domains being mainstream ... i see short pronouncable made up words, native language domains or domains going longer and more descriptive before seeing a bunch of qjkzx.com or zjqx.com - they just don't have any recall ability.

 

[-REECE-]

QVJ.com is hardly more memorable than QVJI.com -- say QVJ Inc. Now why would QVJ Inc. pay $10,000+ for QVJ.com when they could have QVJI.com for maybe $300-500 (via whois email)? For a large corp, maybe 10k is chump change -- but for 90% of businesses out there, spending 10k versus $500 on a relatively equal name for their intended use is a rather easy decision to make.

I didn't look at the Top 500, but looking at the top 100, it's more like 90% being readable/pronounceable -- and seeing as how unpronounceables are often less than one tenth the price, would seem to complement my analysis that non-premium LLLL.coms are still a bargain.

domains use letters for a reason ... they create words (real or made-up), which has been proven easier to remember than random letters or numbers. take a look at the top 500...
http://alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none
even in native languauges, 99.5 % are readable/pronouncable words ... not random letters thrown together.

as a test .. there have been a couple of random letter domains brought up in this thread as sucessful random letter sites ... do you remember what they are???

i really never see these type of domains being mainstream ... i see short pronouncable made up words, native language domains or domains going longer and more descriptive before seeing a bunch of qjkzx.com or zjqx.com - they just don't have any recall ability.

 

[namewaiter]

QVJ.com is hardly more memorable than QVJI.com

qvj is way more memorable than qvji ... as qv is way more memorable than qvj

why stop at 4 ... how about eqvji, qvjic or qvjioh ... i would say unless it's an aggressively marketed acronym (like ncaa, naacp, fdny, lpga) only 3 letters would be the acceptable limit for random letters, and most of the time they also tie into an acronym (mlb, nfl, att, mci, sbc, nhl, wwf, etc.).

 

[-REECE-]

3 letter max is what we've all been religiously dogmatized to believe. As in my example -- QVJ is the company -- they are incorporated. An I at the end does nothing to take away from the original name, whereas your examples do...

Intelligently designed acronyms could work for just about any media -- E = entertainment, N = network, Q= quality (and I have an enduser I'm hunting down with a Q for quality -- a multibillion dollar one), O = online, W = worldwide, C = corporation, I = Incorporated, L = Limited, ...

It takes a bit of creativity, but acronyms can be found that don't take away from a business name.

qvj is way more memorable than qvji ... as qv is way more memorable than qvj

why stop at 4 ... how about eqvji, qvjic or qvjioh ... i would say unless it's an aggressively marketed acronym (like ncaa, naacp, fdny, lpga) only 3 letters would be the acceptable limit for random letters, and most of the time they also tie into an acronym (mlb, nfl, att, mci, sbc, nhl, wwf, etc.).

 

[namewaiter]

3 letter max is what we've all been religiously dogmatized to believe. As in my example -- QVJ is the company -- they are incorporated. An I at the end does nothing to take away from the original name, whereas your examples do...

Intelligently designed acronyms could work for just about any media -- E = entertainment, N = network, Q= quality (and I have an enduser I'm hunting down with a Q for quality -- a multibillion dollar one), O = online, W = worldwide, C = corporation, I = Incorporated, L = Limited, ...

It takes a bit of creativity, but acronyms can be found that don't take away from a business name.

i agree, they can be tied to and do make sense for a select few, and if you're lucky they will find a home. but not every 4, 5 or 6 random letter domains will find a suitor just because we say 'q' can stand for this or 'z' can stand for that.

 

[-REECE-]

You're definitely right. The worst imho are the ones that end in an uncommon letter like x, q, z, ... So many companies are composed of 3 random letters that if you have a super premium at the end like E or C, there are most likely endusers out there (whether they're interested or not, is of course a different matter). I'm fairly certain those of us with hundreds/thousands of such names will get some enduser offers, but as you said, the guy with 1, 2, 3, etc names might be wasting his time if he really thinks he'll find endusers with such a limited sampling.

I only need 5 sales at 2k to pay my renewals. Over 1600 names, that'd mean I'd only need about 1 in 320 to end up being useful for an enduser, which I think is achievable. If you factor in the "quick sales" around Namepros for a little profit here and there, it's more than worth my time to keep them if I can cover my renewals with enduser sales, even if prices don't go up all that much on the names themselves.

i agree, they can be tied to and do make sense for a select few, and if you're lucky they will find a home. but not every 4, 5 or 6 random letter domains will find a suitor just because we say 'q' can stand for this or 'z' can stand for that.