Y'all wanna shoot the moon?

[Rob Monster]

ICYMI, during October, Epik sold 3 domains above $250,000.

In the interest of helping folks sell more domains for bigger money, I want to share openly what I think works pretty well when responding to retail inquiries.

Here are my two go-to response templates for answering inbound inquiries:

Template #1

Hello <firstname>,

Thanks for the inquiry.

Names of this caliber routinely sell for over $100,000.

We also sometimes do domain leases with a purchase option.

If you have budget, I will do my best to get something done for you.

Happy to advise.

Regards,
Rob



Template #2

Hello <firstname>,

Thanks for the inquiry.

You are probably looking at well into 5 figures USD for this domain.

Alternatively, it is likely possible to do a lease with a purchase option or seller-finance.

Depending on your budget, happy to advise.

Regards,
Rob


Obviously, if you have some specific comment about the domain or about the person inquiring about the prospect, that can be helpful, but usually this is a great way to just see how high is up.

During October, we saw a 2 word domain sell for $253,750. By most standards, this domain was absolutely nothing special. The domain was however strategic to the buyer.

A lot of purchase prospects end up becoming leases and financings, depending on the budget situation of the buyer. The point is to never underestimate how high is up. It is much better to: Shoot the moon!

And now you know!

 

[winst]

I want to see this industry grow in size and see more people succeeding, and I think Rob's advice jeopardized that. Enough so that I felt compelled to write an article about it even though I only write a couple a year. Especially since he is someone that many people here revere and will follow blindly, you have to wield that kind of power very responsibly and thoughtfully.

Rob, here is your answer.

I do think as Domain industry matures, each player needs to play to their own strength and position accordingly (marketing). In other words, if you were a restaurant, what kind of restaurant were you? (another food analogy from Winston)

Are you selling a $2 burger like McDonald's? a $6 burger like Shake Shack? If you want to sell a $2,000 burger, you better have some gimmick to justify it.

 

[Rob Monster]

I'm not someone who blindly follows conventional wisdom, I look at the data and form my own opinions. And it just so happens that the conventional wisdom checks out here, as it often does. Now that you've walked back your advice and clarified it more, yours does as well. There's no way you could support a claim with any actual data, that the average domainer with 100 or so weak names should be asking five figures ever, much less always. So I'm glad you didn't double down on that.

I actually like hyphen domains as well, but only if the non-hyphenated version would be maybe $25k+ when priced reasonably. I see them all the time here in Europe. There's no question having a hyphen hurts the value significantly, but that doesn't mean they all have no value. Not sure anyone ever said that though. If you offered everyone here on this forum Car-Insurance.com for $2k I bet you'd have nearly 100% take it, even if they had to beg, borrow and steal to get the money.

I'll take a pass on writing for the book, I appreciate the invite though. I read it and it's a pretty good start, although a bit heavy on the parking and typos when that hasn't been a big part of the game for a decade. And the tools section only has one tool that isn't really all that popular. I sincerely hope the finished product is sound advice that I can recommend. I get a lot of questions where the answer would require teaching someone practically the entire business, so it would be great to have a resource to send people to instead. Kudos for tackling it when nobody else would in the past 20+ years.


I haven't seen your portfolio, your prices, or how you negotiate. But given your join date odds are in your favor that your portfolio is significantly better than the average domainer. That's kind of how statistics work though, for every one of you there are thousands that have never made an end user sale and several thousand more who have never even gotten an inquiry, so it averages out. Your success doesn't make my advice or data any less true for the average person, just not for you maybe.

You guys are right though, I apologize for being overly aggressive. I'll tone it down. I just strongly believe that Rob is giving out bad advice telling the average Joe not to price his names and to shoot for the moon, when the average person has never had an end user sale and rarely gets inquiries. It's a bit tone deaf. And debating using conspiracy theories and backhanded compliments instead of data kind of sets me off.

I want to see this industry grow in size and see more people succeeding, and I think Rob's advice jeopardized that. Enough so that I felt compelled to write an article about it even though I only write a couple a year. Especially since he is someone that many people here revere and will follow blindly, you have to wield that kind of power very responsibly and thoughtfully.

Thanks for the response.

Quick anecdotal input:

Last night, an Epik client sold WINDOWFASHION.COM for $12,500 (wire received). He probably could have shot the moon on that one, but he sold that anyway. The seller had the choice there. We don't force people to walk from 5 figure offers. It was still a fine outcome for the seller and he is happy with his deal.

Earlier today I had a conversation with a domain broker who is doing $27 million per year in domain sales. Nearly all his sales go through general counsel at corporate buyers. When he needs escrow, he often uses Epik, but a lot of his transactions are just purchase and sale agreements, and confidential.

Like it or not, your data is a sample. That may not be comforting but it is a fact and it is going to have huge sampling bias. Did you know I ran a large market research company early in my professional life? Sold it to WPP Group for 9 figures cash. Suffice it to say, I know a bit about statistics and samplling.

The bigger issue I see is that you seem to demonstrate "normalcy bias", i.e. assuming that past predicts future. I don't believe it always does, in part because of big shifts, e.g. tremendous wealth disparity, mainstreaming of cryptos, and most recently the decisive victory of .COM over all-comers.

Your normalcy bias also prompts you to declare conspiracy theories as nonsense, and perhaps validating your overly aggressive and combative rhetoric. You are a skilled writer, and effectively present evidence. However, any skilled analyst and writer can tell a story. You have your truth. I have mine.

As for selling to people who have money, the pattern of "winner take all" is very much at work, which is one reason that guys with the really great premium .com domains have done really well. The people who can afford it, want the best. The rest have to lease, or settle for something cheap.

As for the e-Book, thanks for taking a look there. We'll see what more we can tune up there. The content is being continually refreshed over the last 2 weeks. We are hoping to ship it later this month, and get it into the hands of folks who can apply it. I agree about dialing back PPC and typo -- an outdated strategy.

In the meantime, any further consolidated reference links or resource summaries that you have come across are greatly appreciated. You have my contact info. Even a bit of guidance there is happily acknowledged through a free sponsorship for NameBio.

 

[Rob Monster]

A propos my earlier remark, consider this one from this morning:

https://blockstream.info/tx/f45824ef8420cf19f5a79e545db86595045c85ff4427aff7a9062cee165ea2d8

That is for the domain Ayre.Eu. The 2.71 BTC price tag puts it right around #25 of all time for NameBio for .EU. Most marketplaces don't clear in crypto, and most .EU transactions are not of this size. The transaction was entirely mediated on a self-serve basis through our marketplace. I share this not to boast but to provide a real-time peek that I am not joking around. Epik clients are free to share their deals but that is not going to be our practice anytime soon.

 

[Michael]

Thanks for the response.

Quick anecdotal input:

Last night, an Epik client sold WINDOWFASHION.COM for $12,500 (wire received). He probably could have shot the moon on that one, but he sold that anyway. The seller had the choice there. We don't force people to walk from 5 figure offers. It was still a fine outcome for the seller and he is happy with his deal.

Earlier today I had a conversation with a domain broker who is doing $27 million per year in domain sales. Nearly all his sales go through general counsel at corporate buyers. When he needs escrow, he often uses Epik, but a lot of his transactions are just purchase and sale agreements, and confidential.

Like it or not, your data is a sample. That may not be comforting but it is a fact and it is going to have huge sampling bias. Did you know I ran a large market research company early in my professional life? Sold it to WPP Group for 9 figures cash. Suffice it to say, I know a bit about statistics and samplling.

The bigger issue I see is that you seem to demonstrate "normalcy bias", i.e. assuming that past predicts future. I don't believe it always does, in part because of big shifts, e.g. tremendous wealth disparity, mainstreaming of cryptos, and most recently the decisive victory of .COM over all-comers.

Your normalcy bias also prompts you to declare conspiracy theories as nonsense, and perhaps validating your overly aggressive and combative rhetoric. You are a skilled writer, and effectively present evidence. However, any skilled analyst and writer can tell a story. You have your truth. I have mine.

As for selling to people who have money, the pattern of "winner take all" is very much at work, which is one reason that guys with the really great premium .com domains have done really well. The people who can afford it, want the best. The rest have to lease, or settle for something cheap.

As for the e-Book, thanks for taking a look there. We'll see what more we can tune up there. The content is being continually refreshed over the last 2 weeks. We are hoping to ship it later this month, and get it into the hands of folks who can apply it. I agree about dialing back PPC and typo -- an outdated strategy.

In the meantime, any further consolidated reference links or resource summaries that you have come across are greatly appreciated. You have my contact info. Even a bit of guidance there is happily acknowledged through a free sponsorship for NameBio.

I know we're just scratching the surface of retail data, and I'm good with that. It's the wholesale data I care about, because that actually has predictive value. Retail sales are mostly for entertainment or inspiration, and they also help as comps in email negotiations. You don't need completeness for those ends.

Which brings me to your comment on Konstantinos' blog:

As for Michael’s agenda, hard to say, but BIN pricing in marketplaces that give him data are probably more helpful to him than private marketplaces that don’t.

Nobody is entertained by low-end, bread-and-butter retail sales, and probably almost nobody is citing them in email negotiations. Those don't move the needle for us at all. If I were biased (and a bad person) I would be pushing the same agenda as you, trying to get people to make headline-worthy sales all the time instead of sales that nobody is interested in. Those are the ones that would get eyeballs to the site.

And since, as you love harping on, we're only scraping the surface of retail data, it wouldn't make any sense for me to try to influence them one way or the other. We would only catch a trickle of the shift anyway, most of it would happen behind closed doors and we wouldn't ever know about it. No, my only agenda is seeing more people succeed so the industry is bigger and stronger; that would benefit all service providers including yourself.

You on the other hand run a niche marketplace that can't compete with the likes of GoDaddy/Afternic and Sedo on BIN landers, because name recognition matters a lot for those. When Afternic changed their landers to feature the GoDaddy logo instead, their sales went up pretty significantly.

One could say that you're playing to your strengths (or at least the only place you have a shot to compete) by trying to convince everyone to not BIN price and to push offers/leases, so they flock to you. But surely they could do make offer on Afternic too, even though they can't do leases, so you need another UVP to seal the deal. I know, you could offer to negotiate on their behalf personally so that your fame can help them get higher prices. That's how the conspiracy theory would sound anyway. I don't believe it because of my crippling normalcy bias though.

As for conspiracy theories, I don't mind a good one from time to time. And I don't personally care which ones you believe in. I just don't like them being used as arguments in a debate because by definition they can't be proven. When facts don't support you play to people's emotions right?

The worst part of that approach is that you supposedly have access to this huge treasure trove of data, so you could make data-driven arguments without violating privacy. But you don't. I wonder why? Oh, right, the past doesn't predict the future. A convenient reason to ignore data and rely on arguments like "income inequality is higher than ever before, price as high as possible to take back from the rich!" or "the marketplaces and NameBio want you to sell too cheap for their own personal agendas!"

Which brings us to GMI, your market research company where you gathered and sold market data so companies could make informed decisions based on past performance. Hmm. I wasn't aware of that company or your ouster from it four years before the exit, thankfully this brought me up to speed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Monster

Thanks for the diagnosis on the normalcy bias, saved me a fortune in therapy.

 

[Ariff BD]

I will shoot for the moon & wait 10 years only for two of my domains because i know they are perfect.. one is airlines domain & other is defi domain

 

[winst]

I will shoot for the moon & wait 10 years only for two of my domains because i know they are perfect.. one is airlines domain & other is defi domain

For people who wants to shoot for the moon, I'd suggest to think deeper and ask yourself:

How many airlines are starting every year? Are they well funded/and or looking to rebrand? Look at the airline websites, are they all using similar names as yours? How much do airlines spend to acquire their domain name in the past?

If you are willing to wait 10 years. Are you willing to wait for 15? 20 years?

 

[winst]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Monster

Thanks for the diagnosis on the normalcy bias, saved me a fortune in therapy.

Ahh, that explains quite a bit. All a while I thought people just did not like Rob's hard sell style.

 

[winst]

One could say that you're playing to your strengths (or at least the only place you have a shot to compete) by trying to convince everyone to not BIN price and to push offers/leases, so they flock to you. But surely they could do make offer on Afternic too, even though they can't do leases, so you need another UVP to seal the deal. I know, you could offer to negotiate on their behalf personally so that your fame can help them get higher prices.

I don't like Afternic's BIN. I listed a 4 letter .com there for $1100, just as a test. After 4 years of no activity, not a single inquiry. Out of blue one day I've got a notification that it was sold and did a fast transfer. I was very happy but quickly realized that we were in the middle of the CHIP bubble.

The moral of the story is that I just don't feel we are quite "there" yet with domain BIN, there is no one size fits all because each name is unique. With BIN, we don't really know how much the end users are willing to pay, because the marketplaces are also filled with speculator and high-speed traders. You also have no idea if you price it too high or too low until you wait for several months or even years before you get an inquiry.

BTW, please don't call me a lier because I said that I like Chinese Food, but I did not mention that I don't eat pig brains, or I don't like ALL Chinese food.

 

[Rob Monster]

Ahh, that explains quite a bit. All a while I thought people just did not like Rob's hard sell style.

That Wikipedia article is completely trash nonsense and they know it. I called them out here. The article is camped on and can only be edited by a restricted set of editors -- other edits are rolled back. ICYMI, Wikipedia has been substantially weaponized. The articles to which they link also do not allow comments, or remove comments that don't support the manufactured consensus. It is a manufactured consensus orchestrated by a group whose identity I know and who will be exposed in the process of time. More lemons for more lemonade. If anyone takes the time to trace the rabbit hole, they will begin to fully appreciate the degree to which the mainstream media is almost increasingly a coordinated propaganda operation and worthy of being ignored. The entire impeachment process being trotted out for the American people is nothing but theater. You can find more context in this very long thread - I began commenting on page 16.

As for Wikipedia alternative, check this one out:

https://infogalactic.com/

 

[Rob Monster]

I know we're just scratching the surface of retail data, and I'm good with that. It's the wholesale data I care about, because that actually has predictive value. Retail sales are mostly for entertainment or inspiration, and they also help as comps in email negotiations. You don't need completeness for those ends.

Which brings me to your comment on Konstantinos' blog:



Nobody is entertained by low-end, bread-and-butter retail sales, and probably almost nobody is citing them in email negotiations. Those don't move the needle for us at all. If I were biased (and a bad person) I would be pushing the same agenda as you, trying to get people to make headline-worthy sales all the time instead of sales that nobody is interested in. Those are the ones that would get eyeballs to the site.

And since, as you love harping on, we're only scraping the surface of retail data, it wouldn't make any sense for me to try to influence them one way or the other. We would only catch a trickle of the shift anyway, most of it would happen behind closed doors and we wouldn't ever know about it. No, my only agenda is seeing more people succeed so the industry is bigger and stronger; that would benefit all service providers including yourself.

You on the other hand run a niche marketplace that can't compete with the likes of GoDaddy/Afternic and Sedo on BIN landers, because name recognition matters a lot for those. When Afternic changed their landers to feature the GoDaddy logo instead, their sales went up pretty significantly.

One could say that you're playing to your strengths (or at least the only place you have a shot to compete) by trying to convince everyone to not BIN price and to push offers/leases, so they flock to you. But surely they could do make offer on Afternic too, even though they can't do leases, so you need another UVP to seal the deal. I know, you could offer to negotiate on their behalf personally so that your fame can help them get higher prices. That's how the conspiracy theory would sound anyway. I don't believe it because of my crippling normalcy bias though.

As for conspiracy theories, I don't mind a good one from time to time. And I don't personally care which ones you believe in. I just don't like them being used as arguments in a debate because by definition they can't be proven. When facts don't support you play to people's emotions right?

The worst part of that approach is that you supposedly have access to this huge treasure trove of data, so you could make data-driven arguments without violating privacy. But you don't. I wonder why? Oh, right, the past doesn't predict the future. A convenient reason to ignore data and rely on arguments like "income inequality is higher than ever before, price as high as possible to take back from the rich!" or "the marketplaces and NameBio want you to sell too cheap for their own personal agendas!"

Which brings us to GMI, your market research company where you gathered and sold market data so companies could make informed decisions based on past performance. Hmm. I wasn't aware of that company or your ouster from it four years before the exit, thankfully this brought me up to speed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Monster

Thanks for the diagnosis on the normalcy bias, saved me a fortune in therapy.

Let's make this simple:

- The Epik SSL landers work remarkably well. That is why people are shifting to them. If they did not work, people would stop using them.

- Make offer pricing can be done elsewhere. However, at Epik we give you the full contact details and the IP address of your inquirer. Nearly every other marketplace completely obfuscates this information and will not even give it to you even upon request. Is that lame or what? So people try Efty, which is not free, and is also not a registrar so it becomes patchwork, especially for leasing or escrow. I believe Epik's seamlessly integrated approach is structurally superior and we are co-creating to make it better, for example here.

- Epik is doing some innovative things and gather momentum as a disruptive innovator in a market dominated by dinosaurs who have largely fired their best engineers and cannot retool fast enough. They may try to patch things up with some acquisitions but if you are not a natural innovator, it will be an experiment in merging cultures, teams and technologies. The leadership competency required to delivery "completeness of vision" and "ability to execute" does not appear overnight.

- As for the search for truth, I spent many years from 2009 searching for truth. It was a personal passion. Starting Epik in 2009 allowed me to do that. I spent much of my waking hours on it, which is perhaps one reason why Epik did not really grow all that quickly as opposed to now where we may well do more business in Q4 2019 than we did in all of 2018. I want to take this thread off topic but if you want to debate such topics, the Ask me Anything thread can be found here. ICYMI, I am very focused on Epik.

- As for GMI, I led that business as a garage startup in 1999 through 2007. We grew that business 100% per year for 7 straight years for which I was named Entrepreneur of the Year in 2005. Shortly after raising $35 million in new private equity in late 2006, I was asked to step down as CEO. I remained on the board as the largest shareholder and we did exit in 2011. I think we should have gone public but the VCs had another idea. If you wonder why I have avoided institutional PE with Epik, now you know.

All that said, I don't get your animosity. I have repeatedly acknowledged you are doing something useful. I think you would privately acknowledge the same about Epik even though your rhetoric here suggests you think otherwise. I quite frankly don't care who makes money, or who takes credit, but if you are on board to lift people up, then you are my friend and ally.

 

[winst]

I want to take this thread off topic but if you want to debate such topics, the Ask me Anything thread can be found here. ICYMI, I am very focused on Epik.

Yes, Rob, let's move all non-domain related topics off this thread. Mixing politics with domain topics just confuses people. Besides, it's already too late, the Chineses already bought all the media.

 

[belmar313]

During October, we saw a 2 word domain sell for $253,750. By most standards, this domain was absolutely nothing special. The domain was however strategic to the buyer.

This topic is interesting. Shooting the moon and asking for a xxx,xxx price on a "not so great name". Of course those names might not be disclosed, but to have an idea, what was the approximate appraised value that Estibot/Epik calculated for these examples? Were they registered in other extensions? Were they aged or recently registered?

Thanks.-

 

[Recons.Com]

The outrage! Yes...



















Anyway, enough poking fun. Let's get to the meat of it. Your initial post seemed to be saying to shoot for the moon on every domain. In fact, you went out of your way to mention on more than one occasion that one of the $250k sales was a two-word domain that was, and I quote, "absolutely nothing special":



So I think it is pretty obvious that you were advocating doing this on a regular basis, regardless of domain quality, because you never know. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. You kept saying essentially "Why not, you can always fall back to a lease." But then when people called you out on the bad advice, you did some mental gymnastics and walked your bold statement back to essentially:

1. Own good domains.
2. Set the best to make offer, and ask high prices on them.
3. Price the rest.

Or should we not price any of them? That was a bit unclear.





BIN pricing increases sales velocity significantly, this has been proven time and again by marketplaces much larger than yours, such as Sedo and Afternic. Or perhaps that's a conspiracy by the marketplaces to trick sellers into selling cheap, so the marketplaces can make less commission.

I would definitely agree with not BIN pricing your best names, but 90%+ of them should be priced, and not as moonshots. I wrote a blog post analyzing how Mike Mann does it, but clearly you think he doesn't know what he's doing either:



How kind of you to show him the way! He's only the guy that founded BuyDomains and sold it for $80 million. Then waited out his non-compete and built a massive portfolio all over again, at a time when that kind of scale is much harder to achieve. I'm sure he will learn a tremendous amount.

And then there's this gem:





Epik has 380k domains in the marketplace. Assuming a generous 2% sell-through rate, you're seeing what... 7,600 sales a year? Add in your escrow service, MLS domains that sell through you, and then rounding up, I'm guessing you're privy to at most 10k sales a year through your platform. Probably less. Amazing... nobody has access to that much sales data, other than everyone who uses NameBio.

Out of curiosity, why do you rarely check it? I would assume someone who runs a marketplace would want to have his finger on the pulse, not just stay in his own little bubble. Seems a bit shortsighted, but you do you.

We have plenty of end user sales data from Sedo, Uni, DomainMarket, other brokers, and private sellers if that's all you're interested in. None from Epik though, only the elites should have access to that data.



I'm just glad you walked back your sensational advice to something more sensible, even if it was something we all already knew... own good domains and don't sell the best ones cheap. Oh and SSL landers.

Awesome! Not surprised you have founded the hugely helpful database, as you are very analytical and logical. The beauty of logic is that two clear unbiased minds would arrive to the same conclusions with no communication between them.

 

[Windoms]

All that said, I don't get your animosity.

I'm back from 8 days in Dubai. No phone, no laptop.
I've read everything from Nov 19th.
I haven't seen any animosity from @Michael
Only him trying to help people because of your misleading statements.

 

[Windoms]

I must have missed something here, what's with all the hostility?

If you figure that one out, let me know.

Hopefully the matter is concluded.
Don't shoot the moon like a donkey.

 

[Rob Monster]

You want to know what happens when more people shoot the moon? You get this:

That's right -- all boats rise.

So, keep shooting the moon. If you can't close the moonshot, push folks towards leases for the scenario where they can't pony up the big up-front budget for the domains they need.

To be clear, this does not work when there are obvious alternatives. However, when you have the perfect .COM, then you are in the drivers seat to set price. There are no relevant comps. It is about value.

Anyway, ignore the skeptics.

As for this particular domain, it is a .com with a 10 letter brandable SLD. @DanSanchez was just authorized to close that deal.

 

[Lox]

.

Anyway, ignore the skeptics.

Skeptics are not the problem ... changing mental picture is the problem. Lots have problems s.a. Omg my browser does not currently recognize any of the dictionary domain names ... one word, T1, T2, T3 .... any.

Using mantras s.a....???
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” - George Orwell

 

[Michael Ehrhardt]

First : Thank you

We need TV Commercials

Most people don,t know what is a domain name or that they can buy a registered domain

People believe what they see

Let,s do some TV Commercials

 

[oskaaay]

During October, we saw a 2 word domain sell for $253,750. By most standards, this domain was absolutely nothing special. The domain was however strategic to the buyer.

Thats the keyword I can't skip but point out. Though the domain is nothing special to domainer but to the buyer, it was strategic.

Like I always say, at the end who matter most is the buyer.

That is a sweet cool sale.
Indeed a shoot for the MOOOOOOOOOOON

 

[oskaaay]

So we never know which domain name is special to others?

That is it until the sale occurs.