Don't Sell Your Names To Soon or To Cheap!

IT.com

OzDomainer

New Member
I have been getting more an more offers to buy my .IN names over the past few months.

Most of the offers have not even been worth my efforts in replying to the emails as they were so low its just not funny.

If you have good generic names and you don't need the money then hang on to the name until the right offer comes along. If you sell to cheap then not only are you doing yourself a disservice, but you are also not helping the .IN community as a whole as this puts in buyers minds that .IN names are cheap!

It is early days for the .IN market place and I believe we are 2-5 years away from seeing the major change that is coming for the growth and popularity of the .IN extension.

If you read any of Rick Schwartz's blog post http://www.ricksblog.com then you will know he does not just sell his names to the first person that makes him a decent offer. Now I know we can't compare his names to most of our names, but the principals are the same whether its a $2000 name or a $200,000 name.

I had an offer emailed to me by someone wanting to buy http://www.envelopes.in off me (which I have owned for over 2 years), they proceeded to tell me that they wanted to develop a website selling envelopes and that they would like to buy the name from me. They offered me US$500 for the domain.

Now in my books that is a low ball offer for a domain name that defines a product category and I countered with a fixed price of US$2500.

That was 2 days ago and I have not had a reply back from them, what a surprise!!

In a few years time I will look back and say "what was I thinking" offering that name for such a low price, but thats where it comes back to not selling your names if you don't need to. I can understand if selling the domain meant the difference between eating or not eating that you would sell but if you have any long term vision of how valuable your generic names will be in several years time you wont sell for low ball prices.

I am interested to hear others thoughts on this and what they are doing in this area regarding selling their names.

Cheers

Ed Keay-Smith
www.OzDomainer.com
 
Hi Ed,

I agree with you on one-hand and on the other, being a newbie domainer, I sold a couple recently and just the fact that somebody actually bought from me, gives me the confidence to pursue domaining. So, I would not be surprised that first-timers like me are actually putting our wares for sale.

Secondly, I think I also lack a real sense of the value of a domain. As it is impractical to post every domain in the "Appraisal" section of this forum to get an idea of its worth, the very fact of selling acts as a feedback about what something sells today.

I might be immature in my thinking but that's just me and this is my 1st year in the domaining world. I have more than 1500 domains, and I need to see some sales to believe my portfolio has some value (some listed at namestrade.net), and I cannot renew all of them for 5 years and wait to see the results.

Just my thoughts.
 
@msdomains

Hi there,

I hear where you are coming from and I have been there myself.

I understand you need to test the waters and build belief that you have names of value that other domainers or end users want to buy.

I am not saying DON'T sell your names I am saying don't go to cheap and don't sell to early. Ultimately only you can establish what those parameters are and go from there. I just know that I have many valuable one and two word domains that people want and some buyers out there will try it on and see if you will give your names away for next to nothing as many do.

Some of the domains I have sold have been 3 word domains and they have gone for low US$XXXX and these names are not in the same class as most of my one and two word generic domains.

So you just have to follow your gut and read a great deal and watch what is happening in the market and what other .CO.IN & .IN names are selling for.

Feel free to PM me here with some of your names you are selling and I will give you my feedback.

Regards

Ed
 
Thanks for your comments Ed.

Currently, I am looking at an appraisal for stophairfall.net. Appreciate your feedback.
 
i would like to add my experience to this post too xD

well,
you know you are owning domains with INdian cctlds.. thats just where you are in trouble.
first of all in india.. the mentality of people is never to have good and premium domains for a super-premium price of $2500 which is around 1,00,000 INR(1 Lakh Rupees) in indian currency and is a pretty high demand from a domainer to an end user. xD
though.. i agree that there might be some 2 to 5 end users who might pay such a price for just max. of 10 to 15 best-shot domains of your entire portfolio of may be say 800 domains but the majority of businessmen in india either 'settle' for any long-url domain in the indian cctld or just fork a new web2.0 thingy name like mrandmrsidly.com or myopusradio.com which i bet would never come to your mind and no english speaking domainer would call it a good name to book for 10 yrs.. but they dont realize that there is more much potential in registering domains like the one i told as the majority of indian business owners wouldnt pay for envelopes.in if they were to pay $2500 for it but they would definitely buy mrandmrsidly.com for atleast $50 ad so if you sell around 200 such names every year you can calculate that you are at nowhere doing any loss coz $50*200 = $10000 in today's market where the money value is higher than $2500 after some 5 or 10 yrs as due to inflation rate of over 12% in india every year will make a situation that what commodities you can buy with $10000 right now, you wont be able to buy almost even half of them after 5 yrs..! got my point?

next.. comes the fact that you maybe a domainer not-based in india this is where you land into another trouble. if you want to sell envelopes.in and the end user doesnt wanna pay $2500 and asks a lawyer.. well the lawyer would help the end user get an indian trademark for just around $250 as in india trademarks are not biased on if the word is generic or not.. it can be trademarked if you need it.. simple! so they end user gets his trademark in a year for example and puts up INDRP dispute against you with the charge as illegally taking a trademarked domain(no matter which year you registered the domain, the indian biz trademark owner would win the INDRP) and you have your $2500 after 5 yrs just down the drain..xD thats a jurisdiction that you need to be aware of as you might be dreaming of $2500 after 5 yrs but you never know that it can be lost in a few days or weeks in an INDRP dispute and inregistry is just sitting calculating the money...xD it doesnt care how long a domainer you have been.. only what it cares is that you had a domain which was illegal as you never owned its indian biz trademark. now here another problem also comes up.. if you think you would ask a lawyer in india to get a trademark of your domain then you will see that your domain related keywords have already been trademarked beforehand and in case you are lucky enough to find some domain's trademark is obsolete and you wanna apply for a fresh trademark then you would definitely end up paying an offshore indian lawyer more than $2500 as what you thought of $500 is just what lawyers eat up from their indian clients only at every mid-day meal time! xD so either way you are at loss if you keep the domain for so many years.

i dont wanna discourage you but just its my side of future prediction as i also see many good .com and .net's dropping as many domainers dont have money so this is by majority decreasing the value of domain names and the end user as far as i know would rather register a .com than a .in in the first case at the end of the day... so paying a $2500 for a .in domain would be foolish decision by any indian business owner as far as the mentality of people, world economy & domain name values are concerned at the present market.

though at the end of the day the final decision is always yours xD
regards,
Abhishek
 
that completely depends on how desperate you are.

I've been wanting 3 domains since sometime now and I'm waiting for the seller to go low on these. currently the combined valuation of those 3 .co.in domains is mid xx,xxx $ . I'm going to wait and see if they are willing to let em go for low xx,xxx else I wouldnt have an option buy to buy them at high 6 figures :|

The question is simple, do you own even one domain in your portfolio which has a end user like me who is desperate to buy ? ;) .. i'm certain you would.... so hold on to your premiums.
 
On the outset, thanks ozdomainer, for this interesting thread.

Just have a look at the sales of few domain names (source NameBio.com Domain Name Sales, Domain Recent Sales, Top Domain Sales, Domain Sales History). But for the last two which happened in 2006, the rest of them happened in 2007.

engineeringjobs.in $120
marketplace.in $1947
livescore.in $1550
mobilephones $3398
conferencecall/s.in $499 each
stockmarket.in $560
videoconferencing $500
online-pharmacy.in $1672
sportsbook.in $1395

I thought that if 2-word generic names can sell for such prices 2 years ago, the same names can and should fetch handsome prices in the event they are bought by the end users today.

While I am clear I have nothing to mention about the one’s who were interested in envelopes.in (and not getting back), I agree with ozdomainer that if someone believes he/she has high potential generic names and / or key word search related names, they should take all possible efforts not sell it too soon after registration or too cheap. Of course there can be few exceptions, which is best left at the discretion of the ones who own names.

To get more specific, if anyone can register good 2/3 word names today and hold them at least for 3 years or more, I strongly believe he/she can expect to sell them for a considerably handsome price to resellers – let alone end users.

There should definitely be many hundreds if not thousands of 2/3 word keyword search names already registered which could fetch may be 4 to 8 times more value in the next 3 – 5 years, than those listed above.

The 80 – 20 Principle, I thought, holds good to each one’s domain portfolio too. Let me elaborate. Assuming that each domainer sells 100% of his/her portfolio, almost invariably, 80% of the revenue should be coming from 20% of the domains (or much less).

It doesn’t really matter if one is selling a domain too soon or for little, as long as one is clear that the name belongs to the other 80% of the portfolio (of course, there are exceptions here too). Possibly, if one were to have a portfolio which runs to 4 digits, he/she might have to apply this strategy till a better one is known. Having said that, I hope you get my perspective right.

Each one’s quality of portfolio varies from that of others’. For instance, a domain name that person A sells from the bottom 80% of his portfolio, if listed as a part of, say person B's portfolio, could contrarily be among the top 20%; simply because the quality of the latter's overall portfolio might be much lesser than that of the former's.

Whether or not someone can hold the right names, persevering long enough, and learn the industry and it's trends in the meantime could well be a crucial factor.
 
I have advocated this all along. You sell cheap then the next buyers expectations are lower.

I have lost count of the number of times I get offers/ emails that usually finish with " your prices are too high" - but of course that is incorrect- "the offers are too low" :cool:
 
@PeopleNet Global

What you are saying is spot on IMHO. There is no "one size fits all" rule here as to how much and how soon someone should sell their domain names if at all.

You only have to look at the list of past .CO.IN & .IN domains that have sold that was compiled by Jeff http://www.inforum.in/blog/indian-domain-sales/ to see that quality names sell for quality prices.

I think the only reason that any domains including .COM .NET .IN etc are selling so cheap is that there are so many domain owners in financial trouble and they need the cash. In a few years time they may very well look back and regret selling them for such low prices. But you have to do what you have to do!

Its the domainers / end users who are picking up some of these great generic domains for bargain basement prices that will be laughing all the way to the bank in the years ahead. This has already happened several times in the .COM space and it is again now.

So for me, I will sell some of my domains that I think I can get decent prices for and pick up some better quality ones from people selling them to cheap, but most of my names I will hold on to for the long term.

Cheers

Ed
OzDomainer.com
 
Hm...what an interesting thread this is. Very good tid bits here and there. My thinking is this:

1.Good indian companies will know that having the right name makes a difference. Many Indian names already get traffic, so those .ins automatically have a higher value than what people think.
2.Good point Abhish regarding the typical "Indian budget",but, as a seller, when you feel odd about the price being discussed, thats your gut feeling telling you thats not the equilibrium between the demand and supply, and so you back out.
3.Whatever people are willing to sell and buy .in names for(at the same time), will remain the main factor in determining .in aftermarket prices. I think its a bit impractical to tell people to "not sell cheap", because cheap is a bit ambiguous,and people sell for different reasons.
4. I agree we should all be ready to hold our .in/.co.in for 2-5yrs. Most of my fresh .in or .co.in regs i register for 2 years. Dont be tempted by the easy minnows out there.
5.Traffic is king....it always makes you believe..
 
Hm...what an interesting thread this is. Very good tid bits here and there. My thinking is this:


5.Traffic is king....it always makes you believe..

Traffic is a big bonus but the name is the kingpin.

Killer name and good traffic = $$$$$$ - traffic still seems to be very heavily weighted via .co.in in my portfolio.
 
While you always run the risk of being challenged or even losing a name by INDRP, do remember that INDRP decisions can be challenged in court... a lot of the decisions still have disputes pending. If you're expecting $2k for a domain, you can afford to fight for it, costs $100 to file a civil suit. ;)

The annual advertising budget of Indian companies was around 20,000 crores or $4 billion. Granted only about 50% of that is organised sector. But most top companies have multi-million dollar budgets. If any of these companies understands the value of generics and wants to acquire one for authentic use, $2k or even $20k, is really not an issue. They spend that much on entertaining clients.

Now for the most important bit, not everything is going to be worth holding long term, so be very aware whether you're renewing something that will have higher value in the future or just eating into your renewal funds.
 
Thanks to your initiative OzDomainer, which has trickled thoughts of many out here.

I did have a look at Jeff's valuable compilation and I did get more perspectives from it.

mwzd's mention about the ad spending by corporates was thought provoking too. I strongly believe that the day is not very far off when considerable number of Indian internet users will navigate directly for what they want to search by punching the keyword / generic term at the url.

That's when companies would rather prefer to part away with a fraction of their annual online ad budget, for once, to acquire generic name/s for good.
 
Hi, I am generally new to this but I can only suggest u to appraise the domain and then sell the domain for appraised price.

May be the offer of $500 is good. So, i think u must appraise the domain and if the cost is same or nearly equal ... sell it..!!

Just my thoughts.
 
It's true that you have to play the waiting game in order to strike the right deal. But, a domain is worth only if someone else wants it. So if you are a reseller, it's best to get rid of the names and reinvest the earnings in new stock.

What's better in one year gap?

2 names @ $1000
100 names @ $100

If you have good names and you want a better price try BIDO, the new social marketplace for domains

I've got couple of names accepted for auction recently
treasuremaps.info
australiacricket.net
 
Last edited by a moderator:

whois



Forums dedicated to Indian domain names, including buying, selling, appraising, developing, and monetizing.

About Us

Threads
29,388
Messages
76,792
Members
7,945
Latest member
nilamburfurniture
Top Bottom