2009 February archive at Conceptualist.com, By Sahar Sarid

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Archive for February, 2009

If You Want To Sell, Be “Ready, Willing, And Able”

Published on February 25, 2009 in Bido and Domain Names. 2 Comments

(image source)

Many wish to use the services of auction houses are not ready, willing, and able. This post is for those who wish to sell, need to sell, and motivated to sell. If you belong to the group who wish to hold tight to inventory, this isn’t meant for you.

Ready, willing, and able:

Ready: This one is about motivation. If you are not motivated to sell, that is, if all your hope is for that one person to come and purchase, if you have those high hopes that an end user will show up at the auction and save the day, vibrant and live auction houses aren’t for you.

Willing: You must be willing to sell, and sometimes, that may mean even at a loss. To understand better, let’s explore what trading is.

To buy and sell (stock, for example)

As stocks, it is perfectly fine, common, and acceptable to buy, see decline, sell, hold to your cash, and buy again lower. It is perfectly fine to buy, see decline, and move to a different stock, one which you may think will do better from here on.

It isn’t much different with domains. You do not have to hold forever. You may want to sell a domain just to pick it up later for a better price. You may want to sell in order to buy something else.

And let’s not forget, besides trading, there is always the circumstance argument which means, circumstances Happen, things change. It may be family emergency, other opportunities, commitments, financial difficulties and what’s not. If you are motivated to sell for whatever reason, read on.

Able: No brainer here, You must be capable of selling, that is, you must own what you want to sell, you must be able to transfer when the sale is made.

At Bido, we would like to see those type of sellers. Having such dynamics is what creates a healthy market environment. What we try to do is create a market where trading happens, not when an end-user may wake up and decides to buy one day, but when you, the ready, willing, and able seller, need it to happen.

Have a great day!

Sahar

The Importance Of Accurate Pricing, Part II

Published on February 25, 2009 in accurate-pricing. 5 Comments

(image source)

What is accurate pricing anyways? I touched a little on the subject in part I, where I stated “the initiative for accurate pricing should be on the seller and the seller only”. But how do you educate sellers to price correctly? A step further, how do you educate two professionals to price correctly? By listing an item in a live/event/vibrant auction marketplace it cost the auction house time, money, and energy, whether the domain sells or not. In order to protect the auction house as well as serve the needs of buyers, those costs should be passed to the seller. Newspapers have done it well with classified ads. They sell the space in their publications and if you sell or not is up to you, it is not their concern. If you do not sell you have costs involved (advertising). There is a point in time when you will either reduce the price in order to move inventory or stop listing. In short, to do this right there needs to be an accountability system. In the case above, this sort of accountability system forces you to react to the marketplace or go elsewhere. Continue listing forever with paid classifieds without conversions is simply not an option.

Newspapers are old media and they were made long before the times we live in today. Technology changed the format and delivery however technology did not change fundamentals, the dynamics that needs to be preserved in business. Break those dynamics and you have a broken system. The domain industry is a niche industry where addressing its needs is a complete different ballgame than addressing the needs of Main street, where items such as iPhones and laptops are sold in quantities. Our industry is closer to the collectibles industries, rarity industries. Our industry is extremely young, built on intangible assets, hard to price. Value to buyers and end users is always in the eye of the beholder. As with collectibles you need a buyer which is ready, willing, and able. As with rare items, if you bore your potential buyer long enough by marketing to him items he has no interest in whatsoever he will walk away and spend his time elsewhere, where he can find deals. For these professionals, as well as the the domain professionals, spending their time wisely is essential. I explained yesterday to a close friend of mine that I rarely participate in auctions at the few major auction houses in the domain space. I do like those companies and there are steals to be found (no doubt about that) but going through millions of names, making hundreds of offers to find one deal is just not using my time efficiently. I want to participate in a place where sellers are motivated to sell, where deals are abundant and are likely to be found. NameJet, Snapnames provide that sort of excitement however their systems only work well with expired domains, as these are auctioned off for low opening bids and no reserves, no matter what the inventory is. When it comes to the secondary market though, with these systems and others, there is still no accountability.

In the secondary market, if sellers are not motivated to sell, for professional traders, there’s no reason to buy. Professionals are unattached to the deal, they know there are others. Their business is domains, not one specific domain. When sellers are motivated, when there is accountability and pressure on sellers to price accordinally, it is when we will finally see real liquidity in our marketplace.

Have a great day,

Sahar

The Importance Of Accurate Pricing

Published on February 23, 2009 in accurate-pricing. 7 Comments

no accountability, confusion
(Image Source)

We’ve all seen this before: Auctions go underway, item is overpriced, no interest whatsoever, auctioneer whispers “Pass”. Why is this happening? The seller really did not care that much. He sets the price and watches from the sidelines. The seller in this instance may as well just be testing the waters. If the item is overpriced (as many of them are) and sold, he is happy , and if not, he got great exposure, for free. It’s happening because a seller did not price according to the market. For the auction house though it is a burden. No accountability by sellers means wasting time for potential buyers, which then means the auction house loses its appeal as buyers choose to spend their time, and money, elsewhere, as well as buyers aren’t as eager to come back.

These days the burden is on the auction house to force accurate pricing by declining to accept some listings. So far this method did not work very well as it is too much burden on the auction house. Auction houses have employees, technologies, and businesses to run and taking the time to educate and negotiate accurate pricing with sellers, especially if you take scalability in mind (there are many millions of domains for sale), is inviable.

To do it right the initiative for accurate pricing should be on the seller and the seller only. The auction house should facilitate the transaction and spend its time running a business, in particular, getting exposure to the listed items.

These are some of the thoughts from our internal meetings here at Bido, and some of the issues we see within the industry that if addressed properly can move us all further to better vibrant and liquid market.

Further thoughts about making the auction market better, see Rick Schwartz Blog.

Have a great day,

Sahar

FuneralHomes.com Redesigned

Published on February 20, 2009 in Bido, Business and Recall Media Group. 8 Comments

(Above: New design)

Design was never our strong area but with time, you just get better. Our folks at FuneralHomes.com just released a new design to the wild. The design is not only graphical (now it is much better on the eyes) but also architectural. From an architecture standpoint, there is less clutter on the main page (less links), new header/logo area, as well as we now allow for each listed business to have their own profile page (example).

(Above: Old design)

Next week further projects are moving forward. Keep your eyes on Flowchart.com as well as Bido.

As always, feedback most welcome, highly appreciated !

Cheers

Sahar

Twitter’s Original Domain: STAT.US

Published on February 18, 2009 in Domain Names. 3 Comments

Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder, says:

Via Flickr

On May 31st, 2000, I signed up with a new service called LiveJournal. I was user 4,136 which entitled me a permanent account and street cred in some alternate geeky universe which I have not yet visited. I was living in the Sunshine Biscuit Factory in Oakland California and starting a company to dispatch couriers, taxis, and emergency services from the web.

One night in July of that year I had an idea to make a more “live” LiveJournal. Real-time, up-to-date, from the road. Akin to updating your AIM status from wherever you are, and sharing it. For the next 5 years, I thought about this concept and tried to silently introduce it into my various projects. It slipped into my dispatch work. It slipped into my networks of medical devices. It slipped into an idea for a frictionless service market. It was everywhere I looked: a wonderful abstraction which was easy to implement and understand.

The 6th year; the idea has finally solidified (thanks to the massively creative environment my employer Odeo provides) and taken a novel form. We’re calling it twttr (though this original rendering calls it stat.us; I love the word.ed domains, e.g. gu.st). It’s evolved a lot in the past few months. From an excited discussion and persuasion on the South Park playground to a recently approved application for a SMS shortcode. I’m happy this idea has taken root; I hope it thrives.

Some things are worth the wait.