The story goes, some hot extension, many jump in to participate, and those who now got hold of what they believe to be “prime inventory”, move to a “hold” status, happy with their new properties. More comparable inventory continues to enter the market, but now they are sitting on the sidelines, renewing their domains, and often you hear, “I’m not buying anymore”. By doing so, and by letting other comparable inventory go at registration fee or extremely cheap, they undermine the value of their own properties. On Bido today, few extensions show these signs:
.TV
THIEF.TV BidoPrice $95, no bids
CASTAWAY.TV BidoPrice $95, no bids
.MX
DEALER.MX BidoPrice $50, no bids
.WS
LENDING.WS BidoPrice $80, no bids
FIXING.WS BidoPrice $28, no bids
So next time, before you place those long bets, think about this: Is your “prime inventory” going to be as valuable once others stop buying? Fundamentals are still the key to success in any business, including the domain business. I believe in supply & demand. Own stuff people want, sell (high) when people buy, buy (low) when people sell, and definitely avoid what nobody wants.
Some food for thought.
Best,
Sahar
While I agree with you that not continuing to buy in a TLD can undermine the market a little bit,you’ve highlighted an important issue but failed to acknowledge it.
The market is flooded with speculative domains that just aren’t necessarily a strong choice within a certain TLD. For instance, comerciante.mx would attract substantially more attention than dealer.mx as .mx is attractive to a a predominately Spanish speaking population.
This post is saying much more than you intended Sahar. By recognizing that not puchasing the domains by those who already have good portfolios with those extensions is driving down price you have subsequently recognized that the value of some of these extensions are being kept artificially high by domainers building portfolios.
If Fixing.ws is worth more than $28 then it will sell on the market for more than $28. You are essiantialy saying to domainers… “unless you want the whole world to know that your .ws is not worth beans then you had better keep buying them”.
Most likely you disagree with my interpretation but economically that is EXACTLY what you are saying.
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Hi Troy,
I’m sure this specific post speaks much louder than what I meant or tried to put into words. It it is open to interpretation, and I welcome it.
Best,
Sahar
Good summation. You have to also look at the amount of people in the market. If there are only a couple people making the market then it is very weak and can collapse at any time.
I am not as surprised by the names that didn’t sell as the names that did. With no end users for any of those name it is just a matter of time before they become worthless. End users MUST take names out of the pool to keep prices moving up. Without them the names are traded back and forth until the cash runs out or people just stop buying. The stop buying just started.
I would guess 99% of the names bought at Bido are for future resell. If your goal is future resell, why not look at a proven business like BuyDomains who sells over 1/2 million dollars worth of keyword .coms week after week after week. I’m yet to see .ws and .cc names sell for a lot. I would say Bido’s .com sales are incredibly deflated and the other tld sales are incredibly inflated.
Come on man, you so obviously pushing your own book.
You are so off on your comments, and your ulterior motive to try to get .com owners to buy the other TLDs is an insult to our intelligence.
Try conceptualizing that your readers are not idiots
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Not once I suggested .com owners should buy other extensions. It was simply an observation. Take it for what it is.
Best,
Sahar
Look, I am certainly not one to talk down to people investing in keyword domains in alternate extensions.
And to some extent I agree with you or else I wouldn’t have picked up Richardson.in the other day! I don’t think it’s a viable strategy to simply throw good money after bad though in the hopes of keeping your portfolio’s value up. While what’s been going on with .MX is fascinating to watch, I choose not to participate in that market because I don’t understand it. If it works for someone else, though… go for it.
What’s really interesting to me is that the .com’s didn’t come out of the woodwork when BidoPrice was introduced. It was the perfect opportunity for .com portfolio holders to attempt to liquidate at a price that they felt comfortable with. Like pepe.com, which is still the only real example of that happening as far as I can tell. I thought with Bido Guarantee, that we would see even more quality .com’s come through.
Instead, it seems like it’s gone the complete opposite direction - possibly because everything still has $28 stuck in their head or they still don’t quite grasp how Bido Price works. Regardless, if I felt there were quality names at decent prices in the 200 auctions a day at Bido, I would be a more active participant. As it is, it’s largely a turn off for me. For those that deal in “what’s hot today”, for those that like to flip 4 letter .com’s from one forum to another, Bido may very well suite their needs. Right now it’s not suiting mine and I choose to spend my time and energies elsewhere until I see opportunity that makes sense to me.
But don’t take that as “Bido is doomed”. I’ve got every reason to believe you all will continue to work on the platform until it works for the widest possible audience.
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Thanks Andrew for the comment. No offense taken, it’s just a discussion, and I’m glad to see not everyone agrees with it, as well as add their own view to it.
Best,
Sahar
Well Screenwriters.org could not get the $500 bido price today, so by this post .org is in trouble.
The .tv names are not very good. As Shane said, who is the end user for castaway.tv ? Sorry but top .tv domains are not in trouble because of Castaway.tv not selling on a site that less than .01 of the population knows exists.
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There were few others today. Let’s hope you are right.
Best,
Sahar
I’ve definitely been pulling for Bido, and respect the work, money, and time that Sahar and his team have put into creating a whole new marketplace.
Being a small fish in a large pond, I had hoped that Bido would evolve in a somewhat different direction than what I’m seeing. Just not sure where the site is headed. I’m still trying to sell a few names through Bido. My concern for the model is that it seems to be moving toward a larger and larger database of lower tier domains sold each day on volume.
Volume compensates for the lower sales prices, but it by nature creates a cheaper, dimestore type of marketplace that is the exact opposite environment needed to attract broad-based industry buyers.
I’m not seeing the kind of inventory that would excite a broader market of buyers … only domainers looking for a quick low dollar deal.
Then again, it occurred to me maybe this is just a “ramping up” to something bigger and better. I just can’t tell. I certainly want to see Bido succeed and achieve new plateaus. However, the quick liquidation emphasis might bring a certain limiting restriction with it. Just thinking out loud here.
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It’s a work in progress and we’re no wizards, and we continue to try new things, and evolve. What we see is new registrations numbers are extremely high (in the tens of millions every year across all extensions), expired domains are extremely high as well, but aftermarket sales on the other hand (between one owner to another), in the very low hundreds per day between the 3 leading channels in this space. We feel it should be much broader and when that happens, every domain owner will significantly win.
In some aspect above you are right, and inventory quality needs to be improved, and we believe it will.
Best,
Sahar
Sahar,
Nice food for thought but your message is not coming across at all (if you even had a message
Domains are unique assets and unless you are simply a domain investor looking to buy and flip a domain the value of any other domain besides the one you own is irrelvant at best. End users DO NOT CARE about comparable sales.
Let me repeat that … end users do not care about domain values – all they care about is how much the value the domain has according to their business plan.
The only reason a domainer should care about other sales is so other domainers (the biggest group of buyers in this industry) have a basis for comparison. Again, a comparison basis worthless outside of the domain community – another reason why no logic will ever be found within the industry for values that can be carried into mainstream let alone serve the community.
There is no reason to buy junk. If we owned mortgage.com and all other .com’s sold for 10 cents each I still would not sell it for less than 50 million.
Your domain is only worth as much as it is to your plan.
All other domains … who cares.
I don’t know about other people, but I am not really interested in .mx domains that are English words. But I am more than happy to invest in Spanish ones.
I bought semana.mx in today’s auction for $150. So I do think domainers are willing to invest in nice ccTLD domains, but of course we do not always agree on what exactly they are…
Good discussion Sahar. I believe diversifying one’s portfolio is always a good thing to do in diversified markets like this even if within a favored TLD.
Every seasoned domainer follows trends of their liking in the marketplace weather buying specific keywords or TLD’s/ccTLD’s. They also look for the right times to buy based on trends and overall market factors as well.
I see alot of dumping of inventory lately because of recent turns in the markets. Personally….I invest even more selectively now and avoid ALL ccTLD’s. If I see one that stands out I may scrap for it to the bone but I am not chancing paying more than what I can get a decent .com for at this time. The best to those who do!
The other issue about taking this approach with .TV names that dont’t produce much revenue is that you end up accumulating a large amount of names that are essentially non performing assets. They may resell higher? They may not. Best to just stick to the good ones and not try and prop up a market by buying junk.
Hello Sahar.
I am wondering, currently bido only accept paypal. Is it safe for the seller? Any protection if the buyer do the chargeback?
Cheers.
Mad
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Best to address via our support desk.
Best,
Sahar
Interesting discussion going on from shane, everything.tv and others.
First off I am happy with bido and at times I may get frustrated but as a whole its about liquidity back to the market place. I been seeing a better inventory on things as well.
Now the example of the names you mentioned. I’m a .tv investor and to be honest I wouldn’t spend 28 dollars on those names even. Bad example in this case. Others as well. But that’s just me.
What puzzles me is why the hype around English .mx names? Sensing a bubble will burst on this format. yes the google trends may show the English terms as increasing trend in Mexico. Everyone knows porn across the world and believe porn.mx sold couple months back for only 600 bucks or area. Forgot exact price. I would not be speculating every English word in .mx English. Go Spanish folks and that’s just me. Its the catch 22 but I’m not chasing the next hot trend.
Diversification is very good. Go .com, some .tv, some .us, Uk.