Dallas Cowboys Alleged Domain Price Stupidity

Part of the problem with domain name disputes and domain complaints is the fact so many companies are unwilling to spend a fair amount of money buying already registered domains to protect their valuable brands.

A more or less perfect example is how the Dallas Cowboys representatives made a bid of only $275 (really $275 and not a misprint) for the great Cowboys.com domain name at an auction when other auction bids were in the general area of 200k or higher.

However, strangely the Cowboys allegedly grossly misunderstood the auction price level (in spite of the fact a series of auction bids had worked their way up to more than $200,000., while they were present in-person at the venue) but somehow were oddly thinking a bid of just $275 would buy that great domain. Isn’t that amazing! They say the truth is stranger than fiction. A story like that is so far fetched it could not be made-up!

There is a TV show about the World’s Dumbest and the Dallas Cowboys reps at the domain auction (who I heard it said at least one was a Cowboys attorney) should definitely be on that show based on the alleged auction bidding events.

The proposed world’s dumbest appearance would include the upper management where for just 275k (which should be insignificant to an assumed billion dollar plus business) they later cancelled their absurd $275 bid after being informed the bid should have been $275,000.

This incredible true story about some of the alleged dumbest people on the planet is very hard to believe but this did in fact happen a few years ago.

Do Websites & Traffic Add Major Value to Prices?

There has been discussion on domain-name forums and blogs about developed websites adding significant value to domain names, and also making the domains easier to sell plus sell for a higher price. Agree to a degree, a developed web site with traffic is of high overall value. However, with that said, based on hands-on experience, I can say end-users rarely if ever care about the traffic your domain or its website gets, and in fact don’t ask for any statistics. Even if you offer them your stats, they don’t want to see it.

In view if the above I am unfortunately somewhat dubious about a developed website (with good traffic and typeins too) being more appealing to end-user buyers and the price they will pay for the domain, at least much beyond intrinsic value. Potential end-user buyers may actually be a bit negative about an existing web site and as a result its pre-branding.

Please note that my comments do not indicate I am negative about developed websites, or do not greatly value traffic. The exact opposite is true, since I have a number of developed sites which I am very happy with, most of which get good search-engine traffic, enjoy the benefits of high SEO rankings, plus receive natural typeins (from Internet users like President Barack Obama, pictured below, likely looking at a health website)…

How GoDaddy Captured a 50% Market Share

I just read about how GoDaddy recently achieved a 50% domain market share, which internet people are saying is an amazing accomplishment. I am far from being surprised about that.

My reasons to expect their great success are (A) GoDaddy.com has a strong combination of excellent marketing skills, (B) very large ad budget, including substantial money for high price Super Bowl ads, (C) very diverse and extensive offering of additional products and services for sale, (D) including various web hosting products/services, and something you may not think much about but important to small domain buyers and small business owners is their overall (E) good 24X7 support with short on-hold wait times, often no hold time, all combined with a (F) powerful upselling program.

I am sure GoDaddy will soon go well beyond capturing a 50% market share, with the next big level being my prediction GD will eventually capture a 75% market share and dominate the space. hmmmm…..does GoDaddy have stock we can invest in?

Domain/Website Resale Markets Are Depressed

A domain name forum menber asked about more than unusual numbers of non-forum threads and posts lately and was wodnering why that seems to be taking place? My answer is maybe it appears that way because the domain name/website resale market appears to be declining big time and since so few are successfully selling (with the notable exception of the many which somehow almost magically sell in the DNjorunal.com sale reports each week for surprising prices) forum members have little to do all day except pass time with the non-domain related posts.

An example of how hard it is to sell at forums these days I was checking yesterday and see a majority of believed dubious or marginal value names I let expire (and got zero responses on via the Forums, or thru the Whois contact information and at other venues such as my Websites) were in fact puchased by others at places such as Snapnames.com, for example, and at for high prices vs the small amounts I would have quickly taken for them (even though I rarely offer names or websites for sale). I also see BuyDomains.com ended up getting many of my cancelled names. Really odd the marginal names appear to rarely sell at forums and via for-sale-listings at auction websites for a fraction of the prices many domain sellers would have accepted. Anyone know why?

LiveApp.com and LiveApps.com domains for sale

Two very high profile premium domains for sale, LiveApps.com and LiveApp.com. Registered since 1999. Available as a pair or individually.

There are more than 65,000 app developers and well over 100,000 apps already developed. I believe Apple Computer purchased AppStore.com last month for a ton of money.

The domains are not being sold by a broker at this time. Please contact me direct for more details or with any reasonable offers.

P.S. also interested in finding a good domain broker to market and sell these 2 great LiveApp(s) domains. Willing to pay substantial commission upon sale but not paying upfront fee as unfortunately was done before. As a side-note, domainers can be warned to avoid paying a fee in advance to a broker no matter how legit he seems, or well known he is. That’s because there’s always a possibility of a falling-out and you losing the money (since the broker already received his money, with the potential sales commission perhaps not really being his main goal but you did not realize that aspect) and thus the broker may not do much ‘work’ for you or be slow at the marketing (possibly because he already has his money) so you may end-up in a dispute and ask for a refund but the broker may not want to refund your pre-paid money, been there and done that, unfortunately! Another issue which casts doubt about how legitimate the up-front fee model is you have to ask yourself why if the broker can really get a buyer he simply does not do so regardless of getting money in advance, especially since his commission will normally be far greater than the up-front fee he wants?The answer to that question should be obvious.

Jets.com was a great bargain at only $375,000

To someone who may not be experienced with domain name values the internet domain name Jets.com recently selling for 375k must seem like a ton of money. If it was purchased to try and take advantage of the New York Jets football team as was once commonly believed (until the actual buyer became known) and maybe to run some sports advertising on it and make a few bucks from running PPC ads (and taking a chance on a big trademark lawsuit or WIPO case), then I agree that 375k is a lot to pay.

However, the name was purchased by an end-user firm who rents jets and other airplanes according to what I see on the website today. Since jets both rent and sell for big and small fortunes the price was incredbly low. I believe just one sale or a few 25-hour rentals of a corporate jet would probably recover the domain purchase price in profit or commissions. After the first few transactions take place from the website traffic (and its typeins) it will be all gravy for a lifetime for the lucky owner and and 100% profit with every future airplane transaction. So the price was in actuality a tremendous bargain.

The new jets.com web site offers these prices: U.S. 2009 Pricing: 25 HOURS CARD MEMBERSHIP. Aircraft Price. Hawker 400 XP $114,500; Hawker 800 $125,000; Hawker 1000 $149,000; Gulfstream III $189,000; Citation X $189,000; Challenger 601/604 $199,000; Gulfstream IV $279,000.

This is what Yahoo! Answers says about the costs of jets: “Best Answer – Chosen by Voters: (buying and owning a jet) is very expensive considering all the FAA rules on rebuilding engines every so many hours whether they need it or not and a pilot is gonna cost you in excess of $100,000.00 per year and then you have the hangar charges which are like $3,000 a month, and then jet fuel which was $3.79 a gallon and then the insurance is expensive . There is an old saying at my rolls royce dealership – if you need to ask the price or the gas mileage you can’t afford it and I have found over the years how true !!!!! Byy the way cheap starter jets can be bought used for like $300,000.00 and up whereas the new ones like a 4 seater are probably going to run 1.5 million dollars or higher to start.”

It’s Always Tough Giving a Buy Price or Sale Price

One of the the most frustrating things about the domain name and website business is that in the normal course of business (even if the name or its website is not listed for sale) there will be occasional unsolicited offers to buy your domains and/or websites but most everyone has great reluctance to make the first move regarding a sales price.

In all likelihood, the typical great reluctance by both buyers and sellers to name an agreeable price results in the large majority of web site or domain-name potential transactions failing.

A prospecive buyer does not want to give a specific offer because of two reasons:

1. The prospective buyer is thinking the offer may be more than sellers expected price so seller will accept it right away and he would pay more than was needed.

2. Conversely, buyer is thinking his proposed price is too low so seller may act negative and not respond at all or else act insulted replying with a sky high price of say $50,000 for a domain he really would normally sell for $5,000 or less as an example.

A potential seller does not want to give the buyer a specific buy-it-now price due to two reasons (this is especially applicable if the buyers full identity is not known):

1. Seller may be thinking the accepable buy price is lower than what buyer was really willing to pay. Thus buyer will accept the price and domain or website would get sold for less than its potential price.

2. If proposed buy price is perceived as too high by the potential buyer it may turn buyer negative and buyer will nt reply at all. That would be unfortunate since seller may in reality accept much less than the quoted high price but never has a chance to negotiate the price since buyer already walked away or went on to an alternative name for sale or a newly registered domain.

Not really sure what solutions there may be to this ongoing problem, which in-effect stands in the way of a great number of sales. Anyone know a way to avoid this?

Sales Should Be Atributed to the Correct Website

Regarding domain name sales reports I noticed AfternicDLS gets credit for more sales than deserved. For example, I personally purchased a good health related dot-org domain last week but it was listed in DNjournal.com as being sold by AfternicDLS (even though Afernic.com had nothing to do with the process). It appears credit for many of the sales in both DNjournal and in other media too are often attributed to Afternic when the BuyDomains landing page was responsible for the sale, having nothing to do with Afternic’s name.

The name above and several others I have purchased this year were always a direct result of typing on the domain name and seeing the BuyDomains landing page. The landing page has the BuyDomains phone number at the top announcing the name is for sale and inviting a phone call to the BuyDomans toll-free number, or clicking the link for more details or making an online purchase it goes to the BuyDomains.com website, with Afternic not mentioned on the web-page from what I can see. In fact, I don’t believe Afternic is mentioned at all during the sales and ordering process which appears to be done only under the name BuyDomains.com

Of course I realize they are both divisions of NameMedia.com but it seems like the Afternic.com website gets undeserved credit for far more sales than warranted and greater marketing benefit than is due them. In fact, I would be willing to bet BD landers are responsible for many sales, especially to end-users and higher priced domains) compared to Afternic which is believed to have a lot of sales mostly to domainers and resellers.

The reason we mention this is that Afternic.com is obviously getting more marketing and advertising credit plus greater overall publicity than justly deserved for domain sales. On a more personal note, I dislike the Afternic.com web site which has been riddled with various bugs for ages, lacks certain important features such as bulk operations, and unfortunately has offered poor support for a long time). In fact I removed my domains from there some time ago.

Good Domains for Websites Sold for Under $1000

It’s interesting how the BuyDomains.com reported domain sale prices (substantial $950,000 total sales last week) vary so much. Some names which were reported as sold by BD last week stand-out as really good domain name buys based on end-user product sales possibilities, combined with their low sale prices and good keywords in well paying categories (such as in the financial markets for example).

Knowing to a degree how BuyDomains and Afternic operate I am sure many of these domains were purchased by website developers after successful email or phone price negotiations with BuyDomains and Afternic (which flexible pricing they typically offer) with the intention to make money from the future targeted websites using good keyword domains purchased at reasonable prices, including these examples.

The best buys are domains which are also in high-paying product categories, names such as AnnuitiesAdvisor.com ($900), DomainFutures.com ($488), FreeTradingSystem.com ($440). InternationalAssetProtection.com ($688), CommunityCollegeStudentLoan.com ($488) and CanadaHotelReservations.com ($450).

Those nice domain names were all priced reasonably at under $1,000. In fact, in my opinion, that low-priced group of names are better than many of the names which BuyDomains.com sold at much higher price levels last week. That may or may not be an anomaly but I would not be at all surprised if it was really a common occurrence since so many dubious value names are sold on a daily basis from what I can tell.