Brandable Domain Marketplace Results

[DomainVP]

I would like to hear from some people that have recently used any of the 'brandable' domain marketplaces and sold a name. Did you use promotion packages, or did you just list the name on the marketplace. How long did it take to sell.

I'll tell you why I am asking this...

I'm always so torn with listing any name with a marketplace because I'm a buyer that likes to hold for a higher priced sale, and prefers not to give anyone any money let alone 30% of anything. On the other hand I like liquidity and don't mind the 30% if the ROI is there.

If you have sold there successfully recently share your story with the class.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Coral Cove]

Here's a good place to start: https://www.namepros.com/threads/br...iners-whats-your-experience-with-them.833829/

 

[discobull]

I think that the value of those sites is extremely difficult to assess for 2 reasons:

1) The first thing they do when you submit your names is cherry pick. Any site that only lists your best names is naturally more likely to get you a higher closing rate, but not necessarily due to anything they bring to the table.

2) They require exclusivity and obligate you to point your domain to their site. This means that when you do get a sale, you can never know conclusively whether the buyer was someone they found due to their marketing efforts, or whether the buyer came to their site because s/he typed your domain name into their browser. Every time I've had a sale with these sites my first thought was "YAY!" and my immediate second thought was "maybe my domain generated this sale and I just threw away 30% for nothing".

As you can see in the thread cited above, in attempting to assess the value of these sites, I decided to look at all the domains I've submitted and compare the closing rate of the ones they've accepted vs the ones they've rejected. This guarantees that the time frames and the type of domains being compared will be reasonably similar so that we're comparing apples with apples. Given the cherry picking, I would have expected that the closing rates for the brandables sites would have been significantly higher, but in fact the opposite was true. I consistently did better with domains marketed by other means ( ie my own landing page coupled with listings at sedo, afternic, etc. ).

With that in mind, I would be curious to know how other people have fared. What are the closing rates people have experienced of accepted vs rejected domains?

 

[DomainVP]

I have pulled all names I had listed anywhere.

It just doesn't make sense to have names you could potentially negotiate to high five figures listed for four figures for a 'quick' sale.

Domain renewals are $8/yr; listing fees with marketplaces are $10 with 'promotions' up to $100.

Most sellers have stated that they waited for well over 6 months for a sale to happen, and the sale likely comes from a buyer who was interested in the name and not browsing the marketplace.

There are other ways to market your own names; this way is not for me.

 

[sofiapartner]

Why don't you make your own site?

I guess most of the buyers of those names go to google and type "brandable name" "startup name" "company name" etc. Then they go to those domain marketplaces and like some name.

Thats it. Thats why they take 30%.

 

[DomainVP]

The whole 'marketplace' idea cheapens names. Yes it can turn completely worthless names into cash as well; but I think that also cheapens the industry as well.

As I said before, there are other ways; and I'll be sticking with that.

 

[baldonius]

Why don't you make your own site?

I guess most of the buyers of those names go to google and type "brandable name" "startup name" "company name" etc. Then they go to those domain marketplaces and like some name.

Thats it. Thats why they take 30%.

This is exactly why I'm happy to let them take 30%. My domains are more likely to appear in front of end users than domainers.

 

[equity78]

Good comments all around, I think it depends where you are as a domain investor. How much time do you put in daily and how much do you know ?

For people who understand branding,SEO, advertising, etc... at a high level doing it yourself makes sense. For those that don't have the time or knowledge but still think they are good at picking names and that's all they want to do, the brandable boutiques make sense.

I have always said for 30 % please tell me what you are doing for me, and I have brokered over mid six figures in domains charging 10 % so I understand there is work involved, but you need to convey this to clients upfront.

Now a site may be doing something for that 30%, such as advertising, speaking and or advertising at start up events, have a lot of contacts in the VC industry.

So transparency really is the key with examples of the marketing and advertising going on to promote names.

Absolutely some sales are someone going to a site and entering search, or where you are really leaving money on the table is where, someone went looking for that specific name Cuddly.com for example is what they wanted. Meetings took place marketing department picked this name for a new line of teddy bears or whatever.

They went to cuddly.com which forwarded to the brandable boutique site, paid the fixed price and that was it. No one earned 30% on that kind of transaction.

 

[Coral Cove]

I think that the value of those sites is extremely difficult to assess for 2 reasons:

1) The first thing they do when you submit your names is cherry pick. Any site that only lists your best names is naturally more likely to get you a higher closing rate, but not necessarily due to anything they bring to the table.

2) They require exclusivity and obligate you to point your domain to their site. This means that when you do get a sale, you can never know conclusively whether the buyer was someone they found due to their marketing efforts, or whether the buyer came to their site because s/he typed your domain name into their browser. Every time I've had a sale with these sites my first thought was "YAY!" and my immediate second thought was "maybe my domain generated this sale and I just threw away 30% for nothing".

As you can see in the thread cited above, in attempting to assess the value of these sites, I decided to look at all the domains I've submitted and compare the closing rate of the ones they've accepted vs the ones they've rejected. This guarantees that the time frames and the type of domains being compared will be reasonably similar so that we're comparing apples with apples. Given the cherry picking, I would have expected that the closing rates for the brandables sites would have been significantly higher, but in fact the opposite was true. I consistently did better with domains marketed by other means ( ie my own landing page coupled with listings at sedo, afternic, etc. ).

With that in mind, I would be curious to know how other people have fared. What are the closing rates people have experienced of accepted vs rejected domains?

That is very interesting, and I'm curious to know more information, like what are the number of domains that you are comparing? Acceptance rate at Brandroot is well below 10% and probably around 10% or a tad higher at BrandBucket. So are you comparing all rejected names (say 100) to your accepted ones (say 8) and their sale success? How exactly did you compare the two?

 

[hookbox]

The only type of name that you can do a true comparison with is completely made up mashed together names. These names below are all the names Brandroot has listed as sold on their site within the past month.

feelzy
acutrec
octego
insurun
vogani
movali
pharmonix
qodeco
givemode
activi
vooj
shopogo
acceligent
airue
arbalo
modios
corvea
monitra
infiana
forthius

As you can see they are all completely made up names. Except one which is givemode. These type of names are so random that no one thinks up the name and then searches to see if that exact name is for sale. I can honestly say that all of these sales only occurred because these names were seen on Brandroot's website. I don't believe the buyers randomly came up with these names and then typed it in and followed the link to Brandroot.

Brandroot may not have done much direct marketing to make these sales occur but if they were not listed on this site chances are that the sale would never have occurred in the first place. The majority of Brandroot and BrandBucket names are these type of names.

I do believe 30% commission is outrageous but this won't change because the 3 major players in the space BrandBucket, BrandRoot and Namerific all charge 30% commission. If another site opens up and becomes as popular as these 3 but charges less commission then you can say goodbye to the competition. All it will take is one new or existing company to join the space and charge a more reasonable commission and all others will have to follow. The bottom line is if you can make the same sale on a site that charges less commission then why would you want to list your names at any other site.

BrandBucket was able to charge the high rate because they were the only game in town and these new sites just followed what worked for them but that will change with more competition.

Brandable names used to be looked at as a rarity and kind of special to the end user. Because of this the prices of these names could fetch 2, 3, 4 grand pretty easily but the saturation of the Brandable space and the ease of creating these type of names has drawn down prices and this is one reason BrandBucket has lowered their criteria of accepting lower quality names. The bottom line is they have to make sales to keep up with the saturation of the market and to do that they have to offer cheaper lower quality names.

It used to be that when you typed in Brandable Domains on Google there would be BrandBucket and nothing else. Now every page has a new brandable site that has popped up and they all sell the same type of name. Some may have better names then the next one but they are all very similar names.

BrandBucket's biggest failure was doing the article with Ron Jackson on DNJournal and the millions of dollars in sales they were making. After this article everybody and their mother started a brandable site. They created their own assassin and basically dug their own grave. Makes no sense. I blame BrandBucket and this article as one of the biggest fuck ups to hit the Brandable space. I believe BrandBucket and their 7,476 domains has helped to create the saturation of the market and in turn lowered the prices of mine and your brandable domains. Sprinkling in some GTLD sauce to the mix hasn't helped prices either. Brandable names used to be looked at as unique, cool and catchy but now have become commonplace.

I believe because of the saturation of this market that a time is coming very very soon that these made up type brandable names will have to be priced at less than 500 bucks to have even the slightest chance in selling. When this occurs everyone will get out of the brandable space and the market will reset.

 

[discobull]

That is very interesting, and I'm curious to know more information, like what are the number of domains that you are comparing? Acceptance rate at Brandroot is well below 10% and probably around 10% or a tad higher at BrandBucket. So are you comparing all rejected names (say 100) to your accepted ones (say 8) and their sale success? How exactly did you compare the two?

As I pointed out in the post you quoted, my numbers were published in the thread you cited up top. I've had a couple of direct sales since so those numbers are no longer up to date , but I think they illustrate my point well enough.

 

[discobull]

I can honestly say that all of these sales only occurred because these names were seen on Brandroot's website. I don't believe the buyers randomly came up with these names and then typed it in and followed the link to Brandroot.

I respect your opinion, but beliefs are not the same as facts, and since they don't disclose the sources of their buyers on sales they close, we can't know conclusively know one way or another where the leads came from. What we do know for sure is that they make it mandatory that our domains be pointed at their sites which tells me that they probably consider that pretty important.

 

[hookbox]

I respect your opinion, but beliefs are not the same as facts, and since they don't disclose the sources of their buyers on sales they close, we can't know conclusively know one way or another where the leads came from. What we do know for sure is that they make it mandatory that our domains be pointed at their sites which tells me that they probably consider that pretty important.

They don't make it mandatory that we point our names to their site because some random person is going to type in some random name that some random name generator probably produced. They make us point it to them because

1. When a customer decides to buy a name they may not buy it at first site and will type in the name because they may not remember where they saw it.
2. To track expiration of the thousands of names that they have listed. They don't want to sell names that have expired or are no longer registered.
3. It makes it more legit to the buyer when they are ready to purchase the name. If that name is listed at $1500 at Godaddy, $2000 at Afternic and $1000 at Sedo but the name forwards to BrandBucket and it's listed at $2500 then the buyer knows that the correct place to buy the name is where the name forwards to.
4. It gives the logo designers incentive to stay on board and create logos for names. If the site doesn't point to the main site then the logo designer may think they will never get paid for the sale.
5. When someone types in a name it gives eyeballs to all the other names they have listed on that page with your name and the thousands of other names they have listed.

These are just a few of the reasons that they make us forward the names to their sites.

 

[discobull]

They don't make it mandatory that we point our names to their site because some random person is going to type in some random name that some random name generator probably produced.

If that was true, then how could it also be true that they have us forward the domain because they know that:

5. When someone types in a name it gives eyeballs to all the other names they have listed on that page with your name and the thousands of other names they have listed.

I'm sure there are other considerations, but I would be surprised if traffic generation was not part of the equation. What I know from my own experience is that wherever I point my domains, that's going to end up being my primary source of sales. Of course, it's always possible that other people have experienced different results, but those are mine.

 

[hookbox]

If that was true, then how could it also be true that they have us forward the domain because they know that:



I'm sure there are other considerations, but I would be surprised if traffic generation was not part of the equation. What I know from my own experience is that wherever I point my domains, that's going to end up being my primary source of sales. Of course, it's always possible that other people have experienced different results, but those are mine.

There is no doubt that traffic generation is part of the reason but not the only reason. I point most of my names to one page that lists all of my brandable names. I figure that one random click gives eyeballs to many domains instead of one domain.

 

[Doron Vermaat]

The main reason brandable sites require forwarding domains is for them to have the guarantee that you own the domain when you list it, but more importantly when they sell it for you. Of course I believe too that it also helps to drive a large number of sales for them.

 

[Theydon]

Good thread. It would also be interesting to hear strategies outside of using BB, BR & NR.

Where have people had the most success, GD, DNS, Sedo, their own site?

One thing is for sure some decent names get rejected by the boutiques so they need a sales outlet.