Domaining for Amateurs: The True Story of Selling a Domain Name
This blog is the story of my successful quest to sell the domain table.com. As such, the posts appear in chronological order rather than (as is more typical for a blog) reverse chronologically. If you want to whole story, I suggest you start at the beginning, in July 2007. If you read straight down from the words you're reading now, you'll be peeking at the details of the resulting sale, and you'll miss out on all of the good and bad ideas that led there!
Hope you enjoy,
Chris Crone
Round Table Group
Note: this post has teleported in from the future to get you on the right track.
Among the many things I wish I'd discovered earlier in the process was Dan Warner's thoughtful 47-page 2006 article entitled "Aftermarket Domains Value Segmentation." Dan is COO of Fabulous.com, one of the leading domain monetization programs. His article is a very deep summary of the domain market, and its inherent difficulties, as well as lots of great suggestions for making the domain market work better!
A few points very relevant to the situation of selling a domain like table.com:
- Aftermarket domains are a niche market, not a mass market. Buyers are rare and need to be targeted with deep narrow spectrum marketing techniques.
- The commission structures in place are not high enough to push the current market beyond reactive sales to proactive market development
Watching the Moniker auction live at http://marketplacepro.moniker.com/auction/events/181/results.html.
Interesting to see that, while leatherfurniture.com didn't meet its reserve, it did get a bid of $175,000.
Perhaps the furniture market is good today! Knock on wood... :)
Embarassingly, after sitting most of the afternoon with the live video feed of the auction on, I missed the bit where my domain was sold!
I went out to pick up dinner when there were still about 30 items to go, there was a bit of a delay, and by the time I got back the table.com bit was done...
Luckily, they're showing the prices for the domains that were sold in near real time, so I'll know pretty soon whether it sold. Did anyone see the table.com bit of the auction, or happen to videotape it? (I am beholden to the time-shifting world of Tivo!) If so, let me know -- I'd love to hear about it. I feel like I may have left an important part of my life behind...
The final results for the Moniker auction are in. A pretty good day for Moniker, which sold nearly $8 million in domains today.
My domain sold for $260,000, the fifth highest amount, following computer.com ($2,200,000), investment.com ($900,000), sportinggoods.com ($450,000), cowboys.com ($275,000), though the latter didn't go through. Other domains selling for more than $100,000 included crosswordpuzzles.com ($210,000), criminallawyers.com ($195,000), promotion.com ($170,000), poker.mobi ($150,000), ringtones.mobi ($145,000), caribbeanvacations.com ($130,000), newlyweds.com ($130,000), singlesonline.com ($125,000), and news.mobi ($110,000). A very good bunch of domains.
I thought table.com might have been worth something like that, but didn't think I'd get more than about half that at an auction, so I'm quite happy.
Even more interesting that the list of sale prices from a domain auction, is a list that also includes the highest bids for items that didn't sell because they didn't meet the seller's reserve. Since about half of the domains don't sell because the reserve is "too high," there's at least double the information here!
Here's a list of the domains and their sale prices, or the prices at which they were passed (as well as the reserve price) from The Big eDuh.com.
DomainNameNews.com reports that the Dallas Cowboys, who apparently purchased the domain name at the same Moniker live auction which sold table.com this past week, are pulling out of an agreement to buy Cowboys.com. It appears that their representative believed that they were buying the domain for $275, rather than $275,000 (In my opinion, that is still a very, very reasonable price for an entity like an NFL team given the brandable opportunites).
The Conceptualist blog, in its article Moron of the Year Award on this topic, quotes T.R.A.F.F.I.C. co-founder Rick Schwartz confirming the breakdown. Says Schwartz, "You can't take your family to a football game for $275!!!"
Moniker then moved the domain into their ongoing silent auction where it was bought by an investment group for even more, $370,000.
I'm getting down to my last few days with table.com. By next week, it will belong to someone else.
A quick summary of the process, in case you've never done this before...
In our case, Moniker is serving as escrow (included in their 15% fee). We transfer to the domain to Moniker. Moniker gets the money from the buyer. Moniker transfers the domain to the buyer, and the money to the seller (The choices include check, wire transfer, or even paypal!). Mostly, the process is very easy, but Moniker's Escrow & Transfer form is not well designed!
Most other auctions and agents offer escrow services, as well, though it's certainly possible to arrange a deal without an escrow agent, or to engage escrow services separately.
For our part, we needed to unlock the domain and get an EPP (authorization) code from the current registrar, and send that information to Moniker so they could request the transfer. I could not figure out how to unlock domains online at networksolutions.com (though there was lots of information about how to transfer a domain to NS!), but it only took a couple of minutes on the telephone. Remember that there are lot of protective checks built-in. You'll have to confirm the transfer by clicking on links in at least one email, and there will be a five day waiting period, as well. During this waiting period, as I once discovered while moving one of my domains between registrars earlier this year, you can't change DNS servers or anything, so make sure everything is good before you ok the transfer!
(Updated October 27, 2007)
table.com domain has been successfully transferred to Moniker's escrow (it took about 5 days to transfer) for a couple of days, but doesn't seem to have moved on yet, nor have we been paid yet.
After a little while where table.com continued to promote expert witnesses, I've noticed it now sells tables! The domain is now registered to a Luxembourgian firm, Xedoc Holiding SA, which owns many thousands of domains.
Congratuations Xedoc on your new acquisition!