This new entrant has some great ideas for imroving the domain aftermarket auction process.  Most importantly, the event combines a "live" real-world auction (which has been shown to bring in a targeted professional domainer audience of likely bidders) with a simultaneous online auction, which can potentially open the bidding to a very large potential audience interested in individual names.  In comparison with Moniker's auctions, the domain selection process was quite transparent.  Other details included:

• Flat 10% commission from the seller (less than many other auction houses like Moniker charge).  "Only" 450 domains (though this seems like a pretty large number) in the auction.  All of them are purportedly "high value" domains -- valued at more than $5,000 by DomainTools staff, a free part of the submission process.
• No long contract.  Jay Westerdal says "We are not going to lock people into contracts for months.  This should be a free market so people are free to come an go after the auction is over and no one bid on the domain."  By the way, high reserve domains do have signed contracts.

Drawbacks

• This was DR's first conference & live auction, so I couldn't assess who would actually attend, or how things would likely go.
• Similarly, some of the systems were being built on the fly, so there were lots of bugs, which tend to make me anxious.  Admittedly, many of the systems were updated based on user comments (which is excellent!), but still it didn't project the highest quality image.
• The first couple of rounds of the "top domains" list didn't look very appealing.  On the other hand, the transparency was awesome, and there were some good last-minute entrants (here is the final list)!
• They wanted us to have a lowish? ($25k) reserve.  DR only wanted a limited number of $100,000+ reserve domains.  Jay's argument is that "The Reserve should be set so that multiple bidders want to go after the domain. By setting the first bid at close to or above a retail price the domain will not sell. So it will not be picked to be in the auction if the reserve stays that high."  And Jay was very helpful in trying to suggest good reserves for the domains of many, many submitters.  But there we had some concern that they had a biased reason to get good domains into the auction with low reserves, so it would look like they caused a "bidding war."

I asked for advice both from people I knew and online in various forums, and got some interesting responses.  I got the following advice from users on a domaintools.com forum for which I'm quite grateful:

table dot com is a very strong domain name.

Although it's not the plural that most people would type in, it is still a domain that has a high monetization value and probably gets a decent amount of direct navigation (people just typing in table.com) traffic.

There are lots of advertisers paying for ads for the table keyword, so the domain can easily be monetized.

If your domain doesn't make it in this auction, I would contact moniker.com and see if they would be interested in including it in one of their upcoming auctions.

I think you would get some serious bids for your domain. Especially if you could provide some traffic stats to potential buyers.

- circler

and

First, let me congratulate you on working and/or owning a company that had the foresight to register such an impressive generic when they were freely available - that's always a good sign in my book.

-gepp

and

I think a $50,000 reserve on table.com would be considered a VERY VERY low reserve.

I'm definitely not an official domain appraiser or anything, but just looking at the current list for comparable domain names (and looking at recent sales for one word marketable domains), you can get an idea of the domains potential worth to the right buyer (a seller of tables).

To me, $100,000 would be a LOW reserve for table.com, $250,000 would be a reasonable reserve, $500,000 would be a possible reserve (but might get less bids), $1,000,000 would be a high reserve.

Again, I'm just playing armchair appraiser here, but table.com has a definite high resale value.

To the right end user buyer, it might go high 6 figures (possibly seven), to an investor, maybe low 6 figures.

- circler

and

As it was pointed out, Tables.com would be better. I think $50,000 is a healthy reserve.

- Jay

and

Table.com! I totally agree with circler. You have a piece of cyber real-estate on the prime waterfront of the Internet! $250,000 at the LOWEST for that reserve, I would think. But again, I am no expert appraiser, either. In fact, I don't put a lot of value into the paid or unpaid appraisals anyway, as they do not seem to go along with what always sells at a higher value! At any rate, you have a great name and I hope you do well with it!

- bobbyd43

I also posted a request to Digital Point's Appraisals forum, which appears to be a great site for getting some knowledgeable people to eyeball your domains, but I didn't get any responses, other than a couple of further inquiries about selling the domain.

Where do people go to sell domain names online?  Obviously, they could do it on eBay (which I've read about anecdotally in the newspaper), but where else are domains sold?

It appears that there are a number of online auction sites which focus on selling domains, the primary domain aftermarkets" seem to be:

• Afternic
• GoDaddy
• GreatDomains/Sedo.com
• and eBay

GoDaddy is an internet domain registrar and web hosting company founded in 1997.

It became the largest domain registrar (passing Network Solutions) in April 2005, and later launched what now appears to be the highest volume aftermarket exchange.

It may not be appropriate for the premium domain market, though.  Keither Pieper, a senior analyst at domain name research company Zetetic, says in this press release, "GoDaddy's sale transactions are likely casual sellers who happen to register their names with GoDaddy, casually willing to sell at any price."

According to Zetetic's December 2005 data, GoDaddy had the lowest average sale price of the major online exchanges, where the average sale was for about $692 (Sedo was the leader at $2,558, followed by Afternic at $1,072), though they were a relatively new player at that time.

An acronym for "Search Engine for Domain Offers," Sedo is one of the leading online domain aftermarketplaces, with the world's largest database of domain names (over 8 million domains listed for sale).

When Sedo.com acquired GreatDomains in June (for a reported $2 million) to boost their presence in the higher end of the domain market, they kicked off a monthly week-long online live auction of premium domains.   The most recent auction, ending August 23, sold 22 domains, including lifts.com (67,000), dental.net and queries.com (both $21,500).

According to Zetetic's December 2005 data, Sedo had the highest average sale price of the major online exchanges, and I bet the premium auction has further boosted this.

For a quick summary of Sedo's process and fees (as well as comparison with Afternic), see this Domains Magazine article about Selling Domains: Domain Aftermarkets.

Moniker, one of the five fastest-growing ICANN registrars, as also a leader in domain valuation and sales. Moniker/DomainSystems CEO Monte Cahn started the first internet domain brokerage (NameShop.com) in 1996.  He formed another company, HitDomains, which in 2000 merged with another industry player to become DomainSystems.com.  Despite the dot com's bursting bubble, DomainSystems did well, as company after company was liquidated.  Bankruptcy courts turned to DomainSystems to help them get the most money from their remaining domain assets.  "When many others were stuck, we were hired and that helped fund our business while times overall were tough," Cahn said.

The Big Fish

Moniker/Domain Systems CEO Monte Cahn claims the average retail price realized by sellers who use DomainSystems/Moniker is the highest in the industry by 7X. "Being a one stop shop featuring experience, legal and escrow has allowed us to attract the most valuable domains to sell and that has kept our average sales higher than the others." Cahn added "We also have contacts with the right potential buyers which gives us an edge when marketing high profile domains."

DN Journal has a nice story about how Moniker ushered in the era of live auctions.

Moniker has continued to dominate the "top sale" market this year, with Moniker's auctions (particularly those in conjunction with the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conferences) placing nearly half of items on DN Journal's list of priciest 2007 sales. 

Moniker was scheduled to hold about 10 auctions during 2007, in a number of targeted industries that effectively use domain names (including geo-targeted domains, and the sex and gambling industries), as well as several domains focusing more generally on "premium domains" at top industry conferences.

Cahn runs an informative (and conveniently archived) weekly internet radio show called Domain Masters. 

Agreements:

Seller gives Moniker the exclusive right to sell the domain during a long period continuing even beyond the auction -- Perhaps to give them a chance to possibly sell your domain to interested parties if it doesn't quite sell at auction?.  Seller is apparently released if the name is not selected for one of the auctions. 

Moniker's fee is 15%. 

Drawbacks

Yet, it's expensive to bid in Moniker's auctions.  Attendance at the auction is by invitation only.  And even getting absentee or one of the limited telephone spots costs around $500, and physically travelling to and attending the conference ($800 for a day) would cost considerably more.  There's a lot of good in this -- the auction room is likely to be filled with a known number of serious players -- but also a downside.  I feel like this format leaves the people who aren't domainers (not interested in lots of domains), but who might have a strong interest in a very targeted domain out of the mix.  Moniker claims to reach out to these people, but I'm sure it would be easier were the barriers a little lower.

eBay is far and away the United States' biggest online auction community. But that doesn't necessary mean that they are dominant in the field of domain name auctions.

Do people buy and sell domains on eBay?

They clearly do!  There were several thousand domains for sale when I visited eBay's .com domains auction page.  And people did appear to be looking at the details (though how they could make sense of them, I don't know) -- closing auctions tended to have had 50 or even hundreds of page views, though most domains bid prices weren't very close to the admittedly starry-eyed "buy now" prices.

 Unfortunately, the site was such a mess that I couldn't imagine a lot of people finding the good domains there.  And the whole experience made me feel a little sleazy, so ultimately I didn't feel comfortable doing this with table.com.

Here is something you might want to check out if you do go down this road:

• Auction Domains on eBay - The Complete Guide

One of the longest-established domain exchanges, Afternic remains one of the two largest domain exchanges.  Afternic was bought by Register.com in 2000, then sold after the .com crash in 2002 to a company known as NameBuySell.

According to Zetetic's December 2005 data, Afternic's average sale was for about $1,072, between GoDaddy and Sedo.

For a quick summary of Afternic's process and fees (as well as comparison with Sedo), see this Domains Magazine article about Selling Domains: Domain Aftermarkets.

According to Zetetic's December 2005 data, Sedo had the highest average sale price of the major online exchanges, where the average sale was for about $2,558, followed by Afternic at $1,072 and GoDaddy was at $692.  The anecdotal evidence also seems to say that though GoDaddy is getting good volume, it doesn't seem appropriate marketplace for premium-type domains.

This Domains Magazine article about Selling Domains: Domain Aftermarkets is a nice summary of the fees and procedures at the two other major exchanges, Afternic & Sedo.  In our case, the difference in fees weren't particularly significant, since we were hoping to sell the domain for quite a bit more than $100.

Domain Rookie, who despite his name appears to have a relatively substantial portfolio, has the following post listing where he is selling his names.

One reasonable question is whether I should sell this domain myself, rather than having someone do it...

I bet I could do well at it.  I wouldn't have to pay any commissions. I could follow up on all of the leads I wanted.  I wouldn't have to trust that someone else was doing what I wanted.

On the other hand, there are skilled people who do this for a living, who already have many of the strategies and contacts necessary to succeed.  And most importantly, I really do already have the job of running a small business.  Between my job, family, this project, and other commitments, something would definitely suffer. 

If I did decide to sell the domain myself without using an auction, I would probably use a combination of strategies:

• broad reach by posting the domain on listing services & forums
• and lots of targeted calls and emails to people working in relevant positions in relevant industries (for instance: furniture, dining) asking whether they know anyone who might be interested in table.com.

Domain listing services, an alternative to auctions and brokers, are websites which allow sellers to list and sell their domain names in a DIY-type environment.  Usually, no commissons, but also much more limited services.

Examples include DotComerica.com, 100domains.com, DomainsListing.com, MAXdomains, alphanames, and many more.

Similarly, many domain name forums offer one or more message boards with the express purpose of allowing users to list their domains:  Digital Point, SitePoint, NameCheap, SiteUSell, etc.

We thought this was a nice idea in principle, but not really the best location to solicit buyers for a premium domain name.  Sales from domain listing services and online forums seem to mostly be in the $xx-$xxx range...

An alternative to the auction (where a domain is offered for sale at a fixed point and time period) is a domain broker.  In return for a commission -- typically 5-20% of the purchase price -- the broker will actively solicit buyers for your domain.  For a premium domain, this seems like a very worthy service, because the "best fit" buyer may not even be in the domain business, and bringing this person to the table may create enough value to more than pay for a broker's services.

Many brokers also can provide an escrow service or domain parking.  Brokers frequently require an exclusive agreement for a longish period of time, typically 3-6 months.

My question: How does one find a top-flight domain broker (as opposed to one who doesn't have the necessary contacts and skills)? 

I haven't seen any top ten lists for domain brokers.  Perhaps there never will be, because even a top broker might not sell too many domains in a year...  I'm sure many of the large private sales of recent years were brokered by someone, but aside from one or two references that a particular sale was brokered, it's almost like this business -- publically, at least -- doesn't exist!

Is calling the purchasers in recent big private transactions and asking "how did you meet up with the person who sold you the domain" the best way to do this, or am I overlooking something?

Does it really matter where I list table.com, or am I wasting my time researching the different possibilities? 

If the marketplace were efficient, the "law of one price" should hold.  If the domain aftermarket functioned well, the same domain ought to sell for about the same price at every exchange.  If it didn't, the differences would quickly be arbitraged away by individuals buying those "underpriced" domains, and then reselling them at a more propitious venue or time.

Alex Tajirian's paper Price Inefficiencies in Domain Name Markets: An Empirical Investigation makes a strong argument that the domain market -- despite the growing popularity of the auctions -- is not efficient. 

That part wasn't really a surprise to me.  But what was surprising was this: One of the markets where the report didn't identify significant price differences across exchanges was actually in the highest-priced cluster.  I would have expected the premium domains market (domains which might sell for $50,000 or $100,000 or more), would have been even less liquid, because there are even fewer reasonable players.  Perhaps when the price gets high enough, it causes the market participants to behave differently in some way? 

In short, it probably does matter a good deal where you try to sell your domain, but your mileage may vary.

Maybe we shouldn't sell table.com at all.  There are several reasons to consider holding onto the domain, at least for now.

It's possible that Round Table Group might come up with some kind of separately brandable product or service which might make good use of table.com.  Holding on the the domain at least reserves the possibility of harnessing the domain in our business.

Also, the reach of the internet grows every day, so it's likely enough that the market for brandable .com domains is -- on average -- growing faster than the economy as a whole.  Doing nothing and letting our "bet" on table.com ride could well be a viable strategy. 

On the other hand, new business practices or technologies may come along which may make domains less valuable or obselete.  For instance, future "web browser" applications might reduce the use of or not include domains at all, reducing type-in traffic and brandability.  Search engines may remove or reduce the weight given including keywords in domains. 

And, of course, the domain doesn't actually fit with our current business, and investing in our business (which is also growing quickly), may be a better, as well as lower-risk investment.

The domain listing services didn't seem like the right venue for a premium domain.  We worried that potential buyers would have a hard time finding us, and we didn't really know what the right price to charge was!

For this reason, the auction model was appealing, but -- of the online auctions -- only Sedo's new "premium domains" auction had any real attraction for me.  The others didn't seem like the right venue for a high profile domain.  The offline domain auctions of Moniker and Domain Roundtable, despite being kind of a backward way to sell online property, were clearly higher profile events where some qualified buyers might congregate.

Moniker has a good grip on the premium domain aftermarket, accounting for close to half of the sales on DN Journal's 2007 list.  They are the big player in the industry.

On the other hand, Domain Roundtable has some fantastic ideas about how to make the industry even better.  I love adding the live component to the auction -- which would make it much easier for entities who aren't professional domainers, who might have a legitimate real-world use for a good domain to buy the domain of interest to them -- , and wish Moniker had something like this.  I liked their transparency, too.

But, there were just too many unknowns about Domain Roundtable's auction -- as a first time occurrance -- to pull the trigger.  I also took Domain Roundtable's suggestion that we submit what seemed like a lowish reserve (in comparison with Moniker, which didn't immediately flinch), as a sign of lack of confidence in their ability to pull in the big numbers.

We chose Moniker's auction.

Note: We didn't have time to fully investigate the domain broker model, which I think might have been a very good fit for us, because I think a person actively pursuing leads might have been able to find some very qualified buyers.  Unfortunately, I didn't know any domain brokers, and the time constraints made it difficult to find out enough to be truly comfortable.  If I had another week or two to make up my mind, this is where I would have spent my time.

The GoDaddy appraisal just came in.  The appraisal was somewhat broad ($67,800 - $187,250), but seemed in line with other sources.  Here are the details:

Just got the Sedo.com custom valuation for table.com.  Guess what they said?

$1,000,000!

Sedo provided a well thought-out 7-page evaluation on a number of parameters.  Here are some of the most insightful bits:

• Because "table" is a common term, this domain has the potential to capture user mindshare with only minimal marketing support
• Due to the inherently limited number of meaningful [single] words in the English language, as well as the relatively advanced state of Internet development in the English-speaking economies, these tend to be the most valuable category of domain names.
• The domain name... is resistant to traffic diversion as it is relatively easy to spell, and uses the dominant .com extension
• The domain name table.com can be categorized as a generic or descriptive name...  generic domain names are generally less susceptible to ownership disputes arising from a trademark conflict than are brandable, non-generic domain names.
• According to our analysis, table.com contains a highly popular search term.  A query of the Google search engine returns 662,000,000 results for the term table.  The overall value of the domain is increased by the term's search-popularity.   Expanding the domain's keyword-popularity could likely be accomplished with only limited marketing and branding efforts, which adds a second level of value to the domain's overall worth.
• ... considered to have high commerce potential.  [table.com] lends itself easily to beither building a website geared toward the selling of products and services, or gan garnish value through its association with a popular online industry...  table.com would be a valuable asset for any business seeking to break into this field.

Comparable recent sales*:

* noting it may be that at the time of sale there was a special interest in these domains...

First, I'm not a professional domain reseller.  That's the point of this blog, really.  Finding useful resources and understanding the business of domaining took some time, so I wanted to share my "notebook" -- where I jotted down and organized what I'd learned, and what I was thinking about -- with others.

In real life, I'm one of the founders of Round Table Group, a company that helps people (attorneys, consultants, and money managers, mostly) quickly find the right experts.  

I live near Chicago.  I also started another company, Centerstage, which grew out of my passion for the Windy City's arts & entertainment scene.  My Centerstage partners and I independently built and ran one of the very earliest online arts & entertainment city guides for 12+ years.  The site continues to thrive as part of the Chicago Sun-Times, which bought it a few years ago.

Domain Name Publications or Communities

• Domain Name Journal
• Domain Name News
• Domains Magazine
• Domainers's Magazine: 5th issue as of September 2007
• The Domain Name Forum (DNForum.com): a message board community focused around Domains.
• Domain Names Forum
• Dan's Domain Site: Good introduction to domains
• Name Pros: community of domain investors with appraisal message board, as well as some other interesting topics.
• DomainState: Message board community includes appraisals, buying/selling, and more.

Domain Marketplaces, Brokers and Appraisal Services

• Domain RoundTable
• Moniker
• Sedo.com
• Zetetic: Domain Appraisal Service

Domainer Blogs and Newsletters

• The Conceptualist 
• Daily Domainer  
• The Domainer's Gazette  
• Domain Name News
• Domain Name Wire
• DomainTools Blog (Jay Westerdal) 
• dnvw.com
• The Frager Factor
• The Key (Paul Sloan) 
• Name Brief
• Names @ Work 
• Rick Schwartz
• Seven Mile  
• Whizzbang's Blog

Conferences

• T.R.A.F.F.I.C. 
• Domain Roundtable

Radio Programs/Podcasts

• Monte Cahn's Domain Masters online radio show/podcast

Valuation Tools or Resources

• SwiftAppraisal.com
• Leapfish.com
• Domain Appraisal Guide on Digital Point's Appraisal Forum
• AlphaNames' selling advice 

Lists of More Resources

• Google Directory: Domain Names, Domains for Sale or Auction, Domain Appraisal, Domain Auctions, Domain Brokers & Listings, Transfer and Escrow Services,  Domain Resources