paullas

good point. but im sure there must be a uk company that can actively market and promote domains to end users. at the moment there is only sedo and lets be honest they are making alot of mistakes at the moment, so when someone search for buying a .co.uk domain and they get to acorn then they see the only company that sells domains is sedo and then reads all the posts here, dont you think that puts people off?

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Edwin

It would need to be a completely different kind of company, maybe one built around a team experienced in cold calling and selling relatively high-ticket items to businesses. And that company would have to be super-selective about the domains it "repped" - hundreds or perhaps thousands, but never Sedo-like quantities.

GreatDomains.com tried and failed (to an extent) to go down the exclusivity route but again that was just a listing service - the whole proactive sales side of things was missing.

The hypothetical sales company should be able to combine:-
- Ability to research ALL the most likely purchasers for a given strong generic domain name
- Ability to approach (in a credible, professional way) these companies, either to engineer a straight-out sale or a bidding war (or any other type of sale structure)
- Ability to keep following up on "warm" leads until they become hot
- Ability to make a persuasive case for generic domains, and to do the hand-holding required to help typically non-techy decision makers understand domains and their benefits

And probably a dozen other skills besides. Basically a mix of the kind of people who sell huge ad campaigns to large businesses, with a bit of tech savvy thrown in.

Such a firm would probably need to take a 30-50% cut to make it worth their while, but if they could unlock the kind of real end-user prices the best domains SHOULD command then the pie would be big enough to allow this.

(Of course, no amount of polishing will make a bad apple - so-so-domain - into a prize fruit. So the hypothetical company will need to be ruthless about turning down 99% - or 99.9% or 99.99% - of the domains offered to it for representation.)

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JamesC

I'm not sure whether that's a measure. I've sold a couple of dozen at what I'd consider market value. But we're the traders, I'm talking about end users. People who can buy a domain for £5k and turn it into a business worth millions.

philiporchard

I'm auctioning on Sedo at the moment, and happy with the service... but for good to outstanding domains, especially premium generics, there is a gap in the market for a professional personalised brokering service.

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aZooZa

Edwin has it nailed. Amen.

accelerator

I don't think there is a gap in the market. Maybe people here would like a personalised brokering service to exist, but if there was a gap in the market it would be filled, as if there was money to be made in this model, someone would be doing it, i.e. profitable gaps in markets tend to be filled. There are reasons why such a service does not exist, and it's mainly because you would need very specialist staff who would then figure out they could make more money by doing things on their own, so that's what ends up happening.

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GreyWing

Only problem with proactive sales regime in the .co.uk market means that you could be left open to a DRS. We all know how crazy some decisions can be.

If your agent phones the wrong person, bingo and that could be the end of your name.

It's a tricky one!

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cav

Sometimes us domainers need to be more proactive in our business approach; we need to realise that end-users do not always coming knocking on our doors looking to buy a domain name.

We need to go actively chasing end-users and educate them on the availability of relevant domain names to their business and what value it can add.

It's not always easy money, sometimes we have to earn it.

JamesC

There's a good thought. There's nothing that an agent could do that I couldn't myself if I pulled my finger out.

cav

........I have become more proactive, put the hours in chasing end users and allthough 99% of the chasing will be dead ends, it is worth it when that 1% ends up in a good deal.......