Nice XYZ Sale

[Sound]

Here is a nice XYZ sale 9.xyz just sold for $175,000

Why is the UK market so slow compared to the rest of the world short domains are on fire everywhere else


http://www.west.cn/services/paimai/show.asp?pid=2073562

 

[Skinner]

Nominet!

 

[ian]

Nominet!

Plain and simple

 

[BG]

Why is the UK Domain Market so slow compared to the rest of the world

Personally i don't think its just down to Nominet. I think a major factor is how people sell premium ".co.uk's" domain names for peanuts.

It's hard to create value when people keep devaluing the market because of the need to sell quick, and i hate to say it but i feel to some degree Acorn has been part of this process.

At the end of the day we all have different agendas when it comes to domains... Some people hold on to them as investments, some wait for the right buyer to come along and have a price in mind which they are prepared to sell for... and some simply want an instant flip the moment they are caught as they have bills to pay and are happy picking up a name for say £50, to then get returns of £500-£1000+... and nothing is wrong with this but it does effect how the .co.uk market moves forward, as most buyers research comparable sales and try to use those prices to their advantage.

By now in 2015 you would have expected 3 letter .co.uk's fetching £10k+, and premiums £50k - £100k+, however we've gone backwards over the past 5yrs i feel.

It would be great if we could get the .co.uk market back on track and create value again, yet doing this will be hard as we all have different business models we work too. And those doing quick flips are making good money and paying the bills, and those buying those quick flips are really happy with the price they are acquiring them for, and obviously those buyers are not going to suggest paying more for them, haha!

In short we are 'ALL' in control of how the UK domain market is shaped, but it would help massively if Nominet made more of an effort with the way they marketed the extension too - They need to start thinking out the box and create a buzz / value again, rather than de valuing it and confusing people!

Just my thoughts peeps.

-Barry

 

[Skinner]

You can't build valuable property on a landfill site.

Nominet need to stand up, and be heard. However they prefer to fill their own pockets, "diversify" and generally kill their extension.

If I look at my daily catch rate 2-3 yrs ago, the average mean daily catch were around 80-110 (I posted this a year ago or on the forum), this is pre-.UK. The last 60 days, the average mean daily catch rate is still 80-110. So even now with people doubling up with .co.uk+.UK the average daily catch is SAME as without it. Which I would suggest is actually negative growth or shrinking.

Edit: average dropping domains per day isn't a good indicator, post-drop day regs over the following week are low double digits per day, 15-25 spread over the following 7 days, you could argue re-regs are 100-130. I don't have the 7 days date from 3 yrs ago to compare. When 2,000+ names per day drop, and 100 are regged, something is wrong.

The growth rate on each communique is measured in fractions of a percent now.

It starts with nominet!

 

[foz]

Nominet made £30K on 9_co_uk

 

[AspireDomains]

9.xyz for $175,000, what a complete waste of money, this sale makes no sense at all to me unless i'm missing something.

If i had that kind of money i would to invest it into .com and .co.uk or even look into .co and the cctlds of China and India .in and .cn. Maybe i'm to cynical these days but it wouldn't surprise me if this was a sale fabricated by those looking to profit from smartprice extensions.

 

[Sound]

How about Nominet send all *.uk domain names being deleted to auction at NameJet or an equivalent first? Any that don't get bid on drop as they currently do. This pushes *.uk extensions out there with the other secondary markets that go to auction houses and enables anyone to bid. It'd be likely that those with the deepest pockets would win the auctions for the better names I'd imagine. I've been suggesting this idea for years. Thoughts?

This should have been done years ago i feel they have missed their chance now.

They could have made so much money if they had gone down this route

 

[Sound]

Isn't it only certain extensions and being fuelled by Chinese investors, sound?

Not all admittedly but enough.

what's amazing is you can sell a five number domain in dot com for $2,000 and its free to reg in .co.,uk

 

[spiderspider]

Looks great for the seller But just one good sale doesn't make a good extension.

How about Nominet send all *.uk domain names being deleted to auction at NameJet or an equivalent first? Any that don't get bid on drop as they currently do. This pushes *.uk extensions out there with the other secondary markets that go to auction houses and enables anyone to bid. It'd be likely that those with the deepest pockets would win the auctions for the better names I'd imagine. I've been suggesting this idea for years. Thoughts?

Wouldn't it be better to start a new thread asking this, rather than confusing a thread about the sale of a .xyz with your nominet marketing research?

 

[humble pie]

How dare you all start slagging off Nominet being culpable, when you know full bloody well they've put Bianca Miller to work behind the scenes..

 

[humble pie]

I hate to partly agree with you but ironically, if there was more visibility on the drops, thus more bidders on those better names, then the the current 'good names' 'should' go up in value over time. It feels the .com/gtld drop market is a lot more open in general, where as in the UK its generally a much darker, murkey and closed process + it's being cherry picked by a very small handful of people, who, like Bazza says are creating a self fulfilling prophecy of selling names for peanuts to pay gas bills or their monthly catch fee. You could argue any corp or startup looking for a nice LLL finds DL or AD, and thinks in terms of 500 bucks now, not 5k.

How about Nominet send all *.uk domain names being deleted to auction at NameJet or an equivalent first? Any that don't get bid on drop as they currently do. This pushes *.uk extensions out there with the other secondary markets that go to auction houses and enables anyone to bid. It'd be likely that those with the deepest pockets would win the auctions for the better names I'd imagine. I've been suggesting this idea for years. Thoughts?

 

[looks]

No. There were two parts to the original post and it's pretty open and shut why 9.xyz sold so high.

Wow, and i voted for this guy, to think, we though we was putting one of us in not a nominet PA system.

SH

 

[ian]

Unfortunately portfolio holders that keeping their sales to themselves don't generate positive publicity for the relatively small marketplace.

That includes you though right? I'm not aware of you actively confirming how many sales or how much those sales were for? Not saying that is wrong, but obviously goes against your own position that it may not be the best for the marketplace. It is a tricky one though, for some, keeping it private is important to their own business model, whilst others (using Denys as an example, hope he doesn't mind), displays his sale prices on his website, possibly as a way of guiding potential buyers on price expectations, but possibly also to keep the time wasters away.

Just in general (not specific to you David, you didn't say it), I don't feel it is fair to assume that anyone simply flipping domains for peanuts are doing so in a desperate need to pay their bills and keep a roof over their head; we all have our own approaches. I've taken a position from the start (as I publicly stated I'm not a fan of holding large portfolios of "domains with potential" on landing pages) of selling on to trusted buyers and in some cases, end-users (if the time-scale allows). In some ways to ensure a quick healthy turnover, in others because of ease of sale (some end-user sales can be time consuming educating the uneducated), and mainly because I like to keep moving on and learning. A big part of that decision was also because I wasn't sure where the .uk market would lead us, up or down, and took a position that it was likely to be down as more cash flows towards .com's - would I reverse some of the sales I made if I could, yes, I've sold around 60 lll's in 18 months, some I'd love back but are now gone - I can see that the market may now have bottomed out, but that is purely through own research, nothing more solid.

Fun game either way!

 

[Skinner]

Bluntly put, NO, I wouldn't bid on names.

Look at what they do with the money they already have, giving them more money from domains so they can invest in their retirement and non-domain related fancies, hell no.

 

[Murray]

Bluntly put, NO, I wouldn't bid on names.

Look at what they do with the money they already have, giving them more money from domains so they can invest in their retirement and non-domain related fancies, hell no.

If you strongly believed you could make good money on the names, wouldn't it be cutting your nose off to spite your face by not bidding?.

 

[ian]

How would you react to a hypothetical auctioning off of expired domain names by the registry before the remainder without bids dropped as usual? Would you become a bidder?

I suspect I'd be out-gunned by those with more funding and knowledge than I, but it would certainly give me more opportunity to own some domains than catching alone. It would mean more money for the Nominet pot though to pay back-patting board members though, so catch 22 . I suspect the catching service may just need tweaking rather than copying the .com method. The landscape for me has changed though, now that I can't catch those special drops; which I'm sure you had a hand in stopping

 

[humble pie]

I guess the plain and simple truth is some people may have the time and technical knowledge to write or run a drop catching program, but wouldn't necessarily have the funds to compete on a open auction system run by Nominet, so over night what might have been a nice little earner 'catching business' would effectively cease to exist, so I could see a few people on here not too happy about that, but domain investors who don't catch would probably be far happier cutting out a middle man, it would be very interesting to know how prices would differ on Nominet or NameJet platform *if* that made them more public.

Does it boil down to: would you rather have your domains go up in value long term and the money go to Nominet, or they just stagnate and stay around reseller prices forever due the catch and flip mentality. However, you can't stop people selling domains on AD or DL (are they actually damaging .uk prices?) and is the uk drop market really driving the end user sale value of domain portfolio holders

 

[gimpydog]

There are portfolio holders with substantially attractive portfolios that don't participate on forums and are likely successful businesses doing what they do, not just doing it to pay the gas bill.

As an example I don't see GIRAFFE or 3DWEB openly participating on this forum and never remember seeing either doing so. I've picked on those two portfolio holders but I could name several others. Unless one monitors their portfolios one won't know how often they make sales.

Really?? Even though the chap who nominated you as a non-exec is so well connected?

David Thornton
Proposed by: Andrew Bennett, Netistrar Ltd

"I first met David around a decade ago"

"He is very inquisitive in nature and always wants a straight answer."

"If you want a board member that is honest, transparent and knowledgeable
vote for David Thornton!"

http://www.nominet.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ned_director_candidate_statements_2015.pdf

Andrew Bennett
CEO - Netistrar Ltd

Consultant
Giant Games Ltd
May 2010 – Present (5 years 8 months)London, United Kingdom
Giraffe has one of the largest and oldest prime generic portfolios of UK domain names.
http://www.giraffe.co.uk

Consultant
Any-Web Ltd
March 2011 – Present (4 years 10 months)London, United Kingdom
Any-Web Ltd has the largest portfolio of geo and prime two letter domains in the UK
http://www.any-domains.com

Co-founder
Intergenerational Foundation
February 2011 – Present (4 years 11 months)London, United Kingdom
The Intergenerational Foundation (IF) has been established to promote fairness between generations. We believe that each generation should pay its own way, which is not happening at present. British policy-makers have given undue advantages to the older generation at the expense of younger and future generations. Website: http://www.if.org.uk

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewgbennett
http://www.nominet.uk/whois/?query=if.org.uk
http://www.nominet.uk/whois/?query=giraffe.co.uk

 

[gimpydog]

"honest, transparent and knowledgeable"

I am not sure what you're point is.

My point is that a lot of what you post here is equivocal.

For example, you went on to say;

Since these type of Registrant don't appear to publish their sales we can't deduce how profitable they are or how they price their domain names. One could inquire anonymously and find out, I suppose.

For all I know these kind of registrant might not need to sell more than one or two domain names a year to keep everything ticking along nicely.

Whether I get told about some of the sales they make is entirely different

Either you know, or you don't. And if you don't know, here's a clue....