Why aren't people buying?

[figleaf007]

Okay guys, so I am wondering what is going on with the UK market at the moment and why we have reached a stagnation in the domains market. I'm loving it at the moment, as I am hand regging names that 18 months ago I would never have got near (I'm not a catcher, I pick things up from the ground once they have fallen). People seem to be putting this down to two things;

1. Uncertainty due to the .uk release/consultation
2. Google slap on emd

On number 1, do people really think that everyone will drop the .co.uk habit straight away and switch to .uk? Do people also think that company launching bluewidgets.uk will not also want to own the .co.uk version as well?

Number two I understand slightly more, but I think people (and affiliates, including myself) have shied away from just a bit more work for their domain to rank. I've still got exact matches on .co.uk and .org.uk on first page rankings which frankly have no right to be there. I'd also back myself on a new launch to rank on the first page with an EMD and the time to do so (except for the usual loans, holidays, etc), was it all just too easy a couple of years back and now it requires a bit more elbow grease, people just can't be bothered?

Let me say I'm not attacking anyone's position or strategy on domains, I'm just generally curious what is going through people's head at the moment.

Look forward to your thoughts....

 

[mstephens2013]

I'm pretty new to this and after picking up a few .co.uk domains and after trying to auction them and sell them directly to end users with no luck, I'm going to try some .com domains.
I'm actually see this as a positive thing as it will encourage me to develop some sites too due to the constraints attached to them (60 day rule).

 

[Brassneck]

Okay guys, so I am wondering what is going on with the UK market at the moment and why we have reached a stagnation in the domains market. I'm loving it at the moment, as I am hand regging names that 18 months ago I would never have got near (I'm not a catcher, I pick things up from the ground once they have fallen). People seem to be putting this down to two things;

1. Uncertainty due to the .uk release/consultation
2. Google slap on emd

On number 1, do people really think that everyone will drop the .co.uk habit straight away and switch to .uk? Do people also think that company launching bluewidgets.uk will not also want to own the .co.uk version as well?

Number two I understand slightly more, but I think people (and affiliates, including myself) have shied away from just a bit more work for their domain to rank. I've still got exact matches on .co.uk and .org.uk on first page rankings which frankly have no right to be there. I'd also back myself on a new launch to rank on the first page with an EMD and the time to do so (except for the usual loans, holidays, etc), was it all just too easy a couple of years back and now it requires a bit more elbow grease, people just can't be bothered?

Let me say I'm not attacking anyone's position or strategy on domains, I'm just generally curious what is going through people's head at the moment.

Look forward to your thoughts....

I think it would be great to have some honest debate here too.

My feelings are that actually there has never been that much of an end user market. Many sales in the past have been between domainers anticipating being able to find end users or to affiliate marketers which has masked the actual small size of the end user secondary market.

End users now have so much choice that very few are prepared to pay 'over the odds' for .uk generic domains.

I'm glad I sold so many of my domains (at reseller prices) when I could as I can't give those names away at the moment.

I have marketed quite a few to end users and a sold a few recently but really once you go much above £100 nobody is interested unless you have exceptional domains.

Stephen.

 

[Blossom]

From an end-user perspective, I've just not seen anything interesting at all for sale recently. My mindset is, 'Where have all the good domains gone?'

...bearing in mind my preferences are different to the average end-user

 

[websaway]

Okay guys, so I am wondering what is going on with the UK market at the moment and why we have reached a stagnation in the domains market. I'm loving it at the moment, as I am hand regging names that 18 months ago I would never have got near (I'm not a catcher, I pick things up from the ground once they have fallen). People seem to be putting this down to two things;

1. Uncertainty due to the .uk release/consultation
2. Google slap on emd

On number 1, do people really think that everyone will drop the .co.uk habit straight away and switch to .uk? Do people also think that company launching bluewidgets.uk will not also want to own the .co.uk version as well?

Number two I understand slightly more, but I think people (and affiliates, including myself) have shied away from just a bit more work for their domain to rank. I've still got exact matches on .co.uk and .org.uk on first page rankings which frankly have no right to be there. I'd also back myself on a new launch to rank on the first page with an EMD and the time to do so (except for the usual loans, holidays, etc), was it all just too easy a couple of years back and now it requires a bit more elbow grease, people just can't be bothered?

Let me say I'm not attacking anyone's position or strategy on domains, I'm just generally curious what is going through people's head at the moment.

Look forward to your thoughts....

Nominet Nominet Nominet.

The UK domain market has been flooded with inferior domains for sale that domainers are trying to offload ( mostly keyword names that have only search engine appeal ) you will note they are not selling quality names into this depressed market.
The people who are mostly buying at the moment are traders that really know a good bargain, they may also be the same people trying to offload what they consider to be their surplus to required domains to fund new purchases.
Things could change dramatically when nominet announce their decision,
though if it is a third consultation the effects would be dire.

 

[khalid]

Three words; Google, Nominet and Recession

 

[Brassneck]

Nominet Nominet Nominet.

The UK domain market has been flooded with inferior domains for sale that domainers are trying to offload ( mostly keyword names that have only search engine appeal ) you will note they are not selling quality names into this depressed market.
The people who are mostly buying at the moment are traders that really know a good bargain, they may also be the same people trying to offload what they consider to be their surplus to required domains to fund new purchases.
Things could change dramatically when nominet announce their decision,
though if it is a third consultation the effects would be dire.

The market was severely depressed before the Nominet consultations.

I sincerely hope for those with excellent portfolios that things change but for me there is always a sense of "Emperors New Clothes" as regards to the reality of the market.

 

[figleaf007]

The recession was here way before the domains market dropped in my opinion

 

[anthony]

Three words; Profit, Bonus, Justify

 

[websaway]

The market was severely depressed before the Nominet consultations.

I sincerely hope for those with excellent portfolios that things change but for me there is always a sense of "Emperors New Clothes" as regards to the reality of the market.

I have to say I don't think the market for, quality domains, was depressed before the nominet first consultation, and it was such a shock to the uk namespace that it was like a nuclear strike.
When there are too many sellers and a commodity is not released into the market at a controlled rate then there is a crisis of confidence and a crash in prices.

 

[Brassneck]

Would anybody who actually has a lot of these high quality domains care to comment? Are you all still confident?

Thanks
Stephen.

 

[donton]

I was a latecomer to the wonderful world of domains, but over the last year I've made a few decent purchases around the £1,000 mark.

One of them was a "category killing" domain - previously the owner had asked for £2,000+ but I went back and offered £700 + VAT. I got the domain (actually two including a hyphenated version). It wasn't a necessity for me, but at that price it would have been rude not to.

The guy selling it was very hard to track down - had it had a sales page on the domain he would have got the £2,000 asking price from someone else. Since a site has been on the domain I've had a handful of offers for the domain and the site, way above the £700 I paid and way above the original asking price of £2,000.

The domain is an EMD, and although Google has dialed down EMD bonus in general, the type-in traffic alone is probably worth upwards of £50 per month.

If you'd asked me to buy a domain for £1,000 or so five years ago I would have said no. But having seen the value of certain domains I expect my spending on them to increase as time goes by.

On this particular name, EMD bonus and the possible release of the .uk didn't factor into my thinking. The only thing that stopped me buying it sooner was money - as soon as my business could afford the domain (and I'd knocked the seller down considerably) I snapped it up.

 

[figleaf007]

Thanks for the responses guys, keep them coming. Perhaps people gorged a bit during the good times and are now trying to lose some domain weight?

But I find it interesting that for example I picked up echinacea org uk on ftr after it dropped the other day, 18 months ago it would have been picked up by a catcher and gone on to domainlore for a couple of hundred quid. I bet now no one would give me 20 quid for it, even though it has good potential. Funny times for sure...

 

[websaway]

Would anybody who actually has a lot of these high quality domains care to comment? Are you all still confident?

Thanks
Stephen.

They don't need to, and probably won't.

 

[Brassneck]

They don't need to, and probably won't.

I think that's a shame. It doesn't bother me too much as I made decent returns when I could. More sharing of info and transparency would benefit the whole market though.

 

[cc976a]

Google stopped a lot of the domainer to domainer sales, this is skewing perception.

So many sales will go under the radar, knowing whether sales in general has slowed or not would be hard to analyse.

In fairness the end user won't know much about Nominet, and perhaps not so much about the EMD drops in Google and all the zoo animals escaping unleashing terror on Affiliate-Ville.

Selling to an end user is as difficult as it used to be.

 

[websaway]

Thanks for the responses guys, keep them coming. Perhaps people gorged a bit during the good times and are now trying to lose some domain weight?

But I find it interesting that for example I picked up echinacea org uk on ftr after it dropped the other day, 18 months ago it would have been picked up by a catcher and gone on to domainlore for a couple of hundred quid. I bet now no one would give me 20 quid for it, even though it has good potential. Funny times for sure...

I don't think you can gauge the co.uk market by looking at org.uk's
There is very little comparison in values ( unless of course they introduce .uk as proposed ) pre registered org.uk's and me.uk's would be more valuable.

 

[PoshTiger]

In the past I developed mini-sites based on search volume / CPC / exact match model.

As soon as the 'no more leg up' for EMD update was rolled out, this method was no longer viable and I've not developed or bought any EMDs since.

We're all hung up on extensions at the moment, we consider them to be very important but I think that when the custom tld domains are released (.cloud .apple .search etc) and start to get advertised - the value of old extensions be it .co.uk or .uk or even .com will drop further as Joe Public will finally realise that an url can be pretty much anything.

 

[websaway]

In the past I developed mini-sites based on search volume / CPC / exact match model.

As soon as the 'no more leg up' for EMD update was rolled out, this method was no longer viable and I've not developed or bought any EMDs since.

We're all hung up on extensions at the moment, we consider them to be very important but I think that when the custom tld domains are released (.cloud .apple .search etc) and start to get advertised - the value of old extensions be it .co.uk or .uk or even .com will drop further as Joe Public will finally realise that an url can be pretty much anything.

Do you not think that if it can be pretty much anything then the strength of "extension brand" will become more important.
That's what happened with biz and info.

 

[Edwin]

They don't need to, and probably won't.

They don't even read Acorn (well, most of them anyway) as far as I'm aware. Again, they don't need to...