Yesterday Before Noon I Turned Down $500K In Offers; Domaining Is Like Deal Or No Deal
Yes its true.
Yesterday before noon I had already turned down offers on 4 domains totaling just short of $500,000.
The first domain was easy for me.
VisitTurkey.com. I told the buyer I had just sold visitberlin.com for $230K and visitstockholm.com for $70K.
The official tourism site for Turkey is goturkey.com, which I told the person making the offer, in the US GoTurkey.com, seems to be more of an ad for eating turkeys rather than visiting Turkey.
As the sale of domains sets up price comparisons for other similar domains and I own a lot of visit………com domains, there was no way I was going to let this one go for $250K.
I then rejected an offer for $100K on motorcyclehelmets.com and domain I rejected a $75,000 offer a while back on.
I rejected an offer of $120K on weddingalbums.com, a domain which I have had a lot of interest in over the years.
With 90,000 global searches and a PPC price of $1.65 per, the domain is worth over $250K in my opinion.
The last names which I’m still going back and forth on we will keep quite about for a little while, but you can track all of our activity, including offers in excess of $10K which we reject on our corporate site, wwmi.com (Worldwide Media, Inc.)
Domaining is a real life continuous version of Deal or No Deal.
You remember the show hosted by Howie Mandel that was all the rage a few years ago.
People would be offered an amount of money which they could take or shoot for a higher amount.
As amounts or strikes were revealed in briefcases the offer would rise or fall or the player was eliminated.
Everybody liked to watch so they could second guess the player,”
“I would have taken the last offer” or “I would have kept going” usually we’re the viewers reaction and of course the viewers reaction would change depending on the amount being offered and the possibilities that were left.
After a couple of season viewers seem to get tired of the same old second guessing game and changed the channel and the show was pulled off of prime time.
Like Deal or No Deal, domainers get offers.
When we receive an offer we have 4 choices.
Accept
Decline
Counter
Ignore it.
If we accept it, we never know what would have happened if we said no.
I have had a ton of offers I have said no to, that came back around with a higher price down the line.
I have also rejected offers never to get another offer on the domain.
Sometimes you accept an offer too quickly and the buyer disappears thinking that he offered too much, too good of an offer.
Some chose to ignore offers unless they are say six figures one’s to begin with thinking that they buyer will basically keep increasing his offer and outbidding himself if he really wants the domain.
Like viewers of the show, other domainers reading this will say “Berkens is crazy for turning down one or more of these offers” or “I would have taken it”
Yup domaining to a large part is like deal or no deal.
And like the game, by late afternoon after seeing cardoo.com sell for $110K on Afternic, outreach.org sell for $90K on Namejet.com and Sedo.com sell Defiance.com for $90K, I felt better about passing on the offers.
For Now.
Loading ...
When folks ask me to sell them a domain and provide “comps” – I tell them just to go buy a “comp”.
No doubt – VisitHouston.com, VisitColorado, … were offered to Mike as “comps”
GoToNY.com is the closest I get to these type of travel domains.
Mike Bogros (CheapFlowers.com) used to have some very decent Visit??.com’s – Maybe if Mike is out there he can chime in
Correction – It would be nice if Eric Bogros who owns very decent Visit???.com would post his thoughts
Mr Berkins give them hell! I believe you were smart enough to grab seviervilletn.com for a killer price. I had eyeballed it for a month and could not pull off the cost because I was in other deals. If you did not get the name my presumption was wrong… I just guessed. Quick question. Was the biggest part of not selling weddingalbums.com because click value or more based on the terms future possible value? Thanks for return!
I’ve held a domain name for years that I thought would be an easy sell (CDBN.com). I noticed on my web-stat report the same people have been coming to my domain 4-5 times a week from the same IP address. They own the .CA version of the domain name but have never made an offer to buy. Other similar companies visit at least once a week but never attempt to make an offer either. It stayed unused for about 4 years and then last year I decided to put it to use. I’ve had more success selling real word domains than the 4 letter domains I’ve held. If people want a domain name wouldn’t they try to contact the owner?
If visitstockholm.com is a $70,000 domain name, what is VisitStockholmSweden.com worth? That is an exact match domain also. Just curious.
“what is VisitStockholmSweden.com worth?”
The $10 you paid for it in December.
Ok thanks. So I should take any offer on that name huh?
You think VisitChicagoIllinois.com has any value at all? $10 also?
there are several effective domaining strategies, some of which were discovered by accident.
and a number of successful domainers have employed multiple strategies to get where they are. the auction business and the publicaion of domain name resale prices is relatively new.
i think some very successful domainers do have a conscience and that not all domainers may want to engage in market making. perhaps not every domainer thinks in stock market terms. but clearly some are intensely drawn to the parallels.
technically, all domains are “overpriced” if we think in terms of cost of production. the maintenance cost to the registry is probably like .10 per domain or less. and they have no defensible property rights in a domain name. so it’s not intangible property either. they have no title. and if they did, they acquired it for free. so what’s a name worth? it’s just an entry in a text file on their computers. the entire system is cooperative. we all cooperate and agree to let the registries store all the names and to use their computers day after day. and almost all users agree without knowing there are even alternatives.
(with computers and networks there’s almost always more than one way to accomplish any given objective.)
after we’ve paid the reg fee, and we assume the value of a .com domain is around $6, the question of whether a whois or auction buyer “overpays” for a domain name may depend on factors outside the seller’s knowledge and control. does the seller know what the buyer paying 50-250K without any conducting traffic due diligence will do after the purchase? probably not. if the buyer is not paying for the type-in or backlink traffic, then what’s he paying for? should the market maker care?
There’s an immeasurable difference between City.com and CityState.com.
Not to say that CityState.com’s are without value (as Jeremy Moritz will probably attest to, since he owns them all), but they’re not remotely the same as City.com
This translates down to Geo keyword domains.
LosAngelesCaliforniaLawyer.com is a fine name, but not in the same solar system as LosAngelesLawyer.com. Same thing with State Abbreviations (LosAngelesCALawyer.com), etc, etc.
Small difference in letters, huge difference in keyword gravity.
CityState.com’s can have value as I sold BoiseIdaho.com to the top real estate producer in Boise, Idaho a few years back for 175K:
http://dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2007/domainsales09-11-07.htm
But as LS Morgan implies – when you add an industry in the front or back – it double qualifies the brand – VisitBoiseIdaho.com is too long and double qualifies what “Visit” already says.
Considering I own several hunderd Legal domains The example LosAngelesCaliforniaLawyer.com is worth all of the $8 renewal fee in my valuation
No one believes those figures. If they are true you are not very smart.
@ Jasco,
To know Mike is to know he is grounded and does not need to grandstand or embellish.
Considering I have today turned away a decent 6 figure offer for Minus.com – Mike’s experiences are in line with this market demand.
Which is amazing, given that if the domain came to auction you wouldn’t pay more than $10k for it. And must suspect that if the current buyer doesn’t bite you’ll never get another six figure offer.
But sellers can play games. Just turn down every offer until the buyer goes demented. Then tell him, ‘your last offer wasn’t so bad after all’.
ok a bit hasty it’s quite decent for a brand. Would be interesting to know what the second highest offer ever received has been. But still it’s peculiar how the value of a domain tend to rise dramatically in the domainers mind once he happens to own it.
the publication of sale prices is obviously very useful to a negotiator. wrt the seller, if he sells visitcountryA.com domain for a given price, and that price is known to other prospective buyers, assuming the two contries are generally similar, he can make the argument to any prospective buyer of visitcountryB.com that it wouldn’t be fair to sell it for less than what the buyer of visitcountryA.com paid. the word “fair” suggests consistency of terms, and triggers a fairly consistent reaction from buyers. the burden will be placed on the buyer to cite details to differentiate the two names if she wants to try to negotiate. the seller cannot be expected to know what the buyer’s plans are for the website.
but it’s a very different scenario if every sale is covered under confidentiality agreement. where common terms are not known to prospective buyers.
which scenario is more preferable to buyers?
it depends on the buyer. some know how to negotiate. some don’t.
VisitUK.info , any heads up on value. I know its not .com… but should be worth a reasonable figure right?
Lets get a valuation on BloomingtonIndiana.org? Anyone ? This one doesn’t have the “visit” in front of it but its a .org. Great domain name for a city, a business, real estate, or maybe a chamber of commerce site?
Drugstore.com turned down 2 other offers before taking Walgreens.com $420 Million dollar offer and negotiations took a year
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2014767454_drugstore14.html
HowToValueADomain.com
I’d imagine one of the suiters was AMZN.
Don’t they own some similarly powerful ___store.com generics?
If yes, maybe that helped determine the market price?
I am very surprised you didn’t sell the domain names you mentioned for the prices offered. Did you get emotionally attached to them? You could acquire a much better inventory of domain names for $500k.
Nice write-up, but strong-keyword ccTLD’s offer a much better potential ROI for people just now entering the “domaining” game.
Couple weeks back I noticed Eric sold a visit geo.com and was in moniker escrow from whois. Wonder if he will disclose price or if its under nda.
The price of the “Visit”.com geo domain I recently sold was in the $25,000-$50,000 price range.
Pathetic
Pathetic how many grown men in their 30s & 40s here (who should know better) are squealing like pre-teen girls catching a glimpse of Justin Bieber (or the latest idol).
Oh how they all live vicariously through Berkens…
With all the nuthuggers hanging on Berkens’ sac, it’s a wonder how he can move…
They all suddenly lose control of all their senses & cognitive function, asking the most asinine of qns.
Like posters asking if the offers were 1st bid, successive bids etc.
if people actually read the post or read between the lines…
Of course the VisitTurkey was after a series of offers.
I digress.
Funny how all these other posters now come out of the woodwork bragging about their 6 figure “offers”.
Buyers do it all the time – quite often – it’s called yanking your chain to see your “settle” point.
They often do it to guesstimate your likely response on ANOTHER domain (that you have, possibly similar) that they are really targeting.
Until money passes, it’s all fun ‘n games.
So stop counting the imaginary money & projecting your fantasy net worth.
You can’t wthdraw “domain equity” (cf home equity) until you actually sell it.
Now, why don’t they brag about the 6 figure offers that actually crystallized…?
Oh I forgot – they’re all conveniently under “NDA”
@Alan Dunn,
Good to see a familiar name from years ago from some deals we did.
“Many of us have lost buckos of coin learning what not to do”
- well said Alan
- life is NOT about winning
- life is REALLY about mitigating your losses – might be the basis for Aggro’s frustration
Yes – the DrugStore.com deal once again proves big business will (and wants to) build its brands around generics – that is good news for everybody.
It also explains established entities’ ongoing interest in furthering my CheapDrugs.com / CheapMeds.com brand.
Alaska House passes tourism marketing bill
JUNEAU, Alaska
State funding for tourism marketing efforts would be capped at $12 million under a proposal passed by the Alaska House.
Under the bill, the state would contract with one trade group to carry out a tourism marketing campaign.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9MIBFMO0.htm
Yep, its absolutely amazing how much money is spent & wasted on marketing some places, you look at a place like Dubai, billions of dollars gone into infrastructure, hotels and advertising yet they spend $9.00 on a domain that is one of the most misspelt words in the english language – DefinitelyDubai.com
They they spend many more thousands on TV ads and don’t bother to put the domain on it, (not that I could blame them there.)
Pitty they could’nt get it to rank as well as this one
“How to spell definitely. … The correct spelling is definitely. Not definately. Not definatly. Not definantly. Not definetly. Not definently. …”
d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y.com
Congrats, EmBee… it’s amazing that those domains brought those prices.
I own
DISCOUNTRUSSIA.COM
DISCOUNTSWEDEN.COM
DISCOUNTDENMARK.COM
and many others I feel would meet at least 1/10 the value of the domains you sold… but hell, what do I know? I’ve only been doing this for 12 years.
Your domain sales prices prove that domain investing is by far the most lucrative industry to be involved in ($ to Profi Ratio), IF you know what you’re doing and get lucky too.
Dear All,
I am a company director in Wales ,UK. I own over 800 visitplace domains covering every corner of the planet.
Some are the much-vaunted VisitPlace.com type that are much in demand as Mike Berkens intimates. Others are “.co.uk ” and “.net” .
We have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated visit domains. Hyphens are much more popular in Europe than the USA……and Europe has far more than 300 million population, so demand for hyphenated domains will grow.
Examples of my domains, which are all for sale[ some with web-sites]:-
visitunitedkingdom.co.uk ; visitunitedstates.co.uk ; visitbritishisles.com ; visit-hollywood.com ; visit-california.co.uk ; visitbratislava.com ; visit-germany.co.uk [ hyphens are VERY popular in German domains and Germany has 80 million people with a far better Balance of Trade than the USA];
visit-america.co.uk [ small web-site] ; visit-losangeles.co.uk ; visit-london.co.uk etc etc
SOME of these are for sale on Sedo.com , the German sales site.
I’d like to make contact with Mike Berkens. He’s the sharpest pencil in the pencil-case !
I own 30 visit domain names:
-Ivisitcuba.com
-Ivisitthailand.com
-Ivisitbangkok.com
-
Sorry, Pierre, but who else is using the phrase “Ivisit” ? No-one to my knowledge !!
The words used globally are “VisitPlace”…..preferably with a .com ending.although increasing numbers are using “.co.uk” versions as well to attract UK tourists.
Germans, British , Scandinavians , Spanish and other Europeans also use hyphens.
So Visit-Place.com and .co.uk endings are of value.
As an example, one of the biggest brands in the world is Mercedes-Benz…..and there is ALWAYS a HYPHEN between Mercedes and Benz !!……..It certainly cuts a dash !![ Excuse the pun !!]
German domain names therefore have hyphens because German GRAMMAR and VOCABULARY is replete with hyphens…….unlike that of America.
Don’t forget that the population of Europe is MUCH greater than the USA’s 300 million….and the internet is growing very fast in Europe !
Lyn
America doesn’t have hyphens? But the British do? Last time I checked their language shared the same basis.