Aug 25

2010

A drill of .co.uk’s auction inventory for MeetDomainers / Manchester

Filed Under (Domaining) by Denys on 25-08-2010

Wow.

I am looking at the almost finished Traffic auction @ Dublin and it feels very disappointing to see it’s turning out to be a complete fiasco!

Yes, I was very skeptical about reserve prices for pretty much everything in .co.uk inventory, but I never expected that *almost* *nothing* on the auction will *sell* *at all*.

Italian.net and ShortFilms.com, plus two 3-letter .com acronyms for around 3k and an incidental ccTLD are the only domains which were sold by now (at about 75% of the auction progress).

Unrealistic reserves have spoiled everything again.

Now let’s take a look on MeetDomainers inventory for 27th of August.
I will skip all names priced under £300, as with low priced domains it’s always hard to predict whether they could be worth a punt for someone.

LinkBuildingServices.co.uk – Opening Bid: £300.00
Will sell if end-user is present, which is quite likely as SEO and domaining so closely related.

PersonalisedGift.co.uk – Opening Bid: £350.00
Plural would be much better, but singular could be worth the money for someone building keyword-rich affiliate sites.

AsbestosTests.co.uk – Opening Bid: £500.00
Only for those who know what to do with it. As an investment for future re-sale might be too expensive.

BlackBoards.co.uk – Opening Bid: £500.00
ChalkBoards.co.uk – Opening Bid: £500.00
OK if you want to build affiliate site.

StudentCreditCard.co.uk – Opening Bid: £500.00
Price is good for developers.

VII.co.uk – Opening Bid: £550.00 (+ 17.5% VAT)
Limited appeal. Not likely to sell, esp. with VAT on top.

TRX.co.uk – Opening Bid: £550.00
Weak combination, would sell for £400, but unlikely for the asking price.

Holy.co.uk – Opening Bid: £750.00
Church members in the audience? Harder to justify without..

Shirts.org.uk – Opening Bid: £750.00
End-user price. SEO developers/affiliates might be interested.

Groom.co.uk – Opening Bid: £750.00
My domain, submitted to sell for the sake of the event. With a low reserve, as one would expect, if it would been offered on DomainLore auctions.

FashionDesigner.co.uk – Opening Bid: £1,000.00
Limited appeal. Too expensive, won’t sell.

Entry.co.uk – 1,000
My domain again. I believe it’s a very brandable generic word and I had an idea to develop it into ‘internet entry page’, sort of iGoogle, with user-customized news, widgets..etc. But, time goes by and there are more important domains taking precedence. I remember declining 3.5k for it in 2007 to someone from Acorn Domains; don’t know if he was interested as an end-user or perhaps he saw investment potential, but what happened in 2007 doesn’t really matter now, hence it’s priced at 1k to sell.

EuroPallets.co.uk – 1,150
Domain seems to have been developed into an affiliate website, I don’t know if it brings any revenue, likely not – as it’s being sold alone.
With ‘euro pallets’ having only 1,600 local broad searches, I think it’s priced too high.

Clothes.org.uk – 1,500
Sames as for Shirts.org.uk.

HomeCinemaSystems.co.uk – 1,750
Has a good number of searches, likely to sell.

PhoneContract.co.uk – 1,998
Limited appeal of SEO development.. Still, might be worth for mobile affiliates who have knowledge and experience to utilize it.

TopUps.co.uk – 2,998
Few years ago there were no online services which would offer mobile phone top-ups. I suppose, mostly because of the fraud involved. But it seems a few have emerged since the last time I looked and this domain presents a great opportunity to secure this market, if online top-ups business model has finally started to deliver.

BackLinks.co.uk – 3,000
Great for SEO people, likely to sell. But I would have started it with a lower reserve notwithstanding.

ComputerRepair.co.uk – 3,000
Great price for end-users, might be little too expensive for domain investors.

ProductFeeds.co.uk – 3,000
Limited appeal. Won’t sell.

Blades.co.uk – 4,000
I would expect this one to sell for 6-8k to the end-user. I think it’s should have been better price for domainers auction.

Snorkel.co.uk – 4,000
Again, too expensive for a domainer. Pass.

MediaSales.co.uk & Media-Sales.co.uk – 4,500
Too expensive, even for end-users.

HighChair & HighChairs.co.uk – 6,000
Judging by HighChairs.com, it’s a viable development domain name, the main question is whether it is worth 6k to start with?

QuadBikes.co.uk – 10,000
Has some development done by the current owner, which makes it hard to judge why it is sold as a domain name only.
10k doesn’t seem to be an achievable price during MeetDomainers event.

Invoicing.co.uk – 10,000
Expensive. Non-seller.

GymEquipment.co.uk – 10,000
I understand it appeals for businesses who sell equipment for gyms, but not that much for general public, searching for ‘fitness equipment’ instead. If so, ‘GymEquipmentSuppliers.co.uk’ isn’t much worse and is free to reg.

HotelBookings.co.uk – 11,000
Nice for an affiliate website and getting SE rankings, but lots of efforts required to build a new brand around it, with so much competition around. 50/50% chances to find a buyer at this event.

CoffeeMachine.co.uk + CoffeeMachines.co.uk – 20,000
Good product keyword domains, but priced too aggressively for domainers event.

What do you think on the above? Don’t be shy to comment :)

(9) Comments
Read More
  • Ben

    Let’s hope that the MeetDomainers auction has some better results than TRAFFIC

  • http://www.domainmanagement.net ipsouk

    Just totally agree with you all these auctions (besides yours of course) have totally lost it the guys doing the the
    the domainfest auction were real idiots the dont know how to get people interested names were going up in 50,000 jumps
    the American style of bidding is a con So we can moan or see a opportunity mr domainlore if you fancy a jv in this area let me know

  • Denys

    I praise all sellers, whether it’s on DL or at any other auction, who are not afraid to let the market determine the intrinsic value of their names. Provided sellers want to sell, of course. One either waits for the end-user himself or if he offers to domainers, the price must be attractive to invest without the need to develop. This is what happens with 3-letter acronyms: current market conditions indicate re-seller price to be around £400-500 and it appears to be a good investment choice for many: the value is widely accepted and most end-users are happy with a mid. 4 figures quotation.

  • http://www.domainbits.com/ Jeff

    Again, a very helpful post. Thanks. Looks like a much more reasonable inventory then TRAFFIC.

  • http://affiliate4travel.co.uk/ Rob

    Thanks for the analysis.
    What do you think of product .org.uk domains ?
    I never fancied them much and there was always plenty free to reg or going cheap but recently I have seen some much higher prices for them. Flash in the pan or the new normal ?

  • Denys

    product .org.uk’s are only good for SEO development, hence if keywords are popular and have high earnings per click, it might be worth buying/using.

  • http://www.domainmanagement.net ipsouk

    .co.uk`s are sexy buT .org.uk`s are soldiers big G considers
    The org.uk`s is the same light
    what really create`s the value is development look @
    Was it CarFinance .org uk that sold on DomainLore was that a record for DomainLore Denys for a .org.uk what did it sell for £10,000-£11,000 in fact what are the top 5 sales please.
    I think the end user understand`s positions in Google better than buying just a Domain Name and then trying to develop it with all the complexity that`s involved to someone who is not in tune with seo etc

  • RobT

    Agreed about the LLLs – was asked for some, not overly arsed if they sell thus a little more than reseller price.

    Topups is a good one if someone wants to dev it.

    The TRAFFIC auction is another story… where do you start? Perhaps quoting USA exacts on a .co.uk ?! ;)

  • Graeme

    Reserves too high imo, I don’t blame Namedrive for it. People are less and less willing to let prime domains go with low reserves.

    These types of live auctions are probably not the answer for buyers or sellers.

    What I would have done isfor a whole month forwarded the domains to a page detailing the auction. This way end users may have found out about it and bid online.

    1-2 .co.uk’s will sell is my guess.