I usually write about LLLL.coms on this blog — perhaps unsurprising considering the url

Occasionally other domain name segments have been covered, such as LLL.coms and LLLL.nets, but what about all the other short domains segments out there? We see short domain name investors on domain name forums investing in everything from L-L-L.coms, LLLL.coms, and 5L.coms to CC.coms and CCC.coms and their equivalents in .net and .org. I hope to open this blog up to short domains in general, rather than just focusing on LLLL.coms in the future (of course plenty of short domain content will continue to be on LLLL.coms) or just CNO, as is often pretty much all we see browsing the popular domain name forums.

This post isn’t going to be about any of the short domain name segments mentioned above, rather, it’s going to be about one of the short domain segments which for one reason or another, have been overlooked by the large majority of domainers — I’m talking about short domains in ccTLDs. Outside .com (and sometimes even including .com), it’s not uncommon to see the ccTLD as the second (or even first) choice for many businesses in some countries.

I live in Canada, so I’ll talk about my experience with .ca domains in this post… People here don’t snub a .ca domain like they might a .info… Nobody here looks at a .ca domain and says “Oh, I guess he went with domain.ca because he couldn’t afford domain.com”. It’s a very well respected domain name extension here in Canada — one that pretty much everyone can associate with being Canadian (the fact that only Canadians or those with business interests in Canada are allowed to register them likely plays a role in that). Most Canadian businesses here that use a .com domain for their main site still have a .ca domain that either redirects to their .com domain or, if they’re a multinational corporation, provides a different version of their site on the .ca domain which is targeted at their Canadian clientele.

Despite this ccTLD only being open to the 33 million or so Canadians, total .ca domain registrations as I write this post are nearing 1.2 Million. Just think about that for a sec — If we extrapolate and compare that to the USA’s 300+ Million population, we’d be looking at about 11 Million registered .ca domains if Canada were the size of the USA. You might be able to get around the restrictions on .ca domains if you have a trusted domaining contact who resides in Canada (who could “hold” the domains for you) or if you’re an incorporated business, but don’t quote me on that and make sure you check that out because being Canadian, I haven’t. CIRA is one of the stricter ccTLD registries, so if you’re not Canadian make sure you get real answers to the questions you have before considering investing in .ca domains.

The .ca registry was started in 1987 and by the end of 2000, counted but 140,000 total .ca registrations — still a pretty respectable number when you consider that Canada is a small country and that there were a whole lot less domainers and domains being registered in all extensions back then. Since responsibility for the .ca extension was transferred over to CIRA, the .ca extension has seen massive growth, reaching 1 million registered .ca domains in April 2008. In the year since then, .ca domain registrations have continued to soar, seeing just under 200,000 new .ca domains registered as I write this post.

So, why invest just in short domains? Intelligently investing in keyword ccTLD domains is certainly another option — some inspiring past sales include Jobs.ca for $600,000 and that Big .ca domain portfolio sale awhile back. Seeing as this is a blog about short domains, I’ll leave it at that and continue to talk about how to make money investing in short domains. When we read about LL.coms, we often see 2 letter domains having sold for 6 figures.. Not a whole lot of LL.coms have been reported sold for under $100k the past couple years — all of those which have sold for significantly under that have had at least one bad letter (note: we don’t see a lot of LL.coms on the market.. I’m sure prices are lower now in light of the recession which has devalued most domains, however it’s hard to put a price on a domain when little current sales data exists). On the .ca front, the story is much different.. To a Canadian, it’s pretty hard to imagine that the going rate on an LL.ca is as low as it is.. I sold a double premium, repeat letter LL.ca last year for $14k — when’s the last time you saw one of those sold in .com? Given there’s only 26 such domains, it’s not surprising that we rarely see such domains on the market, yet in .ca, a domain like that remain surprisingly affordable.

I distinctly remember the LLL.ca buyout pretty much coinciding with the LLLL.com buyout — I was having a lot of trouble at the time deciding which one I wanted to invest in (I even contemplated investing in both and still regret not doing that). Now I was fortunate to sell out of the low end LLLL.com market at the right time — since peaking in February 2008, we’ve seen LLLL.coms fall from a minimum wholesale of about $55 to about $4 per domain. When you consider the fact that LLLL.coms were bought out on November 2nd, 2007, you can see that most people having bought in pre-buyout or having bought in post-buyout, are now in the red, assuming they’ve been holding the domains and not reselling at least some of them to other domainers or endusers at a profit.

So, how have LLL.ca fared over this same timeframe? Contrary to the LLLL.com market, the LLL.ca market has actually done pretty good. We see all LLL.ca reaching $60+ today, many hitting $100+ and often far more in auctions. The .ca market doesn’t have anywhere near the kind of sales data that’s available for .com domains — this pretty much repeats itself with all ccTLDs, so it does require a bit more research to invest in than something like say LLLL.coms, where there’s plenty of evidence on where the market is at courtesy of 20,000+ reported sales over the past few years.

So this was a look at the .ca short domain name market.. I hope at least some of the visitors residing elsewhere found this interesting — maybe it gave you an idea about a different ccTLD you’d like to invest in? I’ll have to blog about some different ccTLDs in the future — short domain name investors really are missing out if they limit their short domain name investments to CNO.

Why are low end LLLL.coms consistently selling for more far more over at Godaddy than elsewhere? Now, I’m not complaining — it’s nice to see a steady stream of single and double premium LLLL.coms hitting $20+ day after day, but the question I have is why do we see this over at Godaddy and not elsewhere?

Now I can understand eBay reporting lower sales numbers on average — some sellers clearly don’t know how to sell on there and forget to put LLLL or LLLL.com in the title. Another argument for eBay reporting lower sales numbers which also makes a lot of sense is the fact that eBay auctions end all the time at different hours of the day, but we see that over at Godaddy Auctions as well, so what could it be? I know some domainers (eg. me) have been discouraged from using eBay due to many domainers keyword spamming their domains for sale, resulting in LLLL.com listings that were 5L.coms, LLLL.nets, etc, however that has really died down.. I must say, Godaddy is certainly much easier to follow — it’s very organized and quite easy to browse through their list of available LLLL.coms just by using the appropriate options in their advanced search box (eg. # of characters = 4, exclude hyphens, exclude digits, choose the auction types you want to look at, and make sure only .com is checked off for domain extension). But could that alone be the reason LLLL.coms frequently sell for double, and sometimes even triple what comparable LLLL.coms sell for on eBay?

Let’s stop talking about eBay for a second and take a look at Namepros. Namepros is by far the most popular domain name forum for short domains, so, shouldn’t LLLL.coms sell for decent prices over there? I frequently see LLLL.coms unsold on Namepros with $10 asking prices.. Try and sell LLLL.coms in a bulk lot (that might be as little as 20 domains) and you may be hard pressed to get much more than $5 per domain — why is that?  Even if we consider the fact that all reported Godaddy Auction prices include the renewal fee, it’s hard to justify why LLLL.coms aren’t selling at this price on Namepros, especially when one considers the fact that many times these LLLL.coms which are unsold at $10 or so are nowhere near expiration. Why would this be the case? Most of the domainers I know who are frequently active in the short domain forum on Namepros are the same people placing bids on LLLL.coms over at Godaddy Auctions — surely they would check the fixed price and make offer domain name forums on Namepros, right?

And while we’re taking about Namepros, why do bulk domain sales involving LLLL.coms sell so much worse than purchasing the domains individually? Sure, we’d all expect that it’d be a bit cheaper to buy them in bulk, but when we’re talking about 20 domains or so, the difference between offering $5 on all the LLLL.coms and offering $6 on all the LLLL.coms is essentially the difference between offering $100 on the bulk domain lot or offering $120 on the bulk domain lot. Most short domain name investors I know own a whole lot more than 20 LLLL.coms and have spent a whole lot more than $100 on acquiring the short domain portfolio they have today. And if these short domain name investors focus their domain business around buying and selling cheap LLLL.coms, it’s not all that uncommon to see short domain name investors with hundreds of these low end LLLL.coms.. So the question once again — why are they selling for so much less in bulk (sometimes 1/4 the prices of individual LLLL.coms on Godaddy Auctions)? Clearly money isn’t the issue. If you invest in cheap LLLL.coms, you invest in cheap LLLL.coms, right? While that may not be true all the time, a lot of short domain name investors have certain prices in mind for domains that meet certain characteristics — eg. they might be willing to pay $10 for any double premium, $15 for any triple premium, and so on.. If that’s the case, wouldn’t these domainers regard a bulk lot as the ultimate bargain? Why do we see short domains sell for so much less in even small bulk when many of the domainers who invest in short domains invest not only in LLLL.coms, but also in LLL.coms and other expensive short domain name segments — As I said earlier, it’s clearly not a money issue, so what is it?

What I do know is that I’ll be doing any cheap LLLL.com buying I do on eBay/Namepros and will be selling the large majority of any short domains I do acquire elsewhere.

The quad premium LLLL.com market has been one of the short domain market segments hit hardest since September 2008. Back in September, it was pretty hard to find quad premium LLLL.coms under $200. There were a few here and there in the $160-$200 range, but it was much more common to see them fetching $200-$300, with sales for $400+ pretty common as well. LPTF.com sold for $104 on November 27th — it seemed like a steal to some at the time, with no other quad premium LLLL.coms being reported sold for under $142, however it would soon be established that the minimum wasn’t a whole lot more than $104 anymore. Sales under $130 became increasingly common heading into December, with 8 quad premiums selling for under $130, including DHSF.com selling for $112 on December 23rd.  January was a strong  month for quads, the lowest four being between $130-$140.  February started off rather rough, seeing a return to $110 LLLL.coms with the sale of LGIR.com on February 3rd. Five quads sold for under $130 in February, with 3 more selling for $130, LHDP.com ended the month selling for $91 on February 28th.  March saw 35 quad premiums sell for under $135 by the time the month was over.

And that brings us to today — April 2009. April has so far seen 17 quads sell for under $135.  It’s important to note that there were roughly double as many reported quad sales in March as there’s been in April, so the number of sales in the under $135 range has actually been pretty stable over the past month.

What’s interesting to observe when looking at the data is that the minimum wholesale has held pretty consistent at $110 for several months now — there’s been a few sales here and there for under that, rarely more than a few dollars under and rarely would it be assumed that the domain wouldn’t likely sell for more if resold. That said, while we see a consistent trend of the minimum wholesale being around $110, we have been seeing more and more quads selling under $130. It’ll be interesting to see what transpires in the months ahead..

Presumably, a large number of sales near the minimum wholesale could further push down the minimum — eg. it’s highly unlikely all the domains selling in the $110-$130 are of the exact same quality, so if we continue to see this trend of sales for $115, $120, etc, we might see the minimum wholesale on quads further decrease. Quad premiums seem to at present be behaving similarly to what we see in the LLL.com market, where the weakest 15% or so of LLL.coms will all sell for pretty much the same price (lately that’s been about $3300-$4000) — clearly some of these weaker LLL.coms are much worse than other weaker LLL.coms and if domainers were being realistic about enduser potential, some of them should sell for hundreds rather than the thousands they see for being domainer collectibles.

Are the quad premiums heading down that road? The weakest of quads are certainly weaker than the strongest of triple premiums, yet even the weakest of quad premiums consistently sell for more. What does this say to me? Domainers are (at least when speaking of the weakest of quads) paying $110+ for these domains because they’re quads more than anything else — it’s certainly not because the weakest of quad premiums have more enduser potential in many cases than strong triple premiums selling for half the price.

For the record, I’m a big fan of the quad premium LLLL.com market and these observations are just me looking at what may transpire in the near future. Long term, I see this as a healthy short domain segment to invest in, all the more so if prices fall further.

Last time I spoke about recent LLLL.com sales was on April 23rd and at the time there was plenty to be excited about in the short domain market, so… How’s the market performed since then?

Well, it’s only been 4 days and there’s already some big sales to report — YUQI.com sold for $12,001 on SnapNames and Tego.com saw $7100 on NameJet. GUDI.com has been an interesting domain to watch over the past few months, having sold for $2600 on February 14th, $1850 on March 10th, and now $3101 on April 27th. Clearly the CVCV market is rather unpredictable on any particular day — as an average, prices have been pretty stable over this timeframe, however we see that individual domains can fluctuate quite a bit. If there’s something to take from that, perhaps it’s that CVCVs are not the kind of domain you should be auctioning at no reserve unless you can stomach what may amount to a large loss. Alternatively, you may find yourself pleasantly surprised, as I’m sure the March 10th buyer did,  realizing a 67% profit in well under two months — not bad at all. Now tell me, is there any market other than domaining when you’re going to see that kind of ROI in that kind of timeframe!?

Topping out the LLLL.com sales above $1000 were KAZY.com and WIGY.com, reaching $1101 (Sedo) and $1025 (TDNX) respectively.  You may or may not have noticed that all 5 sales above $1000 happen to be CVCVs. Something which has become somewhat obvious over the past year has been the increased desirability of good CVCV domains with domainers versus bad LLL.coms. It’s somewhat difficult to compare one pronounceable domain to another when we need to consider subjective factors such as pronounceability, however it’s pretty clear that if we make any reasonable attempt to control for overall quality, we’ll see that CVCV domains have weathered the economic turmoil much better than LLL.coms. When Microsoft’s Kumo launches in approximately 40 days, it’ll be just one more CVCV being used by one big enduser

In other news, we witnessed one  particularly strong AAAB sale, with ZZZR.com reaching $510 while GGGP.com could only pull in $400 — both were Sedo auctions which ended on April 26th. ECAZ.com saw $500 on Sedo — double the $260 it reached on NameJet on January 30th 2009.  We’ve also seen a few very respectable triple premium sales lately — WSCM.com selling for $109, YNMT.com pulling in $81, and HGHJ.com pulling in $135. Leading the lower quality LLLL.coms, FJTZ.com was worth mentioning, realizing $150.

It’s always interesting to try and understand the psychology of a domainer and domainers in general.. How could ZZZR.com outsell GGGP.com at the same venue, on the same day, when the latter is clearly better than the former and both buyers appear to be domainers? Why does one double premium struggle to see $5, while one of comparable quality sees $50 or even $100? Why do LLLL.coms sell so much more individually than even in small lots of say, 20?  The unpredictability of the LLLL.com market really is what makes it exciting.

I’ve always been a fan of quad premium LLLL.nets. The way I see it is simple — there aren’t a whole lot of potential endusers out there for most single and double premium LLLL’s, yet there are often many potential endusers out there for quad premium and higher quality LLLL’s.

So, why quad premium LLLL.nets? If you don’t follow the LLLL.net market, you may find it shocking to believe a quad premium LLLL.net can often be had for less than the weakest of LLLL.coms. Why? The quad premium LLLL.net certainly has a better chance of finding an enduser – we all know endusers prefer .com but when you have 20 times as many potential endusers, which one do you think is going to come out on top? Now, I must add that at present these really aren’t the kind of domains that you’ll likely be able to flip for a profit to another domainer — the money here is in, and only in, enduser sales.

I really don’t see the point in registering most currently available LLLL.nets when quad premium LLLL.nets with a few months until renewal sell for as little as $3 — plenty of time to see if you can make that big sale! As you move higher up in quality, prices become more what we’d expect in .net — a good CVCV.net or pronounceable will usually sell for 1/10 to 1/15th the equivalent .com. Why such a big discrepancy when it comes to quad premium LLLL.nets? The problem is actually the same one we’ve seen in the LLLL.com market, only worse because of the lower value of LLLL.nets. If you haven’t figured it out by now, the problem is that the renewal fee is more expensive than the domain itself! A $3 LLLL.net sounds like a pretty good alternative to a $150 LLLL.com, however with one $6 or so renewal fee, that $3 investment in the LLLL.net has now tripled to a $9 investment, with the difference between the price of the LLLL.net and the equivalent LLLL.com in this case going from 1/50th to about 1/18th — putting it much more in line with what we see in the higher quality LLLL.net markets.

Are lower quality, up to quad premium LLLL.nets worth holding? In my opinion, no. With prices as low on quad premium LLLL.nets as they are, and with prices even lower on lower quality LLLL.nets however, it might be worth picking up a few and contacting endusers in your free time — you don’t have a whole lot to lose but potentially plenty to gain! If it doesn’t work out, you drop or resell them and that’s that. If you pick up 100 quad premium LLLL.nets @ $3 per, your total investment so long as you drop or resell them is going to be a maximum of $300. Think you can get one enduser sale out of that? If you managed to sell one for say, $500, you’ve made at least a $200 profit, even if you drop all the LLLL.nets. If you manage to resell them for say, $2 per, you’ve made a $400 profit at the end of the day – not too bad at all, especially when you consider that if you’re successful with a smaller amount like this, you can always scale up operations and multiply your profit.

I did an experiment last year in the VCVC.info market to test the waters and see how enduser demand was in the .info market for reasonably high quality domains. I bought 1900 of them @ $1 per and sat on them, making no attempt to contact endusers — merely a test to see what I could expect if I made a large investment in the .info extension. I came up a little short, selling 3 of them for $500 apiece, netting back $1500 of my original $1900 investment. I made another $100 or so parking them which surprised the hell out of me, leaving me with 1900 .infos needing to be resold to domainers for $300 to fully recoup my investment… Not great but pretty good to see it’s more than possible to break-even in a market like LLLL.infos doing not much of anything. How much would I have made had I made a serious attempt to reach out to endusers? Who knows — I was way too busy at the time to consider doing it, but I’m 100% sure I would have turned a profit.

Back when I ran this experiment, quad premium LLLL.nets weren’t really a better option — most of them were selling for $10+, having just recently been bought out and benefitting greatly from the hype still largely surrounding the LLLL.com market. You don’t need 12 months to find an enduser for a domain and the great thing about quad premium LLLL.nets at present is that they really are more affordable than ever. Before the LLLL.com buyout, pretty much nobody thought about investing in quad premium and lower quality LLLL.nets — the meteoric rise in the months leading up to February 2008 changed that and we saw quad premium LLLL.nets run out. Now, sitting in a recession, many of the people who bought these names (and may have even renewed these names) are deciding to offload at least some of them to cover the renewal fees on their other names. Domainer interest in LLLL.nets was hit even harder than LLLL.coms — largely in my opinion because of what I explained above about renewal fees being so expensive relative to the price of the domains.

A domain not worth renewing isn’t necessarily a domain not worth buying and if I were to say that about any short domain market, I’d say that about quad premium LLLL.nets, because there are buyers out there that are willing to pay a whole lot more than the $3 you can expect on Namepros.

We’ve looked at many short domain markets over the months on this blog, however this will be our first in depth look at the CCC.com market. Like other short domain markets, prices in the CCC.com market do seem to a certain extent to be influenced more by character pattern and character quality rather than due to having more applicable uses or end user potential. Rarer CCC.com character patterns tend to sell for more than more common ones. In addition, CCC.coms with certain numbers or letter combinations will also sell for more — 50D.com in example would be considered a premium NNL.com type of CCC.com. Read on for more information on CCC.com prices and how to determine what your CCC.coms are worth.

Minimums — love ‘em or hate ‘em, us short domain investors just can’t live without them

Here’s a look at how the CCC.com market has been performing lately, broken down per character pattern. All minimums are taken from (and considered using) auctioned domains from major venues only — it’s the only real way to determine the minimum. CCC.coms sold recently have largely been through Sedo auctions.  Reported below are the lowest recently recorded prices per CCC.com character pattern — if the lowest sale happened to be significantly lower than the second lowest sale, the second lowest would have been used, however that wasn’t necessary this time around. Unlike the LLLL.com market, there is far less data available to be analyzed in the CCC.com market, so I’d hesitate to call this a price guide, however it should serve as a reasonable benchmark of current minimum CCC.com performance. Most CCC.coms are currently being sold through Sedo auctions — if your intent is to resell purchased CCC.coms by auctioning them on Sedo, make sure you take into account the fees associated with selling the CCC.com on Sedo ($50 minimum or 10%, whichever is greater / 10% with no minimum if the CCC.com is parked with Sedo) into any offers on CCC.coms that you make.

As will be seen, the minimum wholesales listed below are lower than the reported minimums you’d find listed on 3Character.com.

LLN.com — GL6.com @ $167 (Sedo auction, February 2009) [not exactly of minimum wholesale quality, probably more around $150 as a minimum]
NLL.com — 0QN.com @ $111 (Sedo auction, March 2009) [minimum with any number other than zero should be around $130-$140)
LNL.com -- E1Q.com @ $110 (Sedo auction, March 2009)
NLN.com -- 2J7.com @ $104 (Sedo auction, March 2009)
LNN.com -- G79.com @ $191 (Sedo auction, March 2009)**
NNL.com -- 79Q.com @ $220 (Sedo auction, March 2009)**

** There's very little recent sales data on the LNN.com and NNL.com character patterns. Historically, the LLN.com character pattern (with a minimum wholesale currently around $150) has had the highest minimum wholesale, so please take that into consideration when considering what the current minimum wholesale is on LNN.com and NNL.com (my guess would place the minimum wholesale somewhere between $130-$140 for both segments, with the minimum wholesale on LNN.com closer to $130 and NNL.com, $140). CCC.coms with zeroes in them may sell lower than the above quoted minimums.

There's not a whole lot of data on the hyphenated C-C.com character patterns either -- largely because of their scarcity (eg. L-L has only 26x26 possible combinations, L-N.com has 26x10, and so on).

L-L.com -- S-Y.com @ $1001 (Sedo auction, February 2009) [only reported 2009 sale]
L-N.com — insufficient data
N-L.com — insufficient data
N-N.com — 5-6.com @ 472 EUR (Sedo auction, March 2009) [converts to about $625 USD] and 5-8.com sold for  $735 (Sedo auction, February 2009). These are the only reported sales in 2009.

As said above, there’s really not a whole lot of data available, however one thing does appear clear — the minimums listed on 3Character.com (L-L.com @ $2250, N-N.com @ $1200) seem to greatly overestimate minimum wholesales in the current market. I would be very careful about investing in this segment and wouldn’t recommend anyone buy into it without doing their own research and understanding the risks involved. As a general rule, the rarer a short domain segment is, the more each individual sale affects the overall market — eg. One low LLLL.com sale has a much lower impact than a low LLL.com sale, which in turn has a much lower impact than a low LL.com sale on each of their respective markets. With L-L.coms being among the rarest of short domains (with just 1296 available in total and that small amount split across 4 different character patterns), their values will be more easily affected by a low sale than other segments (such as the CCC.com markets listed at the top of this post).

As is always said when reporting minimum wholesales, all prices suggested in this post in no way represent the value of any particular CCC.com — most CCC.coms will sell for above the quoted prices, some for substantially more.

Selling a domain and selling a domain on eBay are two completely different things. If you want your domains to sell for top dollar on eBay you’ll need to read this post on how to make your domain listing stand out from the rest. It’s not just about having a good domain and proper presentation is important. Targeting your domain to the right people on eBay requires carefully selecting a title, displaying an eye-catching photo, and writing a listing which makes visitors want to buy your domain. Competition is fierce and you’ll be up against domainers who have sold thousands of domains on eBay. Think you’re up for the task? Selling domains on eBay for good prices isn’t always easy, however if you can master it, it’ll be one more venue to sell domains at.

You’d think it’d be somewhat obvious that if someone were looking to buy LLLL.coms on eBay, they’re probably going to use “LLLL.com” or “LLLL” as a search term… So, why are a large number of domainers selling LLLL.coms on eBay without putting these words in the title?

Take TPGY.com as an example, with title ”TPGY.com - Triple-premium domain name”.. It’s a fairly descriptive title and certainly gets across the point that the domain being auctioned is TPGY.com and that it is a triple premium LLLL.com. So why not call it what it is — a triple premium LLLL.com instead of calling it a triple premium domain name? Yes, I’m sure far more people search for “domain name” on eBay than they do LLLL.coms, however, how many of those people typing in the search term “domain name” are actually looking for a 4 letter .com? What’s wrong with describing it as “TPGY.com - Triple-premium LLLL.com Domain Name”? That would seem to cover all the basics… If we wanted even more attention, why not replace Triple Premium, a term which I doubt even domainers would use when looking for LLLL.coms on eBay, with another more descriptive term which will either increase the probability of the listing being found or increase the probability of those who find the listing clicking on the link and viewing the description?

As LLLL.com domainers, most of us know what a triple premium is. When I see a triple premium, I know it’s a triple premium and nobody needs to tell me that a particular LLLL.com is a triple premium. If I’m a new domainer or new 4 letter .com investor, I probably don’t have the least bit of a clue what a triple premium is, so again, this is something which isn’t adding value to the listing and is using up valuable letter space, maybe even confusing some newer domainers wondering what the heck a triple premium is! People put “LLLL.com” or “LLLL” in their listing not because us LLLL.com investors need to be told that a particular domain is an LLLL.com — they put it in their because a lot of 4 letter .com investors search for 4 letter domains by typing in “LLLL” or “LLLL.com”. The same can’t be said about the word triple premium (or quad premium, or single premium, …) The exception I could see here would be using a word like “Pronounceable” or mentioning that the domain is a CVCV — these do add value because they may cause the domainer scrolling over the domains to take a second look at them if they didn’t notice right off that it’s a CVCV (like any of us pros do that! ) or that it is indeed pronounceable.

One positive thing to mention is that the seller is using an image which shows the name of the domain being auctioned – could be a better, more eye-catching one, however it’s certainly better than no image.

Now I made a whole long post describing what I saw wrong with how this domain was listed — I wouldn’t do that unless I saw this happening more often than it should (which should ideally never happen if people care about getting top dollar for their LLLL’s on eBay). Seems at least 1-2 a day (and sometimes more) forget to put “LLLL” in their listings. This is a lesson which applies to other domaining segments as well — don’t list a 5L.com without putting 5L.com and LLLLL.com in your title, don’t list an LLLL.net without putting LLLL.net in your title, etc.

One last thing, if you’re thinking about starting to sell LLLL.coms on eBay, please do everyone buying and selling on eBay a favor and don’t keyword spam “1 2 3 4 5 Letter LLLL.com Website Domain Name LLLL.net”  — it just makes it harder for buyers to find what they’re actually looking for.

The April 2009 LLLL.com Price Guide is now out. LLLL.com prices have remained stable over the last few months on the low end, however their future remains uncertain. Currently, renewal fees on bad LLLL.coms are often more expensive than the domains themselves are. While prices on bad LLLL.coms have been stable in recent months, the same cannot be said about quad premium LLLL.coms, which have seen their minimum wholesale drop significantly since October. LLLL.com results were rather mixed across LLLL.com markets — weaker pronounceable LLLL.coms look to have taken the greatest devaluation in recent months while CVCV type LLLL.coms seem to be at (or near) the top, experiencing little to no devaluation since October. CVCV sales are all over the place - some up and others down. All in all, it’s an okay performance for the LLLL.com market — better than in many of the past months, however LLLL.coms largely haven’t yet begun appreciating and unless they do that, LLLL.coms owners are going to be in trouble when renewals come due.

Minimum Wholesale: $4.00

10th Percentile: $8.00

25th Percentile: $15.39

Median: $26.00

75th Percentile: $90.00

90th Percentile: $500.00

Triple Premium: $5.50

Quad Premium: $110.00

AABB: insufficient data

ABAB: insufficient data

ABBA: insufficient data

BABB/BBAB: $120.00

BABB/BBAB (quad premium): $220.00*

BAAA: $130.00

BAAA (quad premium): $350.00*

AAAB: $150.00

AAAB (quad premium): $350.00*

CVVC: $20.00

CVVC (no Q/X/Y/Z) $25.00

CVVC (quad premium): $130.00

VCCV: $12.00

VCCV (no Q/X/Y/Z): $25.00

VCCV (quad premium): $130.00

VCVC: $12.00

VCVC (no Q/X/Y/Z): $55.00

VCVC (quad premium): $200.00

VCVC (quad premium, no F/H): $350.00*

CVCV: $120.00

CVCV (no Q): $350.00

CVCV (no Q/X): $500.00

CVCV (quad premium): $1000.00*

Approximately 3 out of 4 CVCV that end up selling for $1000+ have no Q/X/Y/Z. For the purpose of this guide, Y is considered a consonant. Most LLLL.coms will sell at a premium to the minimums listed above.

* Estimates made based on a limited amount of sales data.

I decided to go back and look at how the LLLL.com market was performing in October 2008 (what some have considered to be the low point of many LLLL.com segments) as compared to today and see where exactly prices are today and how much (or little) values in individual LLLL.com market segments have changed.

Back in October 2008, quad premium LLLL.coms had a minimum wholesale of $150 — that’s down to $110 today. Triple premiums? EBay aside, you couldn’t find any below $15 back then. Today? Pretty much the same situation, with eBay again having all the lowest sales, however we’ve already seen roughly 4 times as many sub-$15 sales today as we saw in October (7 sales under $15 in October 2008 compared to 31 sales under $15 already in April 2009) .

A more disappointing picture is painted when we factor in renewal fees — Many of these domains would have been renewed sometime between October 2008 and April 2009. With renewal fees running about $8-$10 per year at most registrars, all LLLL.coms would need to appreciate by at least that much each year to not incur further losses for their owners.

October 2008 saw 7 LLLL.coms sell for under $4, something seemingly unfathomable 6 months prior. For comparison, April 2009 has already seen 8 sell below $4 and when we factor in a renewal premium of $4 for the 6 months LLLL.coms have aged since October 2008, the picture becomes even more dismal, with 39 sales below $8 (which really is $4 as explained above assuming the same owner between then and now) in April 2009. March 2009 saw 69 LLLL.coms sell for under $8 and it appears we’re on pace to have a very similar number of sub-$8 sales this month.

There are two ways to interpret the data — I’ve interpreted it one way above by factoring in a renewal premium and considering the LLLL.com as if it had the same owner over that entire time period. Alternatively, one could look at the data from a different angle, as if the person who had bought LLLL.coms in October 2008 were to have sold them in April 2009. How does this picture work? We do know in the case of triple premiums that most were registered well before October 2008 and that many of the LLLL.coms being sold in October 2008 had already been renewed through 2009. If we look at the data this way (from the perspective of a buyer today versus a buyer 6 months ago), one obviously needs to factor in a different kind of renewal premium in comparing what LLLL.coms approximately 11-12 months from expiration were selling for in comparison to comparable LLLL.coms today which are now 5-6 months from expiration.

If we look at it this way, we need to flip that renewal premium around and add $4 to the prices of these LLLL.coms being sold in April to account for the fact that they’re now 6 months closer to expiration. If we look at it that way, the market for very low end LLLL.coms (single premium and double premium LLLL.coms) doesn’t appear to have depreciated at all — matter of fact, it seems like it’s appreciated a bit. If we look at LLLL.coms which realized sales under $8 in October 2008 versus sales which realized under $4 in April 2009, the numbers appear quite differently, with 27 sales under $8 in October 2008 versus an estimated 14-16 sales under $4 for April 2009 (taking into account that the month is roughly half done and we’ve so far seen 8 sales under $4). This might not be the best way to evaluate the low end LLLL.com market granted some of the sales in October 2008 were for LLLL.coms which were just about to expire however it certainly does paint a different picture. When all is said and done, the minimum wholesale for April on LLLL.coms was approximately $4.

Performing the same analysis on triple premiums unfortunately doesn’t produce the same result — With 26 sales already confirmed in April 2009 below $11 versus 7 in October 2008 under $15, it’s very clear that triple premiums have fallen. The minimum wholesale on triple premium LLLL.coms for the month of April was approximately $5.50.

Quad premiums aren’t near as affected by renewal fees as lower quality LLLL.coms — the market for quad premium LLLL.coms has fallen without a shadow of doubt from a minimum wholesale of about $140 in October 2008 to $110 today.

Anti-premiums just don’t seem as interesting today as they were 6 months ago… Interest in anti-premiums seems to have started to die down right around the end of October when we saw wvjk.com sell for $12.99 on October 26th, quickly followed by xvwk.com which realized $4.75 on October 29th and 2 sales on October 30th for $9.50 (ujyq.com) and $10.00 (uxyq.com). Prior to that, no anti-premium was reported sold below $17.50 since January 2008. March 2009 saw xvwk.com again sold, this time for $3.30. Prices since the crash in late October appear to be stable, with most fetching $10-$20.

It’s quite difficult to look at low end LLLL.coms and suggest minimum wholesales due to the fact that one of the biggest factors in the valuation of low end LLLL.coms is how many months remain until renewal. Considering that most most anti-premium, single premium, and double premium LLLL.coms have relatively low enduser potential (at least if you’re not willing to proactively seek endusers out), it really isn’t surprising to see renewal fees being one of the largest determinants of value in this market segment. While the low end market appears relatively stable at present, I certainly wouldn’t want to get caught with a few hundred of these when renewal fees come around!

The ongoing question with anti-premium, single, double, and (to a lesser extent) triple premium LLLL.coms is whether the market will in the future appreciate faster than renewal fees accumulate. It’s a good question, especially considering the fact we’re in a recession which has already seen domain prices drop considerably. Is now the right time to invest or hold onto low end LLLL.coms? I guess that depends to a large extent on where you see the economy going over the next 6 months (or however long until your renewal fees are due). Personally, I feel a lot safer holding onto a few higher quality LLLL.coms than hundreds of lower quality ones. That said, many higher quality LLLL.com segments have fallen considerably since October… Quad premium LLLL.coms saw their minimum wholesale drop from $140 to $110, AAAB-type LLLL.coms dropped from a minimum wholesale of roughly $200 to $150 today, BAAA-type LLLL.coms are down from $200 to $130 today).

Due to the rarity of some of these LLLL.com market segments and the current lack of sales data on them, one of the best ways to get an idea of where the market is at is to look at sales for the same (or a very comparable) LLLL.coms. If we consider AABB-type LLLL.coms, we see that RRAA.com and RRTT.com sold for $650 and $610 respectively on September 25th and 26th. Since then, OOTT sold for $410 on December 4th, EEPP.com sold for $791 on December 7th, WWZZ.com sold for $820 on January 16th 2009, and KKGG.com sold for $625 on April 5th 2009. Now that’s obviously a far smaller sample size than I would have liked to have had when looking over the data, however one would be very hard pressed to conclude that this particular segment has experienced any depreciation since October when all sales but one exceed what we saw RRAA.com and RRTT.com fetch in September.

As for ABAB-type LLLL.coms, we saw VXVX.com sell for $135 on NameJet on September 27th, only to be resold on eBay for $200 on December 21st — quite an improvement, especially when you consider the fact that many LLLL.com domainers don’t do any domain buying on eBay. SRSR.com sold for $461 on September 27th, with the only 3 other ABAB-type LLLL.com sales since then being XAXA.com selling for $1500, JXJX.com selling for $430, and YIYI.com selling $12,445 (yes, I’m well aware this last one is a quite unfair comparison). Again, not a lot of sales data but there’s nothing which would suggest that this LLLL.com market segment has depreciated since October.

There weren’t a great deal of ABBA-type LLLL.com sales unfortunately either. Making due with what we have, it seems more than fair to compare the $125 sale of FJJF.com on October 14th to the $148 sale of XGGX.com on December 15th. Since December, there’s only unfortunately been 4 ABBA-type LLLL.com sales reported, one of which (APPA.com $2910 on February 19th) certainly shouldn’t be factored into the analysis due to the pronounceable (and hence, more desirable) nature of this LLLL.com. GQQG.com was sold in a bulk LLLL.com lot on February 22nd, 2009. I can’t remember how we arrived at pricing it at $50, however I believe that was an estimation of what it would have been worth considering the ending price of the lot and the number of domains in it.

We’ve seen several times in the past that LLLL.coms really don’t sell well in bulk. Including low end LLLL.coms with higher quality LLLL.coms (like GQQG.com) really doesn’t appeal to many domainers… Most LLLL.com domainers decided long ago (although they may have since changed investment strategies) that they’re either investing predominantly in low end LLLL.coms or higher quality LLLL.coms — there aren’t many domainers out there who have a large collection of single premium LLLL.coms in addition to a large collection of rare and/or pronounceable LLLL.coms, so including LLLL.coms of both types in the same lot is obviously ill-advised. The only other ABBA-type LLLL.coms we’ve seen sold since December were VAAV.com (arguably pronounceable) for $206 on March 6th and ZCCZ.com for $150 on March 8th, 2009. Here again, it’s very difficult to make a conclusion with such a limited amount of data, however there is little to suggest that this market has fallen further since October.

Looking at triple letters, we fortunately have more data to play around with. While there were only 2 sales in October 2008, neither of minimum wholesale quality, we can conclude a likely minimum wholesale of approximately $160 knowing that a) BBAB/BABB-type LLLL.coms usually sell for less than LLLL.coms with a AAAB/BAAA letter pattern and comparable letter quality and b) we have a reported sale of $185 on YYNY.com on September 29th and $211 for IYII.com on October 7th. Regardless of how you interpret what the minimum wholesale should be for BBAB/BABB-type LLLL.coms, it’s very clear that this market has taken a large devaluation, with YYQY.com selling for $120 on April 16th.  Even larger losses are evident on AAAB and BAAA-type LLLL.coms, now selling for approximately $150 and $130, down from minimum wholesales of approximately $250 and $200 back in October.

Weaker pronounceables have taken quite a hit over the past 6 months, with perhaps no better example than the weakest of VCVCs. LLLL.coms like UWUZ.com would have fetched $70+ easily back in October — it sold for $12.50 on March 31st.

We’re going to look at CVCV-type LLLL.coms, a segment of the LLLL.com market which consists of a very significant portion of $1000+ LLLL.com sales. Pronounceable LLLL.coms are much more difficult to compare from one name to the next — what one domainer considers pronounceable isn’t pronounceable or isn’t very pronounceable to another. Minimum wholesales mean absolutely nothing when it comes to pronounceable LLLL.coms, so I’ll try to show how the market is currently performing based on sales which have occurred for the same domain at different points in time. As always (and this is very important in the pronounceable space), large enduser sales for well above what would be considered typical aftermarket prices are excluded from analysis whenever possible.

Looking at CVCV-type LLLL.coms first, we see that:

CUFO.com sold for $930 on November 13th, only to be resold on March 4th 2009 for $1075.

GUDI.com realized $2600 on February 14th, only to be resold for $1850 on March 10th, 2009.

HIBE.com sold for $3000 on December 16th and was quickly resold on January 15th 2009 for $4000.

KOWU.com saw $1765 on February 13th and, less than a month later, was resold for $1010 on March 5th.

MAFA.com sold for $3100 and $3105 on December 4th and January 15th respectively.

QEKU.com saw $254 on October 31st and $288 on February 3rd, 2009.

QOXO.com saw $206 on February 22nd only to be resold for almost 3 times as much — $600 on April 11th, 2009.

VOHI.com realized $480 on February 24th, $573 on March 31st, and $750 on April 14th.

VUQU.com saw $300 on October 31st and $510 on February 3rd.

WOQO.com saw $330 on October 31st and $280 on February 3rd.

XODA.com saw $815 on October 4th and $640 on January 8th.

ZICU.com realized $755 on November 13th and $711 on March 4th.

As can be seen from the data, prices on CVCV-type LLLL.coms have remained quite constant over the past 6 months, with some selling for more, others less than they fetched months ago. When it comes to pricing CVCVs, one different letter can make all the difference in the world. Compare SIQO.com to SYQO.com in example — to me, they’re both pronounced like the word “psycho”. Despite their similarities, SIQO.com sold for $650 on October 4th, while SYQO.com yielded but $140 on October 6th. While this particular example shows “Y” to be a weaker choice and while it would seem intuitive that sales with “Y” should sell for less than sales with “I” or any other premium letter for that matter, and while that would hold true for the large majority of LLLL.coms a significant portion of the time, letter quality often doesn’t mean as much when it comes to pronounceable LLLL.coms — all else being equal, the quad premium CVCV will sell for more, however it would be quite wrong to think the rules which generally apply to ordinary LLLL.coms apply to pronounceable LLLL.coms.

The one letter which consistently reports the lowest sales results is a CVCV starting with a “Q”.  We all know that “Q” is considered the worst letter by domainers when it comes to ordinary LLLL.coms, and it’s one thing that pretty much always holds true with pronounceable LLLL.coms as well. Recent sales of CVCVs including a Q range from under $50 (for those generally including both a “Q” and a second letter position “Y”) to $800. As we all know, the letter “Y” can be either a consonant or a vowel. For valuation purposes, “Y” is treated as a consonant when it’s the first letter in the LLLL.com. In short, YVCV = CVCV and the sales results prove it, with the 9 sales since July ranging from $1022 to $4000+. Most domainers do not consider a “Y” found in the second position a real CVCV and the large majority of CYCV-type LLLL.coms sell for under $100. In the third position of a CVCV-type LLLL.com, “Y” again takes on the role of a consonant and is considered a true CVCV, with sales since July ranging from $810 to $4000+ . In the fourth position, opinion on whether a CVCY is a true CVCV or not is divided, as are sales results, with some selling for under $100 and others selling for $500+. In this guide, “Y” is always considered to be a consonant, meaning “Y” can only be part of a CVCV if it is found in the first or third position. This doesn’t mean a “Y” in the second or fourth position of an LLLL.com can’t sell for more than a CVCV with a “Y” in the first or third position, merely that it’s not a very common event.

Most CVCVs without a “Q” will sell for at least $350 (typically has a “Y” or is a weak pronounceable, such as a CVCV having an “X” in the first letter position). If there is no “Y” or the “Y” is in the first or third letter position and provided the first letter isn’t an “X”, CVCVs typically sell for at least $450. Since January 1st, 2009, 51 out of 66 CVCVs (without Q or Y) reported sold realized at least $1000. Ten of the 15 which didn’t realize at least $1000 had either an “X” in the first or third letter position, or an “H” in the third letter position (an “H” in the third letter position often makes for a less pronounceable CVCV). Seven of the 15 had a “U” in the fourth letter position and 14 of the 15 CVCVs which didn’t reach $1000 had at least one non-premium or semi-premium letter.

Of the 51 sales which realized at least $1000, some interesting findings include:

39 had (on top of having not Q or Y as outlined above) no X or Z.

15 had no “U” (these all sold for $1500+)

9 out of 10 reported quad premium CVCVs sold since January 1st 2009 realized sales of at least $2000 (DIFE.com sold for $971 on April 15th)

CVCVs won’t normally sell for above $5000 unless they’re a meaningful dictionary word (more common than you may think if you consider other popular languages), are extremely pronounceable (these often end up being dictionary words, acronyms, and the names of companies), or have other attributes valued by domainers (eg. lots of traffic, revenue).

For the convenience of those who would like to verify the accuracy of suggested prices reported in this guide or who would like to have a complete list of reported LLLL.com sales in April 2009 up to now, you’ll find what you need below:

LLLL.com sales data

End of Guide.

Released April 17th, 2009.

Sales data compiled using LLLL Sales and Namepros.