When I speak of low end LLLL.coms here, I’m speaking of the lowest of the low — a ghastly LLLL.com that’s about to expire and perhaps has one premium letter. There are of course exceptions to that rule, however for the most part, these seem to be the type of LLLL.coms fetching the lowest prices. Between April 15th and 19th, we saw 4 LLLL.coms sell for between $1.54 and $2.26 (I’ll have to ask our Namepros resident eBay expert, however I’m willing to bet all or most didn’t have “LLLL.com” or “LLLL” in the title). April 21st saw UDXY.com sell for $3.24 and since then, all LLLL.coms have sold for $4+.

Despite all the flack low end LLLL.coms get for falling from the peaks of February 2008 (it’s domain speculators we should be blaming, not the LLLL.coms), the situation isn’t near as grave as some portray it to be. Let’s assume a minimum wholesale of $4 — it’s the number I’ve been using for awhile and seems to be pretty darn close to the minimum, at least for LLLL.coms sold anywhere but unintelligently on eBay.

Over the past two weeks (since April 17th), there have been 236 reported LLLL.com sales of anti-premium, single, or double premium quality. How do the numbers stack up? I put them into Excel and came up with the following:

10th percentile: $6.50
25th percentile: $9.50
Median: $15.50
75th percentile: $25.00
90th percentile: $60.00

The real numbers aren’t exactly as bad as many would have you believe. One thing which I don’t think a lot of short domain name investors noticed was the change in behavior of an LLLL.com buyer over the past 15 months. When LLLL.coms were at their peak, there was essentially no difference between a single premium or a double premium, and even triple premiums didn’t sell for a great deal more than the minimum wholesale (which maxed out at about $55). So while this may have been a minimum, I doubt the median at the time of single, double, and triple premium LLLL.coms sales at the time was much above $60. Today, we see pretty much the opposite, with buyers being ever more discriminating in what separates on LLLL.com from another. A terrible LLLL.com still saw about $55 at peak — maybe $50 if nearing expiration, while the very best of triple premiums (eg. triple premiums + U/W) typically saw prices of around $120-$140. Today, we see a minimum wholesale of around $4 on that same comparable LLLL.com that was previously fetching $55, yet a good triple premium that may have seen $120-$140 at peak still sells for at least $30-$40+ today.  It’s not hard to see looking at the February 2008 data versus the April 2009 data that the gap between the weakest LLLL.coms and the strongest triple premiums has widened substantially over the past year, with the price ratio going from about 1:3 to 1:10 on the minimum wholesale LLLL.com versus the strong lettered triple premiums.

Even with double premiums, we see 121 of the 169 (about 72% of) double premiums sold over the past 2 weeks sold for at least $10.00. Of those, 100 sold for at least $15.00, 81 saw at least $20.00, and 33 saw at least $30. Essentially, your double premium LLLL.com has about a one in two shot at selling for at least $20 (81/169) and about a one in five chance (33/169) of netting at least $30. That’s not so bad… Not so bad at all.

Okay, so triple premium and double premium LLLL.coms clearly refute “the sky is falling” theory of LLLL.coms. But what about single premiums? Of the 47 single premiums sold over the past two weeks, only 3 sold for under $5, 30 saw at least $10, 21 saw at least $15, and 11 sold for at least $20. Again here, you had about an almost one in two chance (21/47) of seeing at least $15.

Moral of the story: Minimums mean nothing. Examine the data and find what your LLLL.coms are truly worth. If they’re not minimum wholesale domains and they’re not expiring soon, they certainly won’t command minimum wholesale prices. As discussed earlier in this post, that has never been more true than now.

Related posts:

1. eBay LLLL.com Price Guide
2. Minimum Wholesale Domains
3. Mid-February LLLL.com Price Guide