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.

Related posts:

1. LLLL.coms on GoDaddy Auctions
2. Selling LLLL.coms on eBay? Don’t forget to put “LLLL” in the Title!
3. Some LLLL.com Data