Pricing Domains, Web Development, Advertising
Whether it’s a domain name, advertising, job listing, or a price quote on getting a job done, I usually skip over anything along the lines of “Make Offer”, “Salary commensurate with experience”, “Please send an email to email @ domain.com for a rate quote”. What could be more important than knowing the price?
When someone lists their domain as “Make Offer”, I usually think one of 3 things:
a) this domainer is too lazy to price his domains (which I can understand if you have thousands of domains but not for people trying to sell one).
b) this domainer doesn’t know what his domains are worth, so he’s going to let people make offers on his domains to get a better idea of what they’re worth (nothing wrong with that and certainly smarter than pulling an iREIT and selling LLL.coms for $500 because you don’t know better).
c) this domainer is targeting end users with his domains and doesn’t want to sell himself short.
Domain sale statistics show that domains with prices listed significantly outsell domains without prices listed. I can’t remember if it was Sedo or Afternic who said this — either way, the message was that domains with prices listed outsold domains without prices listed roughly 4 to 1. If someone has their domain listed as “Make Offer”, I have no way to know whether they want $100 or $100,000 — this might be a good idea with generic domains or domains you’re trying to sell to end users, however you’re not doing yourself any favors by not listing a price when you’re trying to sell your domains to other domainers. You can always (and should) price your domains higher than your sale price expectations to make room for negotiations, however leaving out a price entirely makes little sense unless you’re targeting end users — domainers aren’t going to pay you an end user price, so you might as well just list a price to increase the likelihood of a domainer buying your domain if that’s the market you’re targeting.
As Dave (Randomo) on Namepros once famously said: “The sales I most regret are the ones I don’t make.” If you don’t have a domain that’s screaming “Find me an end user”, you might want to reconsider listing it as Make Offer.
As for advertising and web development, I’m a busy guy — don’t waste my time. If you want a certain price for advertising or web development, list it. If you’re waiting around for the advertiser or web development equivalent of an end user, will you be able to likely draw in these companies to your site and/or services? Is it really that hard to do what Andrew over at Domain Name Wire has done, listing what advertisements in particular sections of the website at certain sizes will cost? How hard is it to give a typical range of prices paid for certain web development services? There’s certainly nothing wrong with having a few things asking that an email be sent for more information, however having everything asking to email for price quotes is a good way to lose a potential customer’s business — especially a small business owner who’s likely to think they can’t afford the services.
I’m not looking for a job, however another thing I can’t understand is the logic behind employers not listing any hint of what monetary compensation you can expect when applying for a job. Asking salary expectations during an interview might be a clever way to get a worker for cheap (and royally piss him off when he finds out that other new employees with less experience are making more than him because they asked for more), however I wonder how many workers worth their salt are going to even apply for a job that gives no indication of what monetary compensation a prospective employee can expect.
![[Post to Twitter]](http://llll.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter-big4.png){kind=icon}
Related posts:
July 8th, 2009 at 8:09 am
I do not see why anyone would want to put the time and energy into domaining without the main goal of selling to end users or developing the domains. Selling to other domainers should be an absolute last resort.
If other domainers inquire about about your domains, it is a good time to send an email to potential end users indicating that particular domain is for sale before selling to another domainer that may do the exact same thing.
The only domains I consider pricing are ones I may not renew. If someone really wants the domain, they will make an offer or request a price. If a price is requested, a domainer can take the necessary time to research how many Google key words are associated with the domain, how many advertisers pay for those key words, and any previous sales of similar domains. Doing this for thousands of domains would take a ton of time and pricing them without doing this research for each name is not a wise decision. For those domainers like me that have more than 2,000 domains, choosing not to price them is not laziness. It only makes sense to do this when an offer comes up, or to decide whether to renew names that are not performing up to par. I would rather spend that time contacting potential end users about domains I may not renew, but could definitely help them.
July 8th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Hi Stu,
If that works for you, I’m glad to hear it
It’d really depend on what type of domains you own — people who’ve made their domain investments in LLL.coms / LLLL.coms for example are going to see the overwhelming majority of their sales coming from other domainers no matter how hard they try to find end users.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:35 am
I agree with you 100% Reece, and pricing the domains does makes sense, I will give a perfect example, a friend of mine who is wealthy and not a domainer are talking and I mention a domain sale and I say it sold for $1000, he told me he had interest in that domain and had his assistant look for the name and it was on some site called SEDO and said make offer, So he never made an offer because he found that to be someone not serious about their business. He said if the name was priced at $5000 I would have bought it.
When you say make offer of course you are going to get low ball offers or nothing because people will not waste their time. You regged the name, if you don’t know what you want for the name then that’s a joke IMO. You took the time to say its for sale, if I walked into a store and said how much is the suit ? and the guy said make me an offer, I would laugh and walk out the door, its a total joke IMO.
You are right that its laziness or lottery ticket mentality, it cost me $8 maybe I will get lucky. Buy Domains prices their names and sells more than anyone else, (THAT IS WHERE YOU READ THE PRICING STAT, AFTERNIC BLOG) its not out of luck. Most domainers have no idea why they own the majority of their names, its just keep registering and hoping to get lucky. With 80,000,000 .com regged not every name is getting an end user. So most names are trash, the least you could do is price your trash and maybe get some business done. Again IMO
July 10th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Ray - excellent example. Like you said, it just doesn’t happen in the real world. Even if you go somewhere where they might accept offers — say, a car dealership, they still have some price listed as the equivalent of a buy-it-now on the Internet. BuyDomains is a perfect example of a huge domain company that has taken the time to price out all their domains and enjoyed enormous success. Even if someone has that lotto mentality, there’s nothing wrong with pricing the domain higher than you want and seeing where negotiations go.
If I was a non-domainer and came across a website like DN Journal, I would have the impression that most domains on the domain name aftermarket sell for very large amounts of money. Not believing I have enough money, I’m going to choose not to buy anything…