Prices on short domains are much cheaper than they were a year ago. Is now the time to start thinking about buying a short domain or should you wait a bit longer to see what the future holds for short domains and the domain name market as a whole. Some people say “Buy Low, Sell High”, others say “Don’t try to catch a falling knife” — which best describes what one’s next move should be as a short domain investor? Read on for my thoughts on the short domain market.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen LLL.coms fall to new lows — $3000 sales are happening and they certainly aren’t outlier sales anymore. With some decent quality LLL.coms being sold for not a whole lot more than the minimum (eg. kxf.com for $3400), one has to wonder if the market will be able to hold at $3000. I know more than a few domainers who are itching to get back into this market — you can quite easily buy twice as many LLL.coms with your money as you could 6 months ago, however I haven’t yet seen much to suggest prices are done falling.

Another market which has taken quite a hit lately has been the quad premium market — we’re seeing sales in the very low $100s with increasing frequency. It saddens me to see this as I do like the quad premium LLLL.com market, however with things going the way they are, I fear it’s only a matter of time before we start to see sales in the $90s. The very high end LLLL.com market seems to be weathering the storm far better than lower quality LLLL.coms and LLL.coms — Fizy.com was reported sold for $10,000 (enduser sale),  Dumi.com saw $2604 and DGPS.com $6200 recently on Sedo. When it comes to quads, it’s clear that not all quads are equal — no doubt an LLLL.com like DGPS.com is an order of magnitude better than your average LLLL.com (or quad premium LLLL.com for that matter), and that’s what one should be on the lookout for — a domain being priced based on letter quality when it shouldn’t be priced based on letter quality. I know quite a few people have had success doing just that in the CVCV space, where some of these pronounceables are meaningful words in other languages.

I don’t really have time to approach endusers unfortunately, so buying low end LLLL.coms or paying anywhere remotely close to full market value isn’t something I can consider doing during a recession given the unpredictability of where prices may be by the time I get around to selling the names purchased — that said, I still do look around and you never do know when a deal may present itself.

Related posts:

1. Short Domain Name History: LLLL.coms II
2. Quad Premium LLLL.nets: The Most Underrated LLLL Market?
3. Quad Premium LLLL.com Thoughts