Reporting TBR auction sales? (1.Viewing)

Let me ask you a question, even though I kind of figure I know the answer... What do you think about TBR Auction houses publishing the sales over a certain amount? If so, where?

There are no concrete plans to do this, but I've thought about it from time to time. I would imagine most of you don't like to have this public.

I think the amount and the locale matter a lot - the only reason I post 3-figure+ TBR prices on here from time to time is because it's members-only and not searchable.

I said yes because high profile acquisitions are reported in most extensions.

That said, if it's reported in the TBR forum it's not indexed so that is another option.

That's it for all the opinions/comments?

FM said:

That's it for all the opinions?

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Having information is always good for the "knower", but who will the the "knower"s be? Your customers, your competition, people buying from your customers? I'm not sure there is a simple answer. Given that you didn't get a slew of "It must be THIS way" answers, it would seem to me you are free to do as you wish

My two cents: In many respects, having a level playing field would be nice... where you don't have to jump hoops (e.g. get in all the auctions, but purposely lose -- or other poking around), so anyone who wants to know can know.

-Tom

I mean the auctions are public so…..

If WHC were to post their ending TBR auctions prices, I don't see it "helping your sales" unless it's only the really big, high profile ones that go into the thousands of dollars. Going the other way and displaying every single sale likely would have a negative impact on your customer base, and without much promotional value, thereby creating friction.

At the end of the day, a business needs to understand who their customers are and serve them, while also making judicious use of self-promotion techniques.

And yes, these WHC TBR auctions are theoretically "public" but only for a limited time, and we're talking the ability in 5-10-20+ years from now for any domain buyer to easily run a price search on any WHC TBR domain without understanding an iota of how the domain investment business works - STR, commissions, renewals, time investment, hosting, etc.

I am not sure that anyone but a domain buyer would be served by compiling a database of all TBR auction sales.

Compiling the cream of the TBR crop for WHC to help build their customer base? It might be a necessary evil as these tend to get reported anyway.

I haven’t seen any .CA sale that I can recall in the last couple years that I thought would actually be “helping your sales” as you put it.

Which is why I believe it’s better to report them all to at least show there is activity. No one puts a gun to your head to sell a domain for 5K.

In the past many TBR registrars were reporting TBR sales. Most of those sales people think were end user sales and they were not.

My prediction is WHC will make them public eventually even if they decide not to now. It’s in their best interest. They are the leader in TBR and they should want to make sure everyone knows it by showing how many sales occur on their platform. Any other decision to me wouldn’t make business sense. I appreciate them asking though but I also know how business works.

Im in favour of a database year over year like nambio only for tbr.

I prefer them to go unpublished publicly as that would hurt end-user sales (and ultimately then hurting investor TBR sales) by setting unrealistic expectations for the end-users about pricing.

What I would suggest is that if you're a TBR customer, and have bought a TBR domain, then you should see all TBR sales reported after your first purchase date. If you don't have a TBR purchase every year, you'd get that access cut off. That allows TBR customers to see data while they're active - and keep the end-user public from being able to research that sales data years later. Nothing worse than a potential buyer saying "I see that domain sold for $500 two years ago, how can you expect $10K for it now?"

I think we would all prefer that @rlm. I’ve had many sales the same year or the following year I have purchased a TBR domain. So I am sure we all wouldn’t want to be quoted a price we paid months ago and hinder a sale but it’s all about how you approach it. It really is not much different than me telling a buyer that I paid 15K for a domain and them offering me $20. It hasn’t increased my sales when I tell people that I paid more than they are offering me from 20 years ago.

I like to compare it to the housing market. All house sales are published. It doesn’t matter if i paid 1.2M 2 years ago. It’s now worth 1.5M. I see domains way different also. Since they are unique and if you want a specific domain you have to pay. Even if I paid $60 for it. If they don’t realize that they can move on.

We also have to realize this is not DN.ca asking to have these TBR results public it’s a business wanting to have the figures published. What did we expect when they made the auctions public? We knew what was going to eventually happen. It’s sad because we actually allowed this to happen. We created the monster but I guarantee you that making auctions public may have not resulted in increased profits. I know I have stepped away significantly from the weekly auctions.

Looks like some sales are already being scraped and/or published on Namebio. Namecheap isn't TBR, but it's a marketplace of sorts, of course.

MapleDots said:

Im in favour of a database year over year like nambio only for tbr.

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Exactly my point.

theinvestor said:

We created the monster but I guarantee you that making auctions public may have not resulted in increased profits. I know I have stepped away significantly from the weekly auctions.

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I've said it before, but the market will always adapt to any changes and it's extremely difficult for any shift in business processes to inherently grow the overall market size.

Of far more importance to a top TBR registrar's bottom line is the quality of the weekly TBR lists, and that's absolutely random. The TBR kinda is what it is, with 8-10K domains being released each week and over the last few weeks, the quality level has been extremely low.

You can't get blood from a stone.

Information is your friend

rlm said:

Nothing worse than a potential buyer saying "I see that domain sold for $500 two years ago, how can you expect $10K for it now?"

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I have had that happen many times too.

MacMan said:

Information is your friend

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Exactly, but you also need to ask who this information benefits.

I wouldn't give 2 dead flies in order to see that RLM paid $350 for Jackass.ca or Eby forked over $400 for DIK.ca, but I can guarantee Jackass Enterprises and DIK Consulting would be very interested in those numbers.