About a year ago a new sales trend started on Namepros. The largest forum in the industry became the wholesale trading platform for BrandBucket.
Without discussing it in the BrandBucket experience thread on Namepros, a couple of members Brand Pluck and Crocodile Dundee started a new kind of auction. They were auctioning off brandable domain names that had been accepted by BrandBucket.
These names were not published yet, that would imply that the $10 listing fee was paid, the logo fee set and the domain live on the BrandBucket website.
So around July 10, 2015 the first auctions went up, (I want to make clear I went back 900 pages of old sales threads, if someone else did this first, I did not find you, so no disrespect intended.)
The auctions saved a step for prospective BrandBucket sellers, they don’t need to worry about being rejected, the name is already approved.
I messaged Michael Krell and he said these auctions were allowed. See in order to participate in the auction and win you must have a BrandBucket account. The name is not only pushed at the registrar but pushed at BrandBucket as well. So BrandBucket keeps their marriage to the name for at least 30 days.
Now there are two kinds of BrandBucket auctions, accepted and published. If it’s accepted you do not have to list it with BrandBucket. You can leave it in your BrandBucket account under things you need to do, like pay $10, change nameservers and set the logo pricing. Technically you can tell the seller to tell BB to delete the name from pending and you never have to deal with BB.
Now if you purchase a domain that’s published, the name will have to be on BrandBucket for 30 days. You can request the name to be removed right away if you like, that starts the 30 day countdown. BrandBucket gets a 30 day window to make a sale and earn a commission.
Like anything else in domaining, when many see the success of a few everyone jumps into the pool. In July of 2015 a lot of accepted names were finding prices in the $50 to $100 range. Not every name however, some did sell for $25.
July 2015 was a big month for sellers and BrandBucket alike, the voting system was discontinued, Go Daddy .99 coupon codes had dried up, BrandBucket reached 15,000 names.
So the cost of doing business went up and some sellers were just looking for wholesale profits. The dream of turning .99 into $1,500 went out the window. Now it was about turning a $1 or $2 into $50 to $100.
Namepros has experienced quite a few BB related auctions over the last year. Some over the last year have sold their whole portfolio in one auction. I purchased one such portfolio of 28 names. The portfolio I purchased was published.
One thing to remember is that once the fee is paid it’s paid. So you can give 30 days notice, go try to sell somewhere else and come back to BrandBucket later down the road. Michael Krell confirmed that to me in a private message on Namepros.
Lately the new game has been wait for a .com deal on NetFirms,Dotster,Domain.com reg a bunch of domains and submit to BrandBucket. This has made some newer domain investors set their sites low and post BB accepted names with a buy it now of $10 to $12.
The market has been flooded so much that there are a plethora of names up for grabs. The better names can still fetch better pricing, I have sold some of the 28 portfolio buy individually, Reason ? I never wanted them, I like to find bulk buys, sell off what I never wanted and keep the names I wanted.
I think of it as “name arbitrage”, the seller was never going to sell individually so most buyers pass putting out $800 to $1,500. They will however pay $80 to $150 for a name they really want, if the bulk buy results in a price per domain of $20 to $50 you can make a profit. While keeping the names you wanted from the portfolio.
To be fair some names don’t get that much more than the bulk buy breakdown, but the key is to make the overall numbers work.
With all the interest in BrandBucket type names, Namepros has opened a Brandable section in their marketplace.
For those that haven’t discovered the Brandable marketplace forum on NamePros yet, it’s located here: https://www.namepros.com/forums/brandable-domains.364/
We’re finding that brandable domains having there own dedicated niche marketplace has made it 10x easier for brandable investors to locate what they are looking for without having to sort through hundreds or even thousands of sales listings in some of the more generalized sales forums.
Thanks for the new section Eric. Brandables have come to be such a big part of the domainer to domainer market.
Great article, you are a wonderful story teller. I feel like so many of the other guys talk at the reader. You are the best and Mr.domain Shane is number two, another good storyteller.
This is a great illustration of how these desperate broke – ass domainers screw it up for everyone.
If you bought a name and got it approved at the top brandables website, why are you willing to sell for $12 ?
What the f**************
Everyone strategy is different on how they want to deal with there domains.
Someone will be happy to wait for a year or two to get the listed price from brandable site..
On the other other hand someone is happy making some $ in selling cheap domains to other sellers.
Step 1: A few domainers realize they can make a buck selling domains with a “BB-accepted” sticker. The premise being that such domains have added value by being already accepted.
Step 2: Other domainers notice that domains with a “BB-accepted” sticker are selling faster at NamePros. So they all want “BB-accepted” stickers for their domains – not to sell to end users through BrandBucket but to flip quick to other domainers.
Step 3: BrandBucket sees there’s demand for “BB-accepted” stickers. Accordingly, BrandBucket accepts more domains, issues more stickers, and collects more revenue.
Question: With far more domains accepted on BrandBucket, is the sticker worth what it was at the beginning of this process? Or has that value been diluted?
Hat’s off to those domainers that are in the 12 to 50 dollar domain “mosh pit”. Hard way to make a living.