Aftermarket Auctions 10 months on

[AnthonyP]

So the AMA has been in its current state for 10 months and I thought I'd take a look at how it has been performing.

I was interested to find that it has a clearance rate just shy of 9% with 850 competed sales and 8900 turned in. Compared with the snapper clearance rate of around 2% this means there is actually less sorting/searching to be done than in snapper.

It also seems that persistence pays off in the AMA with 1/3 of sales occurring only after being listed a second or third time.

I also note that in the last week the "buy now" feature has been used by buyers twice for domains priced at $1100 and $450 so it pays to have your alerts setup and be ready to pounce when you spot a bargain.

 

[snoopy]

I was interested to find that it has a clearance rate just shy of 9% with 850 competed sales and 8900 turned in. Compared with the snapper clearance rate of around 2% this means there is actually less sorting/searching to be done than in snapper.

Still a depressing statistic, shows lack of quality control in my view. Not sure there is much point comparing to to the drops where most of the names are names people have decided aren't worth renewing.

 

[Drop.com.au]

Hey Ant,

Can you share the average price?

Andrew

 

[AnthonyP]

Hey Ant,

Can you share the average price?

Andrew

Sure it is $138.77

 

[AnthonyP]

Andrew,

Another interesting statistic is that 62 of the sales where domains which had previously dropped (so we have a public record of the price paid) and the average paid for those 62 domains is $261.27 the average they sold for was $385.90.

 

[FirstPageResults]

Can you share what % of the sales are .net.au?

 

[snoopy]

Andrew,

Another interesting statistic is that 62 of the sales where domains which had previously dropped (so we have a public record of the price paid) and the average paid for those 62 domains is $261.27 the average they sold for was $385.90.

Unless they were all no reserve auctions you'll have very skewed data for something like that because the 90% of names that didn't sell will also include lots of previously dropped names where the new owner couldn't turn a profit.

 

[AnthonyP]

Can you share what % of the sales are .net.au?

36.5% of the sales where .net.au
1.1% where hyphenated .net.au
3.9% where hyphenated .com.au

31% where single word
35% two words
24% three
7.5% four words
1.5% consisted of 5 words (some of these the phrase breaker went crazy)
0.0% 6 words (only one)

 

[AnthonyP]

Unless they were all no reserve auctions you'll have very skewed data for something like that because the 90% of names that didn't sell will also include lots of previously dropped names where the new owner couldn't turn a profit.

Just double checked the 90% that did not sell and it turns out that I was not excluding duplicates when I counted the domain which did not sell. Turns out that only 4780 domains did not sell (so far) and 850 did sell, so the clearance rate is actually almost 16%

95% of the auctions we are discussing where "no reserve" so the comparison is probably quite accurate.

 

[AnthonyP]

I had a look into what does not work too.

I found that % of hyphenated domains, .net.au domains, single word domains, mutliple word domains the ratio between turnedin and sold was consistently the same, the only place I found a significant discrepancy was when a domain has the reserve set.

19.7% of the turned in domains vs 5% of the sold domains had a reserve set.

So having a reserve set on the AMA makes you 4x more likely to NOT sell !

 

[chris]

36.5% of the sales where .net.au
1.1% where hyphenated .net.au
3.9% where hyphenated .com.au

31% where single word
35% two words
24% three
7.5% four words
1.5% consisted of 5 words (some of these the phrase breaker went crazy)
0.0% 6 words (only one)

Interesting stats Anthony, thanks for sharing

Cheers,
Chris

 

[DavidL]

Interesting stats, Ant.

Contrrary to snoopy I think it shows a pretty decent performance compared to what it 'feels' like. What I mean is it sometimes seems that AMA's are literally a ghost town but obviously 850 sales is not to be sniffed at.

Also 20% clearance rate of the no-reserve domains is decent considering most people (like me) regularly jam in the domains they are planning to drop anyway to see if they can snag a few bucks.

Will be interesting to see how these stats change now that:

1) no fee for reserves
2) AMA's integrated with snapper

 

[Chris.C]

Firstly thanks for the stats - it's awesome to hear about the numbers!

I hope you guys are doing some press releases with these number to see if there is any media interest in these sorts of things, because I do think these things are quite interesting facts and if you could play the angle of domains are becoming more valuable and businesses need to get in before they miss out I think there would be quite a few business journalists who might run a story on it.

Another interesting statistic is that 62 of the sales where domains which had previously dropped (so we have a public record of the price paid) and the average paid for those 62 domains is $261.27 the average they sold for was $385.90.

Have you looked at the average time period between being dropped and being sold to work out a rough yearly growth rate of AU domains?

62 domains is a good sample size to draw some conclusions from. Plus it might encourage more people to list their domains on AMA to help increase that sample size.

IContrrary to snoopy I think it shows a pretty decent performance compared to what it 'feels' like. What I mean is it sometimes seems that AMA's are literally a ghost town but obviously 850 sales is not to be sniffed at.

100% agree. And I'll be the first to admit I probably haven't been active enough in the AMA either buying or selling, but hearing about the numbers does make me think I should be more proactive about it.

Also 20% clearance rate of the no-reserve domains is decent considering most people (like me) regularly jam in the domains they are planning to drop anyway to see if they can snag a few bucks.

Hey David, how has this strategy worked for you thus far? Have your snagged a few sales at time? What do you think your success rate is when doing this?

Will be interesting to see how these stats change now that:

1) no fee for reserves
2) AMA's integrated with snapper

Indeed!

 

[DavidL]

Have you looked at the average time period between being dropped and being sold to work out a rough yearly growth rate of AU domains?

62 domains is a good sample size to draw some conclusions from. Plus it might encourage more people to list their domains on AMA to help increase that sample size.

Remember there's also these repeat sales - http://www.netfleet.com.au/domain-sales-graphs (at the bottom) there's 224 domains in there.

Hey David, how has this strategy worked for you thus far? Have your snagged a few sales at time? What do you think your success rate is when doing this?

Not very well actually. Vast majority have been passed in but, IMO, it's worth having a go for the sake of a couple of clicks.

I mentioned it as it makes the 20% clearance rate all the more impressive when you have people like me throwing absolute garbage into the mix

 

[Chris.C]

I mentioned it as it makes the 20% clearance rate all the more impressive when you have people like me throwing absolute garbage into the mix

LOL that was what I was thinking.

I did the same thing way back at the start of the AMA I threw up 50 - 100 domains that I intended to drop anyway, just to test things out, and only 2 or 3 sold... so whilst I was happy that I sold a couple before they dropped I must have been tanking the success numbers of the AMA.

 

[acheeva]

The current structure allows quality names to be listed with acceptable reserves & pay only if we achieve a result

There is no future in domainers selling to domainers though (that is reminiscent of the 1990's property mentality)

Hopefully if we list good domains the AMA will attract the end users, who can justify a reasonable investment

The opportunity for NF to gain $xxx's per sale compared to $x should be sufficient incentive for them to amp-up the marketing

 

[Chris.C]

There is no future in domainers selling to domainers

Hopefully if we list good domains the AMA will attract the end users, who can justify a reasonable investment

I agree there is very little money in selling domain to domainers - at best they have to be domain developers (ie making money via advertising sales/affiliate products etc).

However for me it's not an issue of better domains needing to be listed, it's about domainers knowing that better quality buyers will turn up, and that's a marketing/education problem.

At the moment I could list a handful of industries where I know related domains always have a couple developers if not retailer end users bidding on them every time they come up for auction, which results in good sale prices, but this is only in select niches.

Now the reason end users don't turn up to auctions at the moment is not because they aren't aware of them, a simple email or phone call could change that, it's because they don't understand the inherent value.

ie, yesterday you could have sent 10 emails to various gold bullion dealers around Australia and even the Perth Mint and I'm pretty sure none of them would have bid more than Ned because none of them understand the inherent value of the domains because that's not their core competency to know these things (they specialise in selling gold) so none of them in the space of 24 hours are going to receive an email and then proceed to get educated to the point where they are confident enough to invest thousands of dollars into a single domain.

However I'm very confident that a domain like GoldBullion.com.au would bring in $10,000+ in additional PROFIT a MONTH to a business that knew how to utilise its value even to a basic level, yet the domain sold to a domainer for less than $5000...

The gap is "education" of value extraction from domains - not a lack of quality domains being listed, and unfortunately the "educational" material on AU domains is very limited, probably because there is very limited financial incentive within the AU domain industry to create these materials (except for NetFleet).

So it shouldn't be surprising that I think the best thing NetFleet have done in regards to education is create a video like this:

https://www.netfleet.com.au/Blister.com.au#tabs-3

Because at least this "starts" to explain the value of domains to end users (whilst I'm super grateful for this video, I think this videos still misses a lot of key selling points of AU domains) and this video alone isn't going to get businesses frothing to buy quality domains.

I think the fact is there are very few full time AU domainers hurts this educational effort as well, given most of us run internet marketing related businesses, projects or jobs and dabble with domains on the side as a part time thing. This means we don't have hours of time to educate potential buyers on the value of domains, but without people being out there actively explaining to the public their value I don't know if general market is going to be turning up at domain auctions with their check book open any time soon.

So for me it's more of a waiting game, and I love that NetFleet has developed the "platform" I think it's now time that we all started developing the "market".

But you can see the tide turning slowly, more and more niches are becoming competitive, where prices are better reflecting intrinsic value, but 98% of industries are still clueless and that can't be changed overnight.

 

[snoopy]

There is no future in domainers selling to domainers though (that is reminiscent of the 1990's property mentality)

Hopefully if we list good domains the AMA will attract the end users, who can justify a reasonable investment

The opportunity for NF to gain $xxx's per sale compared to $x should be sufficient incentive for them to amp-up the marketing

The is a wholesale market in every industry imaginable, domains are no different. People will always be looking to sell to other domainers to raise cash, liquidate unwanted assets, increase profitability etc.

Domain auctions a rarely attract endusers, it is the wrong venue for that. They typically want specific names and getting two bidding at once is even more remote. If people want enduser buyers they probably need to wait, and accept that only a small % will sell each year, or chase buyers & put resources into that (though I think the prices are going to be somewhat lower than waiting). There is no right or wrong in my view.

 

[AnthonyP]

Hey Ant,

Can you share the average price?

Andrew

Sure it is $138.77

I just ran the numbers for last month and the average sale price has increased to $599.82 (17 domains)

This month is already proving to be as promising with an average of $406 over 7 sales so far.

 

[Chris.C]

I just ran the numbers for last month and the average sale price has increased to $599.82 (17 domains)

That's pretty positive.

So does that include domains that are bought via BINs?

This month is already proving to be as promising with an average of $406 over 7 sales so far.

I'm surprised it's only been 7 given that it has seemed like more domains have been listed of late...



That said, I've been lucky enough to pick up 3 sales via the AMA this month already (2 of them via BINs).

And with over 350 domains already listed for sale throughout the remainder of this month if you can keep that success rate around 10% and maybe a few more people add some domains over the coming days and weeks the AMA could potentially sell 50+ domains this month.