Following up on my previous article with regards to placing cold calls, here is some additional advice from my personal, professional experience.
Although at times it’s beneficial to get the word out there about your domain assets, other times increased publicity can be the wrong choice.
Allow me to describe this paradox in detail.
Imagine that you are holding a precious, valuable asset and you’re offering it to the public as a commodity. Regardless of the asking price, the increased publicity – when not made in a manner that greatly enhances the domain’s value – can hurt you in the long run.
Still don’t get it?
Your wife or girlfriend might be beautiful or skilled in the art of love; would you parade her in front of a street market, allowing strangers to ogle or poke her?
I sure hope not.
Promoting the availability of a domain name must be done in a controlled fashion. Allowing others to take hold of the name and peddle it on forums, over Twitter or Facebook, can severely damage the way this asset is perceived by the general public.
If you must engage the services of a professional PR firm or a domain broker, be very selective. Ask for credentials and a proven track record. Selling a domain does not equal to letting the entire Internet know about it.
The best domain sales are not public or even publicized; many successful transactions occur when flying “below the radar“, so to speak.
And lastly, if you do send out your own press releases, proof-read them for God’s sake. There is nothing worse than a press release laden with typographical errors or other grammatical inconsistencies that will reflect bad on your own, precious asset: your domain name.
Very nice post. And very true…
Thats very true. Awesome domains are in the hand of brokers or end-users for consideration. But none is in public view
What you say here may be true, but probably not for the reason you would like it to be true.
The explanation that seems most likely to me is that domain trade is basically a greater fool game. Paradoxically, exchanged goods may fetch high prices in transactions for two reasons – the first reason is a high intrinsic value of the good, the second reason is the shocking lack of it. If you own a good with a high intrinsic value (aka worth), there is no harm in publicizing its sale because you want to get the true, well-informed bid price, reflecting worth and demand-side competition for it (the more the better). If on the other hand, you are essentially peddling some worthless or in some way “broken” crap (how fitting that you used the word “peddle” yourself), then you should of course do your best to cover up the intrinsic value and create an impression of scarcity to fetch the (relatively and artificially) high ask (rather than bid) price.
This is of what domain trades often remind me: high-stake bets placed by the involved parties not because they believe in their ability to monetize the domain, but purely in hope that another, similarly thinking greedy individual will perpetuate the game and catch the “hot potato”. But it undeniably works, the same way it works for pump & dump penny stocks and in the art market!
Ray – The domain market is unregulated and value is mostly driven by prior sales, versus supply and demand. E.g. all the LLL .com domains are taken but when being sold, the price ranges from low $x,xxx to high $xx,xxx. My post is not about creating – or avoiding to create – a faux value for a domain, but rather, controlling the “hype” surrounding an asset. If you flaunt something left and right, it loses its mystique. 😉