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We
got together with Sedo.com CEO Tim Schumacher to
talk about how Sedo has developed over the years and
where they are headed now. “Sedo began as a tool to
bring domain buyers and sellers together; to facilitate
the trade of domains," Schumacher said. "Until
roughly a year ago, Sedo used an offer/counter-offer
system exclusively. In addition to this method, we now
have an auction system and, as you mentioned,
GreatDomains.
"With
so many users now buying and selling domains on our
marketplace, we really wanted to expand and
build on the way domainers either buy or sell. Thus,
we introduced the auction in 2006, which was a great
success. Acquiring GreatDomains was the next logical
step in offering our clients more choices in buying and
selling. Sedo has always had a great mix of domains
listed on its marketplace, from obscure to premium.
Adding GreatDomains to the mix reaches out to those
specifically looking to buy and/or sell premium domain
names." |
Tim
Schumacher
Sedo.com CEO
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Schumacher
noted "Sedo also just concluded its first
GreatDomains monthly auction.This monthly auction had a
great turnout with more than $1 million in sales,
including Chinese.net, Supernatural.com
and Debit.com among others. We will be conducting
these auctions each month, and the next one starts August
16, 2007 and will run for a week.” |
With
the new higher profile Sedo has bestowed on GreatDomains a lot
of domain owners will want to get their names listed there –
but the site is not meant for every domain. Schumacher told us,
“As GreatDomains is a premium domain platform, we will accept
only high-quality one or extraordinary two-word .com and .net
domains. To have your premium domains listed on
GreatDomains, you’ll need to have a Sedo account. Once
you have a Sedo account, list the domains you wish to sell.
In the “Domain Management” portion of your account, check
the box by your premium domain name and choose “Apply for Top
Domains Listing.” A Sedo broker will then review the
domain name. Once a domain is listed on GreatDomains, it
is automatically listed on Sedo. Any domain that can
transfer ownership can be listed at Sedo.”
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Sedo
is a truly international company, having built up successful
operations around the globe. They have practically owned the
local resale markets around the world as seen in their dominance
of our weekly ccTLD sales
charts. With some territories
experiencing far faster growth rates than the U.S. this strategy
has been one that has served Sedo extremely well. We asked
Schumacher to talk about how the company reached this position
and how they will be able to maintain it against competitors who are
obviously going to want a piece of the pie.
“As
you mentioned, Sedo itself is a very global company, having
started in Germany with a very international staff. While
remaining loyal to our own international roots, the
international community has remained loyal to us. We have
(and are continuing) to act upon requests made from all over the
world. While we can’t implement every request, finding
solutions that reach literally the entire world has meant
gaining international clients,” Schumacher said.
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Schumacher
added that a lot of the companies others might view as
competitors are actually seen as partners by Sedo. “Fabulous
and NameMedia are great companies, with whom we’ve worked
together for years. As partners, we are mainly an additional
sales outlet for their domain portfolios, and especially given
Sedo’s strong audience both in the U.S. and abroad, we sell
hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of domains for large portfolio
holders like Fabulous and NameMedia each month.”
Some
portfolio owners have traditionally been reluctant to sell
domains but with the ongoing expansion of the aftermarket many
are thinking about taking some cash off the table. Schumacher
commented on finding the right balance between PPC, sales and
development when considering how best to monetize your domains.
“I
think for each individual, it is up to them to decide how they
want to make money with their domains,” Schumacher said.
“Currently, “developing names” is a big buzz, but let’s
face it: one person or one company can only develop very few
names at a time. So, I think developing makes sense only for a
small handful of names or maybe even just one. Hey, Ron, take
yourself as an example – you developed one name, DNJournal.com
into what is by far the leading media covering the domain name
space and you did a terrific job on this --- but could anyone do
this equally well with 100 domains? (Editor’s note: I know I
couldn’t!). The rest needs to be monetized, and this is
currently mostly done via PPC, but Sedo and others work
relentlessly to experiment with other monetization methods.”
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“Apart
from monetization, I totally agree that every domain seller
should pay attention to the domain sales channel.
Obviously the domains with a lot of great traffic will have more
leverage in terms of a sales price, but I also think domainers
are becoming more realistic in their expectations of sales
prices," Schumacher said. "If you have a domain that doesn’t have traffic,
any return on investment is good, and selling a domain like that
is the only way to realize this. So, selling domains and
maximizing the proceeds from domain sales should be definitely
on every domain sellers’ agenda.”
Schumacher
has been a popular speaker at domain conferences where he often
shares his view of current and future trends in the industry. We
asked him if he thought the domain boom would continue to
run at
full throttle and if so, where some of the better investment opportunities might be.
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Schumacher
speaking at T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
New York June 2007 |
“Well,
the aftermarket has indeed being very strong lately, so I do
think that – while overall domain scarcity will increase –
we will see lower values in some areas. So, diversification is
one big trend I see coming. Nobody wants to have all eggs
in one basket, so it makes total sense to diversify domain
portfolios to include more ccTLDs and new gTLDs like
.info or .mobi
(both of them are my favorites in regards to new gTLDs),”
Schumacher said.
“IDNs
are also going to be big. When we had MSDOS, the fact that you
could only use English-language characters for filenames and
other stuff was common knowledge, just like with domains today.
But other characters are a very natural thing for everyone
who’s first language is not English, so it comes naturally to
people – it just takes a few years. But that’s one thing
I’m really bullish on. It takes time, and implementation
isn’t easy (Sedo.com is actually one of the only IDN-compliant
domain portals, but even we have still a long way to go to get
everything IDN-ready, a lot of things still don’t work on IDN),
but it will come - For sure!” Schumacher declared.
“Portfolio
sales are also on the rise. We see more and more activity
at Sedo regarding that too, and it does make sense for both
buyers and sellers (I’m happy to be contacted from both sides
if someone wants to buy/sell domain portfolios, by the way)”,
Schumacher concluded.
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