Usually a very long time.
Brandable domain names are an interesting domain investment. I’d split brandable into two buckets:
- One word dictionary domain names that can be used as a brand unrelated to the dictionary meaning. Examples are colors, animal names, as well as verbs and other nouns.
- Made up words and two+ word combos.
It can take a while to sell either of these two to an end user. And while the first category can be sold to other domain investors, the market for reselling brandables is more limited.
In BrandBucket’s most recent newsletter, the company disclosed how long domains were listed on its service before they sold.
For the most recent month, the median listing time of domains that sold was 29 months. The shortest was 33 days and the longest was over 10 years.
Think about that. This is the time it took for domains to sell, but only a minuscule fraction of the domains on BrandBucket ever sell. And BrandBucket screens out the bad domains, too.
Brandable domains, specifically made up words and keyword combos are tricky. It’s nearly impossible to do outside marketing to end users.
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Crimson sayswe are moving all our brandable domains to brandBucket
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- snoopy1267 says
Brandbucket sells about 1% a year, that is not a bad number but may not be much better than what people would see if they just had their own lander and an afternic/goddady listing. I assume most people redirect to brand bucket with the exclusivity requirement so how much work is brandbucket really doing for their 30%? Being restricted from listing on Godaddy will cost sales also.
Basically they are “cherry picking” only the best names from people’s portfolios but if just offered for sale normally those names might have a 1% chance of a sale anyway.
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- Dave Tyrer says
It seems that BB’s sellthru rate is now about 2 percent. But if you have good inventory, your rate should be much much higher.
Discerning buyers will take the time to find the gems.
The latest report on TLDInvestors for April says that 59 sellers sold a domain, of whom 18 sold more than one. So probably around 90 domains sold, which would equate to say 1,080 per year.
https://tldinvestors.com/2019/05/brandbucket-april-sales-data.html
BB inventory is now north of 50,000, so if we assume it’s gone up to around 55,000, 2 percent of that would be about 1,100.
“With over 50,000 names to choose from, you can browse, get inspired, and find the unexpected yet perfect name for your company.” (BrandBucket.com)
This makes an interesting comparison to the numbers in the DNW link I noticed below:
https://domainnamewire.com/2016/04/07/brandbucket-sales/
In 2015 BB sold 801 domains, but on inventory of only 16,000, less than a third the size of what it is today – resulting in a sellthru rate of 5 percent.
A factor to consider is that the quality of domains might be declining as many of the best ones have been sold and are “off the market forever”.
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- Todd says
What they will never tell is if the sale occurred directly from the landing page or if if someone found the name by directly searching on BrandBucket. If the majority of the names sold on BrandBucket directly from their website then they would be yelling that from the rooftops but they clearly are not. I would assume then that most sales come from the landing page but they will never tell you that because it will clearly show that the sale didn’t occur directly because of BrandBucket.
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- Dave Tyrer says
The entrepreneur who acquired Gaps.com from BrandBucket for $20,395 has provided a beautiful explanation of his admiration for their curated domain plus logo platform:
“…I don’t know how I ever found them [BrandBucket], but I’m so glad I did.
“While their prices aren’t cheap, their marketplace features so many brandable and keyword-focused listings that I was lost for choice.
“In the first few minutes of finding their site I saw Gaps.com and knew it was the domain for me.
“BrandBucket is revolutionary to me because… …you can actually ‘see’ the business you’re about to buy.”
How Spending $20,000 on a Domain Name Uncovered an Incredible Business Opportunity
https://gaps.com/content-maker-marketplace/
The article provides an in-depth insight into the thinking of a successful end user.
He did not find the domain via a lander, he did not have a particular name in mind, he found it via a curated marketplace that spends money on advertising.
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