I browse a lot of forums, sales ads, newsletters every day and time and time again I notice two things: first, people say appraisals are worthless, shouldn't be trusted, can't accurately value domain names, etc. Second, those same people put something like an estibot valuation next to their domain names in a sales pitch. Ok. What gives?
You can't have it both ways, either appraisals are worth something or you're full of shit. I think that slimy feeling the world has towards us is exactly because of the way we act. We are the hypocrites. I think this industry needs some deep self-reflection on what values it wants to promote. I understand the economic desire to use these appraisals to try and inflate your ego and try and earn more money but give me a break. When you're targeting resellers and saying and doing different things it makes you look foolish and implies we (the people reading the ad) are stupid.
The same goes for a lot of the other metrics people use like alexa ranking or anything but the actual traffic number. 'I have 1,023,409 alexa ranking or compete shows 500 visitors per month' these types of messages set of warning signals left and right to me (and hopefully/probably many others). If YOU own the domain don't hint at the traffic, either STATE THE ACTUAL TRAFFIC or don't say anything about it at all. It just implies the reader is stupid and frankly, it's insulting; especially when those very same people demand traffic stats when buying domain names.
So in conclusion, end the hypocrisy: either acknowledge you use deceptive/slimy tactics and don't tell others to behave properly or stop using them and let's move on to actual end users. This industry is incestuous enough as it is and with PPC in decline the amount of money passing back and forth has dropped substantially. We can all gain a lot more if we stopped being so inwardly focused and looked outside our little box.
Your move.
Comments
Truer words...
Sat, 03/28/2009 - 13:17 — Brian (not verified)Truer words were never spoken there are to many that try and squeeze every dollar out of a buyer by using some unsavory tactics,but when the shoe is on the other foot those same metrics are not accepted as a viable option.
never had an end-user buyer ask about traffic and statistics
Sat, 03/28/2009 - 15:39 — David Green (not verified)It's interesting how rarely you see actual traffic stats posted when names are listed for sale.
With that said, it's mostly prospective domain buyers who are domainers themselves and domain flippers who are interested in looking at traffic stats. End-users seem to not care about stats.
In fact, we have never had an end-user buyer ask about traffic and statistics. Since my preferred market to target is end-users with commercial interest in the domain it's not too beneficial posting stats so I may not be doing that as often as in the post.
some people have reported
Sat, 03/28/2009 - 16:05 — kohashisome people have reported commenting lags/hangs/has problems. looking into the issue, feel free to try, they all have been posted.