HugeDomains.com is Buying 50%+ of Expiring Domains at GoDaddy.com

Arca · Dec 9, 2016

I've been wondering about the competition in auctions for expiring domains over at GoDaddy.com, because somebody is paying hundreds for seemingly every domain that gets a few bidders.

I’ve also noticed a clear pattern, with the last bidder (or one of the last bidders) entering the auction winning most of the time, which made me think that there is one large corporate buyer piggybacking of whatever domains other people find and bid on. Turns out that is the case: HugeDomains.com is buying most domains over at GoDaddy.com expired auctions. I looked up the WHOIS of the past 150 auctions I have lost at GoDaddy.com, and 84 of those are now owned by HugeDomains.com and listed for sale on HugeDomains.com.

While 50%+ may not be representative of overall domains bought at GoDaddy, they do seem to buy far more domains than anyone else. The 66 names not bought by HugeDomains.com were bought by a number of different individuals and companies (BuyDomains.com bought 6 of those 66, for example), so 50%+ were taken by HugeDomains, while "the rest" of the auction wins were by a number of different individual domainers and companies.

This might not be news to some, but I've never seen anyone mention that HugeDomains is this active over at GD expired auctions, so I thought it might be interesting for some people to know who is outbidding everyone in the lower range over at GoDaddy. I've read people mentioning that HugeDomains buy names in close-out status over at GoDaddy, but never that they buy most of the domains in auctions too.

HugeDomains absolutely dominates all auctions below $5XX, and they only picked up a single name above $5XX (cakemart.com) in my sample of 150 names, so $5XX seems to be a self-imposed limit for them. If I only checked domains sold below $5XX, the percentage bought by them would be even higher. I've been the second highest bidder in lots of auctions that HugeDomains.com won, and in my experience they will keep bidding until you give up or until the price passes $5XX. By outbidding most bidders in the lower end, and acquiring more than half of the domains other people also have interest, it leaves a far smaller pool of names for the rest of the domainers to compete for, so I guess that's part of the reason why the reseller prices for names keep increasing so much for names in this range.

The only way to buy cheap domains at GoDaddy auctions now seems to be to let domains expire with 0 bids, so that they go to close-out status, and then try to snipe them as soon as that happens. However, some domainers seem to think it's smart to bid $12 on any decent name when there is 1-15 minutes left, hoping that nobody else is going to place a bid, so fewer and fewer decent names are let to expire with 0 bids. However, that strategy never seems to work (I've tried it myself lots of names, and it did not work even one time), because there are always other people watching and waiting for the name to go to close-out, and they jump in and bid if you make a $12 bid, and most of those names are eventually won by HugeDomains.com. What experiences do other people have at GD recently? Anyone else have any good strategies for buying expiring domains @ GoDaddy.com these days?

Some examples of expired domains bought at GoDaddy.com auctions by HugeDomains:
Domain: skillsharing.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $540
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2995

Domain: ledmaster.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $537
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2195

Domain: cyberstrategies.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $262
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2895

Domain: crablab.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $320
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $1895

Domain: dailyportal.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $560
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2895

Domain: fivesecondrule.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $42
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2695

Domain: deltacloud.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $365
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $1795

Domain: itace.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $499
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2595

Domain: sunnykitchen.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $200
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2595

Domain: baristaschool.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $449
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2895

Domain: cakemart.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $695
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $3495

Domain: visuala.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $315
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2795

Domain: massanalytics.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $130
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2095

Domain: edusport.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $535
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2995

Domain: acneguru.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $52
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2495

Domain: stylefolio.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $195
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $1995

Related: HUGE DOMAINS SNIPING GODADDY CLOSEOUTS

wwwweb · Feb 7, 2017

Asfas1000 said:
I have some aged nice-sounding 5L with end user inquiries, but end users are not willing to pay more than a few hundred.

That is why we don't get who is paying $500+ in an wholesale market.

I am watching godaddy aftermarket today, I am seeing a lot of the same, a late $12 bid, and then within seconds moving up quickly into the $9x range.

These are subpar names, that are a crapshoot when it comes to ever selling thru, but very interesting to watch people continue to keep piling money into these.

urlurl · Feb 7, 2017

5L without a meaning (key word built in) are a hard sell as there are so many to choose from or even hand reg.

ben pedri · Feb 12, 2017

EVERYONE HERE IS TALKING ABOUT BUYING,ITS EASY AS SHIT TO BUY GOOD DOMAIN NAMES IF YOU HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR A FEW YEARS ,THE PROBLEM IS SELLING THESE THINGS ,I do agree with a previous poster ,find your niche ,and when you do Dont share it with anyone ,because the guy you share it with will be your c

Doughmange said:
With respect to that; have you actually attempted this lately? It was previously effective to time the closeout arrival, but now it's totally random.

As of october, if you were watching a domain name that had 0 bids you could be assured that the domain would go to closeout within 85 -100 seconds.

Now, that does not happen. It could be 5 - 30 minutes before a closeout shows up' it's totally random now.

So if an auction has 0 bids heading into the last 6 minutes, I will gladly post a $12 bid in the hopes that I can get the DN for a fair price.

So far I have only lost 1 auction to HD, and that was for "coffeeboys.com". It's such a crap name that they could have it for whatever price over $70 USD it finalized at.

The interesting thing about HD is that they still are picking garbage over quality. As an investor I would not pay what they are paying for names on the GD platform that would likely never sell to an end user.

They should stick to their model of paying almost nothing for drops and playing the averages; they aren't ready to handle this model.

It's likely an experiment.

Makes no sense.

urlurl · Feb 19, 2017

wow

Panty Box . com sold for over $1k - i was out at $100

its a nice name but $1k is way over resale value IMO

Michael M · Feb 19, 2017

urlurl said:
wow

Panty Box . com sold for over $1k - i was out at $100

its a nice name but $1k is way over resale value IMO

Lol... I'm guessing you meant pantrybox?

1k seems pretty high for that one at auction IMO.

Recently I have bid on several names I thought I should have been able to get for low $xxx max - go for 1k+. It probably goes without saying - but I dropped out of those auctions before they closed.

Getting tougher at GD auctions to get a good value these days unless your lucky enough to grab one of the rare ones that slips through the cracks.

Michael M · Feb 19, 2017

Let's just all hope HugeDomains and the other companies that have decided to dip into the Godaddy Auctions lately will overspend themselves out of the market sooner than later.

joro001 · Feb 19, 2017

Michael M said:
Let's just all hope HugeDomains and the other companies that have decided to dip into the Godaddy Auctions lately will overspend themselves out of the market sooner than later.

Yep they show no sign of letting up so far.
It's getting harder by the day to get good names at fair reseller prices.

urlurl · Feb 19, 2017

compound that with the nubes who are jumping into the market thinking they are going to flip these names they over paid for. Reality will set in, hopefully sooner than later.

'yes, i did mean pantry box' lol'

wwwweb · Feb 19, 2017

urlurl said:
compound that with the nubes who are jumping into the market thinking they are going to flip these names they over paid for. Reality will set in, hopefully sooner than later.

It's going to be later, because they are going to have to wait 10 months to renew

urlurl · Feb 19, 2017

when you drop $1,000 bucks on a name the renewals are not the biggest concern. I would be more woried about my capital drying up and being held up in names.

Someone should tell these nube investors these are non liquid names; These are not 3L, 4L and 4L chips that have a bottom price. Brandables sell for $0 - to $xx,xxxx - and everything in between, mostly in the $x,xxx range to and end user. They may take a long time or never to sell to an end user. So if they are buying them in the $x,xxx range they are shooting themselves in the foot. I see domainers trying to move and liquidate unsold names - usually pennies on the dollar.

Like everyone, I have made mistakes buying names early in my career. But, my costs were $10-$50...not thousand dollar mistakes, lol

RGkiiing · Feb 19, 2017

I thought when a domain expires with no bids on GD it goes to close out. A domain I watched got zero but still isn't in closeouts

urlurl · Feb 19, 2017

there is a 5- 10 minute period between when it ends with no bids and posted as a closeout - within that time sometimes its snipped by another domainer.

how long did you wait?

boziffous · Feb 19, 2017

RGkiiing said:
I thought when a domain expires with no bids on GD it goes to close out. A domain I watched got zero but still isn't in closeouts

I've seen names that finished with 0 bids take up to 1 hour to show back up available in closeout. This happened to me just a few days ago. Usually it's just 3 to 5 minutes from the time the auction ends with 0 bids to reappear as a closeout, but not always.

urlurl · Feb 19, 2017

i had one that showed up the next day. Im assuming it was grabbed but never paid for (one off)

CrocodileDundee · Feb 20, 2017

Feels like its getting harder to time when the domains are going to reach closeouts, i've had a few disappear on me completely. Some are taking much longer than 3 - 15 minutes.

Asfas1000 · Feb 20, 2017

I checked a few domains which I was waiting to hit closeout, but had disappeared, and some of them got renewed. Looks like the owner was testing the waters.

brandsly · Feb 21, 2017

CrocodileDundee said:
Feels like its getting harder to time when the domains are going to reach closeouts, i've had a few disappear on me completely. Some are taking much longer than 3 - 15 minutes.

In the morning, between 11-11:30 EST (8-8:30 PST) when the auctions first started, I got a couple at around 12-13 minutes. But in the afternoon around 12:30-1PM EST, all of the ones I wanted took as long as 1 hour 40 minutes to 2 hours to enter closeout. This happened to all of the names that were ending around that time. They seemed to have a server overload or something. I don't know about late afternoon since I wasn't watching names that were ending later that had no bids.

Past few days had been relatively quick and consistent though!

campout · Feb 21, 2017

brandsly said:
They seemed to have a server overload or something.

GoDaddy was glitchy for me today. For awhile, I couldn't get into my Manage Domains section, then when I did and made some nameserver changes it took way longer than usual for the changes to take effect. Then I won an auction, and I didn't get the winning e-mail for maybe a couple hours, and I couldn't check the name out until then, too.

urlurl · Feb 21, 2017

maybe to many users, lol

Fuadiansyah · Feb 26, 2017

CrocodileDundee said:
Feels like its getting harder to time when the domains are going to reach closeouts, i've had a few disappear on me completely. Some are taking much longer than 3 - 15 minutes.

Happened to me to these domains in recent days:

DevRack.com - Acquired by TLDPros
Dealgram.com - Not yet known. High possibilities go to TLDPros too.

Do these guys using a software, script or what? If so, I considered this a cheating. (That's always the case,right?)
It's like impossible to acquire a name when it enters closeout if these guys also wants the name.
They completely disappear...

urlurl · Feb 26, 2017

i was waiting for 'Start you . com' to expire/drop. its now at DropCatch at $460 ( i was out at $300 and even that was higher than i wanted to go)

The funny thing is, this was listed prior on godaddy auctions for only $250 and no one grabbed it before,

This goes to show how crazy the market is, how domainers follow the auctions and bid up the prices like sheep.

Fuadiansyah · Feb 26, 2017

I, once, saw InsiderRisk.com on GD closeout for only $8. Thinking of buying it for awhile and ends up leave it. Turns out it have acquired by Mike Mann and now listed on DomainMarket.com for $9.888 (oh sh*t)

Just because a domain doesn't have a bid, doesn't mean it has no value. Many of us just follow bids like sheeps.

By the way, Mike Mann's valuation could be wrong. But, yeah, he is Mike Mann you know...

urlurl · Feb 26, 2017

i agree with it being over priced, seems like a small micro niche info site/blog abount warning people on insider trading - IMO.

I would just wait until he drops it, lol

urlurl · Feb 26, 2017

Fuadiansyah do you have an updated chart of the breakdown of GD auctioned names?

Fuadiansyah · Feb 26, 2017

urlurl said:
Fuadiansyah do you have an updated chart of the breakdown of GD auctioned names?

I stopped watching the list sometimes ago due to need to take care of something else.
But I'll try to catch up on it. Will give the update later on...

HugeDomains.com is Buying 50%+ of Expiring Domains at GoDaddy.com

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