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

trelgor · Feb 23, 2018

I NameBright a partner registrar? I have not checked whois history.

Joe Styler · Feb 23, 2018

You mean it was refunded before it hit your account or the domain was put into your account and then later taken out? If it was refunded that makes sense because some names can be renewed still. People can transfer domains away past day 30 if they were initiated, accepted and are in the process of moving, or the name may not have been registered here in the first place in which case it has to follow the rules of expiration of the registrar it is registered at when it expires. We sell domains from more than one other company besides GoDaddy.

trelgor · Feb 23, 2018

I did not see the name in my account, but the email stated it had been removed.

wwwweb · Feb 23, 2018

trelgor said:
I ”purchased” a GD closeout 9 days ago. Today it was snatched from my account. According to GD reps the name was renewed. That wasn’t supposed to be able to happen with the new auction setup. The reason I’m posting this here? The name is with NameBright. Private registration. @joestyler

I brought this to godaddy’s attention a few weeks ago, the registrant is gaming the system by starting the transfer out process, and changing the status to pending transfer out, so at the end of the 5 days, it overrides the locks, and transfers out.

Sorry, this happend to you, never a good feeling when you spend all that time bidding, knowing the rules have changed, so as long as you win, and pay, you will get it, but still a few loopholes to work out.

trelgor · Feb 23, 2018

I can’t find any good registrar history records, might aswell
share the name, clip\fuse com.

Nametree · Feb 23, 2018

trelgor said:
I can’t find any good registrar history records, might aswell
share the name, clip\fuse com.

Yeah it looks like it wasn’t at Godaddy before it went to auction but at Tucows so the 30 day rule doesn’t apply.

trelgor · Feb 23, 2018

Bummer anyways. Thanks.

Nametree · Feb 24, 2018

Does anyone know if the API gives access to Closeouts as well? Could one technically check the closeout list every second and catch a name the moment it becomes available? I have seen too many names without bids mysteriously disappear after the auction is over, even when I keep an eye on a particular name and refresh every second....

Michael M · Feb 24, 2018

I would imagine that it does. But even if not then a bot could just use the web interface to grab those names.

Arca · Mar 10, 2018

HugeDomains is now placing a $10 bid on every domain with a $1300+ valuation at GoDaddy, about 5:XX minutes before auction end.

jideofor · Mar 10, 2018

Arca said:
HugeDomains is now placing a $10 bid on every domain with a $1300+ valuation at GoDaddy, about 5:XX minutes before auction end.

What company...

Arca · Mar 10, 2018

Arca said:
HugeDomains is now placing a $10 bid on every domain with a $1300+ valuation at GoDaddy, about 5:XX minutes before auction end.

With their current bidding strategies, of placing $10 bids on domains within a certain valuation range + getting into bidding wars on names with multiple bidders, I think/estimate that they buy about 3000-3500 domains via these two bidding strategies every day at GoDaddy (so about 100,000 domains a month).

In terms of quantity that's obviously a lot more than 50% of all bought names by all buyers at GD auctions.

They may be buying additional names at GD following other strategies (i.e. picking up sub $1300 domains in the closeouts), but that is something I’ve not looked at.

They keep changing bidding strategies so the above is just a rough estimate based on how they are bidding at present. It may be highly inaccurate, especially over a longer period. Though the general trend I'm seeing is that they are continuously increasing their bidding activity and quantity of purchases in GD auctions.

jideofor · Mar 10, 2018

Arca said:
With their current bidding strategies, of placing $10 bids + getting into bidding wars on names with multiple bidders I think/estimate that they buy about 3000-3500 domains via these two bidding strategies every day at GoDaddy (so about 100,000 domains a month).

In terms of quantity that's obviously a lot more than 50% of all bought names by all buyers at GD auctions.

They may be buying additional names at GD following other strategies (i.e. picking up sub $1300 domains in the closeouts), but that is something I’ve not looked at.

how do they make profit? who are the people funding this kind of scheme? WOW... what a great time to be GODADDY... GO GO DADDY!

Bros · Mar 10, 2018

Seems insane, but they have so much data about what sells and what does not, that surely they have calculated that this is profitable for them in the long run. It would be very hard to imagine that this is not a calculated strategy.

wwwweb · Mar 10, 2018

Yes, they are killing it, as times are bullish, funny took them 2 months to pay back willynut's bogus bidss, and they can spend $100K a day at godaddy give or take a few k.

They are a threat to most domainers, as they underprice them, and are able to to out bid, and out automate them, wonder when most will get smart, and stop paying them to outbid them with their own money.

Arca · Mar 10, 2018

wwwweb said:
Yes, they are killing it, as times are bullish, funny took them 2 months to pay back willynut's bogus bidss, and they can spend $100K a day at godaddy give or take a few k.

They are a threat to most domainers, as they underprice them, and are able to to out bid, and out automate them, wonder when most will get smart, and stop paying them to outbid them with their own money.

Hard to fathom that their strategy is sustainable. If buying hundreds of thousands of low quality domains each month was profitable why haven't companies been doing it all along? Why aren't BuyDomains and DomainMarket doing it as well? The speed of growth and quantity of low quality domains being purchased (and dropcaught) right now is unprecedented, even for HugeDomains.

tonyk2000 · Mar 10, 2018

Arca said:
If buying hundreds of thousands of low quality domains each month

At some point of time they even stopped to drop domains, at least in 2016/early2017 all or almost all domains they deleted were non-expiring TMs only (likely after receiving C&D). Now they started dropping domains again. A lot more to come I think, would not even post all the nonsense they grab now as expireds on GD (easy to track anyway, as they do not use godaddys privacy).

slimjim270 · Mar 11, 2018

This may be a morbid thought, but...

Over 100,000+ domainers are dying each year. Presuming each has 20+ domains in their registrar accounts and far fewer than 1/2 of them ever share their passwords with anyone else, that is 1,000,000 (curated) domains that will be dropped each year by the domaining community as passwords are lost and domains expire.

With this dynamic, drop catching will likely continue to flourish for the next couple decades and DropCatch is well positioned to harvest cash from this dynamic.

Now... HugeDomains strategically sucks up a prior source of inventory from GD Expiring Auctions, a source that many domainers previously drank from... and the baseline price for domain inventory for future domainers becomes more difficult and expensive.

So my question becomes... does this (in some quirky way) become an opportunity for us as prices rise over time from diminished supply and increased domainer demand catapults baseline prices for inventory acquisition?

Yes, crazy to think that our own demise will provide profits to DropCatch.

-Jim

ps: The "100,000" number was a best-efforts forecast based on the assumption there are 3M domainers worldwide, an average age for the group of 35, and a current life expectancy of 72 for males and 75 for females. Okay - it may be a stretch, but the # of individuals buying and selling domains worldwide has got to be in the high 6, if not 7 or 8 digit range.

MapleDots · Mar 11, 2018

slimjim270 said:
So my question becomes... does this (in some quirky way) become an opportunity for us as prices rise over time from diminished supply and increased domainer demand catapults baseline prices for inventory acquisition?

Average price I see on HD is around 2k, I lost a number of deals on my .ca domains because the client could pick up the matching .com for 2k. There is no reason for me to sell a direct hit domain for only 2k. My clients really want the .ca because they do commerce only in Canada so I would much rather a domainer owned the .com because he would have quoted 10k and my 5k asking price would have been a bargain.

Right now I have to look at HD and consider their price in my negotiations. I would say that made a pretty big impact on the industry.

Arca · Mar 11, 2018

slimjim270 said:
This may be a morbid thought, but...

Over 100,000+ domainers are dying each year. Presuming each has 20+ domains in their registrar accounts and far fewer than 1/2 of them ever share their passwords with anyone else, that is 1,000,000 (curated) domains that will be dropped each year by the domaining community as passwords are lost and domains expire.

With this dynamic, drop catching will likely continue to flourish for the next couple decades and DropCatch is well positioned to harvest cash from this dynamic.

Now... HugeDomains strategically sucks up a prior source of inventory from GD Expiring Auctions, a source that many domainers previously drank from... and the baseline price for domain inventory for future domainers becomes more difficult and expensive.

So my question becomes... does this (in some quirky way) become an opportunity for us as prices rise over time from diminished supply and increased domainer demand catapults baseline prices for inventory acquisition?

Yes, crazy to think that our own demise will provide profits to DropCatch.

-Jim

ps: The "100,000" number was a best-efforts forecast based on the assumption there are 3M domainers worldwide, an average age for the group of 35, and a current life expectancy of 72 for males and 75 for females. Okay - it may be a stretch, but the # of individuals buying and selling domains worldwide has got to be in the high 6, if not 7 or 8 digit range.

I’m pretty sure there are not 3,000,000 domainers in existence and that there are not 100,000 domainers dying each year. I’d be surprised if there are even 100,000 active domainers out there.

I suppose number of domainers (of course it really depends on how you define a "domainer") in the world is in the low thousands. And the number of currently active domainers who to some degree consistently put some money into this and acquire names via auction platforms seems to be in the low hundreds. That’s easy to gauge just by looking at the activity and buyers in domain auctions. In most auctions there are usually not more than a few dozen to a hundred bidders (and most of them don’t bid above the minimum bid).

It seems most domains come from regular domain owners letting them expire for a number of reasons, and businesses letting them expire for a number of reasons. Domainers dying does not seem to be a significant source of domains becoming available again.

The number of quality domains dropping seems to be decreasing though. And as more registrars have in house pre-release channels (or reach deals with NameJet/SnapNames/GoDaddy to handle this for them), I believe this number is set to decrease further. For example a number of registrars have joined GoDaddy’s pre-release stream in recent years. Those names either went through inefficient/expensive pre-release streams or did not go through pre-release at all, so most of them would previously go to pending delete. Now they get bought up before ever becoming available for re-registration by dropcatchers.

With pre-release inventory being relatively limited as well, I assume NameJet/SnapNames/GoDaddy will court more registrars that currently don’t have such arrangements (and just send their names to pen del), such as gandi, annulet, key-systems, cronon ag, rebel, fast domain, and so on. Some of these registrars might have made such arrangements recently for all I know (edit: so I looked this up after posting this and it seems that at least fast domain is now sending names to GD). For NameJet/SnapNames/GoDaddy to NOT court them is a bad move considering how profitable it is to sell domains via pre-release. NameJet and SnapNames have lost several partners to GoDaddy, and GoDaddy seems ever hungry for more names to go through their pre-release. So I’d be surprised if they are not working on striking new pre-release deals behind the scenes. NameJet and SnapNames’ existence/business models depend on it, so if they are not working on this, they are just sitting there and passively watching their own demise (NameJet seem to want to fix this by finding more private sellers). The outcome of more domains being sent to pre-release would be less domains going to pending delete. And any registrar with a pre-release solution is never going to send an amazing domain to pending delete (i.e. such domains don't make it through pre-release without being bought). That’s a loss for dropcatchers obviously. If a handful of the largest registrars that don’t have any pre-release system in place join NameJet/SnapNames/GoDaddy or set up their own in-house system (like Dynadot, Name, NS have done) it’s going to massively dry up the pending delete pool. If you look at which registrars the best domains on the drop come from, they almost consistently come from the same few registrars with a large amount of domains under management that don’t have any pre-release system in place. A lot of Chinese registrars also seem to be letting good names go to pen del so I assume they don’t have any pre-release system in place. They might set up in house pre-release systems for their domestic Chinese customers eventually. Corporate registrars (markmonitor, csc) have also been, and continue to be, dropping valuable domains, and they now seem to smarten up and offer their clients to broker these names for them instead of just letting them drop.

So there are numerous factors that are working towards fewer and fewer good names being dropped. And hardly any factors indicating that more good domains will be dropped.

This could have affected HugeDomains negatively, as they've built up their holdings on the drop - but now they've just moved a lot of their buying into pre-release at other platforms and compete directly against domainers in auctions instead. So they may even welcome that opportunity to buy ever more names, as they can't bid against their own customers at DropCatch (so they can only pick up the stuff nobody backorders), but they can bid against their own customers for any and all domains at GoDaddy auctions.

As for opportunity, the current developments make it harder for regular domainers to acquire new domains. The centralized nature of pre-release availability at open auction style platforms make it increasingly easy for a small number of corporate buyers to buy up a large part of the domains. And when you add bots that bid indiscriminately on domains into the mix it really drives up prices across the board.

Companies like HugeDomains also seem to be working with very slim margins, certainly not something that could work for regular domainers. I’ve seen them buy names for $500 and list them for sale at $2000-2500. A regular domainer is not going to be able to keep things moving in the current market if you sell names for just 4-5x your acquisition cost pre-commissions (you need a really high sell-through to make that viable with a few hundred or a few thousand domains, which is not possible considering how even relatively low quality domains fetch hundreds in auctions nowadays). HugeDomains seem to offer cheaper pricing than most domainers, so rather than diminished supply you could say that they increase the quantity of reasonably priced "domainer owned" supply (though the flip side of that coin is that a lot of the stuff they hold would sit there unregistered otherwise).

GeorgeQuang · Mar 11, 2018

Arca said:
I’m pretty sure there are not 3,000,000 domainers in existence and that there are not 100,000 domainers dying each year. I’d be surprised if there are even 100,000 active domainers out there.

I suppose number of domainers (of course it really depends on how you define a "domainer") in the world is in the low thousands. And the number of currently active domainers who to some degree consistently put some money into this and acquire names via auction platforms seems to be in the low hundreds. That’s easy to gauge just by looking at the activity and buyers in domain auctions. In most auctions there are usually not more than a few dozen to a hundred bidders (and most of them don’t bid above the minimum bid).

It seems most domains come from regular domain owners letting them expire for a number of reasons, and businesses letting them expire for a number of reasons. Domainers dying does not seem to be a significant source of domains becoming available again.

The number of quality domains dropping seems to be decreasing though. And as more registrars have in house pre-release channels (or reach deals with NameJet/SnapNames/GoDaddy to handle this for them), I believe this number is set to decrease further. For example a number of registrars have joined GoDaddy’s pre-release stream in recent years. Those names either went through inefficient/expensive pre-release streams or did not go through pre-release at all, so most of them would previously go to pending delete. Now they get bought up before ever becoming available for re-registration by dropcatchers.

With pre-release inventory being relatively limited as well, I assume NameJet/SnapNames/GoDaddy will court more registrars that currently don’t have such arrangements (and just send their names to pen del), such as gandi, annulet, key-systems, cronon ag, rebel, fast domain, and so on. Some of these registrars might have made such arrangements recently for all I know (edit: so I looked this up after posting this and it seems that at least fast domain is now sending names to GD). For NameJet/SnapNames/GoDaddy to NOT court them is a bad move considering how profitable it is to sell domains via pre-release. NameJet and SnapNames have lost several partners to GoDaddy, and GoDaddy seems ever hungry for more names to go through their pre-release. So I’d be surprised if they are not working on striking new pre-release deals behind the scenes. NameJet and SnapNames’ existence/business models depend on it, so if they are not working on this, they are just sitting there and passively watching their own demise (NameJet seem to want to fix this by finding more private sellers). The outcome of more domains being sent to pre-release would be less domains going to pending delete. And any registrar with a pre-release solution is never going to send an amazing domain to pending delete (i.e. such domains don't make it through pre-release without being bought). That’s a loss for dropcatchers obviously. If a handful of the largest registrars that don’t have any pre-release system in place join NameJet/SnapNames/GoDaddy or set up their own in-house system (like Dynadot, Name, NS have done) it’s going to massively dry up the pending delete pool. If you look at which registrars the best domains on the drop come from, they almost consistently come from the same few registrars with a large amount of domains under management that don’t have any pre-release system in place. A lot of Chinese registrars also seem to be letting good names go to pen del so I assume they don’t have any pre-release system in place. They might set up in house pre-release systems for their domestic Chinese customers eventually. Corporate registrars (markmonitor, csc) have also been, and continue to be, dropping valuable domains, and they now seem to smarten up and offer their clients to broker these names for them instead of just letting them drop.

So there are numerous factors that are working towards fewer and fewer good names being dropped. And hardly any factors indicating that more good domains will be dropped.

This could have affected HugeDomains negatively, as they've built up their holdings on the drop - but now they've just moved a lot of their buying into pre-release at other platforms and compete directly against domainers in auctions instead. So they may even welcome that opportunity to buy ever more names, as they can't bid against their own customers at DropCatch (so they can only pick up the stuff nobody backorders), but they can bid against their own customers for any and all domains at GoDaddy auctions.

As for opportunity, the current developments make it harder for regular domainers to acquire new domains. The centralized nature of pre-release availability at open auction style platforms make it increasingly easy for a small number of corporate buyers to buy up a large part of the domains. And when you add bots that bid indiscriminately on domains into the mix it really drives up prices across the board.

Companies like HugeDomains also seem to be working with very slim margins, certainly not something that could work for regular domainers. I’ve seen them buy names for $500 and list them for sale at $2000-2500. A regular domainer is not going to be able to keep things moving in the current market if you sell names for just 4-5x your acquisition cost pre-commissions (you need a really high sell-through to make that viable with a few hundred or a few thousand domains, which is not possible considering how even relatively low quality domains fetch hundreds in auctions nowadays). HugeDomains seem to offer cheaper pricing than most domainers, so rather than diminished supply you could say that they increase the quantity of reasonably priced "domainer owned" supply (though the flip side of that coin is that a lot of the stuff they hold would sit there unregistered otherwise).

This is one of the best comment i have ever read in this forum.
All you posted was 100% right, @Arca .
The moving of HugeDomains strategy from Dropped list to Pre-Release Auctions is a part of our industry: there are tons of good domains are being moved under Pre-Release Auctions before being expired, so that the quantity of good domains in Dropped list are decreasing. You could not acquire as many as names like you did before.
Want to exist in this industry today ? You have to pay more and think more. Don't forget to let HugeDomains waste their money by shill-bidding with low quality names ( they bid by bots, not by humanity like us).

trelgor · Mar 12, 2018

Looks like domainer doomsday. I liked it better when anything not ultrapremiumgeneric was pigeonsh#t. Give us a break? No?

jideofor · Mar 12, 2018

Well, will they be alive in 5 to 10 years using this strategy? can they buy the entire internet domains? how would they handle renewals as well as staff salaries and other expenses?

thekiller · Mar 12, 2018

jideofor said:
Well, will they be alive in 5 to 10 years using this strategy? can they buy the entire internet domains? how would they handle renewals as well as staff salaries and other expenses?

When they listed a crappy domain for $2895 it would pay for the renewal of many domains itself. Many of those will be dropped in first year or so.

GeorgeQuang · Mar 12, 2018

As a full-time domainer like me, i'm seriously thinking about moving my capital into other industry. Of course will continue domaining in part-time.
Nowaday, i only buy 1-2 names/day, due to HugeDomain 's strategy and domaining skyrocket pricing.
Worse than last year.

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

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