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auctions Is HugeDomains dominating brandable domain auctions at GoDaddy?

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Dimitris

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Since the beginning of last month I am bidding in quite a few brandable domain name auctions at GoDaddy.
When I check the whois for the ones I did not win, I find that in 8 out of 10 brandable domains, HugeDomains is the registrant.

They must be currently working on a strategy to acquire as many as possible brandable names while setting some other - mostly keyword names - that were previously for sale at HugeDomains for "Auction Type: Pre-Release" at their DropCatch platform.

I found one such keyword name which was for sale ($2995) and now it shows a changed whois : "This domain was caught by DropCatch.com".


Some names HugeDomains won in GD auctions include:

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They are using proxy bids and I cannot tell the budget they have per name as they even spent $720, $670 and more than $100 to acquire some of the brandable names.

They won some really nice names for their inventory and they make this game more competitive and as such it is harder for individual investor to acquire expired brandable names within a reasonable budget.

We are competing with the big guns.
 
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was like this for while no?
 
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Since the beginning of last month I am bidding in quite a few brandable domain name auctions at GoDaddy.
When I check the whois for the ones I did not win, I find that in 8 out of 10 brandable domains, HugeDomains is the registrant.

They must be currently working on a strategy to acquire as many as possible brandable names while setting some other - mostly keyword names - that were previously for sale at HugeDomains for "Auction Type: Pre-Release" at their DropCatch platform.

I found one such keyword name which was for sale ($2995) and now it shows a changed whois : "This domain was caught by DropCatch.com".


Some names HugeDomains won in GD auctions include:

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They are using proxy bids and I cannot tell the budget they have per name as they even spent $720, $670 and more than $100 to acquire some of the brandable names.

They won some really nice names for their inventory and they make this game more competitive and as such it is harder for individual investor to acquire expired brandable names within a reasonable budget.

We are competing with the big guns.
They are amazon of Domain names...most of their domains are priced within $3.5k...i believe they clock 50% of total numbers of domain bought/sold in an year
 
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It seems you are just realising this. They have been on this hunt since 2015 I think?
 
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It seems you are just realising this. They have been on this hunt since 2015 I think?

Actually form 2015 to 2017 you could get some quality brandable names from auctions with low bids - I bought a few during that time with HugeDomains not competing, at least for the names that I won.

Now it seems that we have similar taste and they are willing to spend a lot more to win the names.

I had a kind of break since mid 2017 until Feb 2019 and now I found it is almost impossible to score some quality names without paying a lot more.
 
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Oh MentorSpot.com i was bidder on it but Huge domain set proxy bids on it.
 
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They are really play big in this game. And there must be some insiders games too with the registrars
 
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They are really play big in this game. And there must be some insiders games too with the registrars
it is best you dont bid on most name to prevent triggering their bots lol.
 
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it is best you dont bid on most name to prevent triggering their bots lol.

I think this might actually be true. In some of the names I was the first bidder... :(
 
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Oh MentorSpot.com i was bidder on it but Huge domain set proxy bids on it.

We were competing against each other on this one but they scared us away, lol :)
 
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you got to pay the cost, to be the boss, of domain names in auctions

and that's just the way it is

best to try and buy these names, before they expire from their current owners.

imo….
 
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Most domain investors focus on expiring domain names without even looking at undervalued aftermarket names. 99%+ of expiring names are worthless but most domain investors with a few years under their belts have much better names than one is likely to find scouring drop lists.
 
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you got to pay the cost, to be the boss, of domain names in auctions

and that's just the way it is

best to try and buy these names, before they expire from their current owners.

imo….

Most domain investors focus on expiring domain names without even looking at undervalued aftermarket names. 99%+ of expiring names are worthless but most domain investors with a few years under their belts have much better names than one is likely to find scouring drop lists.

Totally agree. Well, despite the fact that I missed some good names to HugeDomains, I found some similar brandable ones to compensate for the loss, lol.

How you like that:

Successful backorder with GD:
upload_2019-4-10_17-36-57.png


and hand-registered S / e / c / u / m / e / t / r / i / c / s, because I did not win SecMetrix. Currently listed with BrandPa.


I don't think most investors with large pockets like HugeDomains dedicate substantial time scouring drop lists and searching for quality available brandable names. They just compete for names that are served/promoted to them through known auction platforms and public lists.

There is still some hope for us, but it comes with side-effect: a visit to the ophthalmologist at some point...
 
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I don't think most investors with large pockets like HugeDomains dedicate substantial time scouring drop lists

Hi

i'd say, you'd be wrong to assume that

as I posted in another thread, how they and others, have picked up some domains that I dropped recently.

you don't get to be Huge, without dedication.

imo...
 
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Your right they don't spend time, their software picks up on bid patterns, last minute bidding, active bids etc... they don't need a list, they can react to information, that is why it is such a great fit because they put that $1xx proxy on every low level name you like. So basically you are going to have to pay 3 figures to acquire any name they have a even minimal amount of interest in, as their bot bidder will blanket every auction. Back in 2015 when it was first discovered, if you placed a bid in the last 5 minutes, someone would immediately put a proxy bid in for $102, this was the beginning of the end. This has been great for Godaddy, as you have a bot bidder placing $xxx bids on a crappy domain, only 1 person may have an interest in at any given time in the World, making them pay up effectively on every interested name. I think they have over 5 million domains now, so I guess maybe 10 million soon enough.
 
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This is why Bidder IDs are going to be terrible for us, but people don't seem to realize it.

I wrote the text below here:
https://www.namepros.com/posts/7172642/

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@Paul Nicks , please don't add bidder IDs. I think the downsides haven't been fully considered yet.


Already, it's tough enough that some large companies (probably HugeDomains being one) use algorithms or artificial intelligence in order to do automated bidding:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/hu...50-of-expiring-domains-at-godaddy-com.988898/

But bidder IDs add another factor, because instead of the big companies seeing that various domains got a bid (which is one basic way of finding domains to bid on), they can do more targeting, which is very useful for them.

I'm sure they can figure out which bidders are good at finding gems, and so then they can search for those IDs, and then focus more on those auctions... it's a useful datapoint for them to know a domain was bid on by a certain bidder, compared to it being anonymous.

I don't know how their software works, but I'm sure they could set their algorithms/formulas to basically "bid higher if certain bidders bid on this domain"... because they know it's an indicator that the domain is good (compared to if it's anonymous, they don't know if it's just some random person making a bad bid).

GoDaddy knows who winning bidders are, and I think that's good enough.
 
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This is why Bidder IDs are going to be terrible for us, but people don't seem to realize it.

I wrote the text below here:
https://www.namepros.com/posts/7172642/

---

@Paul Nicks , please don't add bidder IDs. I think the downsides haven't been fully considered yet.


Already, it's tough enough that some large companies (probably HugeDomains being one) use algorithms or artificial intelligence in order to do automated bidding:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/hu...50-of-expiring-domains-at-godaddy-com.988898/

But bidder IDs add another factor, because instead of the big companies seeing that various domains got a bid (which is one basic way of finding domains to bid on), they can do more targeting, which is very useful for them.

I'm sure they can figure out which bidders are good at finding gems, and so then they can search for those IDs, and then focus more on those auctions... it's a useful datapoint for them to know a domain was bid on by a certain bidder, compared to it being anonymous.

I don't know how their software works, but I'm sure they could set their algorithms/formulas to basically "bid higher if certain bidders bid on this domain"... because they know it's an indicator that the domain is good (compared to if it's anonymous, they don't know if it's just some random person making a bad bid).

GoDaddy knows who winning bidders are, and I think that's good enough.
I think the key is the bidder id will not be revealed until the auction is over, but hopefully they do a good job in masking those id's in their coding.
 
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sure makes you wonder what roi they net after all renewals.. auction fees... etc..

I guess we will never know..

several possibilities come to mind.. the owner(s) made a ton of money in past... are sitting on millions.. do this for fun.. do not mind breakng even or maybe even taking loss.. in more recent times.

or.. they make a lot of profit with this model... maybe through various discount programs.. even on gd.. when paying for auctions.. or discounted renewals... etc.

any thoughts?
 
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sure makes you wonder what roi they net after all renewals.. auction fees... etc..

I guess we will never know..

several possibilities come to mind.. the owner(s) made a ton of money in past... are sitting on millions.. do this for fun.. do not mind breakng even or maybe even taking loss.. in more recent times.

or.. they make a lot of profit with this model... maybe through various discount programs.. even on gd.. when paying for auctions.. or discounted renewals... etc.

any thoughts?
Somebody owned a lot of backorders, when the backorder loophole was in play, HugeNames bot could be beat if you submitted your backorder a few seconds before the auction ended otherwise they were sniping a lot of closeouts via backorder right when they expired. Most people were clueless, and kept hitting refresh looking for the $12 domain to go to $11 closeout, little did they know they were getting sniped by a backorder right when the auction ended. So when they ended this loophole, they didn't do it immediately, they gave it sometime to get all those backorders used up, as they were pretty much worthless since they already have their own drop catch system.
 
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Somebody owned a lot of backorders, when the backorder loophole was in play, HugeNames bot could be beat if you submitted your backorder a few seconds before the domain expired, otherwise they were sniping a lot of closeouts via backorder right when they expired. Most people were clueless, and kept hitting refresh looking for the $12 domain to go to $11 closeout, little did they know they were getting sniped by a backorder right when the auction ended.

I see.

wanna take a wild guess as to how much profit they net after all expenses each year?

im curious bout your guess on this :)
 
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I see.

wanna take a wild guess as to how much profit they net after all expenses each year?

im curious bout your guess on this :)

Because they have so many trashy names, I would put their sell through at 0.3-0.4%.

5mm * 0.4 % = 20 000 names * 2.5k$= 50mm$

Minus $40mm renewals = $10mm pretax and other cost income.

If they net 5mm, it is still not great business. They probably had to invest few hundred millions to get that profit, so IRR could be 2-5% range. They could just buy government bonds for that.
 
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Because they have so many trashy names, I would put their sell through at 0.3-0.4%.

5mm * 0.4 % = 20 000 names * 2.5k$= 50mm$

Minus $40mm renewals = $10mm pretax and other cost income.

If they net 5mm, it is still not great business. They probably had to invest few hundred millions to get that profit, so IRR could be 2-5% range. They could just buy government bonds for that.

maybe a large initial investment when they started.. like you say.. and big loss.. and now they are just trying to chase their investment with "minimal" annual profits...

a bit like how it works for many domainers who started in recent years... or even a bit earlier.. with big initial investment/losses and then spending years trying to return to zero.. and then hopefully start making some profit after that if all goes well..

except of course on a bigger pretty much industrial scale.. with hugedomains.
hmmm.
 
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maybe a large initial investment when they started.. like you say.. and big loss.. and now they are just trying to chase their investment with "minimal" annual profits...

a bit like how it works for many domainers who started in recent years... or even a bit earlier.. with big initial investment/losses and then spending years trying to return to zero.. and then hopefully start making some profit after that if all goes well..

except of course on a bigger pretty much industrial scale.. with hugedomains.
hmmm.
Well HugeNames is part of TurnCommerce, a larger company, I am sure they have some real gem names put away also, sell a few dozen of those a year, at much higher pricing which can really skew the results. One division can play off another, in terms of subsidizing.
 
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Well HugeNames is part of TurnCommerce, a larger company, I am sure they have some real gem names put away also, sell a few dozen of those a year, at much higher pricing which can really skew the results. One division can play off another, in terms of subsidizing.

true.. I was just trying to get a clearer picture whether specifically that one venture called hugedomains of the parent company.. is in itself a profitable venture.. overall since it started.. but like I said.. we'll probably never know.

since we were specifically talking about hugedomains here.. and how they operate etc...

but of course as you say... if overall you make millions in various ventures... plus have a lot of cash reserves otherwise.. then even if some one venture looses you money... you don't really care so much.
 
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