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GoDaddy Auctions vs Sedo Auctions - Best Auction MarketPlace 2020?

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Chaz1

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Which auction(s) would you recommend when trying to sell domains?

Reasons why you choose one over the other?

Good Experiences?

Bad Experiences?

Pro's?

Cons?

Thank you in advance for all guidance. Stay Safe!
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
I've only tried GD, all I can say is money waste you're lucky if you get your investment back
 
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I've only tried GD, all I can say is money waste you're lucky if you get your investment back

That sucks.

I'm in the same boat as OP.

I have this sick feeling in my stomach just listing anywhere these days for auction.

Never understood the concept of a "auction flat fee" to even start and THEN a commission after the sale?
 
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Godaddy auctions is so complicated set up

So many options, bs; wish they kept it simple.

Dont forget pay for reserve, pay feature list etc
 
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Sedo’s not that much better auction.. (if at all)

Glad didnt bring up Flippa; Worst is flippa

I recommend trying this “DaaZ.com” auctions
promising, accept Paypal sith low commissions
 
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The problem with "new" auction platforms is lack of traffic or deep pockets or both.
 
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The problem with "new" auction platforms is lack of traffic or deep pockets or both.

How do you know? have you tried them?
that’s incumbent thinking happy status quo
 
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How do you know? have you tried them?
that’s incumbent thinking happy status quo

nope never did. at this point I'll probably have to bite the bullet and either.

1. go with the usual suspects.
or
2. get myself my own Wordpress auction script or Php script from Envato and just set up my own domain auction site. As far as traffic I'd be in the same boat as "other than the usual suspects" auction sites.

My newly made auction site would probably have the same traffic. at least I can keep loss at a minimum.

maybe even get a following.

It's all about controlling the audience and just give them "tunnel vision" on my domains only.

I mean seriously. if you list with any platform. you STILL have to promote your auction AT those platforms.

God only knows how the platforms redirect the link to your auction.

"oh! you don't like the domain you were sent here to see? well we have a ton of other domains with the same keywords right over here that's much cheaper and at expired auctions. Why not have a look?"

If I'm going to spend money to promote my domain auctions. I want to spend my money on promoting MY domain auctions not the auction platform where my domains are being auctioned at.
IMO
 
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There's a sweet spot with every auction platform where the amount of listings is relatively small compared to the amount of buyers visiting. This is usually a few months to a year after the platform has gone live. We've seen it with site like Flippa, Brand Bucket and Squadhelp etc. The problem for domainers is that the success of the site leads to more listings, greed on the part of the owners and ultimately the listings to buyers ratio going way out and the site being worthless unless you have ultra premium names. This is now GD, Flippa, Sedo, Namejet, BB and pretty much every auction site you can think of. Your name will get lost in the crowd.

NameLiquidate is probably about to hit the sweet spot soon but you can only get a limited amount of money for each name.

Unless your names are of a high quality there's no point auctioning them at all cos you'll just be wasting money.
 
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There's a sweet spot with every auction platform where the amount of listings is relatively small compared to the amount of buyers visiting. This is usually a few months to a year after the platform has gone live. We've seen it with site like Flippa, Brand Bucket and Squadhelp etc. The problem for domainers is that the success of the site leads to more listings, greed on the part of the owners and ultimately the listings to buyers ratio going way out and the site being worthless unless you have ultra premium names. This is now GD, Flippa, Sedo, Namejet, BB and pretty much every auction site you can think of. Your name will get lost in the crowd.

NameLiquidate is probably about to hit the sweet spot soon but you can only get a limited amount of money for each name.

Unless your names are of a high quality there's no point auctioning them at all cos you'll just be wasting money.

where does Dropcatch fall in this scenario of yours? has Dropcatch hit this sweet spot?
 
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where does Dropcatch fall in this scenario of yours? has Dropcatch hit this sweet spot?
I could be wrong as I've never used Dropcatch but it's my understanding that they only auction names they've caught and don't allow user/private auctions.

If they did I'd assume they would promote their own auction over private auctions for obvious reasons (like GoDaddy).
 
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I could be wrong as I've never used Dropcatch but it's my understanding that they only auction names they've caught and don't allow user/private auctions.

If they did I'd assume they would promote their own auction over private auctions for obvious reasons (like GoDaddy).

You’ve never heard of “private sellers”?

They exist all right. They usually get filtered by prospective DC buter due to crazy reserves etc

i stilk have yet to try them, but i will.
It is to my understanding, they mostly suffer from being ignored, in leu of expired auctions sell like hotcakes yu see crazy bids all expired
 
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I could be wrong as I've never used Dropcatch but it's my understanding that they only auction names they've caught and don't allow user/private auctions.

If they did I'd assume they would promote their own auction over private auctions for obvious reasons (like GoDaddy).

I use to think Dropcatch only auctioned domains they've caught where more than one person ordered a dropcatch on.

but I have been since been informed that they quietly implemented a new option for domainers to list their domains as "private seller".
 
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I use to think Dropcatch only auctioned domains they've caught where more than one person ordered a dropcatch on.

but I have been since been informed that they quietly implemented a new option for domainers to list their domains as "private seller".

Quietly? they’ve officially exited beta.

Prob remains, bias; private sellers get ignored going to have no reserve 4L, just to spite them (missing out) crazy how more the expired gets.. didnt even kno can sell there.
 
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Quietly? they’ve officially exited beta.

Prob remains, ther bad bias; DC private sellers on DropCatch get ignored; going to have no reserve 4L, just to spite them ;p (guys are missing out) crazy how more att’n the expired gets.. didnt even kno can sell there
Thats what I meant by being the same as GD with the favouritism.
 
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You’ve never heard of “private sellers”?

They exist all right. They usually get filtered by prospective DC buter due to crazy reserves etc

i stilk have yet to try them, but i will.
It is to my understanding, they mostly suffer from being ignored, in leu of expired auctions which sell like hotcakes

I think domainers frequent dropcatch because their focus is catching expired domains.

The mindset is that. "people pay $59 to order a dropcatch from dropcatch.com. A premium when you could get it cheaper else where. People pay the high price because they want the job done right and just done. Want to catch your dream domain that just happens to have expired? Go with the best Go dropcatch."

Of course there are other options. Dropcatch has missed some dropcatches for me. Best part? no catch? no pay.

other services keep the money. catch or no catch. some won't even let you get a credit for the missed dropcatch to use for a different domain.


I always use the term. "Watering hole".

If this is where domain "crocodiles" park themselves. probably a good place to auction. although I have noticed not too many big money final bids for private sellers.

decent $250-$500 consistent ending bids for mediocre to decent domains. mostly those with proper aging and backlinks.
 
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Quietly? they’ve officially exited beta.

Prob remains, bias; private sellers get ignored going to have no reserve 4L, just to spite them (missing out) crazy how more the expired gets.. didnt even kno can sell there.

I said quietly because I've been harassing them to get be a private seller. Even contacted the CEO. he replied back telling me their private seller option has been live for a while.

never did get a reply from my past request to be added so never bothered to follow up. just assumed they would contact me and let me know like they said they would.

Glad it's out of beta.
 
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Thats what I meant by being the same as GD with the favouritism.

agreed but I guess that's with all platforms. it is the "duty" of the domainer to do the proper promotion of their domain auctions.

Can't rely on simply listing and watch a flood of bids on your domain no matter how good it is.

a realistic domainer would never leave anything to chance.

always have to have an edge.

I would complain too if my domain auction gets no bids.

but I'd only have myself to blame for not promoting it properly.

Fortune favors the prepared.
 
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Dan.com is the best for me.
most domains sold through Dan in the last year.

Godaddy: Too complicated and time consuming.

Sedo: used to be ok, but also too time consuming.

Dan.com: Easy and fast to set up. they also have very good landing pages. And the option to rent a domain which is something i had been waiting for. That works very good.

To my opinion both Sedo and Godaddy are living in the past and forgot to focus on what the customer (both sellers and buyers) really need. They arw not changing fast enough compared to Dan.com.
 
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Dan isnt an auction platform.

2020 auction platforms...
 
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It's a big crap-shoot when you send something to auction on any platform. Unless you want to sell it for domain investor pricing, you'll need to do your own marketing to end users.

I had a lot of success with an auction in 2008 at Sedo. I had a buyer contact me for WorldOfWellness(.)com and submit a $1,000 offer. I countered at $5,450, and then the buyer sent me their "final" offer of $1,500.

So I sent the domain to auction. Within a day or two, the auction received a second bid.

I then contacted about 10-20 companies that used this same term or very similar terms in their name or marketing taglines.

On the last day of the auction a new bidder joined and raised the bidding (along with the 2nd bidder) all the way up to $7,000. The first bidder never bid again after the domain hit $2,000. Had I not contacted 10-20 companies, the bidding probably would have ended at $2,000. So what you do in terms of marketing will make all the difference.

https://sedo.com/search/details/?language=us&aid=27005&language=us

Last year, when things were slow, I thought I'd replicated the same thing since it was "so easy" the first time I did it. I had recently acquired the domain kathmann(dot)com which was a family name and used as a company name as well.

I spent about 3-4 days of solid work reached out to over 100 people with the family name and already owned other domains as well as businesses with the same name, though most of the businesses were in countries where ".com" wasn't important to them.

For this auction, I paid $160 for the domain when I purchased it, and the auction ended at a low $100 minus fees to another domain investor. So I lost about $100 or more on the domain because it was before Sedo lowered their fees. (shows my 2nd account in the link below is in India, but I'm in the US)

https://sedo.com/search/details/?la...trackingOrigin=&aid=488951&origin=&language=e

So you can have great success or no success with an auction on any platform. No matter what, you should reach out to potential buyers once the auction is started (and preferably after there is one bid). In the case above, even if you spend a ton of time getting the right people to the auction, if luck isn't on your side, it may be fruitless no matter what you do. Because of this, I've just gone back to waiting for buyers to come to me rather than the other way around. It's too much time for me to waste on something that can't be replicated with a high degree of certainty.

The other problem with selling at auction is if a potential buyer is willing to pay $10,000 for a domain, by selling at an auction, you are potentially allowing them to buy for a huge discount. They now only need to pay $10 more than the highest losing bid which may be 1/10 of what they would pay.

If you proceed with an auction, I've also asked myself "which platform" many times. To me, from what is currently available, Sedo feels like the most professional experience for an end user. I say this because I believe you need to have an auction membership to participate at GoDaddy, and flippa has always felt really scammy to me. eBay is another option, but again I think the perception of not being a "professional" domain marketplace is a negative and eBay will not help you with the domain transfer, and you still need to worry about some type of escrow service and the communication of this process, so better to just avoid eBay.
 
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Might as well put it in Namepros auctions because you're only reaching investors.

The odds of having two end-users who are ready to buy your domain at the exact time of auction are astronomically low.

The platforms are the only winners.
 
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Might as well put it in Namepros auctions because you're only reaching investors.

The odds of having two end-users who are ready to buy your domain at the exact time of auction are astronomically low.

The platforms are the only winners.

Aren't you guys really talking about selling many domains for not a lot of money (high volume versus high selling price?) So in that case, auction fees can add up if you have a lot of domains you list that don't sell or sell for less than you paid for it. The fees eliminate your profits.

But what about the occasional seller that gets an offer out of the blue on their domain without advertising it for sale. Let's say the offer isn't small, like $15K. Wouldn't listing it in an auction with like a $20K reserve be a good thing for the seller to do to double check that there isn't another interested party out there willing to pay more. The auction fee is inconsequential related to original offer amount.

This also could be used to test if the buyer is a fraud or not because If the buyer is a seasoned investor, they're going to see the domain get listed and either contact the seller directly to try to negotiate outside the auction or bid on the auction for fear of losing the domain to another investor.

Worse case, no one bids at all or no bids are anywhere near the original $15k offer and the original buyer sees that and lowers their offer. But generally the rule of negotiation is that there is some back and forth and everyone low balls on their first offer, unless they are a no-nonsense type of negotiator and just give their final offer right away - but that's pretty foolish/lazy from a negotiating strategy. So the buyer is probably willing to pay more than $15K. If the auction fails. The seller could agree to the original offer and say they are firm and just be prepared to sit on the domain for a few weeks or months to see if they buyer comes around and if not and they REALLY want to sell it, agree to a lower price.

Bottom line is it seems foolish to sell a relatively high value domain privately without first testing the market unless you don't care about risking leaving a lot of money on the table.
 
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