Afternic Bazaar

[Badger]

116 listings in TOTAL....

I can remember the day when it was the place to buy up domains on the cheap.

I bought some fab names from there in the past - from a potential list of 0000's - and now the list they do have is really lame..

I wonder if Bill will stick his head by this thread and maybe offer some reasoning for this..

Seems such a shame, i used to visit daily and now.....

 

[Kenny]

Two years of bad press hasnt helped one bit. Deserved I might add. They ran the whole kit and kaboodle into the ground. Sorry, sad but true.

 

[suntech]

I've had over a hundred names listed on afternic for over a year. I haven't had one offer. It's too bad because I like their format better than sedo.

I've sold nine names from sedo in the same time frame.

I moved some parking from sedo to afternic last month and have seen a drop in visitors for those names.

I have almost 300 names parked at sedo and have two sales in the works right now.

Happy Tradin' !
J.K.

 

[fonzie_007]

This year I've had 1 sale at Afternic and two other offers. At sedo: 0 sales and 1 offer. Ironically, NameDrive has been tops for me: 2 sales and 4 other offers!

 

[namebug]

I sold many names there early on, then had trouble with non-payers and having my auctions suddenly disappear, so I gave up on it. Too much trouble for a few bucks

 

[IAmAllanShore]

Increased membership prices with decreased visibility and an increase in bogus sales and an increase in competition from Sedo... Advertising drives this game, and Afternic hasn't put up penny-one that I've seen recently. (I'm sure they're advertising, it just hasn't stood out to me).
-Allan

 

[floatingworld]

I have sold a few names on the afternic bazaar recently and like the facility of purchasing bazaar bucks with np$ from the np store

 

[yandig]

I've had mixed results with Afternic bazaar, but I've sold a few low-priced names there.

Note: I just got my first offer on Afternic for mid-xxx. Hopefully, the sale will go through

 

[duskdawn]

Ironically, NameDrive has been tops for me: 2 sales and 4 other offers!

Not ironic really, since end-buyers tend to visit the site to buy the name rather than search sedo or afternic first.

 

[goodkarmaco]

No end users, thus pitiful domain sales

The whole trouble with the auction houses and I am not just saying this about Afterni, is this..

They started spending big on parking programs and getting people to list all their names on their auction house years ago.

Result.. they spend no money or very little on advertising to get end users to the auction house. They need to do that to get buyers to come in droves if the names are going to sell.

The Bazaar is almost like the main auction house. Almost the only people who see the names and thus buy them are us.. the domain owners..

If a auction house would switch the money they spend to direct advertising to END USERS then we will see sales ZOOM!.

The auction houses that have poor parking programs that do not allow the user to pick keywords and thus the pages do not resolve should especially abandon that marketing program. Domainers today expect those attributes so if that is not their strong card why not shift strategy ( invest that money into marketing to end users) and go for the big bucks that the domain business is really about, selling names?

I ALSO PREDICT THE visionary auction house that does that will become the industry leader. The reason.. if names are selling like hotcakes at a certain auction house would you not want to list your names with them?.

Another thing is we hear of dribbles of sales at Dnj journel and places like that. Can you imagine the market if money was spent to get the end users to log in looking for a certain name for their business? I predict BILLIONS for a market like that . Why not?

We have the names. We just do not have the lookers to buy those names. When was the last time you have seen a commercial or a ad in the local paper, " buy a domain name for your business today at-----.

Here is my point. Sed- has now reported it has over FOUR MILLION NAMES FOR SALE!

How many sell in any given day? Check it out for yourself. Guess? Five thousand?. One thousand? One hundred?

Nah. Less than a dozen!.

In my view that is pitiful and so much untapped sales are lost and so many domainers are not selling anything. They have decent salable names. Just no lookers. Well us domainers we look and sometimes buy.

So get with it auction houses. Someday a very well off domainer or company will come along and implement this idea and your "sit on your investment marketing plan" will loose way and in the aftermath you will not be the big player you have been.

I have been in business for over (40) years and it amazes me how little effort and money is directed at the main market for domain names. That market is the END USERS.

Please rate my post.

Many thanks,

Roderick

 

[AdoptableDomains]

The trouble with Bazaar is first it was geared from the very beginning a wholesale spot for sellers to buy from sellers.

Second,the selling prices are so low, and there is a listing fee, even if that fee is only $.25 to $.50. I find most names there are just names someone has put up before drop to try to recover some of their cost because they didn't sell and don't want to pay renewal. That makes for poor quality and fewer lookers. Drop the bazaar bucks for listing and you would get more for sale there and probably more lookers, even if wholesale lookers. It would be better to charge the bazaar bucks for sales success. Say the listing price is $100 and it costs 10% commission if you sell. You would need to have 10 bazaar bucks in your account to list. If it sold for $100, they deduct 10 BB from your account. If it sold for $30, they deduct 3. Still a reverse auction, still pay the service, and still buy BB up front. However, if you don't pay unless you sell, there will be more participants and better quality names becase you could list better names at higher prices (up to $400), and still have a good shot at it selling for more than $6 and paying listing rather than paying and it still not sell.

Third, I don't think most sellers like reverse auctions. I think a reverse auction is better for a retail market than a wholesale one.

 

[goodkarmaco]

Not profitable

I have studied the numbers when selling in the bazaar and even when purchasing dn $ you will losse money selling on it. Why?

The AVERAGE sell price for the names that do sell is $20.00 and the amount of names that are listed for sale verses the amount that do sell puts it at a loosing adventure.

Don't believe me? Check the numbers out yourself.

Roderick

 

[worldstar]

I think afternic.com will face the competition from tdnam again. sedo has definitely achieve success and afternic need to go faster

 

[VURG]

The bazaar selling system is so wierd that it turns me off selling there. I'm not suprised that people don't want to sell there. It's a waste of money for them to advertise in the state it's in. It needs to be more simple if they want more sellers.

 

[johnny6]

I bought a name there the other day - transaction was fine. Problem is... as Badger pointed out... not too many good names up there anymore... impossible to get a steal!

The other problem is the lack of acocuntability as a buyer/seller.... don't pay up or don't get your domain you bought and nothing happens. Pretty weak!

I'm hoping it'll get jumpstarted again.

 

[movingconcierge]

I hate to jump on the bandwagon because I'd love to see Sedo and Afternic reversed in this scenario, but I'm not a fan of the Bazaar...

Who knows, maybe Plesmo.com will take off?

NP Post by cfguru360 on Plesmo...

 

[publock]

Spam

[MOD_EDIT]Sorry, spam isn't appreciated here.[/MOD_EDIT]

 

[Traveler]

The Bazaar does suck lately. I tried to sell a decent name there and had no takers. Luckily it worked out in the end as I sold the name for nearly $600 just a few weeks later.

I like the layout of afternic over sedo for some reason, although afternic seems to load a heck of a lot slower. I have also had more success on afternic, but that could be because most of my names are parked there.

They definately need to invest some money in more bandwith and like others have said a little advertising would not hurt.

 

[goodkarmaco]

No hope in hell for most names to sell.

The whole logic for a bazaar is to sell names fast and cheap.

The truth about names not selling is the huge quanity of names for sale compared to the visitors looking for names to buy. Why so many names for sale and very little buyers?

The auction houses are not doing their job!

Its like this, if you own a Mcdonal-s and you do not get the "end users" in you will not sell many burgers. You might have coffee drinkers in there all day and thus no several dollar sales.

Put a great marketing team together and sell the "Mc" or the sizzle and appeal to the "end users" ( burger lovers) then sales will explode.

So even if the listing price was free in the bazaar it would not be worth doing as the situation is today and that situation is we have way to many names for sale and just a trickle of eyes looking for names.

Why is that?. Because we all have so many names we want to sell and we are not the major buyers for the names we sell. The end users are.

So if Sed- has four million names and less than a dozen sell daily on average, can you tell me what your odds of selling names are in a market like that? Pretty bleak thats what it is! Afternic is no different with about Two million names and about the same amount selling daliy, only about a dozen.

The bazaar has a very very low average sell price of around $20.00. No wonder domainers drop out of that and no wonder it is lacking good quality names listed there.

For the comment from Adoptable domains that if the list fee was dropped the names would sell better. Nope. The reason those names are not selling has pretty much nothing to do with the price to list them. We domainers have so many names now and although we are addicted to getting more what we really want is to sell more.

So the names are not selling in the bazaar because we are not selling our own names in the auction houses because no end users or a very small quanity of end users come to the auction house.

They have not been invited.

How can we do deals when our names are not being shown to the right buyers? We are not really about parking names are we? Gee, lets just be happy with parking our names and since not to many names sell then I guess I understand why I have to pay a yearly fee to be a member. Come on, we deserve better than that.

The only way to get this domain business really heated up is to know we need buyers. It is the auction houses job to get those buyers to "see" our names. Personally, I do not think they are doing a very good job doing that.

Selling names is what attracted us to this business and we all know something is very wrong with this market. My guess is somewhere the auction houses got sidetracked by the huge money they can put in their pockets thru parked pages. So "going after" end users became less and less a priority. Pretty soon spending money for getting buyers in droves to the auction house seemed not to be important.

If an aggressive advertising campaign to get end users to the auction house was implemented, then names would be selling at a FAST CLIP and we would be buying lots of names thru the bazaar and other wholesale avenues. The millions of names we own and have on auction would be selling and we would be able to do what domaining is really about.. creating new names for new markets.

Its ridicoulous the huge amount of untapped revenue for selling names. Does anyone disagree with me that billions of dollars worth of domain name sales are being lost to misdirected advertising revenue?

Next time someone yells whoopee " I just sold a name", think about the millions of other names that will not sell because no eyes are seeing them.

Roderick