Bido.com closing

[hawkeye]

Just saw a tweet on Twitter that BIDO is closing on May 5th. Sorry to hear. Best of luck to Sahar et al.

 

[Tim Schoon]

I think the whole voting system didn't make any sense.

They started off with a cool idea, one name a day.
They wanted to expand.. fine, they should have kept it at 3 or 5 good names/day IMO.

 

[Archangel]

I spoke of this long ago. BIDO got the wrong idea with the multiple-domain thing. I said that it should have had one so so a day from different niches, to keep interest alive. Lo nd behold, BIDO turned into eBay. It was a fun idea, BIDO was, but it turned into the place to offload your worthless domains rather than a place for good domains. Even the commentaries pretty much stopped since there were about 20-50 terrible domains to comment on daily.

I think the whole voting system didn't make any sense.

They started off with a cool idea, one name a day.
They wanted to expand.. fine, they should have kept it at 3 or 5 good names/day IMO.

 

[InsanerDomainer]

It's a shame. Seemed to be a nice buyer's market, and I was just thinking of starting to buy again. Guess I'll go back to drop catching. I was sort of wondering how they made any money, though. Oh well it's a tough business, and you had some nice ideas, Bido. Keep your chins up!

 

[iowadawg]

Come on people....

You aint bashing bido enough!

LOL

 

[snoop]

I spoke of this long ago. BIDO got the wrong idea with the multiple-domain thing.

Unless they could get 5 figures sales every day there is no way they could survive with just one listing a day.

 

[stingrae]

i lost interest from about day 2 when i was expected to get up at 3.45 am everyday for a one hour bidding window, i was just about to go back and have a closer look again , i think the way swapped and changed from the very beginning was their downfall, i had already turned off by the time the voting aspect came into it , it seems there may be an opportunity for someone else to take over the mantel ??? with this style of auction , although i think it was a small buying group ????

I never understood the one hour bidding window. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. If somebody takes this over I would think that they would expand the bidding window several fold.

That and the elimination of crappy names. One simple idea could be to have a minimum Estibot value of say $1000. I realize that is a bit simplistic but some sort of defined minimum would be a must.

 

[EGS]

Can someone from Bido kindly tell us why Bido is closing its doors?

I believe that we're all confused with this one, being that it's so immediate as well. Did something go wrong? Has the company gone bankrupt somehow? Please fill us in!

Your site was really unique & innovative. I hope that there is no legal problem behind the reason of the site closing down. Furthermore I hope that you guys recreate it as an auction site or something, for items/products, or domain names. The 1 hour time was hard and I never won any domains but I wish you guys the best of luck and I hope you guys offer some explanation. I feel so sad I'm sick to my stomach because something went wrong for you guys to close down so suddenly and so quickly. =(

 

[DnEbook]

many people here complained in the early days about one hour being crazy , but they really didn't listen to their customers .... YOU

There is still a market out there for this service , just gotta listen and refine it somewhat !

 

[Qc4]

While I agree that there was plenty of room for improvement, it's still a shame to see it go. It's surprising that there was such little warning.

 

[Vito]

Can someone from Bido kindly tell us why Bido is closing its doors?

I believe that we're all confused with this one, being that it's so immediate as well. Did something go wrong? Has the company gone bankrupt somehow? Please fill us in!

Your site was really unique & innovative. I hope that there is no legal problem behind the reason of the site closing down. Furthermore I hope that you guys recreate it as an auction site or something, for items/products, or domain names. The 1 hour time was hard and I never won any domains but I wish you guys the best of luck and I hope you guys offer some explanation. I feel so sad I'm sick to my stomach because something went wrong for you guys to close down so suddenly and so quickly. =(

They are a completely debt free company, so the Bankruptcy thoughts are out. But it has been established, that their income to debt ratio weekly/monthly etc. was inverted from where you would need it to be to post any kind of profit.

They sure as hell shot for the moon, ya gotta give them that.


.

 

[Archangel]

I was referring to 5 "premium" domains or domains in caliber with what they had back in their 1-a-day mode. I wasn't referring to 5 random domains. Hell, they ran on 20-50 randoms a day and couldn't hold up.

Unless they could get 5 figures sales every day there is no way they could survive with just one listing a day.

---------- Post added at 10:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:49 PM ----------

It was a part of their old branding: One domain, 1 hour, etc. "The Power of One," they called it.

I never understood the one hour bidding window. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. If somebody takes this over I would think that they would expand the bidding window several fold.

 

[Greg]

Thank you for the good times Bido, good luck with future endeavers.

 

[EGS]

I was referring to 5 "premium" domains or domains in caliber with what they had back in their 1-a-day mode. I wasn't referring to 5 random domains. Hell, they ran on 20-50 randoms a day and couldn't hold up.



---------- Post added at 10:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:49 PM ----------

It was a part of their old branding: One domain, 1 hour, etc. "The Power of One," they called it.

I think Bido should have went towards different directions, two of which I would think to see better success/profit in:

1.) A domain auction site similar to Swoopo where users by bids to bid on domains.

OR

2.) A domain auction site similar to woot.com - which I think would be more awesome/better - where the company only focuses on premium domains to hold daily auctions for one to a few premium domains only.

It's a real shame when you see something unique & innovative close its doors. It was a really cool site, but it wasn't a feasible solution that it should have been for buying or selling. It was hard to continuously monitor the site on a daily/hourly basis, which is probably what mostly impacted the sale rates and final pricing.

I think the idea alone though is great just not the market. The name/domain Bido.com is also great and I really think they would hit major success should they offer the same site but instead of domains replace it with cool products.

Bido.com should have been something like woot.com where it sales limited inventory of unique/cool products every hour. That would have worked because each product would be unique for each hour, so at least throughout the entire day everyone will be able to snag something cool. Whether or not it should be a bidding system is a different story.

You will be missed Bido. I hope that you guys can sell the domain/site off for a good profit to make up any differences. You guys really worked hard constantly maintaining, supporting, and updating the site. I've never seen such devotion in such a new company; the entire Bido team has what it takes to bring anything they come up with next to become just as successful. =]

*holds a glass up* // Cheers to Bido & everyone involved.

Seriously I never thought Bido.com above all sites/platforms would close down, yet alone close down so suddenly. I just really hope you guys can sell it for a substantial profit - the domain alone is worth quite a bit; it already gets traffic; and its auction platform is unique (I think) and definitely something worthwhile.

If I had the funds I'd definitely buy it and recreate it into something other than domains. Some people are great with domaining, but I'm not. And being that it's so competitive and names are becoming rarer & rarer I just couldn't see success through it.

 

[Archangel]

This is pretty much what BIDO was until the multiple-auction thing came about. Rather than auctioning a few premiums a day, they started auctioning a few dozen crap domans daily.

2.) A domain auction site similar to woot.com - which I think would be more awesome/better - where the company only focuses on premium domains to hold daily auctions for one to a few premium domains only.

 

[SpareDomains]

The problem is nobody is gonna sacrifice their good domains until good sales happen there and if nobody sacrifices good domains to get it going then it will always be junk that domainers are willing to accept low prices on. The best solution would be for someone with a large portfolio fabulous, namemedia etc... to buy it and sacrifice 10-25 good domains per day to get it going and some good sales under their belt to jumpstart it along with some end user advertising. Personally I would kill off vote for profits and just make it a regular auction house with 10-25 quality domains per day coupled with an aggressive end user marketing campaign. Someone with a large portfolio could run a few hundred quality domains through it for a month to get it going and then open it up to domainer submissions but prune them for the best 10-25 per day to keep the quality level up.

 

[Jaco]

I was pretty critical of them for allowing the inventory model to devolve into a compost heap and I unquestionably think that hastened their demise but really, there are factors at work here that were out of their control.

None of us know what sort of role Latonas retooling their auction model played in the decision to nix BIDO (or, we should say, sell it- I think it's pretty safe to say that as long as their price expectations aren't delusional, it will be back online eventually) If anything, Latonas showed that a simple, totally straightforward auction concept can be done en-masse with domains on a regular basis, as opposed to the bizarre, highly complex 'domain name selling game' that BIDO had become with points and votes and profit shares and "BIDO Prices" and other strange, unnecessary nonsense...

Two, the market for shit domains is dead- hell, even the market for DECENT domains is gasping... If you're outside that top 10% of quality, you're getting your ass kicked right now and I think it's safe to say that most of us have a lot of domains WELL outside that top 10%... There are still too many people in that circa 2005-2007 'peak mania years' mentality that totally don't comprehend this (as there are in the years subsequent to any mania) and have yet to understand that the line of next greater fools has gotten a lot shorter.

Three: I got the distinct sense that they were running the operation as a bit of a cash furnace. Customer service isn't free and quick mental math suggested that the names being sold weren't generating enough commissions to subsidize that degree of personalized attention to every matter.

Either way, though, no matter what assumptions we make in the postmortem, no matter what criticisms and critiques we may have had while they were a going concern, there is an elephant in the room that deserves a lot of credit; they had the balls to put their money where their mouths were and give it a go.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” - TR

 

[Archangel]

Good point but let's be honest: Who would put a premium domain on auction? Unless the owner was too lazy to contact potential endusers, I doubt he'd just throw a name on auction.

The problem is nobody is gonna sacrifice their good domains until good sales happen there and if nobody sacrifices good domains to get it going then it will always be junk that domainers are willing to accept low prices on. The best solution would be for someone with a large portfolio fabulous, namemedia etc... to buy it and sacrifice 10-25 good domains per day to get it going and some good sales under their belt to jumpstart it along with some end user advertising. Personally I would kill off vote for profits and just make it a regular auction house with 10-25 quality domains per day coupled with an aggressive end user marketing campaign. Someone with a large portfolio could run a few hundred quality domains through it for a month to get it going and then open it up to domainer submissions but prune them for the best 10-25 per day to keep the quality level up.

 

[SpareDomains]

Good point but let's be honest: Who would put a premium domain on auction? Unless the owner was too lazy to contact potential endusers, I doubt he'd just throw a name on auction.

someone with hundreds of thousands of domains like Fabulous, Namemedia etc... doesn't have to be super premium just run a few hundred good domains through it for a month to jump start it and attract buyers, do you really think they reach out to end users with hundreds of thousands of domains on hand, they just park and wait so they could afford to sacrifice a few hundred for a month to create a quality auction market especially since they pick most up from desperate domainers at $50, once a quality market is established then flip it to quality pruned domainer submissions, someone with that many domains could afford to do so, just depends if they wanna tap into an auction service as well as an aftermarket as most big holders already have their own aftermarket, quality domains running through it for a month should create a market that users will take notice of, little end user advertising and keeping the affiliate program minus the vote for profits would help as well. My guess on a buyer would be...

Name Media
Fabulous
Enom

and possibly...

Domaining
Wanna Develop

 

[spammy01]

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Just found out. Yesterday i got clamped then last night i lost my car/house keys and now i found out Bido is closing. Sob sob, this place actually made alot of difference to my profits and was one of the best places for moving inventory.

Best of luck guys in whatever you do next.
Craig

 

[mexfi]

Disappointment.