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Could the Domain Industry Benefit From Better Auction Timing?
More importantly .. what specific actions would be helpful to you?
- Auctions time more spread out or more concentrated?
- Auctions moved to different times of the day than they already are?
- Auction times sorted by TLD?
- Auction times sorted by Valuation?
- Auction times sorted by domain type (expired/reseller)?
- Anything else I haven't mentioned that you'd like modified (please propose alternatives/suggetions).
I've been wanting to start this topic for a while now in hopes that it could lead to a few changes in the industry.
GoDaddy - For me personally I'm a pretty heavy user of GoDaddy auctions where the auction days are 5.5 hours long! I love the fact that unlike some other marketplaces GoDaddy spreads out it's auction day so that if you're targeting multiple domains you can focus on one or two at a time. But the 5.5 hours a day I find is just way too long and I'd love to see them shorten it to about half that time (no less than 2h and no more than 3h). I think that the only people who buy so many domains that such a change could affect them likely already are running bots or have some other system in place where it really wouldn't make much difference.
What really led me to thinking about this is that auction days are always 5.5 hours regardless of if there are 25,000 (expiring) domains or 60,000 (expiring) domains. 35 days after Christmas is when domains originally registered at Christmas go to auction. On that "Christmas+35" day a few weeks ago there were half the usual number of domains .. I was thinking how nice it would have been if GoDaddy also gave us a half day as it wouldn't have meant any difference of intensity or effort for bulk buyers (even if I'm sure it doesn't affect them .. aka their bots).
I think the majority of domainers do this part time, and as such 5.5 hours a day plus however much time you spend going through the lists each day adds up to too much of my day. But I also think the longer term benefit could be that more people actually participate in the overall entirety of their auctions as opposed to just going on for one or two specific auctions at specific times.
PS @GoDaddy .. Also on the subject of time ... Please move to a state that has daylight savings time so that I don't have to change my routine and Excel formulas twice a year!
DropCatch - I'm not on DropCatch (yet), but the other day @Domain Shane mentioned his frustration at DropCatch's auction timing, because for them it's the exact opposite of GoDaddy and all their auctions run concurrently and end at the exact same time each day. So if you are looking at multiple domains it makes it extremely difficult to manage your bidding. Just as importantly, makes it hard to choose what domains to allocate your budget on when you don't know if you're going to win 1 domain .. or 10!?
Flippa - In the past I actually had choice-paralysis when thinking of starting an auction at Flippa because I feared choose an ending time for my auction that would limit the number of potential buyers seeing my auction when it was nearing it's end time. I think for them it's not as bad because I think most buyers only focus on a handful of auctions compared to the volume platforms, but it would be nice if they had a default suggested window so eventually we could see a little more momentum there if more eyeballs saw more listings as they were ending within the same hour or two. (Obviously I think it's important they still allow sellers to have the right to select ending hours outside of the suggested window .. they should simply discourage it .. and I think that would be enough).
NameJet - I honestly am not familiar with them enough to really give constructive feedback for them .. looking forward to what some of you have to say ...
Overall .. for myself, I'm in Montreal in the Eastern Time Zone. So GD auctions start at 11am or at noon during daylight savings time. I honestly am not sure how changing auction hours would affect me. I'm usually pretty tight for time doing my daily lists and blog at NameCult, so I definitely would not want to see auctions start any earlier. But I suppose with domainers being all over the world there will never be perfect auction hours that makes everyone happy.
Anyhow .. looking forward to hearing what all of you think .. and specifically your suggestions and ideas on how to make things better.