Domain Liquidation Platform - Seeking input for new Epik project

[DanSanchez]

Dear Namepros,

The team at Epik is exploring the development of a project that aims to shift the painful domain name expiration process into a more profitable experience for domainers. Perhaps you have read my opinions about registrars selling expired domains and refusing to help registrants in recovery. The time to disrupt this with action has come!

In the meantime, since joining Epik last month, I decided to do something about it with the help of some amazing engineers. The goal of this "name liquidate" idea is to sell domains directly to buyers that may otherwise wait to acquire these domains at expired auctions or being filled as registrar backorders which pays zero to the registrant.

The planned solution addresses two domainer pain points,
1. Liquidation of expiring inventory brings much needed capital, meaning you can renew more of your portfolio.
2. Buyers get clear title and dont waste time bidding on names that can be recovered post-expiry.

Here is the process,
1. Submit your domains: you unlock your domains, provide auth codes.
2. Seller acknowledges that a fast-transfer of the domain will occur once domain has a bid.
3. Bidders agree to non-revocable change of ownership if their bid prevails.
4. Sellers receive a large portion (80%?) of auction proceeds.

The process begins with a 7 day reverse auction counting down hourly/daily, down to $1 plus renewal/transfer for delivery. The domain doesn't have to be expired or expiring. You can submit the name multiple times during the life of the name but not more than once per year. Once the auth code is verified:
• Epik parks the domain with auction template with Make Offer pricing so retail bids can come in.
• Wholesale buyers are informed of expired auction inventory update.
• Domain goes through reverse auction in 7 days
• Domains are fast transferred to Epik as soon as one bid is made.
• If seller locks name, all domains will be removed and no further listings will be accepted from seller.
• Domains already at Epik are pre-qualified for "name liquidate" services, but you must opt in manually.
• External domains are eligible once auth codes are verified.
• Data will include number of views, expiration date, and expected delivery.
• Pre-set domain buys will give you the ability to buy any name when a price hits a certain target.
• Once a bid is submitted, it cannot be revoked. All purchases a final non-refundable.
As for brand name, we are considering NameLiquidate.com — very descriptive name and targeted at a very specific audience. That said, open to considering other names. A separate brand naming project is coming shortly for what Rob describes as the “Ultimate Digital Brand Marketplace”. This is separate.

 

[tonyk2000]

by dishonest sellers

Yeah, the platform will be growing. Dishonest sellers will appear. Not only bookmarking issue. Some folks do deal with stolen domains for example. Liquidating stolen stuff and requesting bitcoin payout - this may also happen. Prevention is better than cure, so the safety and security is something that should be considered from the very beginning. For example, access to selling @ nameliquidate may be provided only to those who are professional account holders @ epik , to NP members with at least some activity, to known industry players (like respected bloggers)... Not all domainers do have Epik accounts, some may be well set with their current registrars and so did not yet require another registrar account. The nameliquidate platform is unique, so Epik should now expect more domainers joining... exactly because of the nameliquidate service. On this stage it is a must to peform at least some background check before allowing access to nameliquidate. Imho.

 

[BradWilson]

This unfortunately could be easily manipulated by dishonest sellers.

And in contrary, if alerting others then i as a buyer would never bookmark domain i like.

Okay, I guess I never thought about how to be this dishonest so I can't see how they could manipulate bookmaking. Could you please explain how this could happen a bit more.

After a bit of thought I guess an owner could bookmark their own name to increase the likelihood their name will sell at a higher amount so I get it now.

Wow, putting on the evil thinking cap is exhausting and painful

 

[Blitzpotz]

Listed domain inthe.top does not show its age.

If there are extensions the system does not support then sellers should know before they list.

 

[Ategy]

bookmarking names and if so alerting anyone else who also bookmarked the name to increase urgency.

Sorry .. 100% no on bookmarks being available to anybody but the person who made the bookmark. Bookmarks/favourites/watchlists are understood to be personal notes. Not only should that information not be available to others (even if not tracked back to any specific user), but it should not even be used by the platform. The moment marking my watchlist increases the awareness of the domain to potential competitors/buyers, is the moment I'm actually working against myself and making the domains I want potentially more expensive.

This is why it is imperative to offer a downloadable list. Because even if a company promises not to use or share watchlist/favourites/bookmark data, there will always be a portion of users who simply do not trust the companies (either the company itself, or more likely it's ability to prevent employees from using/selling such valuable data). So these people will always keep their favourites tracked on their own system.

What I would be in favour of (mainly as a potential seller), is that the platform be treated as an auction platform in the ways I've already suggested several times above in this thread. So either have open bidding to help the prices go up. Or have a semi-private proxy bidding, so that when a domain reaches or goes below your proxy bid, you automatically get it. I say semi-private, because it could be set up in a cool way that you are only told about someone else's proxy after you've committed your own proxy bid (and it wasn't high enough to win). It's effectively semi-blind proxy setting on a reverse auction.

Again though .. to be clear, you'd only know your proxy bid wasn't enough, not who the other proxy setter was, nor how many people made bids (although I wouldn't even necessarily be against that for transparency's sake .. or to at least have it like at GoDaddy where you are shown user IDs after the auction is over.

For example, access to selling @ nameliquidate may be provided only to those who are professional account holders @ epik , to NP members with at least some activity, to known industry players (like respected bloggers).

Whole most definitely it needs to be clear what sort of fraud prevention will be in place, and more importantly what happens when a seller collects his money in crypto and then cancels a transfer(s). But overall I don't think it's really in the interest of the platform to limit potential sellers.

What they could do is optionally allow sellers to have their names shown. Could be a great action enhancer for domains being liquidated by those known to be good domainers.

The other option is to simply have a "Trusted Seller" badge next to domains from trusted and verified sellers.

 

[tonyk2000]

Proxy bidding in this model will just overcomplicate the things. Now it is easy. First come - first served. Proxy bidding may sound interesting, but... Lets say we both agree to buy something for $9.00 - and we both added such a "proxy" bid. What should happen next? OK, somebody may elect to purchase it earlier for $988 - let it be so. Now, if such a purchase did not occur - should the system assign the domain to Ategy or to tonyk2000 as soon as it becomes $9, or maybe to somebody else who is also monitoring the list waiting for $9, and why? Private auction maybe? This would be a very different system then...

 

[Ategy]

The problem is that they really need to get some form of competition going on the domains more than they have now. Otherwise people simply won't list their domains and it'll end up being mostly garbage domains .. which will mean the platform will ultimately fizzle out and die.

There absolutely needs to be some sort of auction, either an actual auction, or more private.

1) Straight-up auction is pretty simple. You'd have people bidding up, and all the while the BIN goes down (like it currently does), then when the BIN value hits the highest bid, it triggers the BIN and the domain goes to the highest bidder at the BIN.

2) Doing it by "proxy" is pretty much the same thing but in private. So nobody knows what the current highest proxy amount is. You actually need to enter your own private proxy bid. For this there are three ways of doing it:

2a - Always keep it private, and the first person to make the highest proxy bid wins the domain when the BIN drops to that proxied amount.

2b - Same as #1, but instead of going to the first person who proxied at that amount, all people who proxied that amount are invited to a private auction where the opening bid starts from that proxied amount.

2c - Basically you are told when you make an insufficient proxy, but only AFTER you try to make it (so you wouldn't be able to know about anyone else's equal or higher proxy until you actually commit to a purchase). The system would reject your insufficient proxy attempt, and allow you to proxy higher. It would keep rejecting until your attempted proxy is the highest one. All while never telling you what the actual proxy is until you actually actively submit and commit to a higher one.

In the end 1, 2b and 2c are all variations of the same thing and effectively maximises/optimises the amount the sales price for the domain. It's all about creating "marketplace efficiency" and "optimal liquidity".

2a is obviously not as efficient, but it's still significantly more efficient then the current way if it were to be added to that current system.


The only reason I mention 2b and 2c, is because I seem to recall @Rob Monster mentioning proxies after I made my original suggests earlier, so wanted to give options in case the reasons he was talking proxies was because he felt strongly about keeping people's privacy or about giving an impression of this not being so much about liquidation.

Ultimately, I think keeping in mind the vision I think they have for this project, 2c would probably be the ideal choice. Simply because 2b add a lot of painpoints both in coding and implementation when compared to 2c.

 

[tonyk2000]

There absolutely needs to be some sort of auction, either an actual auction, or more private

English auctions.
Dutch auctions.
First-price sealed-bid.
Vickrey auction.
Reverse auction.
Bidding fee auction

are the basic types. We are now in Dutch auction. Is is good enough even to the U.S. Treasury to sell its securities. As per the developers of an advanced auction software (Optimalauctions), with this model:

The seller recognizes their fullest economic benefits from the sale
Descending prices ensure bidders will bid promptly when their internal price is reached
Quick and simple to implement, easy to understand for bidders
Everything is done out in the open, transparency to everyone involved

( https://www.optimalauctions.com/getting-to-know-dutch-auctions.jsp )

 

[Rob Monster]

For folks who have Epik as their registrar, two thoughts on name liquidation:

1. We are going to make it super-easy to send your domains to NameLiquidate -- one click listing and done, directly from the Epik Domain manager. That should be online by January 10.

2. I am thinking to make it an option to allow Epik customers to set NameLiquidate as their default disposition at the end of grace period so that Epik customers can monetize their expiry streams.

What do folks think about that?

@DanSanchez
@vitigo

 

[tonyk2000]

A registrant should still be able to opt out any particular domain. Marking it as "never sell". He may have some legal reasons to, or he may simply wish the have the domain dropped by the registry.

 

[golan]

Totally support this. If i recall correctly it was even $1 bottom end discussed as an original idea. This is liquidation, after all. For me, to receive $1 is better than nothing. And here i also give something good to an other fellow domainer.

Besides, buyers would be much more interested to buy $9 domains than $18 domains. The more so that we are talking domains someone liquidates, drops them.

 

[Ategy]

@tonyk2000 .. I honestly have no idea what all the other ones are .. lol.
(Well .. I probably do, but just not the names).

That problem and big different here is that with the US Treasury there's more than enough volume and demand that the market would be relatively liquid regardless of system used.

Here it's very different in that not only is every domain unique and different, but add to that the fact that there's a significant shortfall of volume of actual domainers. So here we have virtually zero liquidity (that's what we're hoping to change eventually).


SUGGESTION: @Rob Monster @DanSanchez .. You might want to send out an email for domains that do not sell with an invitation to transfer or renew. (Only ONE email per day for all potentially combined listing .. the same thing you DESPERATELY need to do for the frigging ICANN notices .. lol).

2. I am thinking to make it an option to allow Epik customers to set NameLiquidate as their default disposition at the end of grace period so that Epik customers can monetize their expiry streams.
What do folks think about that?

Before making too many more suggestions, the big question is if expired Epik domains will continue to go to a 3rd party clearance/auction going forward? If so at what point?

Before doing too much I do suggest you standardise the dates for everything. And more importantly you might want to consider more relaxed grace periods more in tune with the rest of the industry.

This is what I mean:

Day 0 - Domain expires on paper

Day ~12 - Domain functionally stops working (at 11:59pm)

Day ~16 - Last day normal clients can renew without redemption (until 11:59pm)

Day ~26 - Last day special clients can renew without redemption (until 11:59pm)

Day 30 - Maximum day domain can be renewed with redemption (until 11:59pm)

Day 31 - Goes to NameLiquidate at 1am but prices don't actually drop until 1pm (or whatever time tested most optimal). Be sure to spread them out over an hour or two (depending on quantity) so that they aren't all jammed too tightly together.

Day 36 - NameLiquidate reverse auction ends (whatever time found most optimal)

Day 37 - Goes to 3rd party platform
*OR*
Day 37 (alternative) - Continues in NameLiquidate new "Closeout section" going down $1 per day.

Day 42/43 - Gets kicked back to the registry.


Just in case you want to compare with GD, this is their timeline:

Day 0 - Domain expires on paper.
Day 12 - Domain functions stop.
Day 18 - Last day normal clients can renew without penalty
Day 25 - Last day premium clients can renew without penalty
Day 30 (11:59pm) last day
Day 35 - Expiration Auction Ends
Day 35 (End of each auction) - Domain starts at closeout $11 (go down $1/day)
Day 39 - $8 closeouts go to $5 closeouts
Day 40 - Domains at $5 closeout end
Day 40/41 - Any domains won get transferred to winner/buyer (there is a reason they wait, ask me in private if you want)
Day 42/43 - Gets kicked back to registry

There are some extra not well know aspects to GD that I didn't list that I can share with you privately if you want. But I don't see them as being particularly relevant.


ALSO: When it comes to those grace periods, in order to avoid disappointing people or getting a lot of calls to customer service, I strongly suggest any "deadline" be set to at least 11:59pm pacific time. That way people have until the end of the day to renew all their domains, instead of having each one randomly disappear during the day. Besides, the only time the "time" actually matters is on the final day before you kick the domain back to the registry, and by then it's no longer in people's accounts anyways.


ADDED: @DanSanchez .. did you figure out the non-expired renewal issue? Was I right in that the system charges the renewal if the domain expires within the next 60 days?

 

[Blitzpotz]

A short report after using NameLiquidate for several days now.

• Listing
  When I successfully added names to the auction inventory I am forwarded to the Epik Dashboard telling me that those names have been added to my Epik portfolio. There is an additional Epik E-Mail sent at the same time confirming this. However, I already had added these names earlier to the external domain section. Thus this info does not have additional value unless there would be a NameLiquidate listing information in the Dashboard scroll-down menu "Marketplace Status", e.g. (Perhaps there is such info which I missed then due to the amount of data.)
  
• Administration
  I would prefer to receive result E-Mails after the auction end "your domain ... did sell for / did not sell". Just for my bookkeeping and eventual tax inquiries a year or more later.
• Sales
  Yesterday I received a transfer request for a name that I knew was listed in NameLiquidate auctions. Happy, my first sale there. I accepted the transfer asap and Godaddy transfered it out in a second. I just did not receive any additional info about this sale by Epik/NameLiquidate. There are no funds added to my In-Store Credit, too. But I understand that this could take a while longer though transfer should be started after successful payment. The name in question is [edited].

 

[DanSanchez]

A short report after using NameLiquidate for several days now.

• Listing
  When I successfully added names to the auction inventory I am forwarded to the Epik Dashboard telling me that those names have been added to my Epik portfolio. There is an additional Epik E-Mail sent at the same time confirming this. However, I already had added these names earlier to the external domain section. Thus this info does not have additional value unless there would be a NameLiquidate listing information in the Dashboard scroll-down menu "Marketplace Status", e.g. (Perhaps there is such info which I missed then due to the amount of data.)
  
• Administration
  I would prefer to receive result E-Mails after the auction end "your domain ... did sell for / did not sell". Just for my bookkeeping and eventual tax inquiries a year or more later.
• Sales
  Yesterday I received a transfer request for a name that I knew was listed in NameLiquidate auctions. Happy, my first sale there. I accepted the transfer asap and Godaddy transfered it out in a second. I just did not receive any additional info about this sale by Epik/NameLiquidate. There are no funds added to my In-Store Credit, too. But I understand that this could take a while longer though transfer should be started after successful payment. The name in question is Psalming dot com.

Great points, I agree they are necessary steps to implement.

The transfer of a domain will delay your deposit because we manually check off every transaction to ensure delivery. This process will be automated as well.

Your transaction is verified and paid out. Thank you for approving the transfer so quickly, I am sure the buyer is happy.

The listing process has several improvements coming, I am waiting for the 7th of January like a kid waits on Christmas day. The dev team returns from a well-deserved break that day.

We will create a separate category for names listed on NameLiquidate and a way to list them from your dashboard. Ideally it will facilitate tracking current listings and encourage new listings.

The "result email" is another great suggestion, I want to implement that while the auction is in progress too. Honestly forgot I had listed a few names during the holiday rush.

Just three days left until NL Christmas!

In the meantime, we have seen a steady stream of new users and listings since launching.

Until then, here is a cool trick to segregate names you might like to buy. You can enter a TLD extension to find only .com domains (see uploaded screenshot) or link to it directly like this: https://nameliquidate.com/?searchText=.org

Looking forward to more updates shortly!

 

[Jevsim]

for some reason I cannot upload a domain to the platform:

Doublechecked the tCode - it is 100% correct.

submitted it as: domain.com [xxxxxxxxxxx]

Any suggestions?

BR, J.

 

[Blitzpotz]

submitted it as: domain.com [xxxxxxxxxxx]

Any suggestions?

Tried to submit authcode without [ ] ?

 

[DanSanchez]

for some reason I cannot upload a domain to the platform:

Show attachment 140651

Doublechecked the tCode - it is 100% correct.

submitted it as: domain.com [xxxxxxxxxxx]

Any suggestions?

BR, J.

BR yes, the auth code must not be encased by anything for it to work.

Domainmame.com 1868Hsh%@!

Let me know if that clears up the error.

 

[Jevsim]

Thank you Blitzpotz and Dan.

 

[Rob Monster]

Show attachment 140653


Thank you Blitzpotz and Dan.

Thanks guys. We are going to make that parser a bit more clever. This is the second time in a week that a user submitted auth codes in brackets. As they are symmetrical, it can be ignored by the parser.

@vitigo

 

[domaineed]

Apologies if it has already been answered, what happens if a domain sells elsewhere say via BIN lander or Afternic while listed at NameLiquidate. Thanks.

 

[Rob Monster]

Apologies if it has already been answered, what happens if a domain sells elsewhere say via BIN lander or Afternic while listed at NameLiquidate. Thanks.

The moment the auth code stops working or the domain is locked, the inventory is pulled from NameLiquidate. That all seems pretty dialed in already but we are monitoring.

 

[domaineed]

• If seller locks name, all domains will be removed and no further listings will be accepted from seller.

Apologies for the lack of clarity, I was specifically asking w.r.t this quote. Thanks.

 

[DanSanchez]

Apologies for the lack of clarity, I was specifically asking w.r.t this quote. Thanks.

This could be a temporary limiting or a permanent ban. The whole idea of this step is to prevent people from wasting time on the buy side. One of the biggest complaints of an expired marketplace is the removal of domains after they are found. If you have other ideas to curb this problem, let me know.

Things are lenient right now, mostly because this is still beta. The policy will come into full effect soon and removing domains after agreeing no to, will have some limiting factors on your ability to list more inventory.

 

[domaineed]

I understand the motive behind this policy which is commendable. However, it is not clear whether the auctions/listings are exclusive to the nameliquidate platform and cannot be sold elsewhere for the listing duration. Either a person should be asked to remove BIN from lander/afternic etc. prior to listing at NL or they should be allowed to remove listing if they provide a legitimate proof of a BIN sale. But I realize this can also be misused in one way or another. imo. Thanks.

 

[Ategy]

@domaineed .. NameLiquidate is an auction platform. As far as I know there isn't an auction platform in the world for anything (not just domains) which allows you to have your product listed for sale elsewhere during the auction itself.

Particularly here with liquidation domains, let's say a seller wants to take advantage of the platform to try to sell their domain for over $100 but no less. Then if someone buys it at $80, all the seller needs to do is say "oops I sold my domain elsewhere"? It can't work like that .. once you list your domain at auction you have committed it to be there for the entire auction period (particularly from the instant a NL buyer clicks "BIN").

There are cases on some auction platforms where people are allowed to cancel an auction before the first bid is placed. But it gets complicated with reverse auctions since there can only ever be one bid.

Moreover .. *IF* you sell your domain at auction *AND* you then sell it outside of the auction system, that domain legally belongs to the auction winner. So if they buy your domain for $20, but someone is now willing to pay $2000 for it, you get paid $20, and the balance (if the auction winner chooses to sell) would go to the auction winner.

That's also what happens here at @NamePros .. if a domain sells outside the scope during the course of the NamePros auction, then the profits of the sale belong to the auction winner. (It's actually happened before with a sizeable 4-figure sale a couple years ago I think)
(@Mod Team Bravo .. please confirm my interpretation of the rules so I'm not spreading false info .. thanks)

 

[Bravo Mod Team]

That's also what happens here at @NamePros .. if a domain sells outside the scope during the course of the NamePros auction, then the profits of the sale belong to the auction winner. (It's actually happened before with a sizeable 4-figure sale a couple years ago I think)
(@Mod Team Bravo .. please confirm my interpretation of the rules so I'm not spreading false info .. thanks)

It depends. Take a look at the examples in this guide:

• What if a domain in my NamePros Auction has sold elsewhere or may sell elsewhere?

We hope that helps.