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.

 

[Rob Monster]

Even though this thread might well be promotional in the beginning 1 month ago, and so it was posted in appropriate forum section, the service is now live. What we are speaking about now is a normal domain buying-selling discussion through a particular operational service. Imho. So maybe another thread in appropriate part of the forum will be helpful... More sellers, more buyers, extra feedback. Unfortunately I missed this thread in the beginning exactly because it was not in "discussions"...

We are in beta testing even though it is with live transactions. As such, happy to recognize product feedback at this stage. We have paid out some bounties today and likely continue to do so for a few days longer while we work out the major kinks of what is actually working pretty well.

@DanSanchez and @Riacontents are working on bringing the awareness among both supply and demand. @Gube has integrated this list into the NameInvestors.com widget framework:

https://nameinvestors.com/

It is actually pretty cool to see a transactional ecosystem begin to take serious form.

 

[BrandBoogie]

Just bought 9 domains and listed 10. I love it!!

Thanks @DanSanchez & @Rob Monster for setting this up

Also, how do I earn bounties?

 

[Rob Monster]

Just bought 9 domains and listed 10. I love it!!

Thanks @DanSanchez & @Rob Monster for setting this up

Also, how do I earn bounties?

It is really cool.

It reminds me of something from the early days of Epik when we had this thing called Swapfest. One man's trash was another man's treasure. Same story here but the potential range of participants is vastly bigger because it is 24/7 and worldwide. And because we have automated everything, the fees can be very low.

Keep the feedback coming. More participants are on the way.

If anyone knows folks who are dropping domains, get them to submit their inventory. They'll get something and others will pick up new inventory.

The network effect is huge, and the Dutch auction format means NO SHILL BIDDING EVER which should let folks buy with confidence knowing that there is no way to game the system and no clawback.

 

[RJ]

Anybody here beat me to Ch_rg_C__ter.com? Nice pickup whoever got it! I grabbed some great _____Crate.com domains and a few other fantastic 2 words, as well as 2 one word canna related non.com's!

I feel bad for whoever had to liquidate those names. A couple of them had 8-9 months and even more than a year left, so at $9 it was almost like getting them for free.

Just a note for developers .. for me personally, I didn't even think of grabbing them at the next price level ($21 I think). But if there was a few steps lower, I certainly might have jumped on some of them at more than $9! So basically if I wasn't able to be online or awake at exactly the 1-hour window in question, I wouldn't have purchased a single domain.


That being said .. I'm rather happy about my acquisitions. Better value than GD closeouts for those particular domains .. particularly those that had more than 2 months remaining so I didn't need to pay extra for renewal!

Those were my names that I was liquidating tonight. I'm scaling down my portfolio size, so don't feel bad about it. I'm glad you got some nice names out of it.

In the end, 25 names sold. One for $96.92, one for $33.54, and 23 domains sold for $9.

Pretty easy process overall. There was instant Masterbucks payment to my account, so that's nice at least.

 

[BrandBoogie]

It would be great if you could buy in bulk instead of 1 at a time.

 

[Ategy]

Those were my names that I was liquidating tonight. I'm scaling down my portfolio size, so don't feel bad about it. I'm glad you got some nice names out of it.

Well I'm glad everyone's happy! .. I ended up with 10 of them. 4 of the "_crate.com" names, the two bud_(non-.com) names, two great 2-word .com's, one that made sense locally for me, and one for SteamieTheHotDog.com (the Pup____.com domain)!

I'm trying to figure out if having that big a batch was a good thing or a bad thing? Because on one hand I might have grabbed a couple more if I was more organised and had a bit more time. But on the other having a batch like that got my attention because I saw higher than usual quality compared to the ones that passed previously .. that actually made me be a little more careful and thorough. There was a great name I wanted the night before .. but since it was just one name I didn't bother coming to the PC .. not even sure if I was awake when it ended or not? lol

In the end I think it was good you had a lot .. as it created a sort of critical mass .. but next time maybe spread them out a little bit more. I did like the fact they ended up being more or less alphabetical, that made going through them easier.


IDEA: It might be a good idea on the back-end, to set it up so when people submit more than 10 domains, that the system spreads them out at 10 domains every 5 minutes. (Or at whatever rate makes sense to keep them mainly as a group, but still give people a bit of time .. this "pacing" could be adjusted depending on how many domains are in the queue)

IDEA 2: Allow people to set a start time for their domains. I'm not really sure what time has the most potential on at the same time, but when I added BrakingTechnologies the other night, it didn't even cross my mind that the auction would end at 2am because I listed it at 2am. Or maybe it's a good thing because someone will grab it earlier for a few hundred dollars. Still trying to figure out optimal strategy.

As I mentioned much earlier in this thread, it might even be a better idea to batch all domains' start/end times relatively together (not all exactly at the same time though .. more like 1-2 per minutes, or have them all start within the same 2 hour window. If you have 60 domains, then it's one per minute over 1 hour, but on a busy day with 240 names, then it's 2 per minute for 2 hours.

That being said .. might be a good idea to keep it all random for now specifically so you can get time-of-day based traffic/sales data.

 

[golan]

I actually support an idea of prolonging the auction lifespan. Maybe not a week, but 5 days seem reasonable. 3 days seem too short. And yes, local holidays, citybreaks, all kinds of other stuff...

Also. At least for some domains, which I am not going to renew anyway and which are expiring or expired, if not sold for min. $9 on Name Liquidation platform, I'd rather let another fellow domainer have them for free (OK, for the transfer fee payable to Epik) if he so wishes. Using the same platform. It would be better. In particular, I do not like the games on godaddy expired auctions, or hugedomains becoming even more huge routinely grabbing it after pendingdelete. Just saying. Of course we are discussing commercial platform here, and so the above setup may or may not be possible or practical...

Edited: It may be a "sale" for $0.01 (+ transfer fee), just to make programming easier...

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. Or to make it voluntarily, "i want my auction end at $9 / $1", but this would probably clutter the UI a lot even if doable programming wise.

IDEA: It might be a good idea on the back-end, to set it up so when people submit more than 10 domains, that the system spreads them out at 10 domains every 5 minutes. (Or at whatever rate makes sense to keep them mainly as a group, but still give people a bit of time .. this "pacing" could be adjusted depending on how many domains are in the queue)

+++++

 

[tonyk2000]

Afaik Epik offered transfer-in promotions some time ago, likely below cost. Next time (if the marketing budget so allows), such a promotion could be offered exclusively for domains purchased on nameliquidate

 

[BradWilson]

Just checking this out and the first thought I had was sure would be nice to have a built in time calculator to know...

"What is 56 hours from now?"

In my time zone of course.

And set an email and text alert as a reminder.

Also, not sure if this was already planned or not but bookmarking names and if so alerting anyone else who also bookmarked the name to increase urgency.

 

[golan]

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

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.

 

[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.