information GoDaddy to increase closeout starting prices to $50

[JudgeMind]

Godaddy will be increasing their starting price of closeouts to $50. The pricing structure will go as follows:

Day 1: $50

Day 2: $40

Day 3: $30

Day 4: $11

Day 5: $5

This news is causing a stir in the industry and some are pretty upset. You can read in more detail about the price increase here, courtesy of domainnamewire - GoDaddy to change closeout auction pricing - Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News

 

[DomainVP]

Most closeouts are trash.

I stopped buying them last year, even with the ability to snipe with a high success rate.
*(Still can't beat that API with a 1 second purchase time)

There were also some real suspicious moves where I would win, submit payment, domain would land in my panel as won, then would vanish a day later and they would say someone else won... **cough**aSubsidiaryOfGoDaddy **Cough** not going to get into that.

I bought about $3k in closeouts last year, and covered those costs in the sale of 4-5 names.

Most of them I will drop, but there are a few I have added to my permanent portfolio as I believe they will have solid future returns for long term holds.

As they put the pinch on the price it just makes more sense to go to auction and spend that $3k on quality names that people would want. I suggest that anyone interested in playing the closeout game have the best analytics they can find - don't jump in there blind at $50 per name.

Right now I would much rather spend $3k on GOOD auction names and play those odds.

I will gladly go to auction for a domain worth buying - you get what you pay for.

 

[Name Trader]

I here you @DomainVP. Actually for any one domain $5 or $50 is still ok for any domain which you can sell for $3k. I too have played this dropcatch game at GoDaddy (though not much in 2020 coz I was unloading lots of poor domains from GD Auctions). But with 10 times the price, 1) Our budgeted number of domains we will purchase has surely shrunk, and 2) Not everything you buy is guaranteed to sell for $3K. So we are looking much more a breaking even situation, than feeling comfortable we will make a good profit.

I have a question. Which you might be able to answer. How sure is it when you bid on a domain in the open auction, that DropCatch will bid too, and overbid you. Is it 100%/75%/50%/25%?

I also agree with you that most closeouts are trash. They are still going to be mostly trash when that start at $50 too, just because nobody has bid on the domain.

 

[King]

OMG I am so surprised (not)

 

[DomainVP]

I have a question. Which you might be able to answer. How sure is it when you bid on a domain in the open auction, that DropCatch will bid too, and overbid you. Is it 100%/75%/50%/25%?

100%

They are using analytics that most investors don't have access to. We all kind of have access to it, it just requires bots to harvest.

They know what domains to target, so any auction worth buying you are going to pay 2x more than normal. However, if you did your research right you should be able to sell that domain for 10x+ what you paid.

Across 5 auctions you only have to be right once and you make your money back and have 4 more domains to hold/sell for profit / net gain. Though those margins are thin without room for error. IMO.

 

[Nerevar]

It's the natural order of things. Become monopolist -> raise prices -> people leave -> stop being a monopolist.

 

[Name Trader]

It's the natural order of things. Become monopolist -> raise prices -> people leave -> stop being a monopolist.

Sounds a lot like cPanel

 

[twiki]

It's the natural order of things. Become monopolist -> raise prices -> people leave -> stop being a monopolist.

People don't leave (edit:domains buying) cause they have an unexplained hope that they'll make good money from it someday.

 

[Ostrados]

Monopoly leads to arrogance and arrogance can lead to wrong business decisions.

Look at what is happening to WhatsApp, suddenly I have many contacts appearing in my Telegram lol

 

[pablohc86]

From the OP article:
"People with access to GoDaddy’s legacy API have been able to take advantage of this opportunity, but bidders without API access and computing power/development resources have been left out. Smaller domain investors, in particular, have felt disadvantaged."

So now Godaddy is caring the poor smaller investors with less resources and want to help them
they are so sweet
thanks Godaddy

 

[daniallaw]

At the point when a space name on Go Daddy's lapsed sale stage doesn't sell by the end date, it moves to closeouts. Closeouts follow a Dutch sale design in which the space is $11 (in addition to reestablishment) right from the start and diminishes by one dollar for each day to $5. The space continues to cancellation if nobody gets it by the last day.

 

[GeorgeQuang]

Domainers or Big Companies who has API access must pay high 5 figure cost for GoDaddy monthly. So $50 for quality domains still affordable and cheaper than DropCatch.
I think that the purpose of increasing their Close Out price is just maximize their profit. That's it.
Big whales still catch quality domains on Close Out at $50 like they do daily.
And small domainers will be kicked out off the hunting game.
Welcome to 2021 with the basic prices are increasing (acquiring cost and renewal fee).

 

[Nerevar]

I doubt there will be a significant profit increase. The closeout starting price of $50 discourages auctions, because at that price closeouts become competitors to auctions, so products cannibalise each other.

 

[TLDMart]

So, they are not setting up a program to compete with Name Liquidate... Not that I thought they would...

I get why they are doing this, I know it will not benefit me, there are thousands of undervalued domains elsewhere, so I will continue to limit my spending on GD...

On a broader level, we will see what the market does. As others have mentioned, the bump up to $50 is on par with some of the other marketplaces.

I have won a few $12 auctions at GD though...

 

[equity78]

Rumour has it API in closeout is kaput.

I spoke to Paul Nicks just now and it's not going away. No changes to the API.

 

[equity78]

Hope you're right.

Get ready for this post to be quoted in every Domaining blog

Scoop Plugged in You're the man. FINALLY!!

Unless you think it foreshadows it's demise, i hope you're right.
Why not announce it with the Closeout Price restructure? makes no sense

Samer

No quotes because not true. Paul Nicks confirmed no changes to API, it's available for closeouts.

 

[wwwweb]

Hope you're right.

Get ready for this post to be quoted in every Domaining blog

Scoop Plugged in You're the man. FINALLY!!

Unless you think it foreshadows it's demise, i hope you're right.
Why not announce it with the Closeout Price restructure? makes no sense

Samer

I spoke to Paul Nicks just now and it's not going away. No changes to the API.

Thanks, for doing the extra leg work. My previous comments came from someone I know talking to Joe Styler, I guess things changed.

Then this whole process is for nothing then, HugeNames has no issue paying $50 all day in sniping the best. Godaddy is not interested in keeping a level playing field, but keeping in good with their largest partner/bidder, or whatever you want to call their relationship. I would assume HugeNames would be not to happy with losing their closeout sniping ability, and they would not want to make their largest auction buyer unhappy.

In the case you do happen to get brave and place a $12 bid, their auto bot, will sense it, and come bid you up into the hundreds. If you see something good, most likely it will be gone before you blink at $50.

So what good are we to Godaddy, we are simply click happy lemmings there to ensure HugeNames pays somewhat wholesale for the names they bid on. As most domainers have exited Godaddy as they don't want to sit there for hours on end, placing bids on a bot that resets the clock every 5 minutes, with min bids.

Lose Lose

 

[Hankish]

If it is worth $50 : I'll pay $50. Not that high for antedrop.

But I don't see any thing good dropping to $5, $11 will be the trigger pull . If, if this is not a trend that they have foreseen and the aftermarket across the board is going up up up.

I just have issues with the whole idea. These are not GD's names; these are customer's names that for whatever reason (death) didn't get renewed. GD should be happy with just the renew price.

... why am I worried afternic is going to 30% - 35% soon?

 

[urlurl]

If it is worth $50 : I'll pay $50. Not that high for antedrop.

But I don't see any thing good dropping to $5, $11 will be the trigger pull . If, if this is not a trend that they have foreseen and the aftermarket across the board is going up up up.

I just have issues with the whole idea. These are not GD's names; these are customer's names that for whatever reason (death) didn't get renewed. GD should be happy with just the renew price.

... why am I worried afternic is going to 30% - 35% soon?

i agree with you 110%, and they should be giving the money to the previous owners

where I'm from, if a house is power-of-sale, forclosure, etc - and the house is sold by the bank - the bank is allowed to take any fee's from it - but they must (if anything is left) give anything above that to the previous owners

not much of a difference with GD auctioning of expired names

 

[equity78]

i agree with you 110%, and they should be giving the money to the previous owners

where I'm from, if a house is power-of-sale, forclosure, etc - and the house is sold by the bank - the bank is allowed to take any fee's from it - but they must (if anything is left) give anything above that to the previous owners

not much of a difference with GD auctioning of expired names

Well there is a difference, you technically never own a domain name and on top of that when you fail to pay the renewal for the right to lease that domain name, you really have no rights.

 

[privatereg]

GD Auctions hasn't been a level playing field for small time investors for several years. I gave up going after closeouts years ago mostly after HD (and other big investment firms) came into the space and left us with garbage. They already use their API bots to go after what they want during the GD auction phase. One guess of raising prices is simply demand. I've seen from bidding that there are far more bidders today than a few years ago. But I don't see GD doing this as a "one and done" strategy. This is just the first step. How long do you think the starting price pre-closeout will stay at $10/$12 especially when NameJet starts at $69/$79. I fully expect starting price at GD auctions will align to those prices after the dust settles....That may put the final nail on the coffin of most small/mid-size investors looking at GD. They will move to Dropcatch/Dynadot for now, but they'll follow suit I'm sure. Raising starting prices won't hurt any of these firms financially because the bulk of their buys come from the big players anyway. All it will do eventually is squeeze everyone else out but the players with substantial funds to invest with.