HugeDomains.com is Buying 50%+ of Expiring Domains at GoDaddy.com

[Arca]

I've been wondering about the competition in auctions for expiring domains over at GoDaddy.com, because somebody is paying hundreds for seemingly every domain that gets a few bidders.

I’ve also noticed a clear pattern, with the last bidder (or one of the last bidders) entering the auction winning most of the time, which made me think that there is one large corporate buyer piggybacking of whatever domains other people find and bid on. Turns out that is the case: HugeDomains.com is buying most domains over at GoDaddy.com expired auctions. I looked up the WHOIS of the past 150 auctions I have lost at GoDaddy.com, and 84 of those are now owned by HugeDomains.com and listed for sale on HugeDomains.com.

While 50%+ may not be representative of overall domains bought at GoDaddy, they do seem to buy far more domains than anyone else. The 66 names not bought by HugeDomains.com were bought by a number of different individuals and companies (BuyDomains.com bought 6 of those 66, for example), so 50%+ were taken by HugeDomains, while "the rest" of the auction wins were by a number of different individual domainers and companies.

This might not be news to some, but I've never seen anyone mention that HugeDomains is this active over at GD expired auctions, so I thought it might be interesting for some people to know who is outbidding everyone in the lower range over at GoDaddy. I've read people mentioning that HugeDomains buy names in close-out status over at GoDaddy, but never that they buy most of the domains in auctions too.

HugeDomains absolutely dominates all auctions below $5XX, and they only picked up a single name above $5XX (cakemart.com) in my sample of 150 names, so $5XX seems to be a self-imposed limit for them. If I only checked domains sold below $5XX, the percentage bought by them would be even higher. I've been the second highest bidder in lots of auctions that HugeDomains.com won, and in my experience they will keep bidding until you give up or until the price passes $5XX. By outbidding most bidders in the lower end, and acquiring more than half of the domains other people also have interest, it leaves a far smaller pool of names for the rest of the domainers to compete for, so I guess that's part of the reason why the reseller prices for names keep increasing so much for names in this range.

The only way to buy cheap domains at GoDaddy auctions now seems to be to let domains expire with 0 bids, so that they go to close-out status, and then try to snipe them as soon as that happens. However, some domainers seem to think it's smart to bid $12 on any decent name when there is 1-15 minutes left, hoping that nobody else is going to place a bid, so fewer and fewer decent names are let to expire with 0 bids. However, that strategy never seems to work (I've tried it myself lots of names, and it did not work even one time), because there are always other people watching and waiting for the name to go to close-out, and they jump in and bid if you make a $12 bid, and most of those names are eventually won by HugeDomains.com. What experiences do other people have at GD recently? Anyone else have any good strategies for buying expiring domains @ GoDaddy.com these days?

Some examples of expired domains bought at GoDaddy.com auctions by HugeDomains:
Domain: skillsharing.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $540
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2995

Domain: ledmaster.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $537
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2195

Domain: cyberstrategies.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $262
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2895

Domain: crablab.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $320
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $1895

Domain: dailyportal.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $560
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2895

Domain: fivesecondrule.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $42
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2695

Domain: deltacloud.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $365
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $1795

Domain: itace.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $499
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2595

Domain: sunnykitchen.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $200
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2595

Domain: baristaschool.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $449
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2895

Domain: cakemart.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $695
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $3495

Domain: visuala.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $315
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2795

Domain: massanalytics.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $130
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2095

Domain: edusport.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $535
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2995

Domain: acneguru.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $52
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2495

Domain: stylefolio.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $195
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $1995

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Related: HUGE DOMAINS SNIPING GODADDY CLOSEOUTS

 

[urlurl]

yes, but would you but a name for $1,000 that may not sell for 10 years... or maybe never sell!?

 

[wwwweb]

Sometimes getting into a bidding war is just plain fun. Business models vary on a per-business basis. Nothing wrong with marking up a name 20-50x and holding for a decade, so long as that's your gameplan going into the fray. Good things can come to those who wait just as well as to those who snap up the quick flips and keep the liquidity going.

What platform are you getting into bidding wars for fun exactly?

I checked your platform via the link in your signature, are you going to renew all those .xyz at $10?

https://undeveloped.com/domain-seller/ken-snijders?order=length-asc

 

[Brandworthy]

@wwwweb I'm talking about the time gap between when you can place a $12 bid and then it re-emerges for availability as an $11 closeout.

It's randomised, but I haven't seen it less than 5 minutes.

I've seen it take 5-10 minutes sometimes lately.... It does seem random.

It can sometimes be much longer.

 

[slimjim270]

Where Backorders and Expired Auctions have become so flooded... it seems like $11 Closeouts has become a mini-dropcatch game.

@Nat Hunt - to answer your question... I have seen the timing jump from GD $12 Expired Auctions to GD $11 Closeouts to be anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes. I agree, it appears GD set the transfer time to "randomize" the transfer from one system to the next.

My gut for the reason - some analyst at GD identified that a large portion of names were not receiving 1st bids on Expired Auctions and being grabbed immediately by a specific group of users the moment they hit $11 Closeout. Then by simply "randomizing" the jump timing, it dissuaded many in the tracked group from waiting and GD saw an increase in 1st bids being entered by the same group of users in the $12 Expired Auction model after the change.

At the volume GD manages, they have plenty of analytics to determine bidder behavior, can perform parallel tests, and can adjust their processes to maximize bidder metrics and sales volume.

From what I recall, any bid entered in the last 5 minutes of a GD $12 Expired Auction automatically bumps out the expiration time of the Expired Auction by 10 minutes. This provides the HugeDomain (bandwagon) type bidders an extra 10 minutes to jump onto last-minute activity.

-Jim

 

[Arca]

Since the period between pre-release auction and closout status now varies, it's made it a lot more inefficient to snipe closeout names. Previously you could set a timer and be ready pretty much exactly when the name hit closeout. That doesn't work anymore when the time is no longer set, and I've seen one name take as long as 25 minutes before hitting closeouts. That GoDaddy would make such a change to make more people start bidding before auction end, instead of attempting to snipe the name as a closeout, seems probable, as closeout sniping competition at GD used to be fierce, with lots of people doing it, instead of starting to bid (and if all those people attempting to snipe the name for $11 got into a bidding war instead, GD would obviously earn a lot more money off the name). However, considering how much more you generally have to pay for a name in a bidding war (as opposed to $11), I also find it strange that domainers would be as "obliging" to GoDaddy's strategy. There's just a huge difference between sniping a bunch of names at $11 and going into a bidding war and buying them at say $50-500 each instead.

But while this change has made it harder to snipe names efficiently, it has also made it a lot easier to snipe names just based off determination alone. If a name expires with no bids now, and you sit there and refresh continuously until it appears as a closeout, you'll have a really high success rate, since there are fewer people hitting refresh every second until the name hits closeout, since it is really time consuming (and not just time-consuming, but also mind-numbingly repetitive!). But it seems like something that would benefit full-time domainers and people with lots of time on their hands.

 

[dordomai]

Sometimes getting into a bidding war is just plain fun. Business models vary on a per-business basis. Nothing wrong with marking up a name 20-50x and holding for a decade, so long as that's your gameplan going into the fray. Good things can come to those who wait just as well as to those who snap up the quick flips and keep the liquidity going.

A decade isn't that long. If turnover is 2%.. 20% chance of selling in a decade, need to hold 50 years to sell on average if you overprice mediocre names.

if you are 30 years old, you might never be able to sell them and the name will have to exist longer than you to sell.

 

[wwwweb]

A decade isn't that long. If turnover is 2%.. 20% chance of selling in a decade, need to hold 50 years to sell on average if you overprice mediocre names.

if you are 30 years old, you might never be able to sell them and the name will have to exist longer than you to sell.

I agree many newbies believe these things fly off the shelf.

The reason you cannot bid so high on domains is that is dead money sitting there for many years, with no guarantee of ever being recovered. That implies risk, and the purchase has to be discounted for that.

It takes a while for people to max out their credit card, then sit waiting for a sale, and none come then they get a reality check.

 

[spooksy]

What platform are you getting into bidding wars for fun exactly?

I checked your platform via the link in your signature, are you going to renew all those .xyz at $10?

https://undeveloped.com/domain-seller/ken-snijders?order=length-asc

Unlikely, those are all 2 cents / 1 dollar regs that are set to drop unless they have active traffic or bids. That said, a few of them sold, and several bring in a daily 10-20 visitors. Can't complain at a 2 cents cost.

A decade isn't that long. If turnover is 2%.. 20% chance of selling in a decade, need to hold 50 years to sell on average if you overprice mediocre names.

if you are 30 years old, you might never be able to sell them and the name will have to exist longer than you to sell.

Yeah, never invest what you cannot afford to lose. That being said, 50 years of holding will run you $500 in renewals at most. Not very much in a span of 5 decades. If you did your homework, that's your retirement fund or a legacy.

I think a lot of these turnover rates and averages are based on giant portfolios that were bootstrapped together with profits of previous sales, or savings in the bank. Less so a problem of domaining being a harsh business, moreso a problem of the user having a bigger portfolio than his current situation comfortably allows him when sales dry up for a bit.

 

[brandsly]

Since the period between pre-release auction and closout status now varies, it's made it a lot more inefficient to snipe closeout names. Previously you could set a timer and be ready pretty much exactly when the name hit closeout. That doesn't work anymore when the time is no longer set, and I've seen one name take as long as 25 minutes before hitting closeouts. That GoDaddy would make such a change to make more people start bidding before auction end, instead of attempting to snipe the name as a closeout, seems probable, as closeout sniping competition at GD used to be fierce, with lots of people doing it, instead of starting to bid (and if all those people attempting to snipe the name for $11 got into a bidding war instead, GD would obviously earn a lot more money off the name). However, considering how much more you generally have to pay for a name in a bidding war (as opposed to $11), I also find it strange that domainers would be as "obliging" to GoDaddy's strategy. There's just a huge difference between sniping a bunch of names at $11 and going into a bidding war and buying them at say $50-500 each instead.

But while this change has made it harder to snipe names efficiently, it has also made it a lot easier to snipe names just based off determination alone. If a name expires with no bids now, and you sit there and refresh continuously until it appears as a closeout, you'll have a really high success rate, since there are fewer people hitting refresh every second until the name hits closeout, since it is really time consuming (and not just time-consuming, but also mind-numbingly repetitive!). But it seems like something that would benefit full-time domainers and people with lots of time on their hands.

In my experience, the time it takes for names to hit closeout varies periodically, but fairly consistent during a given day. I remember early-mid last year, they "drop" in about 5-10 minutes, then at some point in late summer/fall, it took about 20-30 minutes, at some point in early winter I believe, it took as long as 1 hour or more. It went back to less time at some point again, and recently it's been only around a couple of minutes to 10 minutes, mostly around or less than 5 minutes.

This leads me to believe that it's not necessarily by design that Godaddy randomize the "dropping" time to closeout. It could have more to do with their system/server issues. I remember vaguely that the dropping time became painfully long (40 min - 1 hr) around the time they added Tucows expiring domains to their expiring domain auction lists, this might suggest that additional names slowed down their backend script processing time, increased the queue, so it took longer, but I can be wrong. I also remember, from time to time, their website messes up a bit / not responding, and when that's over, the dropping time dramatically reduced the next day, this suggests that they could have performed server maintenance / update as they have noticed service lag as well.

If you have published names for auction on Godaddy, you should also have noticed that it takes time for the name to be processed in their system, by the time the name shows up live on auction, it's usually 6 days and 20 something hours left, instead of full 7 days. They have an enormous amount of names to process in the backend in addition to accepting a huge amount of HTTP requests every second, I think they are doing a great job even though there's a few minutes of lag on things instead of everything being real-time. They have to have a server farm and tons of processes to run their site, and various servers in the cluster can cause delay while "transporting" information to one another.

Again, these are just my guesses from my experience.

 

[wwwweb]

Unlikely, those are all 2 cents / 1 dollar regs that are set to drop unless they have active traffic or bids. That said, a few of them sold, and several bring in a daily 10-20 visitors. Can't complain at a 2 cents cost.


Yeah, never invest what you cannot afford to lose. That being said, 50 years of holding will run you $500 in renewals at most. Not very much in a span of 5 decades. If you did your homework, that's your retirement fund or a legacy.

I think a lot of these turnover rates and averages are based on giant portfolios that were bootstrapped together with profits of previous sales, or savings in the bank. Less so a problem of domaining being a harsh business, moreso a problem of the user having a bigger portfolio than his current situation comfortably allows him when sales dry up for a bit.

Yes, well said,I tend to agree.

So looks like you will be dropping most of your portfolio then, as it is mainly .xyz.

 

[Brandworthy]

This leads me to believe that it's not necessarily by design that Godaddy randomize the "dropping" time to closeout.

I asked them about this and the response was that is random by design. My guess is it makes them more revenue as others mention above.

 

[brandsly]

I asked them about this and the response was that is random by design. My guess is it makes them more revenue as others mention above.

It's true I guess if that's the answer from them, thanks for that! But I still think the "dropping" time is fairly consistent on a given day, and at least for a period of time as well (sometimes weeks, even months). Today and past few days they all take only a few minutes.

 

[wwwweb]

Just going thru some of my watchlist for the past month to better educate myself:

Shazo.com sold for $200, Domainer from Jordan has about 1000 domains

ruxoo.com sold for $164, looks to be newbie domainer from Yemen, trying to build their portfolio

vrtalent.com sold to our good friends at huge domains $354

mgood.com sold to once again huge domains for $302

rapidscreen.com sold to a domainer from Dubai who has about 7000 domains for $380.

So from prior years we did not see as much action from China, and the Middle East, whose buyers are stepping up, paying up, and winning auctions.

 

[BrandChimp]

Waiting for closeout is a good option when you have nothing more important to do for 10 to 40 minutes at that exact time. This makes it harder for busy people to catch domains. Maybe that is why some prefer early bidding...

 

[wwwweb]

Waiting for closeout is a good option when you have nothing more important to do for 10 to 40 minutes at that exact time. This makes it harder for busy people to catch domains. Maybe that is why some prefer early bidding...

There are alot of domains out there, I would rather make my money on the buy, and not worry about trying to get it out, rather than overpay, and worry about how I am going to get my money out.

 

[campout]

So from prior years we did not see as much action from China, and the Middle East, whose buyers are stepping up, paying up, and winning auctions.

That's a good point. A big part of this rise in auction prices could be a lot of big, new money from China & M.E. coming into the English-language .com space.

vrtalent.com sold to our good friends at huge domains $354

Now listed for $1,795, or 5.1X cost.

mgood.com sold to once again huge domains for $302

Now listed for $1,995, or 6.6X cost.

I guess Huge Domains is just less ambitious in the returns it's seeking than most of us. It's a real puzzle why they seem to price too low vs. conventional wisdom. I hope we figure it out definitively some day.

 

[BrandChimp]

They want quick sales and money flow. But I don't get why they are paying top $$$ all the time? They need to be profitable...

 

[campout]

They want quick sales and money flow.

Maybe, but it seems to me like you'll get the opposite if you over-pay and under-price names.

 

[wwwweb]

They want quick sales and money flow. But I don't get why they are paying top $$$ all the time? They need to be profitable...

Maybe they are trying to make things expensive for everyone else.

Do they really need anymore domains, or should they focus on the 2,800,000 domains they already own?

I try to put myself in that position, if I owned 2.8M domains, would I be spending my free cashflow to purchase more, of focus on selling what I have?

They can dropcatch all the domains they want, they have their own register, they have their own dropcatch connections, they have their marketplace, they are the perfect operator, yet they still want more, and your business, at your expense.

 

[BrandChimp]

They should drop thousands of those IMO...

Lot of crap names

 

[wwwweb]

There are a few companies in this industry that are competing with their own customers. I really think this is a bad idea, I know nobody in any offline business could, or would do this, as they would be out of business very quickly.

As a collective, I think we need to make sure we don't support the people who are outbidding us with our dollars, because we need to be greedy, just as they are greedy as well.

Only fair

 

[urlurl]

Just going thru some of my watchlist for the past month to better educate myself:

Shazo.com sold for $200, Domainer from Jordan has about 1000 domains

ruxoo.com sold for $164, looks to be newbie domainer from Yemen, trying to build their portfolio

vrtalent.com sold to our good friends at huge domains $354

mgood.com sold to once again huge domains for $302

rapidscreen.com sold to a domainer from Dubai who has about 7000 domains for $380.

So from prior years we did not see as much action from China, and the Middle East, whose buyers are stepping up, paying up, and winning auctions.

maybe its my own personal taste, but i wouldn't have even put a bid on any of those names.

If foreign investors are trying to break into the market they need a firm grasp of the language - if not, they will end up blowing money on useless names. Its hard enough for some English speaking investors to pick out good brandables.

 

[wwwweb]

maybe its my own personal taste, but i wouldn't have even put a bid on any of those names.

If foreign investors are trying to break into the market they need a firm grasp of the language - if not, they will end up blowing money on useless names. Its hard enough for some English speaking investors to pick out good brandables.

To be honest those were domains I would buy for $12-50, or in closeout prior to 2014.

They paid what they did, now they have to mark them up 5-10X, and get an end user to come knock on their door. Then they still have to close the deal, and collect payment. After all that capital investment, and paying renewals they have to make a profit.

Enjoy

 

[urlurl]

Again, a little update about my watch on GoDaddy expired auction of mediocre to quite good quality domain which still doesn't get bid at last 2 hours or bought as soon as the domain entered Closeout.

I found Mike Mann! And the domain is LandToRent.com. Good name obviously. I don't know whether it's him who own the name previously, accidentally slip to GD expired auction and renew it asap. I forgot to check the whois when it's still on auction.

And it's Wenjie Jiang who bid for mirrorly.com @dotbay. He bid and win another good names too...

Any updates on the stats?

i thought things were cooling off for a bit (i was able to get a couple at my desired price range) and then the crazy bidding started again for so-so and ok domains selling at or near end-user prices.

 

[wwwweb]

Any updates on the stats?

i thought things were cooling off for a bit (i was able to get a couple at my desired price range) and then the crazy bidding started again for so-so and ok domains selling at or near end-user prices.

I think their is a lot of compeition, maybe newbies, and more veteran users battling it out. The auction is getting the better of them as it is a very emotional process that is more about strategy than always winning.

Prices are high for sure, end users for the most part are still low balling, and have more options than ever. Many of these names will be sitting for a long time, before some of these buyers get what they want.