I built a marketplace for quickly buying and selling domains.

[mjhcodes]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a project I've been working on called SwoopDomains. It's a marketplace for buying and selling domains quickly and easily.

Just like every founder and entrepreneur, I have a bunch of unused domains sitting around that have been bought then forgotten about. I wanted to sell them, but when I looked into existing marketplaces, I ran into a bunch of issues:

1. Many charge listing fees just to put your domain up for sale
2. Auctions often drag on for weeks or even months
3. The interfaces felt clunky and outdated
4. You have to sell on your registrars marketplace

I figured there had to be a better way, so I created SwoopDomains.

How it works​

• No listing fees - it's completely free to list your domains
• Quick 72-hour auctions - every auction starts at $1 and lasts just 3 days, driving up bidding activity
• Modern, user-friendly interface
• Instant payouts once a sale is completed - straight to your PayPal or bank account

Whether you're looking to offload some unused domains or pick up some new ones at a good price, I'd love for you to check it out and let me know what you think. You can find it at swoopdomains dot com

I'm happy to answer any questions or hear your feedback. Thanks for checking it out!

 

[Future Sensors]

Since your marketplace has just started and you're working with buyers, sellers, and payments, could you please list your company details on the website?

 

[mjhcodes]

Since your marketplace has just started and you're working with buyers, sellers, and payments, could you please list your company details on the website?

Great idea, thanks. Will add team info too.

 

[Future Sensors]

I mean your Chamber of Commerce details, not team info.

 

[Internet.Domains]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a project I've been working on called SwoopDomains. It's a marketplace for buying and selling domains quickly and easily.

Just like every founder and entrepreneur, I have a bunch of unused domains sitting around that have been bought then forgotten about. I wanted to sell them, but when I looked into existing marketplaces, I ran into a bunch of issues:

1. Many charge listing fees just to put your domain up for sale
2. Auctions often drag on for weeks or even months
3. The interfaces felt clunky and outdated
4. You have to sell on your registrars marketplace

I figured there had to be a better way, so I created SwoopDomains.

How it works​

• No listing fees - it's completely free to list your domains
• Quick 72-hour auctions - every auction starts at $1 and lasts just 3 days, driving up bidding activity
• Modern, user-friendly interface
• Instant payouts once a sale is completed - straight to your PayPal or bank account

Whether you're looking to offload some unused domains or pick up some new ones at a good price, I'd love for you to check it out and let me know what you think. You can find it at swoopdomains dot com

I'm happy to answer any questions or hear your feedback. Thanks for checking it out!

Looks very nice!!.. Wishing it great success!!

 

[mjhcodes]

I mean your Chamber of Commerce details, not team info.

Yes. I meant will also add the team info with that.

 

[mjhcodes]

Looks very nice!!.. Wishing it great success!!

Thanks!

 

[Mister Funsky]

I'm happy to answer any questions or hear your feedback. Thanks for checking it out!

I will take a look at it...always interested in modern options. It would be helpful, for those of us that spot interesting threads and want a quick overview, if you would list commission structure for completed sales.

 

[mjhcodes]

I will take a look at it...always interested in modern options. It would be helpful, for those of us that spot interesting threads and want a quick overview, if you would list commission structure for completed sales.

Sure - here is a quick breakdown.

For a seller, it is completely free to create an account and list domains. We take a 10% fee on the final domain price once it has sold - which is used to cover the payment processing fee, the payout fee, and everything in between. This is the only fee the user will pay.

For buyers, there are no fees at all.

There is more information in the FAQ section on the site. Thanks

 

[alcy]

yea the keyword is unwanted domains cause no one will list good names at 1usd for 3 days on a new site with almost no traffic. but in time if many go there this can become good place to unload names. u can do same here for 0 fee tho. or other places too. usually ideas like this have the issue of traffic problems. plus low quality names due to 1usd start.

 

[Jannes]

Everything looks good, but how can this be sustainable businesswise?

 

[alcy]

Everything looks good, but how can this be sustainable businesswise?

how can it not be when their costs to run it are exactly zero

 

[Bannen]

A well-run and smooth, bugless, rollback-less, shill-less auction house is always welcome for domains... if you can avoid all that.

However, the huge elephant in the room is: are you a licensed escrow service?

Because for the transaction system, you are acting as an escrow... you take the buyer's money, hold that payment in your account (personal or business account?), and when the transfer completes, you pay out to the seller.

Only problem with that is: without being a licensed escrow service, then as Epik/Masterbucks show, the security of the payout is all up to one person: you. If you have a heart attack, or Covid, or end up in hospital with a spoon stuck through the side of your head (this represents random accidents that you can in no way predict), or get hit by a Mack truck, or you see you have tens of thousands of dollars in your account waiting for you to payout, and you figure what does it hurt if you use just a teeny teeny bit of that for a vacay to Australia, because there will be more in the account later and you can pay it back eventually, right?

Not saying any of those things will happen. You might be a very honest guy, even when the chips are down, and might never run into an injury, accident, illness, or natural catastrophe with yourself or your computer system. But I am saying: since you are providing an escrow service... what security measure do you have in place (other than, "Hey, I'm an honest guy, plus no accidents or disasters will happen to me, so your funds are safe with me!"), so that we know our pay-ins (from buyers) and pay-outs (to sellers) are safe?

At a glance, I like your site. Functionality looks good so far, layout looks clean... take that with a grain of salt, as I have not signed up nor tried out an auction yet.

But function and service only go so far; we ****ABSOLUTELY**** need to know your escrow security. I bolded, redded, underlined, capitalized, and asterisked 'absolutely', so you may infer how important it is and not sidestep answering this directly.

Good luck. I, for one, do welcome a good new auction platform if it is run properly and securely.

Thanks

 

[alcy]

true about license but sale values will be tiny due to poor quality names as I said...and as op said as this being for unwanted names. we all know what those are. nobody will start valuable names there with low traffic and 1 buck start ... probably 10usd is most they will escrow. just the truth

 

[Bannen]

true about license but sale values will be tiny due to poor quality names as I said...and as op said as this being for unwanted names. we all know what those are. nobody will start valuable names there with low traffic and 1 buck start ... probably 10usd is most they will escrow. just the truth

Agreed. If it stays tiny like this, and always with a $1 minimum first bid, then it will remain only a 'liquidation-house' style auction marketplace, for the lowest quality names. And not having a legal escrow service will cause it to forever remain tiny.

Growth can only happen if they become a legal escrow service, and if they at least introduce tiers for a reserve/start price. You know, the $1 starts for liquidation names, $1K starts for decent names, 10K starts for lower tier premiums, etc etc. If both of those are addressed, then we can think about adding better quality domains to see what happens.

 

[johnn]

How do you make money?

 

[Future Sensors]

It takes a long time, effort and resources for something like this to become viable. Many initiatives of this kind have gone before.

My concern is in line with Bannen's. I already mentioned that it is not clear anywhere which entity runs the website, and the point mentioned about escrow is at least as important.

Wishing you all the best with the website.

 

[Future Sensors]

How do you make money?

I think it's explained here:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/i-...ing-and-selling-domains.1332898/#post-9233955

 

[Bannen]

Problem is, it is dealing only with very low quality domains. Which equals low value domains. Which equals: a business plan based on the sellers 'losing just a little less money'. I'll explain that:

I buy a lot of new domains each year. Mostly dropcatches, bunch of auction wins, and a few handregs. By 'few' I mean a few dozen each year, ha ha.

I also drop many dozens of domains each year. Most of them I paid at least the $59 Dropcatch fee for, and many of them I paid reg fee for. The names I win at auction are better and I don't drop those, of course.

The point is: if I list say 10 domains on SwoopDomains that I am dropping this month... each of those domains, I paid in the $11 - $59 range for. If they even sell on Swoop, I expect they would sell for maybe $1 - $5 each, at best. People are really paying peanuts for liquidation domains these days.

So, best case scenario: I pay $59 for a domain, decide to let it drop in a year, put it on Swoop, it goes for an optimistic price of $5 there; I lose $.50 cents for their commission, so I get $4.50 back. Now I have only lost $54.50 on that domain, instead of $59.

If it's a domain I paid reg fee for, say $11, it'll probably sell for only a dollar on Swoop, if I'm lucky. After their commission, I make $.90 cents. Which means I've now only lost $10.10 on that reg fee domain, instead of $11. Ha ha.

So really, it's not worth my while to put any domains on Swoop. It takes a little time and effort to sign up, list the domains, monitor the auction, go through the transfer and payment transaction... all usually for anywhere from $.90 cents to maybe $4.50 on each sale... plus none of those sales actually brings me PROFIT. They are only tiny sales that make me not lose quite as much money as if I were to simply let those domains drop.

And, with the time and effort involved, even though it's small time and small effort... I'm basically just losing even more time and effort on putting those domains in such a tiny auction for almost no return and certainly no profit.

Heck, I used to hold my annual liquidation sales, with domains starting at $49 each... and I would sell a bunch, but still not profit. Now... I don't even do that sale each year. People just aren't buying liquidations at $49 much anymore. Not worth all my time and effort involved.

On Swoop - so far - I just see a few dollars and cents to be made, here and there. No real money, no profit, no larger sales.

I may be missing something. Maybe there's a way to make a little money that I'm not seeing? If so, please let me know! I want to see a new, good auction house succeed!

 

[alcy]

due to low traffic u have more chance to list free on dyna sav etc..
sav is 5p fee only... dyna 10 I think

I made like 600 on some 300 handeegs i was gonna drop on sav... iver say last 6 months... I only got 200 names on dyna and didnt try there.. bummer on sav is they need 60 day min before exp to list.
dyna is 15 days only. but that's 2 clicks and your listed. no transfer or other stuff.

 

[Future Sensors]

Don't quit your day job @mjhcodes

 

[alcy]

Don't quit your day job @mjhcodes

exactement hahaha

but to his credit the site is kinda nice. didnt reg or try list tho.

 

[Future Sensors]

but to his credit the site is kinda nice. didnt reg or try list tho.

The Internet welcomes another beautiful new website. Now the hard work begins.

 

[alcy]

The Internet welcomes another beautiful new website. Now the hard work begins.

true

well... number one step to get more quality names and people is let folk pick starting price. instantly u get quality names potential. which now is zero. then u can add makeoffer bin crypto etc... every aspect attracting more traffic... without traffic your nothing.

 

[alcy]

I guess without escrow license u can figure out a system like say... auction ends... buyer pays them fee.. buyer gets seller emailfor direct contact.. rest is between buyer and seller... that's like zero work for op... no chargebacks for op ... unlimited payment options as agreed on for 2 parties.. and if seller fails to complete buyer gets fee refund.

that's actually half decent idea.
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