NameSilo.com expired auctions bids

[Trader247]

I am a client of NameSilo.com as I am sure a lot of you are too. I have been visiting their expired auctions in the last 2-3 months on a regular basis, mainly due to their ads on a popular podcast.


All was well, they have some ok names on the expired auctions which a few users bid on here and there. So it was easy to search decent names on a daily basis as most (like 99%) did not have any bids. So to see what was ‘trending’, all you have to do is sort by highest bids and about 20 to 50 names would pop up and the rest would sit idle, at $0 bid, waiting to be claimed and brought back to life.


That all appeared to change about 4 weeks ago when bids appeared of at least $1 or more on 99.9% of expired names. Questions for fellow NP fam – is this normal in the domain world?


I have contacted their support who are most likely responding from a 3rd world country with little knowledge about expired domain names and their value. In a 15-minute conversation, all I got was ‘expired domain names have value and people are bidding them up. The said people will flip them for a profit.’ – that’s it in a nutshell.


I tried to explain that the chance of every name being bid on every single day is almost impossible. Their response to my question was that about 400 domains from about 70,000 did not have bids. This was where the conversation finished.


Has anyone else seen this and has anyone contacted NameSilo.com and received a more appropriate response?


If NameSilo.com has a NP account, it would be great to get a response as to why almost all their expired domains now have at least $1 bid or more?


Any thoughts or debate would be great.

 

[karmaco]

Huge Domains or some other big entity finding another source for exp domains. As you said like everywhere 95% of names dropping there are garbage so let them have those.

 

[topdom]

Because 1 USD bids are probably below reserve, but still make other buyers and current owners get panicked. Just a guess.

 

[Trader247]

Because 1 USD bids are probably below reserve, but still make other buyers and current owners get panicked. Just a guess.

No, having purchased about 12 at the $1 bid, it's definitely above reserve.

 

[Mr De]

No, having purchased about 12 at the $1 bid, it's definitely above reserve.

What is cost of acquiring namesilo expired domain ? What is there renewal price for expired domain ?

 

[karmaco]

The lowest cost is $1.00 bid plus $8.99 renewal. It goes up from there.

 

[griff]

It's not a regular user as the "bidder" is simply titled "opening bid". Would like to have been informed as well, only noticed it happening in the last week or two - seems to a simple case of making more money.

 

[Embrand]

It's not a regular user as the "bidder" is simply titled "opening bid". Got a feeling it's NameSilo themselves trying to create a reserve/start auctioning themselves, but would also like to know as I don't think anyone was informed about this and it's only started happening in the last couple of weeks.

Show attachment 128718

If the opening bid was placed at 00:00:00, it certainly seems automated.

 

[topdom]

Normally I would drop a domain and buy again, knowing there is not much competition, but such activity kills such a chance,
but "they" can't sell either, so I have to wait one more year before reregistering. It is a good thing that there is an Icann fee, and uncertinity when trying to sell, otherwise we wouldn't be able to handreg some sellable domains.

 

[Trader247]

What is cost of acquiring namesilo expired domain ? What is there renewal price for expired domain ?

$8.99 for 1 domain
little less if you have more domains

 

[Trader247]

The annoying and totally unprofessional thing was that they assume the domain investors would not notice and when i approached them, their line was as per above.

I wanted to support a smaller registry but this is a bit too much.

 

[Ategy]

I tried NameSilo auctions a couple of nights about a week ago. Can't say I was very impressed with the quality of names nor the quality of their platform. Plus it seems many of the names I was watching got renewed in the last day or two. Honestly, not worth the time or energy at this point.

That being said, my impression of the $1 "initial bid" is that it isn't really a bid. My best guess is that those names do indeed drop (unless someone bids $2 obviously).

Wish I could say more .. the only good thing about them at this point is that their expired auctions quality/experience combination is so bad, nobody is really going to bother using them .. which in turn at least makes for little competition and higher chances of getting good domains for cheap.

The being said, the other night I was bidding on 2 domains, and there was someone else just adding $1 every 4m45s, making the auctions needlessly last 1.5 hours. A bit like the issue with GoDaddy auctions, but when it's $1 multiples it's just ridiculous, you can be forced to wait 2 hours for it to get to just $50 (after that it's $5 multiples it seems)!

Plus you can't even proxy bet .. if it's at $1 and you bid $100, then instead of placing your bid at $2 and $100 as a proxy, the current bid becomes $100! So either you burn money, or you wait forever!

 

[Dave]

I tried NameSilo auctions a couple of nights about a week ago. Can't say I was very impressed with the quality of names nor the quality of their platform. Plus it seems many of the names I was watching got renewed in the last day or two. Honestly, not worth the time or energy at this point.

That being said, my impression of the $1 "initial bid" is that it isn't really a bid. My best guess is that those names do indeed drop (unless someone bids $2 obviously).

Wish I could say more .. the only good thing about them at this point is that their expired auctions quality/experience combination is so bad, nobody is really going to bother using them .. which in turn at least makes for little competition and higher chances of getting good domains for cheap.

The being said, the other night I was bidding on 2 domains, and there was someone else just adding $1 every 4m45s, making the auctions needlessly last 1.5 hours. A bit like the issue with GoDaddy auctions, but when it's $1 multiples it's just ridiculous, you can be forced to wait 2 hours for it to get to just $50 (after that it's $5 multiples it seems)!

Plus you can't even proxy bet .. if it's at $1 and you bid $100, then instead of placing your bid at $2 and $100 as a proxy, the current bid becomes $100! So either you burn money, or you wait forever!

NameSilo auctions will be changing to proxy bidding soon and doing away with max bid. I've no idea what date they're planning on releasing this change on though.

 

[dncafe]

Plus it seems many of the names I was watching got renewed in the last day or two.

There are domain investors who own domains and let them drop because they don't get any offers or the metrics don't look good.

After the domain has expired, they use scripts to check the auctions on the last day/minute to see if the domain has any bids, if it has bids, they believe the domain may have some value and automatically renew it.

 

[bojan1]

This morning I was bidding at NameSilo expired auction and lost because winning bidder placed his bid just a few seconds before auction ended. In past I am pretty much sure (even yesterday!) it was not a case, it would be added 5 additional minutes in case the bid was places in last 5 minutes.

I have asked their support but they didn't mentioned any change in rules for expired auctions. Were those rules always valid on NameSilo expired auctions? Thanks.

 

[golan]

This morning I was bidding at NameSilo expired auction and lost because winning bidder placed his bid just a few seconds before auction ended. In past I am pretty much sure (even yesterday!) it was not a case, it would be added 5 additional minutes in case the bid was places in last 5 minutes.

I have asked their support but they didn't mentioned any change in rules for expired auctions. Were those rules always valid on NameSilo expired auctions? Thanks.

This sucks.

@namesilo please?

 

[karmaco]

Guess they took Ategy to heart and are not adding 5 minutes every time someone adds a bid. Honestly they should to maximize their profit.

Another continued annoyance is domains you watched for 30 days getting renewed in the last hour or two. I refuse to bid until the last 15 minutes for this very reason.

Also do we know what entity is placing the $1.00 bids on all names including gibberish?

 

[namesilo]

This morning I was bidding at NameSilo expired auction and lost because winning bidder placed his bid just a few seconds before auction ended. In past I am pretty much sure (even yesterday!) it was not a case, it would be added 5 additional minutes in case the bid was places in last 5 minutes.

Sorry to hear about the trouble you experienced on our marketplace. Can you please send us an email at [email protected] or PM us with the details of the auction (the domain name you bid on) so our team can investigate this matter further. In the near future, we are working towards moving to a proxy bidding system on expired domains similar to our other marketplace listings which should hopefully alleviate these kinds of issues.

 

[bojan1]

Even though I am not convinced 100%, investigation showed that everything was OK with this auction. Looks like that I have received email notification about another bidder too late, and that was the reason why I did not have a time to place my bid.

But this is the first time that something like this happened to me. Thanks @namesilo

 

[griff]

@namesilo 24 mins after winning an expired auction (ends at 7am UK time) I got an email saying the owner has now renewed it (second time that's happened - last time got an email like 5 hours later).

Does Namesilo allow renewal after the auction has already ended then? Was also charged funds to pay to renewal of that new name, that the old owner still has in their account

 

[namesilo]

@namesilo 24 mins after winning an expired auction (ends at 7am UK time) I got an email saying the owner has now renewed it (second time that's happened - last time got an email like 5 hours later).

Does Namesilo allow renewal after the auction has already ended then? Was also charged funds to pay to renewal of that new name, that the old owner still has in their account

Can you please PM us the details (i.e. the domain name) or contact us at [email protected] so our team can investigate the logs for this case. It's possible that there was another bid on that domain name and the auction was extended or the original owner renewed it just prior to the deadline.