New Namesilo Marketplace

[cocaseco]

Just saw this and the 7.5% commissions stood out!. Nice to have another option.

https://www.namesilo.com/Support/Marketplace

 

[namesilo]

hmm, very small number. I've not heard of only one person being allowed to bid on an auction before in other industries...

This is actually not quite accurate - there is no limit on the number of people who can bid until the maximum bid has been reached. Also, the domain was renewed by the Registrant prior to the auction completing so nobody won the domain.

 

[Keith]

@Keith - with all due respect, you have made your opinions abundantly clear in this and many other responses in this thread. You have made it very clear that you do not like our current expired domain auction system, you have accused us entirely falsely of fraud and you continue to voice your ongoing displeasure. Anybody who reads can easily understand your viewpoint and opinion, so it is unclear why you continue posting here. If you do not like our system, with all due respect, you are not required to use it or any of the services we offer. If you spend the time to read this thread and several others on NamePros and elsewhere regrading our company, you will see that we are very open to constructive criticism and frequently add to or adjust our systems based upon feedback. However, continuing to raise the same points you have made many, many times is really not helping and seems only to disparage and harm our company. We would ask that you please stop posting the same displeasure that you have already made very clear. We have responded to your feedback and the feedback of others already and will continue to assess this and other topics to help in our effort to provide the best systems possible for all of our users. Thanks.

A simple solution is to publicly tell everyone why this particular domain has a sketchy background.

The domain used to resolve to a page that said it was expired, when it wasn’t actually expired. Then when it did expire the page didn’t resolve at all. The domain magically got renewed 3 days prior to going to the auction winner. The dns still says the following, even though the domain is supposedly in good standing - Name Server: DELETED-83B0E4C8CA6B6CF07236A9D3FBBF38D1.DROP-IILVVYOYU08JYBNFRTJK.BIZ

The mystery owner recently renewed this according to namesilo yet they don’t respond when approached with 7 figure offers. The domain industry is a dirty place and as I’ve already stated here, maybe namesilo operates an honest operation. Transparency goes along way though...

 

[Embrand]

@namesilo

I use your landing pages for my names for sale at your marketplace. But I don't use Google Analytics. Are there any plans to launch your own visitor statistics for landing pages?

 

[namesilo]

A simple solution is to publicly tell everyone why this particular domain has a sketchy background.

The domain used to resolve to a page that said it was expired, when it wasn’t actually expired. Then when it did expire the page didn’t resolve at all. The domain magically got renewed 3 days prior to going to the auction winner. The dns still says the following, even though the domain is supposedly in good standing - Name Server: DELETED-83B0E4C8CA6B6CF07236A9D3FBBF38D1.DROP-IILVVYOYU08JYBNFRTJK.BIZ

The mystery owner recently renewed this according to namesilo yet they don’t respond when approached with 7 figure offers. The domain industry is a dirty place and as I’ve already stated here, maybe namesilo operates an honest operation. Transparency goes along way though...

We have already covered this topic in length months ago. Nothing in our responses will change. We are sorry you feel we are a shady and under-handed company that steals domains, but, AGAIN, this is simply not the case. Why you are now choosing to re-arbitrate the case after months is again a mystery to us. We can only guess you have some kind of desire to harm our company for some reason based upon your posts in this thread. We would ask, again, that you please stop posting here on a thread about our Marketplace. You attack us with absolutely no evidence, no history of other accusations in over 10 years in business, comments about how other registrars/domainers laugh at and scoff at us, and are unrelenting about ensuring other people who post here are well-aware of your perceived short-comings with our systems and the ethics of our business. For the last time, we are very sorry you failed to get a domain that you wanted.

 

[namesilo]

@namesilo

I use your landing pages for my names for sale at your marketplace. But I don't use Google Analytics. Are there any plans to launch your own visitor statistics for landing pages?

That is a great idea and one that we have considered, but have yet to implement. I will be sure this topic gets raised back to the top of our "list"

 

[Keith]

We have already covered this topic in length months ago. Nothing in our responses will change. We are sorry you feel we are a shady and under-handed company that steals domains, but, AGAIN, this is simply not the case. Why you are now choosing to re-arbitrate the case after months is again a mystery to us. We can only guess you have some kind of desire to harm our company for some reason based upon your posts in this thread. We would ask, again, that you please stop posting here on a thread about our Marketplace. You attack us with absolutely no evidence, no history of other accusations in over 10 years in business, comments about how other registrars/domainers laugh at and scoff at us, and are unrelenting about ensuring other people who post here are well-aware of your perceived short-comings with our systems and the ethics of our business. For the last time, we are very sorry you failed to get a domain that you wanted.

That’s the transparency thing or lack there of I just mentioned. I’ve also said twice now that maybe namesilo is one of the few honest companies in this business.

You also keep saying things like “fraud” as if I’m harming your business. I said one time that namesilo renewed the domain. In case you’re unaware, that’s a common practice at other registrars. They warehouse domains for whatever reason so my comment isn’t harmful or out of line, this practice happens. You stated that the customer renewed the domain, great, we got it. You still haven’t explained something as simple as the server saying delete/drop when the domain is in good standing.

 

[namesilo]

That’s the transparency thing or lack there of I just mentioned. I’ve also said twice now that maybe namesilo is one of the few honest companies in this business.

You also keep saying things like “fraud” as if I’m harming your business. I said one time that namesilo renewed the domain. In case you’re unaware, that’s a common practice at other registrars. They warehouse domains for whatever reason so my comment isn’t harmful or out of line, this practice happens. You stated that the customer renewed the domain, great, we got it. You still haven’t explained something as simple as the server saying delete/drop when the domain is in good standing.

We cannot explain name server changes made by Registrants. We do not make name server changes to domains. We therefore of course cannot explain why they are set as they are - only the Registrant could answer that.

And to be clear, yes, accusing us of fraudulent activity is harmful to our business - whether other registrars engage in the practice or not has no bearing on how we operate our business. Please stop posting here about this topic, and let this forum remain what it was intended to be - not a place for you to continually disparage our business. Please stop posting here about this issue. Anybody who wants to read about it can do so in the prior pages and your many other posts, and our responses. There is nothing more to say.

 

[tonyk2000]

As for landing pages stats, there is a great service called statcounter dot com - both free and paid versions, all necessary reports up visitors country and screen resolution, no google, and their code can be integrated as easy as GA code. NameSilo programmers should have no issues adding this option.

 

[Michael Ehrhardt]

Keep Life Simple

 

[namesilo]

As for landing pages stats, there is a great service called statcounter dot com - both free and paid versions, all necessary reports up visitors country and screen resolution, no google, and their code can be integrated as easy as GA code. NameSilo programmers should have no issues adding this option.

Thanks - we'll take a look. Do you perhaps have a usage example for implementation? Assuming it is something like Google Analytics in which everyone has their own ID(s) that can be added to standard JavaScript?

 

[tonyk2000]

Do you perhaps have a usage example for implementation?

More-or-less similar to GA from webmasters point of view. I"d say it is even better.
Example - hugedomains.com They use paid version with extended stats and longer archiving it seems. Just look into html code of their 1st page for "statcounter"

 

[namesilo]

More-or-less similar to GA from webmasters point of view. I"d say it is even better.
Example - hugedomains.com They use paid version with extended stats and longer archiving it seems. Just look into html code of their 1st page for "statcounter"

Cool, thanks. We'll take a look...

 

[SuperBrander]

NameSilo is a good and honest registrar. I wish more registrars would be like it. But I too gave up on their expired auctions long ago after not being able to win even a single domain with a max bid and with my money being stuck there for 60 mandatory days until they allowed me to get a refund.

NameSilo's expired auctions favor the registrants as NameSilo itself admits and that makes the experience extremely frustrating for buyers. Since NameSilo is fine with it and willing to lose money in order to make the registrants happy, despite the tons of notifications they're already getting about the expiration- then so be it. Does their current system make sense for expired domains? Absolutely no. Every other expired auction platform operates differently than NameSilo, makes more money and has happier buyers. But NameSilo insists on this faulty system because they're scared of bad reviews... so unfortunately that's where things stand.

In my opinion, if a client blames a company for something that was their own fault- the company should just post a reply and explain what happened. Letting these online "bullies" win by creating practices that don't make sense both financially and logically out of fear- is the wrong way to go. Hopefully one day NameSilo will decide to start the auctions only when the domains are guaranteed to be won instead of the current situation- where domains are listed on day one of expiration and then are renewed (at least the good ones) 99.9% of the time to the great frustration of buyers.

 

[Arca]

How much did the auction of Cryptofund.com finish at BTW?

The domain was renewed and the auction was cancelled. Nobody bought it for $75. It's still with the original owner.

 

[Arca]

@namesilo - Would it be possible to let buyers buy a domain from us with a 12 month payment plan even though the domain doesn’t have 12+ months to go before expiry?

For example, as long as we have $9+ account funds, all our listed domains could show as available to purchase with a 12 month payment plan. And then if anybody purchases a domain from us with less than 12 months to go before expiry, you deduct $9 from our account funds when a sale takes place, to be used to pay for the renewal of the domain during the during the installment payments period. If the buyer defaults before expiry, the renewal fee would be refunded to seller's account funds (along with the domain). For sellers that keep names renewed with 12+ months to go before expiry, the renewal deduction would not matter whatsoever, as we pay that amount for nearly every domain in our portfolio anyway, as a measure taken to prepare for the eventuality that a buyer might come along and want to set up a 12 month payment plan.

The whole system would of course be opt-in and 100% voluntary for sellers.

If you have thousands of domains, it’s not desirable to tie up tens of thousands in always keeping everything renewed for 1+ year out, when that money could be put to better use in the short term at the auction houses (or simply just needed elsewhere). But it’s necessary to do so to give buyers the option of setting up 12 month payment plans.

I'd much rather have $8.49 selectively deducted from my account here and there for the actual payment plan sales that come in, rather than having to indiscriminately and ineffectively keep my entire portfolio renewed for 12+ months out at all time for the same purpose.

If you could find a way to let us sell domains with a 12 month payment plan, even if the domain is going to expire before what would be the completion time of that payment plan, it would make selling names with the payment plan option far more practical, cost-efficient, and would surely allow more sellers to fully utilize it as a payment method.

 

[bee]

@namesilo - Would it be possible to let buyers buy a domain from us with a 12 month payment plan even though the domain doesn’t have 12+ months to go before expiry?

For example, as long as we have $9+ account funds, all our listed domains could show as available to purchase with a 12 month payment plan. And then if anybody purchases a domain from us with less than 12 months to go before expiry, you deduct $9 from our account funds when a sale takes place, to be used to pay for the renewal of the domain during the during the installment payments period. If the buyer defaults before expiry, the renewal fee would be refunded to seller's account funds (along with the domain). For sellers that keep names renewed with 12+ months to go before expiry, the renewal deduction would not matter whatsoever, as we pay that amount for nearly every domain in our portfolio anyway, as a measure taken to prepare for the eventuality that a buyer might come along and want to set up a 12 month payment plan.

The whole system would of course be opt-in and 100% voluntary for sellers.

If you have thousands of domains, it’s not desirable to tie up tens of thousands in always keeping everything renewed for 1+ year out, when that money could be put to better use in the short term at the auction houses (or simply just needed elsewhere). But it’s necessary to do so to give buyers the option of setting up 12 month payment plans.

I'd much rather have $8.49 selectively deducted from my account here and there for the actual payment plan sales that come in, rather than having to indiscriminately and ineffectively keep my entire portfolio renewed for 12+ months out at all time for the same purpose.

If you could find a way to let us sell domains with a 12 month payment plan, even if the domain is going to expire before what would be the completion time of that payment plan, it would make selling names with the payment plan option far more practical, cost-efficient, and would surely allow more sellers to fully utilize it as a payment method.

Sounds good.

 

[tonyk2000]

if the domain is going to expire before what would be the completion time of that payment plan

Indeed, current setup is not optimal. So far I ended up with submitting 1 year renewals even before I think of a plan length and down payment amount. Actually, I just started "playing" with pmt plans, for a limited number of domains, but already had a 1st sale with the plan, a few days after I (re)configured the domain to offer such an option

A potential solution would be to process renewal at the time of the first payout to seller (when it becomes eligible for payout) and use these funds, this way there would be no need to maintain sufficient account balance or active billing agreement with the seller.

As a side note, GoDaddy premium listing sales do always add 1 year renewal to a shopping cart and the buyers do actually pay aftermarket price + $14.99 renewal at purchase time. It works.

all our listed domains could show as available to purchase with a 12 month payment plan

@Arca did you find that offering maximum plan length (12 month) for all domains (regardless of their price range) works better? Just curious...

 

[Arca]

A potential solution would be to process renewal at the time of the first payout to seller (when it becomes eligible for payout) and use these funds, this way there would be no need to maintain sufficient account balance or active billing agreement with the seller.

Great suggestion.

As a side note, GoDaddy premium listing sales do always add 1 year renewal to a shopping cart and the buyers do actually pay aftermarket price + $14.99 renewal at purchase time. It works.

GoDaddy is infamous for adding on various fees to the “main one”. NameSilo has built their model around the opposite pricing strategy (“no hidden fees - what you see is what you pay”). Accordingly, if a domain’s landing page displays BIN: $999, I think buyers should be able to add it to their cart, and pay exactly $999 for the domain, rather than discover that there is fine print somewhere on the page stating $999 + $8.99 renewal when they add the domain to their cart.

did you find that offering maximum plan length (12 month) for all domains (regardless of their price range) works better? Just curious...

I personally find that the vast majority of buyers opt to pay the lowest amount possible over the longest period of time allowed. If a domain is priced at $1300 for example, most buyers will opt to pay $100 over 13 months (down payment + 12 months of installment payments). I continue to see this preference among buyers regardless of the price range, though it holds particularly true for higher priced domains.

Also, the payment plan option is extremely popular among buyers. I offer payment plan option on all my listings, and in many months I sell more domains with a payment plan than I do via a one time payment of the full amount. The payment plan option has been particularly popular among buyers in the last few months. Not sure why.

If given the choice of BIN vs payment plan, the majority of buyers will usually opt for the payment plan rather than pay the full BIN price upfront (this is just my anecdotal experience of course, the marketplace-wide stat may very well differ).

 

[namesilo]

More-or-less similar to GA from webmasters point of view. I"d say it is even better.
Example - hugedomains.com They use paid version with extended stats and longer archiving it seems. Just look into html code of their 1st page for "statcounter"

Ok - all set.... you can now enter your Statcounter project id and security code on the Seller Resources page (same page as where the Google Analytics ID is entered).

 

[namesilo]

NameSilo is a good and honest registrar. I wish more registrars would be like it. But I too gave up on their expired auctions long ago after not being able to win even a single domain with a max bid and with my money being stuck there for 60 mandatory days until they allowed me to get a refund.

NameSilo's expired auctions favor the registrants as NameSilo itself admits and that makes the experience extremely frustrating for buyers. Since NameSilo is fine with it and willing to lose money in order to make the registrants happy, despite the tons of notifications they're already getting about the expiration- then so be it. Does their current system make sense for expired domains? Absolutely no. Every other expired auction platform operates differently than NameSilo, makes more money and has happier buyers. But NameSilo insists on this faulty system because they're scared of bad reviews... so unfortunately that's where things stand.

In my opinion, if a client blames a company for something that was their own fault- the company should just post a reply and explain what happened. Letting these online "bullies" win by creating practices that don't make sense both financially and logically out of fear- is the wrong way to go. Hopefully one day NameSilo will decide to start the auctions only when the domains are guaranteed to be won instead of the current situation- where domains are listed on day one of expiration and then are renewed (at least the good ones) 99.9% of the time to the great frustration of buyers.

Thanks, we really do appreciate your feedback and the feedback of others who have posted here, elsewhere and in direct communication to us. It is really not so much a fear of negative reviews as it is the potential liability (yes, we have been threatened with many lawsuits, ICANN complaints and other legal action) and drain on our support, legal and other administrative resources when dealing with Registrants who lose their domains. We of course agree 100% that losing expired domains is the responsibility of the Registrant. Unfortunately, common sense, clear terms of service, multiple reminders, etc. do not satisfy some people who would rather threaten us and do damage to our brand than to accept responsibility for the renewal of their domains.

As we've stated in this thread, we do understand the shortcomings of our current system and we are very much reviewing all possible options to help alleviate these issues. It is not our intent to make things hard on Buyers or to make less money

Again, we appreciate the feedback and we are always looking for ways to improve.

 

[namesilo]

@namesilo - Would it be possible to let buyers buy a domain from us with a 12 month payment plan even though the domain doesn’t have 12+ months to go before expiry?

For example, as long as we have $9+ account funds, all our listed domains could show as available to purchase with a 12 month payment plan. And then if anybody purchases a domain from us with less than 12 months to go before expiry, you deduct $9 from our account funds when a sale takes place, to be used to pay for the renewal of the domain during the during the installment payments period. If the buyer defaults before expiry, the renewal fee would be refunded to seller's account funds (along with the domain). For sellers that keep names renewed with 12+ months to go before expiry, the renewal deduction would not matter whatsoever, as we pay that amount for nearly every domain in our portfolio anyway, as a measure taken to prepare for the eventuality that a buyer might come along and want to set up a 12 month payment plan.

The whole system would of course be opt-in and 100% voluntary for sellers.

If you have thousands of domains, it’s not desirable to tie up tens of thousands in always keeping everything renewed for 1+ year out, when that money could be put to better use in the short term at the auction houses (or simply just needed elsewhere). But it’s necessary to do so to give buyers the option of setting up 12 month payment plans.

I'd much rather have $8.49 selectively deducted from my account here and there for the actual payment plan sales that come in, rather than having to indiscriminately and ineffectively keep my entire portfolio renewed for 12+ months out at all time for the same purpose.

If you could find a way to let us sell domains with a 12 month payment plan, even if the domain is going to expire before what would be the completion time of that payment plan, it would make selling names with the payment plan option far more practical, cost-efficient, and would surely allow more sellers to fully utilize it as a payment method.

Hi @Arca - thanks for the feedback and suggestions. We totally understand where you're coming from and we'll see what the feasibility is for us to add some kind of optional configuration controls to help give better flexibility on the length of available payment plans. Might take us some time on this one since the change would be in a pretty complex area of our code, but anything is doable

 

[Embrand]

Ok - all set.... you can now enter your Statcounter project id and security code on the Seller Resources page (same page as where the Google Analytics ID is entered).

That is great. Thanks! I will try it out.

Update: It seems to work perfectly.

 

[creataweb]

Sorry if I may have missed this but how does the expired domains pricing structure work? I see some listed with a max of $2,xxx and others are really low. Is it some automated setup based on an appraisal?

 

[namesilo]

Sorry if I may have missed this but how does the expired domains pricing structure work? I see some listed with a max of $2,xxx and others are really low. Is it some automated setup based on an appraisal?

Our system runs through an algorithm to establish the initial max bid price base don things like domain length, age, etc. Then, as the auction nears an end, the max bid is lowered. More details can be found here:

https://www.namesilo.com/Support/Expired-Domain-Auction-Frequently-Asked-Questions

 

[SuperBrander]

@namesilo Thanks for your response. Much appreciated. I understand now that this is mostly a legal issue and about not wanting to use up your resources to handle these angry registrants rather than just fear of their negative reviews. I understand your situation. However, that's no excuse to the fact that your expired auctions systems is so bad for buyers. It can be improved despite this issue. You guys say that you're considering changes but it's stayed the same for a long long time even though you know that it's frustrating to the point where buyers prefer not to use it just to avoid dealing with it. If you have a system in place and you want buyers to use it- then you can't leave a faulty product out there without even trying to improve it. Find a way to make it better taking into account other issues. Any sort of change is better than leaving it the way it is.

To begin with, you could start the expired auctions process much later in the expiration cycle. As it is, you guys are making every effort for these domains to be renewed including emails to the owners after the domain is sold- so at least if you start the auction later- there's more time for the owners to renew before buyers are even involved in the process and then also a shorter waiting time for buyers to know the outcome. Also, making people deposit money into your system as account funds in order to be able to even bid and then keeping that money for 60 days before it can be refunded (when the inevitable renewal happens)... not a good policy. I understand chargebacks are happening, but if all other marketplaces figured it out... you guys can figure it out too. I know some users are offered the ability to pay with credit after they have a certain amount of domains so the money isn't paid until the outcome of the expired domain is decided. That may help some, but isn't a good enough solution and your criteria for giving that credit is unknown. I currently have a few dozen domains, bought a $1000 domain from the marketplace and I still have to deposit money if I want to try and grab an expired domain against all odds. So these two matters are possibly a good place to start.

Again, love you as a registrar. But your auctions need serious fixing. So... please take steps to solve this matter so it would be up to par with your other services and your great customer support. I'm sure that you can come up with something better.

Thanks again for reading and for your reply. Have a great week.