PushToAuction.com Helps Get Domains on Sedo™ Auction

[Michael]

I just wanted to let everyone know who hasn't already heard of the site that PushToAuction.com is a place to market domains that you would like to push to auction at Sedo™.

But what does Sedo™ think about all this?
I spoke with Mark Klein, Sedo's director of business development, about the concept, intent, and implementation of the site. He is well aware of the site's existence, and hasn't expressed any desire for us to stop providing this service to industry professionals.

But won't this lead to a lot of canceled auctions?
The answer is no. I worked closely with Tom Fell, Sedo's North American risk management coordinator, to monitor several hundred auctions started through the site. He was unable to find any correlation between an auction having been started from our site and an increase in canceled auctions. Essentially, the ratio of completed auctions to canceled auctions on Sedo as a whole was not markedly different then the ratio for ones started from PushToAuction.

But won't this encourage favors?
We have made the site as anonymous as possible by not having user names and requiring logins. If you don't know who made the offer, you won't be inclined to reciprocate.

So, how does it work?
You list your domain for free on PushToAuction.com. If someone browsing the site would be happy purchasing your domain for at least $60, they will proceed to make the offer through Sedo™. Once the offer is received, the seller is obligated to push to domain to auction. We also have a featured listing option available for $5 that places the listing on the home page and the top of its category.

Are people having success using the site?
Absolutely! At the time of this post, PushToAuction.com has started 271 auctions. Of those, 255 have already ended with sales totaling $79,117, an average of $310 per domain. The highest sale so far was 6JJ.com which closed at $1,068. These stats are updated live on the right side-bar. Not bad for having only been live four months :tu:

So what's in it for buyers?
Two things. The most important benefit from the site is saving time. Let's say you want to buy a CCC.com at fair market value. You go through Sedo making a few dozen offers, but every single one of those gets countered with $30k+ (as usually happens on Sedo). You just wasted hours of your time searching, and you don't have your domain. Instead, just pop on PushToAuction.com, go to the Acronyms category, make a single $60 offer, and seven days later you have your domain at a fair price.

The second reason buyers use the site is they are hoping to get the domain cheap. Imagine if you made a $60 offer on a domain that is $300 min wholesale and nobody noticed the auction. You just got a bargain! The truth is that rarely happens, but there's no harm in trying, you never know when you'll get lucky

Am I going to waste time clicking a lot of dead links?
We wouldn't do that to you. There are sophisticated programs running in the background that maintain the site. If a listing gets deleted from Sedo, the listing automatically gets removed from the site. If a listing gets pushed to auction, it automatically gets moved to Current Auctions. When an auction closes, it automatically gets moved to Past Auctions, the price gets recorded, and the home page stats get updated. This update happens once a day at 5am EST (GMT -5).

We've spent a lot of time creating the site, promoting it, and making sure Sedo is comfortable with it. We hope it provides a valuable service to the community and makes the process of buying or selling a domain more efficient.

Domain Name Wire even did a feature on the site, click here to read it.

Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[GF]

I visited PushToAuction.com and found it:

1. Very clean and professional
2. Full of tons of great domains
3. EASY to use!

Great work on this site, Michael! :tu:

- GF

 

[ripley]

Going to check it out myself today.

ripley.

 

[Charley]

But won't this encourage favors?
We have made the site as anonymous as possible by not having user names and requiring logins. If you don't know who made the offer, you won't be inclined to reciprocate.

Wouldn't it lead to shill bidding ?

 

[ripley]

Shill bidding is always possible, regardless of the venue. Is there a potential for abuse? Sure. But there's an inherent potential for abuse in any auction system.

ripley.

 

[Michael]

Wouldn't it lead to shill bidding ?

There's no more potential for abuse than at Sedo itself. You don't know who placed the bid, and you don't know who owns the domain (unless you whois it). Sedo doesn't require private whois, so this is exactly the same level of protection provided by them.

Using this site is no different than having a $60 price expectation on your Sedo listing, it will get the offers coming in so you can do an auction. The only difference on my site is less clutter so you can actually get noticed.

 

[JoshuaPz]

A couple of hours ago I placed a bid on a word listed under "Dictionary Words" that I only realized later was actually a typo of dict. word and should be been placed under the typos section. The buyer accepted my bid, which was for pretty significant amount of money. I later realized my mistake and sent an e-mail to Sedo urging them to annull the transaction, then messaged the domain owner to request he write Sedo as well. Although this situation came about because of carelessness on my part (and the seller's), I really think the owner of PushToAuction.com should take pains to ensure thatall self-claimed "Dictionary Words" submitted fit the bill.

 

[Steven]

JoshuaPz, just out of curiosity, will you be willing to disclose the name?

I hope things work out well for you.
Just have to double check always before making the bid as well.

 

[Michael]

Can you PM me the domain and I'll get it taken care of. I try to make sure everything is put in the proper category, but every once in a while something will slip through the cracks. Buyers should always do their homework on a domain before making an offer though. Thanks for the feedback, and I hope you get it straightened out to your satisfaction.

Edit: The domain has been moved to the Typos category.

 

[JoshuaPz]

I'll reveal the domain once we get this issue squared a way. It's an extremely easy one to mistake for the actual dictionary word, so much so that Estibot values the typo at close to $1K, and it even has a Wordtracker/day of 7.

JoshuaPz, just out of curiosity, will you be willing to disclose the name?

I hope things work out well for you.
Just have to double check always before making the bid as well.

 

[paxton]

I've had several successful sales through PushToAuction.com. It's perfect for names that are not premium, but have considerable reseller value (such as LLL.info).

Although it's very simple to submit domains, it would be nice if there was a feature to add multiple domains at once for the same category.

 

[randomo]

I've had several successful sales through PushToAuction.com. It's perfect for names that are not premium, but have considerable reseller value (such as LLL.info).

Same here! It's a great service. On the forums, people frequently post pleas like "A $60 bid will send this domain to auction." PushToAuction is the answer to their wishes.

 

[Michael]

Thanks for your feedback guys! I'm working on bulk uploads now and hope to have it ready soon.

 

[h3rm4w4n]

It need more payment option, for example by NP $

 

[boja]

is it okay for a co.uk? since I can't submit a domain co.uk :wave:

 

[Michelle]

Thanks for your feedback guys! I'm working on bulk uploads now and hope to have it ready soon.

Give me a shout when bulk is available :p

 

[Broker]

I dont get it, push to auction for $60? Whats to say I dont accept the $60 offer then your user pushing it/making an offer is mad?

 

[Michael]

is it okay for a co.uk? since I can't submit a domain co.uk :wave:

I just tested it with a .co.uk and it submitted fine. Are you sure you typed it correctly?

Give me a shout when bulk is available :p

Will do mellow

I dont get it, push to auction for $60? Whats to say I dont accept the $60 offer then your user pushing it/making an offer is mad?

I've had 2 emails from people complaining that their $60 offer didn't start an auction. One the seller was out of town and started it when he got back, and the other got deleted. It isn't a major concern at this point.

It need more payment option, for example by NP $

If you want to pay by NP$, just submit it as a standard listing, donate 250 NP$ to me, and in the subject put the domain name. I'll make it featured manually.

 

[E-Thunder]

Seems like a good concept. Just added a domain to try out the site.

 

[hookah]

Nice and useful service! Thanks.
Are you going to include a 'bulk submission' option?

 

[Michael]

I'm working on a bulk submission option now, but I'm having second thoughts about going forward with it. I'm worried it will lead to everyone submitting their entire portfolios without putting thought into whether each one is worth $60+. If each listing takes time to add, users will be more inclined to only submit the good ones.

I'd rather have 2,000 listings on the site with 90% being worth $60+ than 80,000 listings where 2% are worth $60+. If the latter happens it will be like Sedo all over again, and people will still have a hard time getting noticed.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

 

[ripley]

My personal opinion is that it would be in your interest, as a fledgling site, to encourage people to use it. That means making the interface as friendly as possible (the question to answer, then, is whether or not the lack of bulk uploads is discouraging users, which it seems like it might be, at least in one case). Your first concern, I would think, is encouraging people to use your service.

Then again, your concern about crappy domains is valid, however you may not like the proposal I'm about to put forth, which is evaluating each name yourself for inclusion. Of course this invariably gets into value judgments that you may not want to make.

ripley.

 

[JoshuaPz]

I second ripley's thoughts. Think of your site as a microcosm of Sedo's Top Domains listing. When a Sedo user submits a Top Domains application on one of his/her names, I imagine a panel of Sedo execs. cast votes to arrive at a decision to either accept or reject the domain, and furthermore, in what range to set the reserve. Not all submissions make it to the glorified listing, and I'm sure Sedo has received many complaints to that end, but it's intuitive to understand why Sedo made that choice.

My recommendation: Get a couple of experienced domainers from NP on your team and designate 15-30 minutes each day during which you all conference on MSN over which of the day's submissions made the cut. Allotting the time consistently will take some dedication, but you'll lose less sleep at night thinking about worthless domains contaminating your repository under this scheme.

 

[onlinelife]

I'm working on a bulk submission option now, but I'm having second thoughts about going forward with it. I'm worried it will lead to everyone submitting their entire portfolios without putting thought into whether each one is worth $60+. If each listing takes time to add, users will be more inclined to only submit the good ones.

I'd rather have 2,000 listings on the site with 90% being worth $60+ than 80,000 listings where 2% are worth $60+. If the latter happens it will be like Sedo all over again, and people will still have a hard time getting noticed.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

1st of all, great job on this service.
No matter how many domains they list in your site, main difference is people will go PushToAuction.com to get their domain list into Sedos 7 day’s action, not just offer-counter offer or no response negotiations. So again; seller is willing to take risk at $60 and buyer will get chance to get domain they want at right cost. As a webmaster I would expect more domains listed on site, let buyer decide what’s hot

 

[Michael]

I definitely agree that the site needs to be as easy to use as possible, but I have to consider it from the perspective of sellers and buyers. While bulk submissions would make life easier for sellers, a lot of clutter would make the experience a lot worse for the buyers. For this site both groups are equally important. Without the sellers posting, the buyers won't come. But if the buyers don't like using the site because they have to sift through garbage, there will be less offers.

I think the way things are now, where it is quick to submit an individual listing because there is no login and no captcha but the site doesn't get cluttered, is a good compromise for everyone. Others may not agree though, which is why I'd love to hear some more points of view.

I'll look into having a group of people approve/deny listings. That would be the only way I'd really consider doing bulk submissions though.