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.

 

[Michael]

You just need to make sure your minimum price isn't set above $60. If the min price isn't set, it defaults to $60 for most extensions.

In regards to featured listings, they are more to keep your listing visible longer than to make it get offers faster. I would recommend them for domains that are less valuable, since ones that are worth $150+ min wholesale are going to get offers within a few hours usually.

Also, just so everyone knows, we moved PushToAuction.com to a new hosting provider tonight to accommodate increased traffic and to provide faster page load times. If you don't see a message regarding the hosting switch, you are already seeing the site on the new hosting. For the rest of you, the nameserver change hasn't propogated to you yet, but you should be able to use the site again within a few hours.

 

[SebastianJu]

At the moment I only see godaddy parking page for pushtoauction.com...

 

[SebastianJu]

Still a parked page... Does anybody see the real site? Didnt think that nameserverupdate can takes that much time in reality... Mine were fast always...

 

[ripley]

Unfortunately GoDaddy's nameservers can be painfully slow to change. Personally I think it's on GoDaddy's end; they drag their feet updating the nameservers and in the meantime they get some PPC revenue off it. I've had it take days for a nameserver to update on GD.

ripley.

 

[Michael]

If you use Windows, trying opening up the command prompt and typing "ipconfig /flushdns" without the quotes. Maybe your system cached the nameservers and isn't updating them. Nameserver propogation can supposedly take 24-48 hours to be worldwide, so it may be a little while. The site is live for me on the east coast of the US. Anyone else seeing the live site?

 

[ripley]

It's also live for me, here in Washington, D.C.

ripley.

 

[SebastianJu]

Tried that flushdns but didnt change anything... So no pushtoauction here at germany at the moment... That takes me wonder because changing dns on dynadot dont takes that long for me... As far as I remember after 2 hours every change was made and the new location could be reached...

Greetings!
Sebastian

 

[Michael]

I checked the logs and we have had a few visitors from Germany today to the live site. There have also been visitors from the US, Canada, UK, Italy, Romania, Morocco, Israel, Australia, Taiwan, etc. The nameserver change seems to have propogated pretty far, I would expect there are only a handful of people who can't see the new site today. Thanks for the update though Sebastian, please keep me posted.

 

[SebastianJu]

Now its online again for me too... 30min before it wasnt...

At least for me its fine now...

By the way... whats to do when a domain offered at pushtoauction is sold on another place?

As I misunderstood the thing with the site before I have to ask this...

When someone wants to force a domain going to auction at sedo he could search a friend, tell him he should bid 60Dollar and then set it into auction. If no higher bids are done the holder is paying the 6Dollar to Sedo and the domain isnt moved because the friend doesnt need it...

If the domain rises in bids... the better...

Is that legal?

Greetings!
Sebastian

 

[Michael]

If you sell the domain somewhere else you can just shoot me an email and I'll remove it. We're going to implement an automated system to remove listings soon though.

Regarding your other question, if your friend doesn't actually have any intentions of buying the domain, that would be considered shill bidding and should not be done. With PushToAuction.com, the people making the offers are willing and happy for the chance to purchase the domain at $60, and will follow through with the sale should the auction not receive any more bids.

 

[Michael]

I just wanted to give everyone an update that the Cheif Operating Officer and General Counsel for Sedo cleared us to keep running the site and to promote it on the forums.

As long as it remains clear that Sedo does not own/operate/endorse the site, and that buyers should only make offers if they will complete the sale, everything is good to go.

Finally this issue has been put to rest and nobody has to worry about being penalized for using the site.

 

[mtford]

Do you have any stats regarding the sell-through rate of your featured listings - i.e. how many listings have been featured, and how many of them resulted in an auction? Just curious.

 

[Michael]

About 8% of listings that are not featured are pushed to auction. About 52% of listings that are featured are pushed to auction. You are 6.5 times more likely to get an offer if you feature it because of the extra visibility.

 

[mtford]

wow, that's an awesome sell-through rate. Even 8% is very impressive for a free service.

 

[mtford]

I just added three featured listings. A couple of questions, though:

• Is there a way to upgrade standard listings to featured ones? When I tried to do this, it said "Title is not unique in the parent category."
• What does "Quantity" mean when you buy a featured listing? If I select more than one, will this give me credits toward further featured listings, or does it just extend the duration of the current listing? The former would be very useful, to avoid multiple PayPal checkouts; but I didn't want to try, in case it did the latter.

 

[Michael]

Thanks, we're pretty happy with how the site is helping sellers. The overall sell-through rate fluctuates around 10% which is decent for not manually approving listings, but we're still working on ways to reduce clutter.

If you want to upgrade a regular listing to a featured listing, use the donate button at the bottom of the right column to send $5, and in the description put the domain you want featured. All featured listings are manually approved, so rather than clutter the site with upgrade buttons next to each listing, we put the donate button.

Quantity refers to how many months you want to feature the listing you are submitting. If you want to feature multiple domains, you can just submit them as standard listings, then use the donate button to send the correct amount. That way you only have to check out once.

We're going to put together a FAQ soon that addresses some of these questions.

Thanks for using the site and good luck!

 

[mtford]

A few suggested improvements for the PushToAuction site format:

• Add some more search options, including searches by extension, number of characters, and exclusion of numbers/hyphens. Some sorting options would be nice, too.
• Create some more categories for the following domain types: CCC.COM; LLLL.COM; LLL.NET; LLL in other extensions; one- and two-character in any extension. Most of the domains sold through PushToAuction.com are short acronym domains, not generic dictionary domains. These short domains have fairly well-defined resale values, based on their extension, length and type of characters. Unfortunately, however, the current categories don't give due prominence to the best domains. The LLL category contains all extensions mixed up together, so a $3900 LLL.com would be hidden among $55 LLL.us and RegFee LLL.mobi domains (prices taken from http://3character.com/priceguide.html). To make matters worse, many domains in the LLL category aren't LLL at all: in the first two pages, I found 3co.info, cpkk.com, aedf.org, 8a3.net, h-e-r.net and others. Likewise, the CVCV and VCVC categories should be restricted to .com and possibly .net, because CVCV.biz is not worth $60.
• Display all domain names in CAPITALS, or lowercase if you prefer. But not a random mixture.

 

[cmason]

Just reviving this to address a popular concern since Sedo has changed their commission structure. Let me first say that I think PushToAuction has been a great success as I have both sold a couple and pushed many dozens to help out other sellers. Well, with Sedo's new commission structure, my interpretation is that those $60 pushes will all involved a $50 minimum commission.

Sedo states:

The minimum commission fee for domains with the above extensions may be waived if the domain is both verifiably parked with Sedo and sold for a fixed price.

Okay, so "verifiably parked" has been a term for some time, so let's forget about that one for now. My frustration comes with the "sold for a fixed price" part. I really hope that Sedo can provide specific examples of what commissions would be paid, but my interpretation is that if I list a domain for $400, start an auction at $60 and it sells for $210, they get $50.

Any other thoughts on how this will affect PushToAuction.com?

 

[mwzd]

If you list a domain for $400 and choose 'make offer', this doesn't qualify as 'fixed price' at all.

Be very careful here, not a good move on Sedo's part.

OTOH, maybe it will can the $60 push to auction scene totally.

 

[cmason]

If you list a domain for $400 and choose 'make offer', this doesn't qualify as 'fixed price' at all.

Be very careful here, not a good move on Sedo's part.

OTOH, maybe it will can the $60 push to auction scene totally.

Exactly Samit. I wonder if perhaps Bido or another auction house will pick up that slack.

 

[mtford]

Let me first say that I think PushToAuction has been a great success as I have both sold a couple and pushed many dozens to help out other sellers.

The site seems to have gone stagnant in recent months, though, perhaps due to lack of publicity. The "Current Auctions" list usually shows 0 listings, meaning that no domains have been pushed in the past week.

 

[exsedo]

Could well be due to Sedo's new min $50 commission charge.

Who is gonna risk sending a domain to auction with a $60 bid, when you have to pay $50 commision ?

 

[Michael]

Actually, it hasn't gone stagnant, it's just the tracking that has. Sedo recently changed their auction page to be paginated, so we need to change our tracking software to handle this. There's still auctions being started, we're just not detecting them. We're working on totally revamping the site to handle the changes in the auction page, and to add other much-needed features like having an account so you can delete listings, possibly bulk listing, etc.

I'll call Sedo on Monday to ask what will happen in this case, although I think the $50 minimum will apply due to the lack of fixed price. I doubt this rule will remain very long, I think it is just an overzealous experiment in the wake of the Afternic tip that fixed prices help improve sale velocity. It will definitely not last long if people speak up and contact SEDO to complain. You have a voice... use it I'll also put in a call to their Director of Marketing, she's a fan of the site. Maybe we can get an exception made, or the rule reversed.

Either way, I don't think this will have a negative effect on PushToAuction.com. What I see happening is the quality of what is listed on the site will go up, so buyers will have less garbage to sift through. Our average sale price is over $300 as it is, with somewhere around 10% of domains being pushed. Maybe we'll even add in support for Afternic and send Sedo a message. I'll keep you guys posted.

 

[cmason]

Actually, it hasn't gone stagnant, it's just the tracking that has. Sedo recently changed their auction page to be paginated, so we need to change our tracking software to handle this. There's still auctions being started, we're just not detecting them. We're working on totally revamping the site to handle the changes in the auction page, and to add other much-needed features like having an account so you can delete listings, possibly bulk listing, etc.

I'll call Sedo on Monday to ask what will happen in this case, although I think the $50 minimum will apply due to the lack of fixed price. I doubt this rule will remain very long, I think it is just an overzealous experiment in the wake of the Afternic tip that fixed prices help improve sale velocity. It will definitely not last long if people speak up and contact SEDO to complain. You have a voice... use it I'll also put in a call to their Director of Marketing, she's a fan of the site. Maybe we can get an exception made, or the rule reversed.

Either way, I don't think this will have a negative effect on PushToAuction.com. What I see happening is the quality of what is listed on the site will go up, so buyers will have less garbage to sift through. Our average sale price is over $300 as it is, with somewhere around 10% of domains being pushed. Maybe we'll even add in support for Afternic and send Sedo a message. I'll keep you guys posted.

Great post Michael, I look forward to hearing what you can get out of Sedo. I am not really a fan of the pagination of the auctions, but I think it was necessary with all of those .DE's this week.

 

[gold2platinum]

Is this site still working? I submitted a domain but it has not been added.