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]

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.

 

[hookah]

I dont see any evaluation/selection process possible after bulk upload implementation (at least regarding regular listing). I can imagine thousands of domain/day being submitted so only automatic software procedure shall be applied. Anyway I am for making a site as friendly as possible and bulk upload is one of site improving features. There can be also a testing period during which you'll verify your worries. There is always better to start sth new and improve it afterwards than not to start at all because of some possible only dangers.

 

[domainacrobat]

Very nice, I was hesitant to visit at first. The concept seemed silly to me as I figured it was just another "directory" to list your names at... However after visiting, I see you have executed your idea very well. The functionallity of your site is excellent. Good to see you actually contacted sedo and to a degree worked with them to add credibility to your site. I will try it out.

I always used to say "push to auction for $60" in my threads.

 

[TheBulldog]

Well, against others opinions here, I completely agree with you not wanting to allow bulk uploads for exactly the reasons you stated.

You would just get mass garbage and buyers would start looking elsewhere to find something less cluttered.

There are some downsides.......

IF it were my site, I would put captcha in and here is why.....it will take no time for someone to work out a script that pulls names out of a text file and then they would just let it sit there and upload their crap anyway.

Next, even if you do enable captcha, eventually enough users would have thousands of names on there anyway. Then you are back to square one because even though I haven't looked through every category, I would say that I saw a fair amount that weren't worth 60 anyway.


in the end, you may actually be better off with a backend system to have people decide which names are good enough anyway.

yes, it would be subjective, but if you do something like every name goes into a system, and then you have 5 "moderators" that vote on whether it is good enough or not. If 3 or more say yes, it is posted. If not, into the trash it goes.


Now, that will somewhat hurt your system, but eventually you will have to do this anyway because people will get sick and tired of looking at garbage posted there whether you do bulk uploads or not.


So in a nutshell this is what I think: Don't do bulk uploads and institute a panel to approve names. If you don't, then you may as well allow bulk uploads because in another 1000 names it will be 80-98% garbage that you will have to clean up as if you allowed bulk.

 

[Michael]

Thanks for the great post Bulldog, it was very well thought out. I added the captcha back in to prevent bots from submitting sites as you suggested. It is fairly easy to read and shouldn't give people too much trouble.

There are a number of ideas I had to help keep the quality up:

1. Have a "Stale" category. Any listing that has been on the site more than X weeks without getting an offer gets moved there. That way it is still on the site but not cluttering up the category it was in. This would be the most objective and least labor intensive.

2. Have a vote up/down next to each listing. Then order the listings by the number of votes they have, so the bad ones get voted down to the bottom of the list. This would probably lead to people trying to game the system (voting theirs up and the ones above them down).

3. Have a group of moderators decide which ones make it through, possibly by voting as you suggested. Voting would increase the work for each moderator because they would have to weigh in on each listing, but would make the system more fair and accurate. Would anyone volunteer to do this?

Keeping the quality of the listings up is a major concern. I even tried charging $0.50 for standard listings hoping that people wouldn't pay if they didn't think the domain had a good chance of getting a $60 offer. This definitely worked, but I think there was some collateral damage of keeping out a lot of good submissions because people couldn't pay or didn't want to.

Any comments on these ideas or suggestions for other ways to do it would be greatly appreciated :tu:

 

[TheBulldog]

Some further thoughts on your reply:

1) and 2)-----Combine them. Implement the voting per name, and if it gets a certain percentage.....say 80% unfavorable, then the listings are removed completely after 3 weeks. If there is enough traffic, then you might consider 2 weeks just to keep things fresh.

If you do the above, you wouldn't need moderators at all. But if you do want mods to vote, you would actually need a pool of people since everyone wouldn't be able to check in every day. (Or every hour if it is popular enough)
Let's say you have a pool of 15 mods.

Step 1) Name is submitted.
Step 2) Email is sent to each mod
Step 3) Mods have 24 (Or 48) hours to log in and vote.
Step 4) Majority rule after that time.

The best thing would be that it is automated that once voting/time is complete, the name is either approved and activated, or declined and deleted and notice is sent to the submitter either way.

Another thought: Personally, I would charge $0.25 per name for regular listing. paid via np or paypal.
You are providing a service, and if someone thinks their name is worth $60, then $.25 should be the entry fee.

Since obviously people will gripe about that, try something like this: The ability to enter 5 names at one time. (You would probably need user accounts for this) The first name is free, the next 4 cost 0.25 each. The users would be able to upload as many as they wanted through their login, but each one would be 25 cents after the first one, up to five at a time.
For you, that fee is non-refundable, regardless of approval or denial. That should give users pause on entering crap. And likely each person would take advantage of the 5 at a time rule, and you would earn $1 per entry of five names.

You might lose a few sellers upfront, but overall, your buyers are the ones making your marketplace work, because if enough people buy through your site, you will have demand for people wanting to list there.

I would be happy to help vote, but can't gaurantee how often I would be able to.

 

[mazkel]

Great site, however, in the past few months, I've tried to push 2 domains to auction, however, the owners would not accept $60 and counteroffered for a higher amount. I sent emails to PushToAuction with no response. Will unlikely be using in the future.

 

[Michael]

Please PM me the domains and I'll remove them from the site. Our contact form wasn't working for a while and I didn't realize it. It has been resolved now though. Sorry for any inconvenience.

 

[cuttie_gal]

Hello Everyone!

I just want to thank Michael for such a great site!! I think it was a great idea...
1. Your site is very unique!
2. I think your site gives sellers opportunities to list their domains.
3. The site is simple to use, clean, easy to understand, etc.
4. It seems your site has a lot of total sales.

Just a suggestion, I realized that there was a charge for $0.50 before but now it is gone. How about if you make a button for a "Donation" of $0.25, $0.50, $0.75, $1.00. The reason is because I'm sure there are lots of people who think your site is very useful and would like to thank you in some way.

I think the site is great and it helps sellers a lot to promote their domains. I feel that we should all advertise your site!!!

Again, thank you Michael for such a wonderful site!! :bingo:

 

[namehopper]

I am definitely going to use it! I have been meaning to,but got busy reg.domain names :hehe:

 

[goodkarmaco]

Good news and perfectly executed plan. I hope you have great success.

Roderick

 

[-Adam-]

Your site has great potential and is headed in the right direction. I think it's great idea all around and as it progresses I am quite certain it will only continue to get better. I submitted some of my names and found it quite easy to use, the captcha was actually readable and the interfaces were very easy to navigate. Great job all around!

 

[ff89]

great site, I just submit some domains to see what happened.
Good luck to me & everybody. :hehe:

 

[Michael]

Thanks for all the feedback guys, I'm glad the site is helping the community! The next auction to close will be #300, and we're closing in on the $100,000 mark in total sales for users of the site. We have a new record holder: 9K9.com was pushed to auction at $60 and climbed all the way up to $1,750! Who will be the next to break the record?

 

[-Adam-]

Quick question thought at the end of submitting it states it is awaiting approval. Whats the normal turn around time for that and is there some kind of notification?

 

[Michael]

There's no email notification. The software doesn't have the capability to hold off and send multiple domains in one email. A majority of people submit several dozen domains at a time, and I don't want to fill up their inboxes.

As for turn-around time, I'm back to approving links manually to make sure domains are put in a reasonable category. I'm also rejecting some submissions if I feel very strongly that they aren't worth $60. I'm not rejecting very many domains, just really bad stuff like 2954Keyword.biz. I log in at least once a day to approve listings, but usually I'll clear the queue every 3-4 hours.

I just finished modifying the back-end software as well. It will now check if domains have been pushed to auction once every hour instead of once a day. The accuracy has been improved as well so it won't miss any more auctions.