advice Risk vs Reward: Sedo’s $99 Reserve for 4L .com Auction – A Gamble Worth Taking?

[URL Stream]

Sedo's 4-letter .com auction begins on January 16, 2025, with a reserve price automatically set at just $99. Given that many of their auction listings often go unsold, this could be seen as a risky gamble—even for a mediocre 4L domain or worse—where someone might bid the minimum and walk away with a practically free name. This raises the question: are they primarily showcasing lower-tier names, or will domainers actually take the risk of listing higher-quality domains at such a low reserve?

 

[forge]

I was wondering about that $99. You're sure that's the set reserve? (I had seen "minimum price" of $99.)

Frankly, in the current "environment", I'm not willing to take that kind of risk, and I wouldn't recommend it to others. Is Sedo even promoting this auction to potential buyers?

 

[URL Stream]

I was wondering about that $99. You're sure that's the set reserve? (I had seen "minimum price" of $99.)

Yes. Before writing the post, I confirmed with a representative that the reserve price is a fixed amount of $99.

Is Sedo even promoting this auction to potential buyers?

So they say. See screenshot below.

 

[Kyle Tully]

So they say. See screenshot below.

Show attachment 268582

I login to Sedo multiple times a day, have bought and sold names on the platform, and if it wasn't for the odd post here on the forum I would barely know about any of their auctions. Playing fast and loose with the word "intensive".

 

[URL Stream]

@Kyle Tully
A saving grace is that, for the duration of the auction, it appears on the front page when opening the site, attracting a few more eyeballs.

 

[D Haynes]

I was thinking about this yesterday when looking through the 4L Atom auction.

The problem as I see it is these auctions are almost completely trade to trade sales. Names need to be priced cheaply enough to attract bids from investors but sellers want end user prices. You can't please everyone in this scenario.

It has to be seen for what it is, inventory liquidation to other investors.

Sedo just doesn't get enough eyes on their sales and couple that with some pretty horrendous inventory selection for their auctions it just isn't worth submitting your names to them. You only need to look at their past auctions to see most listing don't get bids.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the Atom auctions.

 

[alcy]

did u just call 99$ free??? where country u live or how poor arent u to say this lol

 

[URL Stream]

did u just call 99$ free??? where country u live or how poor arent u to say this lol

When you buy a $500+ name for $99 and easily flip it the next day for $200, that’s about as close to free as it gets.

 

[URL Stream]

The problem as I see it is these auctions are almost completely trade to trade sales.

The issue comes up repeatedly with expiration auctions. You hold onto a name for years with no traction, let it go, and then watch the bidding climb higher and higher during an auction.

Even when selling from one investor to another at a fair price, there still doesn’t seem to be a good auction site that attracts enough eyeballs—at least none that I’m aware of.

 

[D Haynes]

The issue comes up repeatedly with expiration auctions. You hold onto a name for years with no traction, let it go, and then watch the bidding climb higher and higher during an auction.

Even when selling from one investor to another at a fair price, there still doesn’t seem to be a good auction site that attracts enough eyeballs—at least none that I’m aware of.

Flippa used to fill that void to a certain extent but yeah there isn't one as the moment. Problem is, as soon as there is one with enough eyeballs to sell on it'll have too many eyeballs to buy on. The paradox of trade auctions.

 

[alcy]

When you buy a $500+ name for $99 and easily flip it the next day for $200, that’s about as close to free as it gets.

bro if it was so easy we all be rich

 

[URL Stream]

bro if it was so easy we all be rich

Do you have any names truly worth $500 that you’d sell me for $99?

 

[alcy]

Do you have any names truly worth $500 that you’d sell me for $99?

well that's my point.. that those arent truly 500 names.

if they were those auctions would have 500 bids

kinda makes sense no?

 

[enterscope]

End users aren't browsing auctions. End users decide on the name they want and type it in.

Auctions are a great way to sell your valuable domains cheap to other domainers.

 

[DN_Hunter]

I participated in the last 4-L.com auction.
Starting price was $99, and they charge 15% commission

I changed the domain name listing currency to GBP -- so starting price was 99GBP which paid a little bit more in USD based on the exchange rates at the time. When they sent the ACH payment to my bank - it was converted to USD.

Be careful though -- some joker bidders -- so I sold 7 names out of 10 listed -- but three of them never paid. After they cancelled the three names, the buyer of one of them says he forgot to pay for it about 3 weeks later (meanwhile he was the buyer of one of the 4 names that were paid for).

Sedo gave me the option to sell it at $99GBP -- which I said NO-THANKS -- that joker probably bid and tried to sell and once he gets a buyer, he pays for the names he bought. In this case he found a buyer 3 weeks later -- but too late I said no thanks...

Lesson learned -- I won't be participating in anymore SEDO 4L auctions. Not worth it to me... The highest bids I got were in the $99 - $129 range.

 

[scithe]

Interesting. For some reason I thought SEDO auctions sold at retail prices. I also thought SEDO was supposed to be very selective and even charged you $75 to join their auctions.

When I have looked at their listings in the past, I have seen some domains with reserves that were not just end user pricing but unicorn end user pricing. Of course those reserves were not met at the time so maybe you guys are onto something.

That's disappointing. I was hoping Atom auctions might somehow get some attention like I was imagining SEDO auctions had. So it these auctions will likely just be reserve not met wastes of time. It'd be cool if Atom sent users an e-mail saying something like "After x number of auctions run, it looks like bidders are stopping at wholesale pricing so you might not want to bother listing new auctions with your retail reserves" That way at least those of us wasting our time bidding won't have as many lowball bids to make.

 

[forge]

The problem as I see it is these auctions are almost completely trade to trade sales. Names need to be priced cheaply enough to attract bids from investors but sellers want end user prices. You can't please everyone in this scenario.

What was great about Godaddy user auctions is that you were able to pretty much set whatever reserve price you wanted. Easy peasy. But you had/have to be realistic or you'll get no decent bids.

 

[D Haynes]

What was great about Godaddy user auctions is that you were able to pretty much set whatever reserve price you wanted. Easy peasy. But you had/have to be realistic or you'll get no decent bids.

I guess again the problem there is sellers want the highest prices and buyers want the lowest prices. For trade to trade to work you need desperate sellers who accept they are going to get below market value if they want to sell.

I'm trying to think if the same is true in other business niches where trade auction to the trade but I'm not sure that really happens elsewhere .

 

[scithe]

I think the successes happen in situations where those auctioning are happy getting a lower profit and moving more domains.

If I buy a 4L for $200, I might have it priced for 8k but if it ended up at auction for $2k I'd be fine with that. Actually right now I have 40 4Ls listed at Atom's auction and the reserves on them are what I feel are considerably lower. A couple actually only have a $300 reserve because I bought them for less than half of that and they aren't million dollar domain names. There's a domain Atom recommended I price for $30k retail and my reserve is at $1500 because that's enough for me to go out and acquire a name that hopefully Atom will recommend I price for $150k and maybe I'll have a reserve of $3-7.5k on it depending.

My attitude would probably be similar with SEDO if it were free to submit domains to their auctions.

 

[URL Stream]

My attitude would probably be similar with SEDO if it were free to submit domains to their auctions.

This specific auction is free.

 

[URL Stream]

you need desperate sellers who accept they are going to get below market value if they want to sell. (emphasis mine)

Below retail value, in my opinion. Sedo is promoting a system that results in below wholesale value.

 

[D Haynes]

Below retail value, in my opinion. Sedo is promoting a system that results in below wholesale value.

I wonder if the domain industry is slightly different from other sectors in that a domains value is largely in the eye of the beholder.

I mean we talk about market, retail and wholesale values but unlike a lot of other industries there is no real pricing guidelines as such in domaining so who's to say what the wholesale price for a 4L really is. If an auction of say 100 4L domains takes place and 50 don't receive bids, 40 sell for 99 bucks and 10 sell for slightly higher, isn't somewhere around 99 dollars actually the wholesale price (probably even lower as some don't sell)? The market decides value doesn't it?

Or are we being naive in thinking they must be worth more? After all during the CHIP era any old combination of 4 letters were selling for 300 - 400 dollars.

 

[scithe]

Wholesale pricing is definitely not something we'll all agree on for this industry. Domains are similar to collectibles but with collectibles it's not crazy to try to get keystone pricing out of a collectible.

With domaining, a lot of domains are worthless until they're not. Plus a poor sell thru rate.

 

[scithe]

I submitted a domain to the sedo auction. $99 start and I was able to choose a $299 reserve price. We'll see if the domain gets added to their auctions :D

 

[forge]

I submitted a domain to the sedo auction. $99 start and I was able to choose a $299 reserve price.

Argh!!! See, I knew that prev "info" didn't seem right!