Sedo Having Reservation about dot Asia

[tech4]

What do you think of Sedo having reservations about dot Asia?

Not listing them in search results and not accepting submission for great domains or top listing.

What's your opinion on this.

 

[-REECE-]

At this stage, I honestly think it's a good thing.

I hate to say it, but I do question most .asia sales I hear of for XX,XXX+ and wonder sometimes if shill bidding is involved to a much greater extent than the general domaining community as a whole.

Kind of like .me, I think it's going to take some time before people can come to "appraise" these properly. Sedo doesn't allow domains price above 10k (which most Great Domains are) without an appraisal -- I really have no clue how anyone would go about appraising these at this point; I certainly couldn't.

What do you think of Sedo having reservations about dot Asia?

Not listing them in search results and not accepting submission for great domains or top listing.

What's your opinion on this.

 

[tech4]

I hope its not shill bidding done by pool. If it is, I think they'll go bankrupt with lawsuits.

 

[Ronald Regging]

The thing you have to understand is that it is not just auction houses and registries that are making money. Big domainers are also controlling things, because they're heavily invested in premium .asia names. They probably race to outbid each other in public auctions so that everyone will get excited and hype the hell out of the extension. Suddenly everyone is going nuts and throwing tons of money into the extension, buying from the big domainers for premium rates. By the time the dust clears, the big domainers are at the bank with your money and you're sitting there with a bunch of names waiting for buyers. Best of luck!

.asia has potential, but it just reminds me too much of .mobi and I think a lot of the same major players are involved playing the same game.

 

[tech4]

The appraisal scheme invented by Sedo is to make more money on top of the big fat 10% commission. Other sites like moniker doesn't have a requirement to "appraise". The price should be set by the seller because the seller is the owner and should be left to buyers who want to buy or not.

I don't like Sedo's business model regarding appraisal and not indexing search results for dot Asia. Not sure if anyone here agree with me. But in the future hopefully a better business model which doesn't discriminate base on extensions and that's not too greedy like Sedo.

-----
Ronald Regging has a good point about big domainers impacting the market. But base on the sales figure in auction, most are really low, like sometimes no one bid on the names as low as $10 + 2 years registration fees from client's registry.

I think its very diverse and not affect by big time domainers at all because prices were lower than what I would have expected. For example, Information Technology Service, ITS.Asia didn't go as high as I originally thought, that's why I won it. For names like tours.asia which also didn't go as high as I would have thought. The average per domain is about $225 on about 30,000 names. Which is to say, its been diluted alot and the big domainer almost didn't show up. (I think).

 

[-REECE-]

That's exactly along the lines of what I was thinking.

In the end, shill bid or "I'll make sure nobody gets a premium 1 word generic under $500" have the same effect of artificially inflating the market and confusing newer domainers into paying prices which they're unlikely to see positive returns on.

Auctions make the situation even worse by easily allowing someone (or multiple people) to "game" the market placing fake bids. It's really not hard at all to setup a few proxies, steal a few people's identities and make it look like there's bidding wars going on for every .asia if that's one's goal.

The thing you have to understand is that it is not just auction houses and registries that are making money. Big domainers are also controlling things, because they're heavily invested in premium .asia names. They probably race to outbid each other in public auctions so that everyone will get excited and hype the hell out of the extension. Suddenly everyone is going nuts and throwing tons of money into the extension, buying from the big domainers for premium rates. By the time the dust clears, the big domainers are at the bank with your money and you're sitting there with a bunch of names waiting for buyers. Best of luck!

.asia has potential, but it just reminds me too much of .mobi and I think a lot of the same major players are involved playing the same game.

 

[scorpion]

I agree with tech4 that Sedo should improve its business model. One of the things I don't understand is its so called "active marketing" promise, as if they have people running around "actively" trying to sell your domains to end users. There's nothing of the sort happening, at least not with my domains. If they did that then perhaps the 10% would be deserved.

At the risk of sounding anti-capitalist, that's what happens when there's an imperfect market and big companies and big domainers control things. The small fries, like the low-wage workers everywhere, get brushed aside.

 

[Ronald Regging]

I agree with tech4 that Sedo should improve its business model. One of the things I don't understand is its so called "active marketing" promise, as if they have people running around "actively" trying to sell your domains to end users. There's nothing of the sort happening, at least not with my domains. If they did that then perhaps the 10% would be deserved.

They do actively market your names, just not in the sense that most people imagine. First of all, they spend money advertising their site, which brings in more buyers. Secondly, they do showcase quality domains for free at their discretion. Thirdly, they have an affiliate program that encourages third party site owners to promote domains on Sedo.

Unless you own a very high dollar domain (read: they will make a hige commission), they aren't going to be pulling any strings for you, but they still do actively market your names, along with the numerous other millions listed on their site.

 

[james2002]

I think possibly because some dot asia domains are not allowed to transfer within certain period, I think 60 days.