Sedo's "featured" option sucks...

[ivoy]

5 days ago I paid sedo $39 to feature one of my domains on their front page - well... I go there at least 30 times a day and so far not even once have I seen my domain on the homepage [even though they claim that domains rotate every 10 minutes] Has anyone here successfully featured a domain with them and actually spotted it in the "featured" section? And if yes, in how many cases did it generate a sale?

 

[Charley]

Oh, oh this is WEIRD ..... I thought they LISTED domains once someone registers there.... Now I change my mind.....

 

[-Raja-]

same here purchased a featured listing for 49$( at sedo.com & sedo.de) 8 days back
believe it or not i was never able to spot my domain on the homepage.
I check every 5-10 min that accounts for 50 times a day.
Intresting thing here to notice is that i was able to spot some domains again and again but failed to get the glimpse of my domain atleast once.

I reported this to their support.....but the reply was

Thank you for your email. I am happy that you have decided to order Sedo's
featured listing for your domain.

When you order a Featured Listing for $49 your domain listing will rotate
between the Sedo homepage and featured listings page for 30 days. Thirteen
randomly selected Featured Listing domains are displayed on the Sedo
homepage each hour while the remaining domains are displayed on the Featured
Listings page.

As if we dont kno this

 

[HBK216]

People save your money as it is a waste! People will find your names especially if they are decent quality or match exactly what someone wants.

 

[goodkarmaco]

The whole trouble is the auction houses are NOT doing their job!

Why would we need to pay for getting noticed if they advertised our names to end users? If they spent some real cash to draw end users into the auction houses we would not be so tempted to "hurry" things up wishfully thinking that might just work.

If they had a campaign of targeting the right buyers (small business or large business owners) we would hear the ca- ching happening at a fast clip and we would be seeing names move in the thousands in one day in the large auction houses. As it is today around a dozen domain names sell daily at the biggest auction houses and I am referring to ones such as Sed- which now boasts over four million domain names for sale, and others like Afterni-.

These auction houses can only sell a few names a day? Offering to sell a few million of anything and then actually only selling a dozen a day or less is well..

that is pitiful!

No wonder no one sees our names. Then to add insult to injury they want to extract $40. to do so by featuring our name. I say feature it is the job they have in the first place. If all the names sold to other domain owners were counted and then deducted I bet the numbers for domain sales to outsiders is extremely low.

I have never paid it and I say you should save your money also. They do some big sales and are happy to make the commision on that. But just think of the millions and possible billions in domain sales they are missing out on by not serving up our domain names properly to the masses.


Wow, some company can swoop in and implement a marketing campaign to end users and virtually take over in the domain game if they produced results. I know I would want to sell my names at a place like that.

Roderick

 

[JsteRmX]

hey, thanks for this info. i recently asked a similar question on this forum here.. http://www.namepros.com/domain-name-discussion/220350-promoting-domains-on-sedo-and-afternic.html

 

[ivoy]

goodK, thanks for the "bottom of your heart" critique of auction houses - very good and valid points that I wish someone there took seriously. I do regret becoming a victim of my own experiment with sed--, it was, however, prompted by a successful featuring of a different dn at tdnam - the name sold within 4 days... (it was listed for over 3 months without getting a single offer before I featured it)
I do not diminish the value of featuring a domain, except I oppose the way it is done. The rotation of names on sed--- does not seem to be just, and I'd much rather be happy to pay twice or three times the current amount, get on a waiting list for a few weeks or even months, and be GUARANTEED that my DN appears and STAYS on the front page for a week or two.
As much as I want to agree with another person here, according to whom a good domain will find a buyer on its own just by being listed in a proper category - with hundreds of thousands of other domains there, even true gems can be easily overlooked by potential buyers. Most end users are not even familiar with using the search specific options sed-- offers. We have to remember that we are only a tiny part of the population that understands how domains and keywords work and how valuable they are to any business that wants to succeed online - most business owners, especially small business owners have no idea what it is all about. I know that, because I've spoken to many potential end users who did mention going on sed-- and/or afterni- just because search engines directed them there during their quest for a proper domain name - but had no idea what to look for and where to do it even after they got there. They all did, however, remember some of the names on the front pages.
After spending over 10 years in the retail business, I learned to believe in the "in your face" advertising and promotion - but in my opinion sites like Sed- concentrate more on making profits from sellers, rather than trying to find more potential buyers.
I'll keep you guys posted if I see any improvement in my featured listing.
If the name sells, I'll even apologize for bitching about sed_

 

[ripley]

Hey ivoy, according to my (rough) calculations with about 3 weeks of having one of my domains as a featured listing, it seems to me that it ends up coming up on the home page about once every two or three days. For a month, with an hour's exposure each time, it works out to something like 10 - 15 hours of homepage exposure in a month.

ripley.

 

[Source]

People save your money as it is a waste! People will find your names especially if they are decent quality or match exactly what someone wants.

I've never purchased a featured listing on Sedo, yet I've been able to sell 25+ names there in the past 6 months.

The system works and Sedo does it's job quite well. You've just gotta find good names. (The hard part!)
:imho:

 

[AdoptableDomains]

I have always wondered what sedo's stats look like. I really wonder how many people actually start on their home page. I'll bet it's not as many as you might think. I would guess most people find sedo either by landing on a parking page first, or by being sent to a particular listing by following a link from a search engine or 3rd party site. How many non-domain people would know to find sedo first by visting their home page. I'd guess most that do visit their home page are industry domain traders who are not necessarily looking to pay retail, but are looking for a bargain. The front page is generally not where you find those, so they probably wouldn't even look closely.

The model that would be best would be for sedo or afternic to interface with registrars. When someone tried a domain that wasn't available, they could suggest one of the secondary market domains. The registars could probably make more in commission on these sales than they do with new domains. That is how to get secondary market domains in front of retail buyers. I think afternic has started to do this with a few registrars, but I really haven't seen it yet at the big ones.

 

[AWest]

Hello AdoptableDomains,

The model that would be best would be for sedo or afternic to interface with registrars. When someone tried a domain that wasn't available, they could suggest one of the secondary market domains. The registars could probably make more in commission on these sales than they do with new domains. That is how to get secondary market domains in front of retail buyers. I think afternic has started to do this with a few registrars, but I really haven't seen it yet at the big ones.

Currently when you attempt to register a domain that is taken, at both Register.com and Enom.com you are directed to make an offer on the name at Afternic. You can then use Afternic's Anonymous Offer service to make an offer to the owner, or seek out an alternate name on the site.

Best regards,

Amber West
Afternic.com

 

[AdoptableDomains]

Hello AdoptableDomains,



Currently when you attempt to register a domain that is taken, at both Register.com and Enom.com you are directed to make an offer on the name at Afternic. You can then use Afternic's Anonymous Offer service to make an offer to the owner, or seek out an alternate name on the site.

Best regards,

Amber West
Afternic.com

Thanks for the clarification. Two registrars down, hundreds to go... I hope you can expand that to a wider base yet.

 

[ivoy]

I've never purchased a featured listing on Sedo, yet I've been able to sell 25+ names there in the past 6 months.

The system works and Sedo does it's job quite well. You've just gotta find good names. (The hard part!)
:imho:

25 sales in 6 months is very impressive! Congratulations!
Would you care to share with us the list of the above mentioned domains?
Had you registered them recently, or were they some long term gems? If you could include the approximate selling prices, that would be even more amazing - the best way to learn is from successful traders, and I think we all could learn from someone with such an impressive record.
Thank you in advance for your input to this post.

 

[HBK216]

goodK, thanks for the "bottom of your heart" critique of auction houses - very good and valid points that I wish someone there took seriously. I do regret becoming a victim of my own experiment with sed--, it was, however, prompted by a successful featuring of a different dn at tdnam - the name sold within 4 days... (it was listed for over 3 months without getting a single offer before I featured it)
I do not diminish the value of featuring a domain, except I oppose the way it is done. The rotation of names on sed--- does not seem to be just, and I'd much rather be happy to pay twice or three times the current amount, get on a waiting list for a few weeks or even months, and be GUARANTEED that my DN appears and STAYS on the front page for a week or two.
As much as I want to agree with another person here, according to whom a good domain will find a buyer on its own just by being listed in a proper category - with hundreds of thousands of other domains there, even true gems can be easily overlooked by potential buyers. Most end users are not even familiar with using the search specific options sed-- offers. We have to remember that we are only a tiny part of the population that understands how domains and keywords work and how valuable they are to any business that wants to succeed online - most business owners, especially small business owners have no idea what it is all about. I know that, because I've spoken to many potential end users who did mention going on sed-- and/or afterni- just because search engines directed them there during their quest for a proper domain name - but had no idea what to look for and where to do it even after they got there. They all did, however, remember some of the names on the front pages.
After spending over 10 years in the retail business, I learned to believe in the "in your face" advertising and promotion - but in my opinion sites like Sed- concentrate more on making profits from sellers, rather than trying to find more potential buyers.
I'll keep you guys posted if I see any improvement in my featured listing.
If the name sells, I'll even apologize for bitching about sed_

I can understand your feeling about names getting overlooked. I have seen some real decent or even quality generic names passed up. I guess I just got lucky when I sold on Sedo a couple of times & buyers finding me. I have no clue how they did.

Honestly after watching most of my decent names do nothing on there, I'm thinking it is time to move in a new direction. Parking overall seems to be a waste of time. I'd probably be better off developing even the most simple site & go from there.

 

[Source]

25 sales in 6 months is very impressive! Congratulations!
Would you care to share with us the list of the above mentioned domains?
Had you registered them recently, or were they some long term gems? If you could include the approximate selling prices, that would be even more amazing - the best way to learn is from successful traders, and I think we all could learn from someone with such an impressive record.
Thank you in advance for your input to this post.

Check the sales thread here. Most of my sales along with the sales by other members are posted in this thread. Save yourself some time and start at the last post and work your way backward. There's a world of great ideas, inspiration, and information available to you in this thread and throughout NP. Just read.

Age of the name is unimportant. Quality, application, and brandability are keys to success.

 

[Robert Allen]

I dont really know how to comment. I put teenout.com as featured and it is my only sale on sedo. I didnt bother checking if it worked, but it helps to know that it made me have a sale. (Transaction finished yesterday, took nearly a month.)

 

[MadAboutDomains]

Why would they show your name on the front, when they know that you posted it to the featured listings. They want you to see others featured names so that you may choose to buy one. You wont buy your own domain using their system.

Think about how many hits they get... and how many times you visited the page in relation to that. The names are on a constant rotation. They don't need to fix anything, because they already have your money!