Sharing My GoDaddy Closeout Research Process - Feedback Welcome From Experienced Investors

[tricknguyen]

Hello guys,

I'm still a newbie in the domain field. I started learning domain investing recently, and I am not trying to teach anyone yet. I am mainly documenting my research process and trying to improve it based on feedback from more experienced investors.

This time I reviewed a batch of GoDaddy Closeout domains found through ExpiredDomains.

The goal was not just to find names that sound good. I wanted to test a stricter research process and avoid buying names only because they look clean at first glance.

A bit of context: I'm 14 years old and still treating this as a learning / research exercise. I am trying to understand how experienced investors think about buyer pools, downside risk, and realistic resale value.

The Main Change In My Thinking

Before, I often started with:

"Is this domain beautiful?"

Now I try to start with:

- Who would realistically buy this domain?
- Why would they buy it?
- Do they have budget and willingness to pay?
- Is there a wide buyer pool, or only one obvious buyer?
- Is there trademark, UDRP, or market-exposure risk?
- Is the purchase price low enough compared with realistic resale value?

This change made the batch look much weaker than my first impression.

Source And Initial Filter

The starting list came from GoDaddy Closeout results on ExpiredDomains.

My quick filter was:

- .com preferred
- 2-word names preferred
- Around 15 characters or shorter
- No hyphens
- No numbers
- English or at least pronounceable
- Low closeout price preferred
- Obvious negative meanings removed

After that, I separated the names into three main research groups:

1. Brand / company / generic names
2. GEO / local service names
3. Personal names

Total reviewed in the final workbook: 57 domains.

The Research Framework I Used

1. Source filtering
For GoDaddy Closeout and ExpiredDomains, I first used a stricter name-quality filter before doing deeper research.

2. Domain type classification
Each name goes into one primary flow:

- Brand / company / generic: Are there multiple real companies or active sites using this name?
- GEO / local service: Is there a wide enough buyer pool, not just one local business?
- Personal name: Are there enough real professionals with this name?
- SEO domain: Is there backlink, traffic, authority, or topical value?
- Trademark / single-buyer risk: Is the only likely buyer a trademark holder?

3. Quick eye test
I checked if the domain is easy to say, easy to spell, memorable, commercially usable, and has a clear use case.

I skipped names that were forced, awkward, too narrow, negative, or only sounded good without a real buyer thesis.

4. Active-use / buyer-pool validation
For brand-style names, I used DotDB when available.

My rough guide:

- 10+ active sites = strong
- 5-9 active sites = good
- 2-4 active sites = caution
- 0-1 active sites = weak / usually skip

For GEO names, I used Google Maps manually.

The feedback I am trying to follow is: do not buy because one local business matches. Look for a wider buyer pool, ideally 100-200+ possible buyers for local-service names.

For personal names, I used LinkedIn count buckets:

- Under 100 profiles = usually skip
- 100+ profiles = sample 10-20 profiles
- 500+ profiles = good count signal, but still not auto-buy

Brand / Generic Active-Use Results

This part was weaker than I expected. Many names looked decent to me at first, but the actual active-use signal was low.

The two names that reached my caution/watchlist range:

- CivicSites.com - $5 - 3 exact / 5 total / 2 active - Watchlist
- SheScribe.com - $5 - 2 exact / 7 total / 2 active - Watchlist

Other brand-style names I skipped after active-use checks:

- CampaignWarrior.com - $5 - 1 active
- MeetAide.com - $11 - 1 active
- RecipeSidekick.com - $5 - 1 active
- PremarketInfo.com - $11 - 0 active
- PartsSociety.com - $5 - 1 active
- ExactCam.com - $5 - 1 active
- StudioZion.com - $5 - 1 active
- AdTwins.com - $11 - 1 active

My takeaway:

CivicSites.com and SheScribe.com were the only brand-style names I kept as soft watchlist names. Most others had only 0-1 active sites, so I downgraded them instead of forcing a buy thesis.

GEO / Local Service Results

This was another useful lesson.

Some GEO-style names looked usable at first, but the buyer pool was often too small.

- WichitaCarwash.com - $5 - around 63 relevant businesses - watchlist only / low priority
- MaconPsychiatry.com - $5 - around 4 relevant businesses - skip
- LudwigDentistry.com - $11 - around 1 relevant business - skip
- UrdialesRoofing.com - $11 - 0 business found - skip
- AtlanticVacuum.com - $5 - around 1 relevant business - skip

WichitaCarwash.com was the only GEO-style name with a somewhat meaningful buyer pool, but 63 possible buyers is still below the stronger 100-200+ benchmark.

The others looked like one-buyer or very-few-buyer situations, which is exactly the type of mistake I am trying to avoid.

Personal Name Research

This was the most interesting part of the batch.

Earlier, I would have skipped most personal names automatically. After feedback, I now treat them as a separate category and check LinkedIn demand first.

The strongest count signals:

- ElizabethKent.com - $5 - 500+ LinkedIn profiles - watchlist
- StephenWinn.com - N/A - 500+ LinkedIn profiles - watchlist
- TerryJefferson.com - $5 - 500+ LinkedIn profiles - watchlist
- MartinMoran.com - N/A - 500+ LinkedIn profiles - watchlist
- YuriMartinez.com - $11 - 500+ LinkedIn profiles - watchlist

Lower-priority personal-name candidates:

- AntonioVerdi.com - $11 - around 360 LinkedIn profiles
- SarahRocco.com - $11 - around 350 LinkedIn profiles
- JoshNagel.com - $5 - around 230 LinkedIn profiles
- ErikFlowers.com - N/A - around 230 LinkedIn profiles

My current thinking:

500+ LinkedIn profiles is a good count signal, but it is still not enough by itself. The next step would be to open 10-20 profiles for each name and check whether the people are real professionals with possible personal-branding needs.

Professions I would look for:

- Founder
- CEO
- Lawyer
- Realtor
- Doctor
- Consultant
- Creator
- Designer
- Investor
- Speaker
- Freelancer

Final Decision From This Batch

Ready to buy now:

- None

Watchlist - personal names:

- ElizabethKent.com
- StephenWinn.com
- TerryJefferson.com
- MartinMoran.com
- YuriMartinez.com

Maybe - personal names:

- AntonioVerdi.com
- SarahRocco.com
- JoshNagel.com
- ErikFlowers.com

Watchlist - brand names:

- CivicSites.com
- SheScribe.com

Low-priority GEO:

- WichitaCarwash.com

Skip:

- Most remaining names

Final Recommended Actions

- Do not buy any domain immediately from this batch.
- Prioritize personal names with 500+ LinkedIn count, but only after sampling real profile quality.
- Keep CivicSites.com and SheScribe.com as soft watchlist names, not buy-now names.
- Treat WichitaCarwash.com as low priority because 63 possible local buyers is below the stronger GEO benchmark.
- Skip names where active-use, buyer pool, or LinkedIn count is weak.

What I Learned

This batch was useful because it stopped me from buying names just because they looked clean.

My main lessons:

- A good-looking 2-word .com can still be weak if active usage is low.
- One obvious local buyer is not enough.
- Small local businesses often do not pay much for domains.
- Personal names should not be skipped automatically.
- 500+ LinkedIn profiles is a good signal, but still requires profile-quality sampling.
- DotDB / active-use validation matters more than my first impression.
- A domain is only interesting if there is a realistic buyer, budget, acceptable risk, and enough margin.

The rule I am trying to follow now:

"Buy only when the domain has a clear buyer thesis, realistic budget, acceptable legal/history risk, and enough margin that I am not depending on hope."

Full detailed report is here:
https://trick-nguyen.vercel.app/blog/godaddy-closeout-research-may-5

My blog is only where I document what I am learning in this field. I am not trying to teach yet, just trying to get feedback and improve my process.

Would really appreciate honest feedback from experienced investors.

Where do you think my analysis is wrong?
Which parts of this framework should I improve before I even think about buying closeout domains?

And also link contain full my research I let in Google Excel
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SfU2-Kcou_RnehK02u6s9oz96jzdYz52ZkJjA8SayFw/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks everyone.

 

[fka1080405]

A pretty good overview, nice work

I'm normally quite cagey about my strategy but since you put in so much effort to your post, I'll share a couple of pointers:

1. A lot of what you are describing is "targeting" according to the UDRP guidelines. Of course, we all know which domains are valuable to existing companies, but you have to pretend that isn't true. If "Example, Inc." is using "exampleinc.com" and you see "example.com" come up at auction and then buy it to sell to "Example, Inc." you are targeting and vulnerable to losing the domain to a UDRP complaint.

Never ever indicate you knew about a company before you bought the domain. Spend some time reading various UDRP complaints to get a better feel for the type of statements that can get you in trouble. The presence of or absence of a trademark registration isn't important, a UDRP complaint primarily litigates your behaviour as the person selling the domain.

Your mantra should be "I didn't learn about Example, Inc. until after I bought the domain" and if you cannot come up with a convincing story for why you acquired the domain not knowing about Example, Inc. then you're at higher risk. If the domain is "applesipadpro.com" and you say "I bought it because apples are my favourite fruit and I "padpro" which is my nickname for dancing" nobody is going to believe you. Look at the lambo.com case for an example of the sort of nonsense that will not fly.

2. Full names, first names and last names are a siren, they're attractive, easy to form a narrative around... they lure you in with the numbers of people who share that name... but nobody buys them. Unless the prospect has a personal brand that they're investing time and money into (which is rare) they're never going to buy the domain from you. The domains expire for a reason.

And even if you do manage to sell one, the buyer is unlikely to pay enough to justify the investment, individuals are much less precious about domain names when compared to a company. A company can draw a direct line from owning a great .com to revenue, a human cannot.

Remember, most domains you buy will never sell. You spend $x on 100 domains, 99 don't sell, 1 does sell, and the 1 that does sell has to over the cost of the other 99 and the remainder is your profit. You could buy 100 name domains for $5 at closeout (+$10 registration fee) but if you can only sell 1 (or 2) for $500 each then you're losing money.

3. People will tell you that closeout domains are worthless and given this is a zero sum game and any domain you buy is a domain I can't buy, I'll agree with them. Stay away from closeout domains! You'll never make any money! You'll lose everything! They're a scam!

If this wasn't a zero sum game, I would say that closeout domains are a good opportunity. You actually get a lot of great information from them being closeouts, you know that other investors (who are more sophisticated and experienced than you) don't think they're valuable. So, in the case of name domains, they are so plentiful because everyone else has tried and failed to make them profitable and now just ignores them.

(An exception to this rule is buying a name domain someone let expire by mistake and then you can sell it back to them at an inflated price. Personally, I think this is bad karma, and I return domains for free when this happens, but it's up to you how you choose to handle that.)

Closeout domains are essentially a game of arbitrage between GoDaddy's valuation and your own. Most domains that sell at GoDaddy expired domain auctions are the domains that GoDaddy has valued high. Most investors are just looking at the GoDaddy valuation. A valuation of over $4k all but guarantees a bid. A value below $1k means it is very unlikely to receive a bid. So, rather than thinking about closeouts specifically, you can focus on domains that GoDaddy undervalues.

(Every day there are up to 1 million domains at auction with GoDaddy, but only a few thousand will ever receive bids. Each day there are tens of thousands of auctions finishing with zero bids because GoDaddy has valued the domain low and no other investor has spotted value in it. Even if you can only spot 1 undervalued domain per day out of 40,000, that's 365 valuable domains per year.)

For example, the domain name ballerleague.com was up at expired auction this week. Baller League is a very popular and well funded sports competition that currently uses a variety of different ccTLDs because they couldn't get the .com, like ballerleague.us. Ballerleague.com was only valued by GoDaddy at ~$1,500! The domain is worth a lot more than that to Baller League.

And so, because GoDaddy valued it low, the domain flew under the radar, it didn't attract much attention, it was a great opportunity. Unfortunately, it didn't go under the radar enough and I ended up in a bidding war with someone else and I tapped out at ~$3,500. Anyway, point being, there are lots of opportunities to find domains that GoDaddy has undervalued, and you just need to hope you're the only one who realises the real value.

(And following on from my above point re: targeting, the winner of Ballerleague.com will have to pretend they had no idea who or what Baller League was at the time they bought the domain.)

4. Closeouts aren't usually the most cost effective strategy. A closeout domain starts at $50 and goes as low as $5. Domain auction folklore is that you shouldn't bid on an auction until the end because you risk alerting people to the domain's value which means most domains receive most of their bids at the end of the auction, and in many cases, there could be 0 bids until the last 5 minutes. So, rather than waiting for the auction to end with 0 bids and then buy it for $50 at closeout, you can bid $1 in the last 5 minutes and get it for $1. Hell, you can stick a $1 bid at the start of the auction if you don't believe the folklore about bids attracting others.

5. Your instinct to research and evaluate a domain's potential is good but keep in mind that you're going to be wrong most of the time. If you're wrong 99% of the time then you are an average domainer. If you are wrong 90% of the time, you're one of the best domainers in the world. Acquiring domains based on vibes becomes more and more useful as time goes on because you will build your sense for what has potential from everything you have seen.

There's a phrase in infrastructure, "treat your servers like cattle not pets". The same applies to domains. The biggest mistake novice domainers make is buying a domain and then investing a bunch of time and energy into crafting a narrative around it. You'll often see on NamePros people posting their domains for sale and writing a big long thing about why the domain is valuable. That's a terrible waste of time. I bought a few domains at auction this week and I have already forgotten most of them because there is no value in thinking about them now that I own them. 99% of your time should be spent on choosing the right domains. A good domain will sell itself, a bad domain will never sell.

6. Some people argue that you'll succeed more the more money you invest. If you're rich and have money to burn, sure, go for it, but if you're starting out with limited capital, you can absolutely build a great portfolio following this strategy of buying cheap domains. Sure it'll be a little slower and you'll have to pass on some good domains you can't afford but you can be profitable from your first sale.

--

From your list, RecipeSidekick.com stands out to me as an obvious buy. People love making recipe websites / apps and sidekick is a common term used to describe apps / bots / things.

 

[tricknguyen]

Omg, my first comment, I appreciate your time to reply my post. Thanks you very much!

Yeah, I already noted everything you shared above to my pattern researching.

I also agree with you with above things, especially with domains (RecipeSidekick.com), I know closeout domains is quite cheap, then investor usually ignore, but if we have a perfect pattern to filter. It will become valuable.

By the way, I also continue upgrade and share more knowledge in the field through my blog research in daily and weekly.

(https://trick-nguyen.vercel.app/blog)

You can have a look at it, I'm feel free to listen any feedbacks from you!

One more time, thanks you very much!

 

[URL Stream]

4. Closeouts aren't usually the most cost effective strategy. A closeout domain starts at $50 and goes as low as $5. Domain auction folklore is that you shouldn't bid on an auction until the end because you risk alerting people to the domain's value which means most domains receive most of their bids at the end of the auction, and in many cases, there could be 0 bids until the last 5 minutes. So, rather than waiting for the auction to end with 0 bids and then buy it for $50 at closeout, you can bid $1 in the last 5 minutes and get it for $1. Hell, you can stick a $1 bid at the start of the auction if you don't believe the folklore about bids attracting others.

Do you mean to say that some people prefer buying a domain outright in closeout for a higher price of a fixed $50, rather than taking a chance starting at a $1 auction bid that could turn into a bidding war?

If I’m understanding that correctly, then sometimes a domain found in closeout might actually be a name that arguably deserved to be caught during the auction stage?

 

[tricknguyen]

Yeah, I agree with you but if we compare with auction domains, the closeout domains is lower priority to invest. So I think 50$ is a safely price!

 

[fka1080405]

Do you mean to say that some people prefer buying a domain outright in closeout for a higher price of a fixed $50, rather than taking a chance starting at a $1 auction bid that could turn into a bidding war?

If I’m understanding that correctly, then sometimes a domain found in closeout might actually be a name that arguably deserved to be caught during the auction stage?

Yes.

I personally do not believe that bidding begets bidding. I regularly win domains for $1. I think people massively overestimate how unique they are in their thoughts about which domains are valuable.

1. A person identifies a domain at auction that they're interested in which currently has 0 bids
2. They've been told that bidding begets bidding, they worry that if they bid, someone else will see it, so they wait until ~10 minutes to the end before placing their bid
3. At ~10 minutes left, they place their bid, then moments later a bunch more bids come in
4. "Drat! Bids beget bids! People saw my bid and were alerted to the domain's value, I'm going to tell people on NamePros about this"

What they fail to realise is that the method they used to find the domain is almost certainly a method being used by many, many other people, and those same people share in the fear that bidding begets bidding. So, the domain that has 0 bids with a few hours left, isn't an unknown domain ready to slip through the cracks, it is a domain lots of people are looking at and lots of people are preparing to bid on in the last few minutes.

I place proxy bids of what I'm willing to spend the moment I find a domain I think is a good buy, often that means there is still many days left in the auction and I am the first bidder. And I still, every day, win domains for $1, because I am bidding on domains nobody else wants. I just checked and a domain I won for $1 yesterday, I placed my $1 bid almost a week before the end of the auction. A week and nobody else bid.

If a domain has a GoDaddy reported value of over $3,000 you can guarantee that there are at least a few other people watching it, ready to bid in the last few minutes. For example, I can currently see kacpa.com is up for auction with 1 day to go and 0 bids. I could be the first to bid on that domain now, and when more people start bidding at the end of the auction, I could think "I shouldn't have bid so early, I alerted people to this valuable domain!" but that is almost certainly wrong. The domain is valued by GoDaddy at over $4k, I'd bet $4k that there are at least a dozen people monitoring that domain and preparing to bid at the end, and whether I bid now or not will make no difference.

Essentially, the bids beget bids myth is correlation implying causation. The mythology has become so pervasive that it is self reinforcing. And certainly, a decade ago, when the industry was less sophisticated, players like HugeDomains did automatically bid up to $100 on any domain that received interest, but that strategy is long dead and they are much more sophisticated now.

I've won domains at auction for $1 that I was able to sell on the same day[1] for ~$10k. Domain name investing on a budget[2] means the difference between $1 and $50 is substantial[3]. I'm currently participating in ~500 auctions. I'm the high bidder in most of them. I expect to win 10 at most. I think waiting for closeout and paying $60 to avoid a bidding war is a false economy. That said, the myth benefits me, because it means I have a greater chance of winning auctions for $1 so maybe I'll regret saying this.

Every day, there are valuable domains receiving 0 bids and going to closeout, and in many cases, not being bought at closeout either. I sometimes buy at closeout if I missed a domain for some reason.

[1] I say "same day" but because of the annoying delays between when an auction is won and when a domain is delivered it is often more like within a week. That said, I personally consider when the domain lands in my account to be when the timer starts on how long it takes to sell the domain. I regularly sell $1 domains within 24 hours of them landing in my account. I'm also not including the registration fee because $1 sounds better than $1 + $11.99.

[2] I'm fortunate enough to be very profitable and sometimes I will spend big on the right domain but I know that often the risk isn't worth it. I am wildly profitable on cheap domains, and only reasonably profitable on expensive domains. I don't have to invest on a budget but I try to stick to it because that is what I believe is the most profitable strategy. I think for people investing today, pursuing high value domains is almost always a mistake. The people who reliably make big money off high value domains are people who bought them years ago for reg fee. People paying $10k at auction for a domain are usually making a mistake.

[3] A little less substantial than 50x because of the renewal fee but still, $1 + $11.99 vs. $50 + $11.99 = 6x as expensive! For $1,000 you could have ~100 $1 domains or ~20 closeout domains.

 

[biggie]

Hi

that’s some in-depth searching by OP
you get a +2 for effort and ability to relate.

however, at 14 years old, you are not of legal age to enter binding agreements/contracts.
you would need parents or legal guardian to assist.

not saying you would, but you could back out of a transaction or auction and not be liable.

just wanted to throw that out there for consideration


imo….

 

[URL Stream]

Essentially, the bids beget bids myth is correlation implying causation. The mythology has become so pervasive that it is self reinforcing.

Good points.

But at the end of the day it's undeniable that a commen filter used when searching for domains is 'Min 1 Bid'.

---

I've won domains at auction for $1 that I was able to sell on the same day for ~$10k

1. A lot of what you are describing is "targeting" according to the UDRP guidelines. Of course, we all know which domains are valuable to existing companies, but you have to pretend that isn't true.

 

[bmugford]

Do you mean to say that some people prefer buying a domain outright in closeout for a higher price of a fixed $50, rather than taking a chance starting at a $1 auction bid that could turn into a bidding war?

If I’m understanding that correctly, then sometimes a domain found in closeout might actually be a name that arguably deserved to be caught during the auction stage?

Oh, for sure.

I barely even look at auctions. Once a domain has one bid, it flags everyone else to take a look which usually leads to a bidding war.

Some closeouts are higher quality than domains that sell for hundreds at auction.

The difference between a $50 domain and $500 domain is often just another bidder.

Brad

 

[fka1080405]

But at the end of the day it's undeniable that a commen filter used when searching for domains is 'Min 1 Bid'.

I doubt it matters, there are thousands of domains with 1 bid. I've won hundreds of domains with $1 bids. Even when people do use that filter, they've still got to choose to bid on the domain I'm interested in out of the thousands of choices. If GoDaddy has valued the domain at just a few hundred dollars and the person didn't find it through their normal criteria, would they choose it if they saw it because it had a bid? I assume lots of people are seeing the domains I buy, they're just not recognising the value in them.

I guess I could experiment to validate this more scientifically, I could not bid on any domains and pick them up at closeout instead... that said, I'm pretty happy with my current process because vibes wise, it feels like I'm right that bids do not beget bids, and switching to closeouts increases my cost basis substantially.

I was speaking hypothetically, in fact, I don't even own any domains, this is all roleplay

 

[tricknguyen]

Hi

that’s some in-depth searching by OP
you get a +2 for effort and ability to relate.

however, at 14 years old, you are not of legal age to enter binding agreements/contracts.
you would need parents or legal guardian to assist.

not saying you would, but you could back out of a transaction or auction and not be liable.

just wanted to throw that out there for consideration


imo….

Yeah! Thanks you for your advice, yeah I known I known, that's why I created this post with main purpose that learning and improve knowledge first, before go ahead with investing

 

[tricknguyen]

Good points.

But at the end of the day it's undeniable that a commen filter used when searching for domains is 'Min 1 Bid'.

Show attachment 301928

---

haha, I also facing this, so which link you're using? let me have a look

 

[tricknguyen]

I doubt it matters, there are thousands of domains with 1 bid. I've won hundreds of domains with $1 bids. Even when people do use that filter, they've still got to choose to bid on the domain I'm interested in out of the thousands of choices. If GoDaddy has valued the domain at just a few hundred dollars and the person didn't find it through their normal criteria, would they choose it if they saw it because it had a bid? I assume lots of people are seeing the domains I buy, they're just not recognising the value in them.

I guess I could experiment to validate this more scientifically, I could not bid on any domains and pick them up at closeout instead... that said, I'm pretty happy with my current process because vibes wise, it feels like I'm right that bids do not beget bids, and switching to closeouts increases my cost basis substantially.

Omg, thanks you so much! I think you have an experience in filtering overlooked auction domains, so could you share it, currentl I do not have any pattern to research on auction domains!

 

[URL Stream]

Some closeouts are higher quality than domains that sell for hundreds at auction.

The difference between a $50 domain and $500 domain is often just another bidder.

Basically a $450 finders fee.

 

[URL Stream]

@fka1080405

I go back and forth on this...

Do you filter out names under $100 (=$0) in GoDaddy auctions?

Basically, once the appraisal bot misses a name for whatever reason, do you think it becomes totally underrated, or does it still assign some baseline value for the most part?

The problem is that there’s clearly a huge amount of guaranteed junk over there, which makes sifting through it pretty cumbersome.

 

[fka1080405]

Do you filter out names under $100 (=$0) in GoDaddy auctions?

Basically, once the appraisal bot misses a name for whatever reason, do you think it becomes totally underrated, or does it still assign some baseline value for the most part?

The problem is that there’s clearly a huge amount of guaranteed junk over there, which makes sifting through it pretty cumbersome.

GoDaddy's valuations don't usually have false positives but they have a lot of false negatives. If a domain is valued at $10k by GoDaddy you can be sure it is valuable but anything under ~$1600 is basically indistinguishable from zero, there doesn't appear to be any reason for $1600 vs. $1500 vs $750 vs $100 vs. $0. I've won quite a few $0 domains, in fact, looking back now, one of my favourite domains was valued at ~$50. There are $0 domains that I would never in a million years guess as being valued by GoDaddy at $0.

The latest GoDaddy auction inventory contains 902,103 domains of which only 900 are valued at $3,000 or higher. There are 93530 domains valued at $0, 66195 valued at $1 ... 1219 valued at $71, ... 276 valued at $1,239... so on and so forth. Just picking completely arbitrary examples, "copyrightabook.com" + "corwisdom.com" + "kardoes.com" + "sa7ori.com" are all valued at $1,331 but of those 4 domains "copyrightabook.com" stands out as having far more potential than the others. The auction for copyrightabook.com finished with no bids and is now at closeout for $50. If I had seen that domain's auction, I'd have bid $1 for it.

GoDaddy's valuation also heavily biases towards age, all but guaranteeing that a young domain (e.g: ~5 years old) will be valued at a few hundred dollars. Although that makes sense at first glance (if a domain was available to register 2 years ago, of course it is junk) it doesn't consider that domains can be drop caught (resetting the age even though the domain was not available to register) and that trends can appear from nowhere. One of my best $1 auction to end user sales was a domain registered for the first time in ~2020 that (if I remember correctly) GoDaddy had valued at $200 but the moment I saw it, I knew it was gold.

I probably spend anywhere from 1 to 2 hours per day looking at auction inventory. Since inventory cycles every ~10 days I could look once per week but I enjoy doing it daily, a little routine, as a treat. I review a lot of junk, definitely, but it is absolutely worth it. I ingest GoDaddy's auction inventory into a database and query it, improving my filtering process as time goes on with more and more learnings. I probably look at and make a decision about 2,500 domains per day in the 1 to 2 hours. I am sure if I increased my time spent I could find more domains, although I don't think it would scale linearly as, hopefully, my filtering is surfacing the best for me to review first. I only do it for as long as it is fun, which is usually 1 to 2 hours.

I think the best analogy is that GoDaddy's auctions are like a yard sale. If you show up and only buy the items the sellers have listed as worth the most money, you might get good things at a good price because it is a yard sale but if you want to make real money at a yard sale you've got to show up and dig through the junk to find the hidden gems that you recognise as valuable. Not because it is hard to show up to a yard sale and look, but because nobody wants to do it. Counterintuitively, this is even more true now in the AI age because everyone is trying to AI-ify everything, doing things by hand is seen as archaic, they're vibe coding half-baked concepts that miss the nuance only a human can spot, nobody wants to say "yes I am looking at a big list of domains and picking the ones I like" they want to say "I taught an LLM to find valuable domains" so they're prompting instead of looking.

I expect if once per week you took a completely random selection of 10,000 .com names from GoDaddy's inventory valued at between $0 and $2000 and spent a few hours reviewing them, you'd find at least 100 that you were willing to pay $1 for, and of those, I am sure you would win at least 10 of them for $1 each. That's 500 domains per year, at a cost of 500 x $1 x $10.99 = $6000 and even with a sell through rate of just 1% it would be very easy to be profitable, in fact, a single good sale would make you profitable.

 

[URL Stream]

Thanks for elaborating.

I don’t think there’s another member here who writes at such length while keeping it consistently substantive and helpful.

I ingest GoDaddy's auction inventory into a database and query it,

Is that different than loading a saved search with your criteria and exporting the results?

 

[fka1080405]

Is that different than loading a saved search with your criteria and exporting the results?

GoDaddy's filtering options are quite limited and I don't think you can export more than a few pages of results.

The expireddomains.net website has a lot of great filtering options. I like being able to augment with my own data, control the interface and use inventory from unsupported providers (e.g: DropCatch) but building out your own theory about which domains are valuable using the filtering provided by expireddomains.net would be a meaningful step beyond what most people are willing to do and what is possible with GoDaddy's interface.

If you do want to go further, you can download the inventory (all_listings.json.zip[1] from inventory.auctions.godaddy.com) and use a tool to transform jsonld to a format you prefer, e.g: SQL or CSV. Although I advocate against using AI for decision making, it can be very good for getting data into the right shape, so you could use it to convert jsonld to SQL or CSV and help you write queries.

I think the most human friendly option would be to use a business intelligence tool. Metabase is one that I'm familiar with which has a free open source option to run locally. I think you could get 90% of the way to having a great system by...

1. Download the latest inventory from GoDaddy
2. Ask AI to write a script to convert jsonld to CSV (or use an existing tool)
3. Import CSV to Metabase

And then you'll have the ability to create dashboards with any filtering options you can think of, and be able to bring in other data and join it for referencing, e.g: if you like name domains (...for some reason) you could import a list of all names in the U.S. and then sort / filter by name popularity in the U.S.

Ultimately, it is just about spending the time to explore expired domains untethered from anyone else's judgement about value, which can be done via GoDaddy's limited interface, albeit slowly. Any additional tooling / processing / data improves efficiency and effectiveness but doesn't fundamentally change what needs to be done... we've gotta look at domains! I'd probably filter GoDaddy by type: Expiring Auctions, characters: No hyphens + No numbers + No IDNs, extensions: .com, No. of bids: 0 maximum, Estimated value: $1600 maximum... and then go through a few dozen pages, sticking $1 bids on any that seemed promising.

[1] The inventory files are limited to 1 million rows so in cases where more than 1 million rows exist GoDaddy splits into a new file. If you're building out automation, you can use the inventory metadata.json to find all files, e.g: all_listings2.json will appear if there are more than 1 million rows. Sometimes, though, the split file will remain available on subsequent days that don't have more than 1 million rows, so you can't just rely on the presence of the file, you also have to make sure the dates match.

 

[URL Stream]

GoDaddy's filtering options are quite limited and I don't think you can export more than a few pages of results.

The expireddomains.net website has a lot of great filtering options. I like being able to augment with my own data, control the interface and use inventory from unsupported providers (e.g: DropCatch) but building out your own theory about which domains are valuable using the filtering provided by expireddomains.net would be a meaningful step beyond what most people are willing to do and what is possible with GoDaddy's interface.

If you do want to go further, you can download the inventory (all_listings.json.zip[1] from inventory.auctions.godaddy.com) and use a tool to transform jsonld to a format you prefer, e.g: SQL or CSV. Although I advocate against using AI for decision making, it can be very good for getting data into the right shape, so you could use it to convert jsonld to SQL or CSV and help you write queries.

I think the most human friendly option would be to use a business intelligence tool. Metabase is one that I'm familiar with which has a free open source option to run locally. I think you could get 90% of the way to having a great system by...

1. Download the latest inventory from GoDaddy
2. Ask AI to write a script to convert jsonld to CSV (or use an existing tool)
3. Import CSV to Metabase

And then you'll have the ability to create dashboards with any filtering options you can think of, and be able to bring in other data and join it for referencing, e.g: if you like name domains (...for some reason) you could import a list of all names in the U.S. and then sort / filter by name popularity in the U.S.

Ultimately, it is just about spending the time to explore expired domains untethered from anyone else's judgement about value, which can be done via GoDaddy's limited interface, albeit slowly. Any additional tooling / processing / data improves efficiency and effectiveness but doesn't fundamentally change what needs to be done... we've gotta look at domains! I'd probably filter GoDaddy by type: Expiring Auctions, characters: No hyphens + No numbers + No IDNs, extensions: .com, No. of bids: 0 maximum, Estimated value: $1600 maximum... and then go through a few dozen pages, sticking $1 bids on any that seemed promising.

[1] The inventory files are limited to 1 million rows so in cases where more than 1 million rows exist GoDaddy splits into a new file. If you're building out automation, you can use the inventory metadata.json to find all files, e.g: all_listings2.json will appear if there are more than 1 million rows. Sometimes, though, the split file will remain available on subsequent days that don't have more than 1 million rows, so you can't just rely on the presence of the file, you also have to make sure the dates match.

Thank you!

Does GoDaddy Auctions have an option to bulk upload an external list of names to bid on?

In other words, after I compile a list of names I’m interested in, what’s the most seamless way to access those auctions and place bids?

 

[TonnyDomains]

Hello tricknguyen,
Thank you very much for starting this thread.
You wrote a lot of interesting stuff.
It is not a surprise that your text inspired many others to publish interesting information.