debate The domaining game is rigged (entirely).

[twiki]

Saw a comment today about (perhaps) smoke and mirrors. This made me twitch a little.

I'm pretty sure there is a lot of smoke and mirrors going on. Quite a lot. But it's not just that.

Bait and cast net for gullible fishies. (seen this too much)

Also search and get your regs snatched by(via) the registrar. ( seen this too much, and yeah, with many popular registrars)

Also pump your auction price up to infinity via vouched bot bidders. ( anyone missed this one...? )

Also "steal the dinner" = lowball offer to get your name for $100 when an hour later there's a 3K+ BIN going to come at ya. ( Had this so many times personally that I lost the count; so I'm not making any significant min offer anymore, or a min offer at all.)

Also I believe there's a new smoke and mirror league: So-called branding agencies selling overpriced domains and crappy sites to gullible (mostly fintech) founders. Ugh.

I've said it before: The game is rigged. Entirely.

We're the gullible believing that maybe, maybe, maybe it's not.

Make your voice heard below, we all appreciate it.

( Edit: Shall we also mention for a second, registrar premiums, hidden renewal costs and additional services, etc etc. But these are already too small to matter in an ocean of deceit. )

 

[Lord Antares]

Also search and get your regs snatched by(via) the registrar. ( seen this too much, and yeah, with many popular registrars)

As far as I'm concerned, this is true and not a myth. I've searched for a name which was never registered in the history of the internet, only for it to be taken 30 mins later when I came home. This happened more than once.

For this to be a coincidence is a statistical impossibility.

Also pump your auction price up to infinity via vouched bot bidders. ( anyone missed this one...? )

This is the worst problem. Ask yourself why the prices are always much higher on expired auctions, i.e. auctions where the registrar gets the money. I only ever take part in user auctions where I consistently notice the prices can be multiple times lower than what would be bid for the same domain if the registrar owned it.

I also use one site, I won't mention which, where I notice that the second highest bid is one increment less than my proxy bid about 50% of the time. So my proxy bid is $440, there is about a 50% chance that the second highest bid will be $435 (if I end up as the winner). This is ridiculous.

I also consider this to be statistically almost impossible. I'm sure they're shilling.

Also "steal the dinner" = lowball offer to get your name for $100 when an hour later there's a 3K+ BIN going to come at ya.

Why do you think this is the registrar's doing? Why couldn't the end user be testing you? It would make perfect sense from their perspective.

All in all, the more experience I have, the less I trust corporations. I have concluded that if there is a chance to cheat, there will almost certainly be cheating.

Maybe I'm a cynic, but I don't do proxy bids anymore and I don't trust corporations.

 

[Samer]

Dont forget questionable sales in auctions.

How many times did DropCatch re-auction:

“eBanking.com”? One of many. What a Joke!

Samer

 

[karmaco]

Life is unfair in many aspects- that’s a given. As long as domainers continue to make money that’s really where all your focus should be.

I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore is fun for a rant but doesn’t change a damn thing or improve your business. Focus on what you can control not what you can’t.

 

[biggie]

The domaining game is rigged (entirely).

I'm pretty sure there is a lot of smoke and mirrors going on. Quite a lot. But it's not just that.

Bait and cast net for gullible fishies. (seen this too much)

Also search and get your regs snatched by(via) the registrar. ( seen this too much, and yeah, with many popular registrars)

Also pump your auction price up to infinity via vouched bot bidders. ( anyone missed this one...? )

Also "steal the dinner" = lowball offer to get your name for $100 when an hour later there's a 3K+ BIN going to come at ya. ( Had this so many times personally that I lost the count; so I'm not making any significant min offer anymore, or a min offer at all.)

Also I believe there's a new smoke and mirror league: So-called branding agencies selling overpriced domains and crappy sites to gullible (mostly fintech) founders. Ugh.

I've said it before: The game is rigged. Entirely.

We're the gullible believing that maybe, maybe, maybe it's not.

Make your voice heard below, we all appreciate it.

( Edit: Shall we also mention for a second, registrar premiums, hidden renewal costs and additional services, etc etc. But these are already too small to matter in an ocean of deceit. )

Hi

i've seen and have spoken about many of the same things you mentioned.

the gullible, as a vague group, will likely fall for one or more of those scenarios.

the shill/insider bidding in auctions, i experienced first hand years ago with snapnames, though i did get refunds.
the frontrunning on hand-regs by netsol
the bait and cast the nets and hook a fish, are still in effect
pump and dump still goes on
and not to mention the registry's holding back top tier ngtld's to sell at premium registration fee's and renewal costs.

as for the brandable platforms, to me,
they are like pimps in the street game, hustling your names and taking the highest cut overall.

still, i don't see it as entirely rigged
one just has to beware and not get "caught-up" in the winds of hype.

imo....

 

[Lord Antares]

as for the brandable platforms, to me,
they are like pimps in the street game, hustling your names and taking the highest cut overall.

IMO, brandable marketplaces, along with paid appraisals are the biggest rip offs in the industry.

The majority of the listing views come from direct type ins which means the domains would probably sell if they were just normal landing pages.
They force you to point nameservers to their site, so you're in charge of bringing traffic to them and them profiting off of your traffic.

On top of all this, they will typically charge you for listing and logos AND they will treat their insider names preferentially. You're getting ripped off from several sides.

At least Alter are transparent about all of this so I respect them for it.

 

[biggie]

Back when you could submit unregistered names to Alter

Hi

that's one of the ways "they", can use your brain, to provide them with inventory.

but it's something domainers started years ago by posting available names to register that had ovt score.
in return members would give thanks for those they regged.

i guess the diff there is... who you want to help or contribute to

imo....

 

[Ostrados]

I completley stopped using brandable marketplaces 4 months ago and will.never look back.

 

[VadimK]

IMO, brandable marketplaces, along with paid appraisals are the biggest rip offs in the industry.

The majority of the listing views come from direct type ins which means the domains would probably sell if they were just normal landing pages.
They force you to point nameservers to their site, so you're in charge of bringing traffic to them and them profiting off of your traffic.

On top of all this, they will typically charge you for listing and logos AND they will treat their insider names preferentially. You're getting ripped off from several sides.

At least Alter are transparent about all of this so I respect them for it.

That's definitely the case for some nice combinations, but what about single made-up words (most of the brandables?). They have zero type-in traffic. You have to see them first in order to like them. And here the platform comes handy since already having someone already there, browsing for its preferable names.
That's why I don't completely discard brandable platforms. My brandables are a mix between platforms, landers with ''Offer accepted'' and landers with BIN price.

 

[Lord Antares]

That's definitely the case for some nice combinations, but what about single made-up words (most of the brandables?). ]

Oh I 100% agree about made up brandables. Only way to sell them unless they're very high quality.

 

[Liberty Wolf]

As far as I'm concerned, this is true and not a myth. I've searched for a name which was never registered in the history of the internet, only for it to be taken 30 mins later when I came home. This happened more than once.

For this to be a coincidence is a statistical impossibility.

I've been waiting months and months to make a comment about this. Back when you could submit unregistered names to Alter and over a period of about 4 months I had a few dozen names registered between the time I submitted them, and they were accepted.

I would go to grab them once accepted, and they would already be taken, the names I was submitting where from drop lists dating back to 2015, and I found it also a statistical impossibility. A few of those names have since been sold through Alter and a few have made their way to SquadHelp pending sale.

 

[Liberty Wolf]

Hi

that's one of the ways "they", can use your brain, to provide them with inventory.

but it's something domainers started years ago by posting available names to register that had ovt score.
in return members would give thanks for those they regged.

i guess the diff there is... who you want to help or contribute to

imo....

Agreed, it makes perfect sense, the Brandable niche was not around when I was involved in Domaining 12 years ago. I only jumped back in about 18 months ago and a lot has changed. I mentioned this same scenario to someone else in a conversation, and they mentioned ghost accounts doing the regs for those platforms.

Obviously I'm not saying that's what it is nor could I even prove that, I just found it to be highly strange, and it made me take a few steps back to rethink what I was doing. After a few more happened, a quit submitting and moved on.

 

[twiki]

I recently wrote about this happening to me. People didn't take me too seriously here.

I do, and a few of us are, those who had direct experience in this.

Not only that but I had it so many times and with several domains snatched at once. The odds are, this happening by accident is an absolute impossibility cause it's a trend, it's not an one-time thing. I could even trigger it cause I even know at certain hours they tend to do that more.

I did repeat regging there for several reasons, 1) price, 2) wanted even to see if this happens again, and 3) accident, something happened and I had to postpone my buys for a bit. It did happen. Again and again.

Fortunately I do have enough volume so this did not affect my bottom line severely. But it did impact psychologically - a lot. It's an absolute disgusting thing to do.

 

[Deven Patel]

I wanted to comment on this thread as a few of you mentioned Alter.

I can't speak for other companies but we never registered seller-submitted names ourselves. It just wouldn't make sense because of many reasons with the most important being the reputation of our company. Anyway, as many of you may know we no longer review names which makes this a moot point for us.

Regarding registrars snatching names, IMO it doesn't make sense for them to do this because again reputation is everything in business. Not to mention they can lose their ICANN accreditation for front-running which to me isn't worth risking for a registrar whose core business is hand regs.

That said, companies are operated by people at the end of the day and there may be a bad apple especially at larger companies. Employees have their own motivations and one can do this without the company's approval if they had access to the data.

Anyway, rather than speculating and worrying about things we can't control, why not just register the names that are available right away? If it's a good name, someone is bound to register it at some point so why leave it up to chance?

Regarding lowball offers from buyers looking to flip domains for profit, I guess that's the definition of a domainer no? One can argue that every domainer falls on this spectrum somewhere (some use dirty tactics while others are more professional). No different than any other industry.

TLDR.. Rather than losing sleep over things we can't control, treat them like rules in the game of life. Those that can successfully navigate them generally come out ahead. The best players win!

 

[Lord Antares]

It's not the end user. Its an experienced middleman, I get all sorts of plays from them including the most common "I'm a poor student". Nah. I don't buy this crap.

I feel like this would be too easy to expose with disastrous consequences. All it takes is one person to accept that lowball offer, then find out the reported price and it's exposed. Or do you think such sales would be censored? Maybe he could just ask the end user later on and if he replied, it would have disastrous effects on the registrar.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it would take a lot of cockiness to do this.

then I add all to cart and purchase right away.

This is how I do it. Put all my names in a .txt file, then copy and bulk buy with no delay.

 

[twiki]

Maybe I'm wrong, but it would take a lot of cockiness to do this.

I don't think they have any remorse or shame whatsoever. These are for "losers", they say.

This is how I do it. Put all my names in a .txt file, then copy and bulk buy with no delay.

I rarely do handregs today, but when I do that I never waste a second. And nobody should, indeed.

 

[paulbain]

I do, and a few of us are, those who had direct experience in this.

Not only that but I had it so many times and with several domains snatched at once. The odds are, this happening by accident is an absolute impossibility cause it's a trend, it's not an one-time thing. I could even trigger it cause I even know at certain hours they tend to do that more.

I am wondering whether you can avoid such Domain name (D.name) theft by avoiding D.name registrars and using the Linux command line instead, thus:

#whois -H domainName.com

These days, I almost always use the whois command _FIRST_, avoiding the D.name registrars entirely until I am ready to register my D.names. Does anyone else use follow this practice?? If so, has it benefited you??

 

[Ostrados]

Why?

Bad ROI (in my experience)

 

[twiki]

So now I have names that are listed for sale for way less than I would ever consider. Like Scalpels.net no fucking way I would accept the 1000 dollars it's listed for. Feels like someone is trying to artificially depress the value of my best names.

I'm not sure I follow this.

Where do you have listed your names and do you mean they show a lower price than the one you have set?

 

[twiki]

To clarify yes, the names are listed in several places for less than the amount I listed them for.

I've seen this happening too with syndicated Afternic listed domains. But the effect depends on how you listed the domains.

If you have BIN only (I have that at some names) then it's weird. Obviously those places won't be able to sell the domain. So it's dumb.

Edit: Actually, on further thought, they have a way. An Afternic/GD broker might contact you with an offer regardless of your BIN only. Which is not bad I think as you can choose.

If you have BIN + make offer (as most have), and if the price is above your make offer, then those sites are attempting to lure buyers with a lower price. But when you try buy it there, your buy will be labeled as "place your bid" instead of buy now. And I think you'll receive an offer via Afternic without any comments on that.

It's a tactic to increase those sites' revenue. Doesn't care much about your revenue, unless you care yourself by not accepting low offers.

Edit: The tactic is definitely not from Afternic itself but the partners. Actually on GoDaddy Auctions for example prices tend sometimes to be higher.

Edit2: I've also seen the opposite; domains I have listed for $299 are priced $950 by some platforms/registrars. That's a huge markup on they part. It's alright for them as they dont' foot your regs and renewalls bills.

 

[twiki]

Any idea how you think they are picking some names over others? Would it be random, or do you think they are looking for something specific? I'm kinda curious as to what criteria they would use to pick one over another. And who would be doing the reg's, one would think multiple accounts would be used, so they aren't all listed under one, that would be a dead giveaway.

I think that they are just watching the regs and picking what seems of interest, on spot.

 

[twiki]

I am wondering whether you can avoid such Domain name (D.name) theft by avoiding D.name registrars and using the Linux command line instead, thus:

#whois -H domainName.com

These days, I almost always use the whois command _FIRST_, avoiding the D.name registrars entirely until I am ready to register my D.names. Does anyone else use follow this practice?? If so, has it benefited you??

You can search at reputed registrars. For example I can vouch for Dynadot. Never had such issues with them, and I did a ton of searches. Bulk search is also improved right now.

With many other large registrars, yeah, you have this problem. You'll get your names frontrunned. With many of those mentioned and used by others here including myself (sometimes you cannot avoid using the biggest ones)

 

[Jason Baudendistel]

Amazon actually registered a name I was in the middle of buying. Something seems fishy about that. Like the registrar feeds companies names they might want to beat others to.

 

[twiki]

Agreed totally. Have never had any domains suddenly disappear after searching hundreds of names at DD. And their Bulk Search is the only one I've found where you can simply copy and paste the results into a spreadsheet.

Actually that feature was added by Dynadot at my suggestion. Previously there was no way to export the bulk results. But of course the merits are theirs, I just offered feedback.

I had a tool that preformatted their former listing so I could copy paste even before (the whole page and it extracted the results), but I knew this new feature would be very useful to both Dynadot users, and their own sales.

Passed it to my account manager. The Dynadot folks are very kind to add such features. I suggest them such things from time to time. I'm glad it helps

 

[Jason Baudendistel]

So now I have names that are listed for sale for way less than I would ever consider. Like Scalpels.net no fucking way I would accept the 1000 dollars it's listed for. Feels like someone is trying to artificially depress the value of my best names.