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. )

 

[Ostrados]

Why?

Bad ROI (in my experience)

 

[Max1000]

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)

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.

 

[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

 

[Max1000]

I had a tool that preformatted their former listing so I could copy paste even before (the whole page and it extracted the results),

That would have been useful lol!
I still often copy straight off the page into OOffice and do minor formatting, for speed on small searches.

 

[twiki]

That would have been useful lol!
I still often copy straight off the page into OOffice and do minor formatting, for speed on small searches.

Unfortunately don't have it anymore, was deleted (no more use). But you can download now at Dynadot.

 

[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.

 

[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?

 

[bolo]

I'm with @twiki

 

[Jason Baudendistel]

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

 

[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.

 

[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!