Validate this domain auctioning idea.

[m4jor101]

I'm excited to share my vision for a new domain auction platform that focuses on providing a premium experience for both buyers and sellers. Here's a breakdown of what I'm planning and how it will work:

Key Features and Approach:​

1. Premium Domain Auctions Only
   • Quality Over Quantity: The platform will feature only premium domain auctions. This ensures that the listings are valuable and attractive, avoiding the clutter of low-quality names that won’t sell.
2. Seamless Authentication with OAuth
   • Simplified User Experience: Users can sign in with their Google accounts. This streamlines the registration process, reduces the risk of spam accounts, and enhances overall security.
3. Verified Domain Ownership
   • Seller Verification: Before sellers can list their domains, we will verify ownership. This step is crucial to maintaining the integrity of the auctions and ensuring that all listed domains are legitimately owned by the sellers.
4. Yearly Subscription for Buyers
   • Serious Bidders Only: To ensure that buyers are committed and to deter fake accounts, a yearly subscription fee will be charged. This helps maintain a high standard of auction activity and deters spammers.
5. Listing Fees Based on Duration
   • Commitment from Sellers: Sellers will pay a small listing fee based on how long they want their domain to be listed. This encourages serious listings and prevents people from using the platform for free evaluations without the intention to sell. Each listing will be manually reviewed to ensure quality, which is time-consuming but necessary to maintain standards.
6. Commission-Free Auctions
   • Encouraging Activity: Unlike the industry norm of charging 10-15% commission on sales, our platform will initially offer commission-free auctions. This aims to boost participation from both buyers and sellers. We might reconsider this as the platform grows, but starting without commissions will help build a robust user base.
7. Integrated Escrow Service
   • Secure Transactions: We’ll integrate escrow.com through their API to handle transactions securely. This is essential for a small team like ours to ensure trust and security in financial dealings, even though it means buyers will have to cover escrow fees.
8. Focus on P2P Transactions
   • User-Centric Auctions: The primary focus will be on user domain auction transactions rather than expired domains. This approach fosters a more community-driven marketplace and enhances user engagement.

What Do You Think?​

I'm eager to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Is there anything else you’d like to see on such a platform? Your feedback will be invaluable as I continue to develop and refine this project.
Thanks for reading and looking forward to your insights!

 

[bmugford]

Launching a domain auction platform is a tough task for a number of reasons.

Premium Domain Auctions Only

• Quality Over Quantity: The platform will feature only premium domain auctions. This ensures that the listings are valuable and attractive, avoiding the clutter of low-quality names that won’t sell.

I don't think most marketplaces plan to be flooded with garbage domains, but it just happens.

One major reason is the vast majority of investment quality domains are already in strong hands. These people don't usually sell domains for appealing investment prices.

Because of the lack of inventory, over time you will probably have to lower the bar on what a "quality" domain is.

Yearly Subscription for Buyers

• Serious Bidders Only: To ensure that buyers are committed and to deter fake accounts, a yearly subscription fee will be charged. This helps maintain a high standard of auction activity and deters spammers.

You start with the chicken & egg problem.

Why would a seller list a domain when there are limited buyers?
Why would a buyer pay for a membership when there limited quality domains?

Brad

 

[m4jor101]

I don't think most marketplaces plan to be flooded with garbage domains, but it just happens.

I plan to manually review all domain listings to ensure I only allow premium domains. But yeah, I get what you mean.

One major reason is the vast majority of investment quality domains are already in strong hands. These people don't usually sell domains for appealing investment prices.

Because of the lack of inventory, over time you will probably have to lower the bar on what a "quality" domain is.

That is something I too thought when I came up with the idea, it's going to be difficult for convince diamond hands holding onto premium domains until the "right" buyer offers them. But it could also be because there's no market for liquidity as most registrars only allow user auction if that domain is registered with them, by creating a universal marketplace that accepts user auctions no matter which registrar they have registered on. Still, I will give more thought into it.
Do you have any suggestion on this that could be enticing for these premium domain holders?

You start with the chicken & egg problem.

Why would a seller list a domain when there are limited buyers?
Why would a buyer pay for a membership when there limited quality domains?

that is the case for any marketplace when it's starts, plan to kick start by offering only premium auction and zero/low commission to bring in initial visitors.
I'm open to suggestion in this as well.