Why Namecheap isn't allowing me to get the domain listed as an auction?

[avinashi]

Hi

I have 27 .ai domains and most of them are kinda premium (one word or 2 word with 5-6 number search volumes.)

I was planning to sell some of those and listed one of them as a BIN in Namecheap marketplace. But later on I thought to do it as a auction listing but I couldn't find any option to do that so I reached out to their support and they told me that they have the policy stating, 'Unfortunately, it is not possible to list your own domains on our auctions platform at the moment.'

Even though they said that, they have the auction thing going on here - while asked they said it's by the registrar itself!

Well, I then pointed some of those domains in DynaDot as BIN + Make Offer but when I tried to list it in auction they were saying that the domains has to be transferred to Dynadot which will cost $144 it seems.

What would be the best way to transfer or sell the domains on a platform where they allow BIN+Make an offer + Auctions?

 

[EtherealEmilie]

Hey @avinashi!

How recently have you bought the domains?
The ICANN forbids domains to be transferred within 60 days from registration or previous transfer, if you sold it within those 60 days you wouldn't be able to transfer the domains to the buyer, and that'd be an issue, so to prevent that from happening, I assume they prevent listing domains for sale when they're still freshly registered.
That's my first thought as to why you may not be able to list them yet.

 

[avinashi]

Nope, the domains are 1 year old and hasn't been sold to anyone.

 

[EtherealEmilie]

Oh right, I must have misread your post yesterday, because I now understand everything I didn't, haha, and unfortunately, I don't have an answer for your actual question, sorry.

 

[Samer]

NameCheap does not allow user auctions.
NameCheap is overrated.

 

[Samer]

I recommend Dynadot user auctions.
Dynadot has no such ridiculous restriction.

 

[avinashi]

I recommend Dynadot user auctions.
Dynadot has no such ridiculous restriction.

I took that decision, but they will only allow user auctions for those domains which is in their registry. For that we need to transfer the domain from Namecheap to Dynadot which costs around $144 for .ai domain

 

[Samer]

I took that decision, but they will only allow user auctions for those domains which is in their registry. For that we need to transfer the domain from Namecheap to Dynadot which costs around $144 for .ai domain

This is crazy; you made me happier to be .com
Keeps it simple!
But you’re wise to auction off .ai before hype dies

I wish you nothing but success and good luck!

 

[EtherealEmilie]

For that we need to transfer the domain from Namecheap to Dynadot which costs around $144 for .ai domain

Yup, that's the transfer price to Dynadot for an .ai domain, please note that transferring an .ai domain doesn't extend its expiry date.
Dynadot also appears not to provide privacy on .the ai TLD while Namecheap does, could be wrong about that.

 

[zotix]

We got so (positively) manipulated by Dynadot that I only see Dynadot Fanboys(and girls, of course).
I can't remember where, but when I mentioned that I wanted to move 70-80% of my Assets to Dynadot, they even said I could contact them for a bulk transfer offer.

As of now I'm very happy over there!

The only, but truly the only, thing that is missing is proper Marketing for the Auctions; unfortunately, I don't see so much Interaction there; correct me if I'm wrong. But at least the Auctions shared on "shortdomains" are increasing for Dynadot, which is a good signal.

zotix

 

[m4jor101]

I'm planning to build a domain auctioning website to help solve this particular problem, so far I have worked on implementing basic mvp and still need to work on it.


If you are interested in getting notification, when I launch it. Do let me know so I can send you message when its beta launched.

 

[zotix]

I'm planning to build a domain auctioning website to help solve this particular problem, so far I have worked on implementing basic mvp and still need to work on it.


If you are interested in getting notification, when I launch it. Do let me know so I can send you message when its beta launched.

Good luck with it:
Except the fact that this might be not allowed in this specific forum section, maybe you can tell a bit about the USP of your platform / MVP you have built so far:
Maybe, short bullt points to the following questions :

- How does your business model work - what makes this platform „special“
- How do you ensure privacy, regulatory requirements, cyber crime prevention, legal - topics, especially if you operate globally?
- Provisioning Model?
-Where is your company based?

Kind regards
Zotix

 

[Bob Hawkes]

As @Samer pointed out from ToS, users can list fixed price on the Namecheap Marketplace (of domains registered there) but they have never been able to list auctions. The .ai that you see auctioned there regularly are expiring or other registry held names (or possibly NC owned? not sure if they have any).

So it is nothing about you as a seller or your names. None of us can list in auctions there.

As others pointed out, there are auction options at other marketplaces available.

Best wishes for selling the names.

-Bob

PS And yes as OP found out, you can list fixed price at Dynadot marketplace for names registered elsewhere (after verification) but not in the auctions section unless registered at Dynadot.

I believe Sav would be an option? (although never tried an auction with externally registered, but I believe possible - but the bidding would start at the 2 year transfer fee, so probably not effective. The same will be true anywhere.

Or I have not used Daaz but they do auctions.

One option would be to list the name in the count down auction at DNWE, since closing there would allow new buyer to get name via push so time not lost as far as I know.

 

[m4jor101]

Good luck with it:
Except the fact that this might be not allowed in this specific forum section, maybe you can tell a bit about the USP of your platform / MVP you have built so far:
Maybe, short bullt points to the following questions :

- How does your business model work - what makes this platform „special“
- How do you ensure privacy, regulatory requirements, cyber crime prevention, legal - topics, especially if you operate globally?
- Provisioning Model?
-Where is your company based?

Kind regards
Zotix

Thanks a lot asking the nitty-gritty of it.
Here's what I have in mind and how I'm planning to build it:

- Offer only premium domain auctions to avoid flooding auction listings with boring and domain names that won't sell.

- I'm planning to roll out authentication using OAuth such as signing in with google account, This avoids a lot of hassle in user creation, spam accounts and also simplifies the user journey.

- Verify each domain ownership for sellers before letting them list the domain for auctions.

- Charge a yearly subscription to buyers to mitigate fake account and that they are serious about bidding and not create fake accounts either from auctions listers themselves or spammers.

- Charge a small listing fee based on the duration the seller wants to list, this is to make sure they are absolutely sure that they wanna sell it and not just trying to get evaluation by creating listing and taking it down after auction ends and not selling that domain, also to ensure all the auction listings are premium domain. I'm planning to manually review it which takes a lot of time so I want to make sure only serious sellers are listing their domains.

- Offer a commission free auction platform, Unlike the industry standard of 15-10% of domain sale value, I wanna offer it for free to encourage more auction activity from both buyers and sellers. Maybe change it as platform grows but at the beginning, I would love to offer it free of commissions.

- Integrate escrow.com through their API into the platform as it would be difficult to do escrow like service for a small team/single person platform like mine. So there will be escrow fees that the buyer has to pay for escrow.com.

- I wanna focus more on user auction side of things where p2p domain transactions are held instead of expired domains and all that.

Is there anything else you would like to add or see in such platform?