Bido Guarantee Program: It Makes Sense Now
Sunday, August 30th, 2009
The missing piece of the puzzle glues it all together.
When domain auction platform Bido announced its “Bido Guarantee Program”, I was a bit confused as to why any buyers would participate. Essentially, buyers would participate in a pre-auction where they could bid for domains. The seller could choose to accept the winning bid in the pre-auction, send the auction to a “real” auction with the pre-auction bid as the starting bid, or walk away.
This didn’t sound too appealing to pre-auction buyers. They would essentially bid up the prices of domains, only to face more competition in the real auction.
But there’s one detail that wasn’t in Bido’s original explanation: pre-auction winners get a cut of the commission if they don’t end up winning the “real auction”.
Let’s say I’m a bidder in the guarantee program. In the pre-auction I win with a bid of $500 for a domain. The seller decides to send it to a real auction and the domain sells for $1,000 to someone else. That means I’d get 50% of the total commission (4% of the sales price), or $40. It would give me an incentive to bid high in the pre-auction (let alone participate at all). This should push domain sales prices higher on Bido.
My only worry, as I’ve discussed before, is that this makes things more complicated. But I think it’s a nifty addition to Bido.
Current guarantee bidders include NameMedia, Parked, Domaining, Reinvent, and several other companies.
Further Reading:
- Bido Drops “Guarantees” In Domain Auctions
- Rating Bido’s New Features
- Bido Reinstates Reserve Pricing (with a Catch)
Tags: bido
Bido Guarantee Program: It Makes Sense Now – http://tinyurl.com/lbsss7
Can it get any more complicated?
It reminds me of pool system a while ago where they want sealed bids and then another round of bidding. An unneccessary complication, I’m guessing this will be dropped within 12 months.
To be honnest when Jarred contacted me I did not understood very well all the aspects of their program and only accepted to participate to land them a little hand.
Now I can tell you I am really happy they contacted me and lucky to not have declined their invitation.
I confim what I already posted in Sahar blog: It’s a GENIUS idea!
This “Guarantee Program” brings an excitment and a game dimension others auctions don’t offer.
And Snoopy provides all the negative feedback you’d ever want or not want, FOREVER! Of course, his contributions to the domain industry are legend, because I can name them on both of my… hmmmm
sorry, got none to offer. Wait, I think he shot down the Red Baron…
its pennies… does anyone really care about a few dollars commission when buying thousands of dollars in domains?
Thats not really an “incentive”.
I’ve never been one to mess with incentives, coupons, and such. Too much hassle and confusion. This does not sound like fun to me.
Besides, I domains I submitted to Bido previously, they never even replied back to reject them. No communication whatsoever.
Johnny – Bido has changed its model for selecting domains. You might try again.
[...] list of partners here, and if you would like to apply to become a Partner, discuss some of the benefits, etc., please email Jarred Cohen, Bido COO, at [...]
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