Bido.com no longer guarantees a sales price to sellers.
After gaining experience from a couple week’s worth of domain auctions, Bido has made a sweeping change. It will no longer “guarantee” a certain sales price to sellers.
Bido cofounder Sahar Sarid noted on his blog “Looking at domain submissions we learned that if you state that you are willing to give a guarantee if certain guidelines followed, domain owners will submit anything and everything for your consideration, mostly outside the boundaries stated.”
So all domains submitted from now on will start at $1 and truly have no reserve. I think this is a smart move to draw in more bidders, too. If I feel that I may be able to get a bargain on a domain, I’m willing to show up and participate.
Granted, the market should determine the final bidding price, but I may value the domain differently than others. I may believe true value is less than the “Guarantee” price, but greater than what other people are willing to bid.
If you list your domain, it’s essentially guaranteed to sell. Whether it’s for $1 or $10,000, at least you know it got great exposure and a fair price.
Today’s auction for Compete.net starts at $1.
Wow, they just made their service even less appealing. At first I thought they were going to bring something unique to the table, but, they are just not creating a good environment for people to sell names. I’ve been less than impressed with the domains for sale so far as it is.
“Granted, the market should determine the final bidding price, but…”
Smart move Bido – but early domain sellers need to be aware that it is they who will be footing the bill to help raise awareness for the Bido.com domain auction platform.
IMO, for the next few months at least or until ‘The Market’ truly arrives, Bido.com will be a domain investor’s dream come true.
Lots of great deals will be had, then the masses (the market) will arrive. Smart move Bido.
Who wants to submit anything good for a $1 no reserve auction?
You gotta be a fool…especially when the house is bidding too…which leaves too much room for corruption.
I can see it now…”Sorry, the system was down and the only bids that went thru were ours”.
WQ, to clarify, most of the stories I’ve seen about the insider bidding commotion have been careful to note that Bido specifically forbids employees or the house from bidding on any names at auction.
@ Jamie:
You say “IMO, for the next few months at least or until ‘The Market’ truly arrives, Bido.com will be a domain investor’s dream come true.”
If this were really the case, then why aren’t you parked out over there snapping up domains at bargain prices?
I guess my point is that domains up for auction at Bido seem to get more press than most domains auctioned off elsewhere.
There are a lot of people saying that Bido domains are going for “a steal”. With perhaps one or two exceptions, I don’t think this is the case.
@ WQ – you say “Who wants to submit anything good for a $1 no reserve auction?”
I would think you would only want to submit something if it’s good. If you truly believe you have a winner, other people will think so too.
Now this isn’t to say you’ll get end user pricing for it. You’re selling to other investors.
@Andrew
You said:
“If this were really the case, then why aren’t you parked out over there snapping up domains at bargain prices?”
First of all Andrew, I very rarely buy domains in auctions, but TODAY Bido.com just became a whole lot more attractive to those who do.
You also said:
“I guess my point is that domains up for auction at Bido seem to get more press than most domains auctioned off elsewhere.”
As they should Andrew. Bido.com is a revolutionary domain auction platform/system. It’s unlike any other in the industry.
Other than domainers talking to other domainers about Bido.com, where’s all the press you’re referring to?
When, (not if) either Bido gets CRUNCHED by Mike Arrington’s gang, or the WallStreet Journal covers Bido.com is when domainer’s listing domains at Bido will know what it means to have serious press coverage on their domains.
In regard to “steals” Bido.com is a little over 2 weeks old, and I’ll say without hesitation (and as an expert with Bido) that:
7/01/08 worldcigars.com $1001.00
6/28/08 marriagerights.com $540.00
6/25/08 cerealbox.com $2,695.00
6/18/08 discountimages.com $911.00
…were all GREAT buys.
There’s only more to come.
Hey Guys,
I do want to clear up something up. Before when we had the guarantee, we did leave the option open for the house to bid.
Now that we have retooled the guarantee, we have also removed the ability for the house to bid as well.
The house, employees, family of employees, etc….none of them are able to bid on the auction.
If anyone has any questions about this or Bido in general, please feel free to email me.
Thank you!
Sean Stafford
http://www.dnzoom.com
http://www.bido.com
“I would think you would only want to submit something if it’s good. If you truly believe you have a winner, other people will think so too.”
Andrew,
The “other people” who will bid on your domains are the domainers that participate in Bido’s auctions, which will be a limited amount of people. Most I know don’t care to participate.
You’d be better listed it on forums or at eBay.
Throwing a “good domain” up at some new auction site for a $1 no reserve auction is a suckers game.
As a follow up to Sean’s comment, Bido was only allowed to place one single bid. It effectively made a reserve price on the auction as I wrote a couple weeks ago.
@ Jamie – the fact that Bido is only talked about in domain circles right now is no different from other domain auctions. Who do you think is bidding at TRAFFIC conferences? On rare occasion does an end user bid there. Sedo and Afternic get some end users because of their large catalog of domains, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking end users are larking around Sedo looking to buy our domains.
With regards to these domain sales:
7/01/08 worldcigars.com $1001.00
6/28/08 marriagerights.com $540.00
6/25/08 cerealbox.com $2,695.00
6/18/08 discountimages.com $911.00
I really don’t see any huge values there. Maybe they would have gone for a little more somewhere else, but I don’t see any of these selling for a lot to other investors.
Never sell a good name without a good reserve.
Case in point: Michael and I decided to sell Passover.com through Moniker. I told Monte I wanted a 100K reserve. He suggested a 50K reserve to “get the bidding going.”
I disagreed and stuck with the 100K reserve. It didn’t sell at that auction, but a month later it sold for 100K at the next Moniker auction.
During the first auction there was a bid for 50K. If we had lowered our reserve to 50K it would have sold and we would have lost $50,000.
@Andrew
I’m not trying to argue with you, but I do enjoy the debate.
You know just as well as I do that many domain buyers are not buying domains to resell them but now see domain development as a very real small business opportunity.
6/18/08 discountimages.com $911.00
He knows that he got a great deal. And as best that I can tell, he’s planning to develop it.
http://tinyurl.com/6gqz7p
Also, looks like COMPETE.NET sold for $2,073.00 – That was another GREAT buy. Whether it be to flip it to an end user, to develop it into a site, or simply acquired to help grow the value of one’s domain portfolio.
We buy domains for all sorts of reason.
@ Jamie – DiscountImages.com certainly could have sold for more. If I were developing a site there are plenty of good alternatives for anywhere from $500-$2k, but I agree this was a good one.
As for Compete.net, that one is a tough call. I recently *tried* to do an analysis of .net prices compared to .com and it was difficult — it was all across the board. Compete.net is somewhat “tainted” given you can’t do anything that would “compete” with Compete.com and it’s not an obvious ecommerce site. I’ve scored a couple .net’s I’m proud of including Newlyweds.net (the .com version sold for over $100k).
“you can’t do anything that would “compete” with Compete.com”
Clever point 🙂
I usually swing by Bido to read the “experts” comments. It’s amusing to read how they extrapolate 5 figure prices for silly domain names. For a even bigger laugh, I wait till the name hits auction and it ends up bidding 3 figures.
Bido domains going for a “steal”. LOL, if you say so.
These guys should be writing for Jay Leno, they’ll make a mint.
Andrew, don’t you agree that canadiancoins.com sold for a great price as well?
– Richard
I think CanadianCoins.com will pay off nicely for the buyer, if nothing else because CanadianCoin.com is a developed site with modest traffic.