Minimum offer prices should reduce number of unqualified offers.
When GoDaddy.com started listing “make offer” domains from Sedo and Afternic, many domainers reported a flood of unqualified offers.
One domain investor even removed all of his listings from SedoMLS to stop the unqualified offers.
It looks like the message was received.
Afternic announced today that its unpriced syndicated listings on Go Daddy will now show your minimum offer price. The company is encouraging customers who have listed unpriced domains to update their minimum offer prices to reflect what they expect for the domain.
Here’s the full message:
We wanted to let you know of a recent change with one of our largest reseller partners, GoDaddy. Recently, GoDaddy began accepting offers on unpriced domains listed on Afternic. As you may know, this resulted in a large volume of unqualified buyers, with unrealistic expectations on sale price.
We are excited to announce that GoDaddy will now be displaying on their site the minimum offer amount on your domains as you have them set on Afternic. This represents a tremendous benefit to you, as you now have the opportunity to receive more qualified offers than in the past.
In order to benefit from this, we are requesting that you update your minimum offers on your domains listed on Afternic to reflect your true expectations on sales price for your unpriced domains. Setting an appropriate minimum offer (versus the default $250) will lead to more qualified inquiries, and potentially increase your sales velocity!
Dozens of domain investors have removed their full or partial portfolios from Sedo, because of the way SedoMLS was implemented on TDNAM.
Minimum offers do not solve the problem, as a minimum offer is more often perceived as an indication of a selling threshold; in the mind of sellers, it’s just a rock bottom price that they *might* accept under duress. In all reality, domain investors won’t sell at that price.
I think that’s why Afternic is asking people to put something that they’d actually consider as the minimum offer. If you might consider $3,000 for a domain, you can just list that as your minimum.
People want offers that make sense. Not setting a minimum offers the ability to negotiate with the other party, instead of ‘scaring’ them off, or giving the impression you will sell at the minimum price. With large portfolios, investors would be inclined to set a base price across the board, which defeats the purpose. Also, times change and domains might gain in value from one day to the next due to trends and keyword popularity. The issue here is Sedo treated our domains as an opportunity to list them – without explicit permission – on a bazaar. The entire SedoMLS idea is wrong, but at least Sedo should have offered to option to opt out.
@ Acro –
It sounds like you do want to “scare off” some potential buyers — the ones that want to offer $60. I think even setting a min of $500 or $1000 would eliminate many of the nonsense offers.
Depending on how it’s displayed it could get people to think they can buy the domain for about the amount of the minimum offer. But I think this is step in the right direction.
Here we go again deleted 5000 names from sedo, afternic we did over 100k with you last year, you can kiss my 20k in commissions goodbye as well. It and domain power people you do not need to pay these execs. If you have the name with a link, and escrow checkout they will come. Nobody wants to set a potential limit on their domains. They will leave in droves afternic.
@ Ron “Here we go again”
Huh? Afternic just did something that makes things better. Why “here we go again”?
Andrew,
I had 40 offers via Godaddy/Sedo $60 special, closed 0 (ZERO).
I followed up on a few of the domains, and saw some recent reg’s in lessor extensions, found out these were the people making the offers.
They were clueless about the aftermarket process, and thought they could pay a premium of $60 instead of $10 to get the domain.
I managed to close 3 deals on my own, each in the 4 figure range. If I had not followed up, most likely those inquiries may have sat idle for years, or moved onto other names.
Godaddy/Sedo fumbled those sales for me, I lost over 30 leads, potential clients, because they were not informed on the value of a premium domain, and cost of acquiring it in the current marketplace.
I have had 5 inquiries on domains in my portfolio already this morning, with 2 yielding offers in excess of $5k. One of my inquiries worked at apple for 15 years, and the other is the CEO of a large TX based company. I am in control of my transaction, and we are both transparent of whom, and what we are dealing with.
I would think maybe I am wrong, but I know Acro does not speak without going through the motions of breaking down the scenario, as well experienced what went on at sedo.
I will have to delete my domains via afternic, so be it, probably for the best, as their site can probably sustain their own internal portfolio best. Fixed prices are a bad idea, if I could talk about some of my sales, it would blow your mind, domains you wouldn’t even pay $50 for in a forum, selling for 5 figures. You guys work to hard to leave money on the table, give yourself the respect your portfolio deserves.
@ Ron – I think I understand why we’re not seeing eye to eye.
The news this morning wasn’t that Afternic is now showing “make offer” domains on Go Daddy. It’s been doing that about 6 months ago:
https://domainnamewire.com/2012/07/10/what-afternics-expanded-deal-with-go-daddy-means-for-domainers/
The news is that it is now showing minimum offer prices with them, which should reduce tire kickers. You shouldn’t now start seeing lots of unqualified offers from GD to Afternic; the number of offers should go down but the quality should go up.
I understand that, it shows a minimum offer price of $250, which is their house min, and what domainers that do not have a fixed price, default at.
If you have a crap portfolio of reg fee domains great, not sure why it says auction, if you follow the auction, as an end user and see nobody else bids, not much of an auction.
This is just smoke, and mirrors, now instead of $60 offers, you are going to cap out at $250. I guess there is really no easy solution here. I tried to use the godaddy system to do a test $60 offer on sedo, it was a horrible experience, and it was a navigation nightmare, lost in the shuffle. I just see this being an epic fail, just my side of it, I hope I am proven wrong.
@ Ron – Afternic lets you set any minimum price. In fact, they’re encouraging people to set a minimum price closer to what they’re actually expecting. They don’t want $250 offers.
I removed my entire portfolio about two months ago from Sedo and most likely will never go back.
I have seen a pretty big bump in direct contacts and higher closed sale amounts. I don’t want to draw conclusions yet as this is the High Season for selling domains, but it sure looks like it was a smart move. Also, no more blessed $60 offer. Get me out of this oven!!!!!!!!!!!! See ya’ 🙂
Seriously, GoDaddy involved or not, what in the holy heck is Sedo thinking when asking us to take $10 on a damn domain in a $60 sale. Just stupid. Who has time for that childish nonsense? I’d rather spend that negotiation time buying more domains.
Sedo is asking for InternetTraffic to take the paddle to them.