Joe Styler talks about what’s going on with auctions and the aftermarket at GoDaddy.
There have been a lot of changes on GoDaddy’s aftermarket platforms this year. Joe Styler, a product manager for aftermarket, joins us today to talk about some of them. We dig into improvements in the auction experience and he provides some big news about TLD availability in auctions. We also discuss the Uniregistry transition, Lead Center, and a lot of other questions you’ve probably been burning to ask (at least I have!).
Also: Aftermarket TLDs, charm pricing, AI and more.
Sponsor: Sav.com backorders
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:57 — 28.8MB) | Embed
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Joe sure knows how to spin things. Like when he tried to claim the closeout price increase was for us. No, that was gone your shareholders, period. All you had to do to stop sniping is level thr playing field and give everyone API access. Speaking of which his argument for why they didn’t open up API access sooner makes no sense for anyone who understands how the internet works. And API response is vastly smaller and simpler for their servers to process than a full web response which includes all sorts of HTML CSS JavaScript and images, whereas the API is a minimal text representation without any visual fluff the web users get. So if server load was a real issue you would want to allow users to use the API instead of the full web experience as much as possible.
The other thing that grinded my gears is when he justified the price increase at Afternic to 25% by comparing themselves to Squadhelp and saying they do advertising too. Again a flat out lie. Squadhelp is using that higher commission to advertise my name specifically so I am the direct benefactor of that advertising. The only advertising Godaddy and Afternic do is generic advertising for their business. There is a very minimal 000000000001% chance that their brand awareness advertising will yield me a sale I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. Again the purpose of that ad is to benefit Godaddy and therefore their shareholders not an individual domainer. The purpose of the squadhelp ad is to directly advertise my name period. So it’s no way equivalent.
I get Godaddy has a fiduciary duty to their shareholders not to domainers. But Joe shows a real lack of personal integrity when he lies about the reasons for price increases.
Afternic Lead Center was a great improvement. I
n regards to offers and counter offers between Afternic brokers and potential buyers; add option for ACCEPT/REJECT.
For example, Byrd*com receives an offer of $100K, Afternic seller has BIN of $200K, min. $100K.
A prompt within lead center can be added to allow the seller to automatically ACCEPT or REJECT.
Afternic adding lease to own option is great news, but they must keep the LEAD 5% commission option as well.