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GMO is sending expired domains to GoDaddy Auctions

by — Expired Domains 2 Comments

GoDaddy Auctions has landed another top 10 domain registrar.

GoDaddy Auctions has apparently picked up another registrar partner for its expired domain auctions: GMO. GMO domains are currently listed in GoDaddy’s expired domain auctions.

GMO is a Japan-based registrar and is one of the top ten domain registrars in the world in terms of .com domains registered. The registrar has about 2 million .com domains under management.

This new addition means that GoDaddy is monetizing at least some of the expired domain inventory from half of the top ten registrars. It also has partnerships with Tucows, Endurance International Group, and Namecheap.

Earlier this week Web.com announced that it had bought out its partner Tucows and is now the sole owner of NameJet. NameJet currently sells expired inventory from Web.com registrars Network Solutions and Register.com as well as inventory from Enom, which is owned by Tucows.

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Web.com acquires Tucows’ half of NameJet

by — Expired Domains 0 Comments

Deal is a sign of the times in the expired domain business.

Web.com is now the sole owner of domain name auction site NameJet after acquiring Tucows’ (NASDAQ: TCX) interest in the business.

NameJet was created as a partnership between Enom and Network Solutions (now part of Web.com) in 2007 at a time when SnapNames was dominating the direct-transfer expired domain business. The deal meant that Network Solutions’ expired domain inventory would move to the new NameJet platform, delivering a blow to SnapNames. Oversee.net had just acquired SnapNames but knew about Network Solutions leaving the platform before completing the acquisition.

In 2014, Web.com acquired Snapnames from KeyDrive for $7.4 million. That meant that Web.com owned all of Snapnames and half of its competitor NameJet.

SnapNames and NameJet later combined forces on grabbing pending delete domains, which are domains that make it through the deletion cycle and are deleted by the registry.

Tucows acquired Enom last year and Enom’s half ownership in NameJet was a sort of “gift with purchase”. After the acquisition closed, Tucows shifted its expired domain name inventory from GoDaddy to NameJet, only to switch back to GoDaddy later in the year.

This was a big indication that GoDaddy was far better at monetizing Tucows’ expiring domain names than NameJet.

Today’s news makes sense. In fact, it probably makes sense to merge the SnapNames and NameJet platforms.

The big question is if Enom domains will remain on NameJet and for how long. This was obviously part of the negotiation and ultimate purchase price. If Enom leaves the platform for GoDaddy at some point in the future, it will further degrade NameJet’s role in the marketplace.

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.AI begins auctioning expired domain names

by — Expired Domains 0 Comments

Anguilla’s registry cuts out the middleman and begins auctioning expired domain names.

Anguilla’s ccTLD registry is auctioning expired domains.

The registry for country code domain name .AI (Anguilla) has started auctioning off domain names that previous registrants let expire. The auctions run differently than on most expired domain auction sites.

Auctions run only once a month for ten days. They start on the third Friday of each month and run for ten days. Also, any bids placed in the final hour extend the auction by an hour, which is much longer than most platforms extend bidding for late bids.

Starting bids are $100 with $10 increments.

In order to bid, users need to create an account and deposit at least $100. Users can pay with a credit card, wire transfer or bitcoin. There’s a 60 day delay to transfer a domain if you pay with a credit card.

Also, note that .AI has a $100 transfer fee that doesn’t extend the registration. So if you want to transfer the domain to another registrar, you need to factor in another $100 to the price.

The .AI registry has licenced the software used by Park.io to run its platform.

For the auction that ends on Monday, Customer.ai is currently the top domain with 14 bids and a $3,343 price. Other available names include BTC.ai, Strategy.AI, Target.ai and Ledger.ai.

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How NameJet can right the ship

by — Expired Domains 12 Comments

NameJet needs to make some changes to improve its results.

It’s been a rough year or so at domain marketplace NameJet.

First, there was the shill bidding scandal last summer.

Then, the company re-lost its Tucows expired inventory to rival GoDaddy. This is despite Tucows owning half of NameJet, so that wasn’t exactly a vote of confidence.

It also lost Name.com inventory. And Namecheap.

Those were big blows. NameJet is mostly left with Web.com’s registrars and Enom, plus pending-delete domain names and private seller inventory. A drop in the Chinese market is also hurting.

Last month, NameJet had $259,000 of sales over the $2,000 mark. It had $744,000 in the same month last year. That might have been an outlier because of a lot of three letter inventory, but I checked year-over-year sales for the past five months and they are all down except for August, which was essentially flat.

This could be somewhat of a death spiral. NameJet needs to reinvest in the business, but it also needs to make the case to its owners that it’s worth making the investment in light of lower revenue. I hope they choose to invest in the business because the industry needs at least two solid competitors for direct-transfer expired domains.

Here are some inexpensive ways that NameJet can improve its business. Click here to continue reading…

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1&1 sends expired domain names to Sedo

by — Expired Domains 1 Comment

New arrangement sends domains to Sedo before SnapNames.

expired domainsDomain name registrar 1&1 has begun sending expired domain names to Sedo as a preliminary stop through the expiration cycle.

The domain names are listed for sale on Sedo in a special category with starting bids at $79.00.

1&1 is continuing to partner with SnapNames for expired domains, but Sedo is the first stop. Domains that don’t sell at Sedo are then sent through SnapNames.

Sending the domain names to Sedo first could expose expiring domain names to more end users.

1&1 and Sedo are part of the same family of companies. However, the companies just recently started working more closely together. 1&1 didn’t join Sedo’s aftermarket syndication network until just last year.

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