Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News & Website Stuff

Domain Name Industry News and Website Stuff

Featured Domains

Namecheap starts sending expired domains to GoDaddy Auctions

by — Expired Domains 2 Comments

GoDaddy Auctions increases its expired domain footprint.

Namecheap is the latest domain name registrar to send its expired domain name inventory to GoDaddy Auctions.

A Domain Name Wire reader noticed a domain in the GoDaddy Auctions expiry stream today that is for a domain registered at Namecheap. I subsequently ran searches uncovering many more.

Namecheap joins Tucows and Endurance International Group, which have been sending their domains to GoDaddy for a while. This means that GoDaddy Auctions has the expired domain inventory from the #1, #2, #3, and #6 largest domain registration companies (based on their .com registration base).

I predicted that Namecheap would end up in GoDaddy’s stable. Namecheap just had a nasty divorce with Tucows, which operates the competing website NameJet where Namecheap names were previously auctioned off.

(Yes, Tucows sends its expired domain inventory to GoDaddy despite owning 50% of a competing expired domain service. That speaks volumes.)

Share
Tweet
Share
Email

Mining Available Domains via GoDaddy’s Watching List

by — Expired Domains 4 Comments

Alvin Brown shares a way to find hand-reg domains to register.

I shared 3 tips to Discover Expired Domains Available at Hand-Registration Fee at the end of last year.  As a follow up, I’m sharing another method to discover available domains using GoDaddy’ Watching feature.

It’s not really a “new” feature as some of you may recall a brief experiment by GoDaddy to display Watcher data on auction landing pages. Nevertheless, you may discover a profitable opportunity exists using Watching export data as a method to bulk search for available domains.

In addition to providing a daily list of GoDaddy expiring domain auctions for the general public to peruse, I “watch” quite a large number of GoDaddy expiring domains each day. Prior to providing a daily list for the general public, I never used the export feature for Watching domains.

But for the last two years and counting, I download this list of expiring domains daily as I strategize about which domains I’m going to actively bid and at what cost — via GoDaddy’s Watching download (see image below). [Read more…]

Share7
Tweet7
Share
Email
14 Shares

Park.io starts drop catching .AI domains

by — Expired Domains 1 Comment

Service known for ccTLDs adds .ai domains.

Park.io has begun offering drop catching services for .AI domain names. .AI is the country code for Anguilla but has become popular for artificial intelligence companies.

Park.io is known for helping domain investors get popular country code domain names that are good for domain hacks or have taken on a meaning of their own, such as .io, .me and .ly.

The addition of .ai domains was made possible by the registry moving to EPP.

As with all domain names at Park.io, catch fees are $99 and include a year registration. If there’s more than one interested party there will be an auction.

One of the first featured .ai domains coming up is eat.ai.

Share6
Tweet17
Share
Email
23 Shares

A simple way to make GoDaddy Closeout auctions more fair

by — Expired Domains 15 Comments

A win-win for GoDaddy and most bidders.

A lot of people are frustrated with the bidding process at GoDaddy when it comes to closeout auctions.

The idea behind closeout auctions is smart. If no one bids at least $12 for a name during the regular GoDaddy expired domain auction, the domain goes to a Dutch auction where the price starts at $11 and decreases by a dollar a day until it hits $5.

Closeouts allow GoDaddy and its expired domain partners to get something for a domain even if it’s not worth the $12 starting bid price.

But how things work in reality is very different from how they work conceptually.

People don’t want to get into bidding wars in auctions. If no one else has bid on an expired domain as the clock winds down, they (or their computers) stand ready to ping GoDaddy the minute the domain goes into closeouts so they can get it for $11 rather than what is likely hundreds if they place a bid during the regular auction.

Think about what’s happening here. An auction will expire with no bids at even $12, but there are sometimes 5 or more ready buyers who would be willing to spend $100+ on the domain. The point of auctions is to sell things for the market price, but that’s no longer happening in these auctions.

That’s bad for people that don’t have automated means to snipe the closeouts. It’s also bad for GoDaddy and its partners because they are leaving money on the table.

The solution is fairly simple: raise the starting bid for closeout auctions.

Instead of setting a buy now price below $12, set it much higher. I’m not sure what the right number is. Maybe it starts at $75, drops to $50, then $25, then $10 and drops a few bucks after that. I know that I’d be willing to pay $75 or more for many domains that close with no bids.

Raising the price will have two effects.

First, people will be more willing to bid in the regular auctions rather than wait for closeouts. The potential savings of waiting won’t be as great.

Second, GoDaddy and its partners will make more money.

The only people who will lose out are those that have perfected their systems for sniping closeouts.

Share7
Tweet9
Share
Email
16 Shares

GoDaddy is closing an expired domain “loophole”

by — Expired Domains 18 Comments

Last second backorders will no longer circumvent closeout process.

Auctions for expired domain names at GoDaddy can get competitive. With no backorders required, domain names can go from $0 to hundreds of dollars even when no bids are placed until the last few minutes.

This is complicated by the closeout process. If you bid on a domain in the live auction it will likely be bid up to over $100. If you can snag it when it goes into closeouts then it’s only $12 plus the renewal fee.

Unfortunately, there are lots of people with API access and computing power who treat the closeout like a drop. They start sending calls to buy the domain as soon as the regular auction closes.

But there has been a loophole that has helped people like me. If you place a backorder the second an auction closes, you can win the domain for the cost of a backorder before it gets placed in closeouts.

For the past year or so, I will closely watch auctions and be ready to bid if someone jumps in at the last minute. If the auction ends with no bids, I’ll place a backorder at the second the auction ends.

Historically, this has helped me scoop up a lot of domain names. About 95% of the domains that make it through the auction with no bids. But it’s gotten tougher this year.

Starting in January I noticed a lot of people placing backorders with a few minutes left in the auction. I’m not sure why they were doing this because it triggers a $10 bid and then everyone can pile in.

Then a few weeks ago I noticed that many of the domains I was backordering at the last second were getting scooped up by other people. My success rate went from 95% to about 25%. My guess is that they automated the process for backordering to get the timing just right.

While the backorder loophole was nice while it lasted, GoDaddy is about to eliminate it.

Joe Styler explained this change in a post on NamePros this week.

So now the options are either bid regularly and fight with everyone else, or program a system to snipe domains the minute they hit closeouts.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. At least now I won’t log into GoDaddy to place a backorder, only to be frustrated when someone places a last minute bid.

Share7
Tweet8
Share
Email
15 Shares