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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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Did someone register a new TLD domain you let drop? Don’t despair

by — Expired Domains 2 Comments

They likely paid a lot less money than your renewal fee would have been.

If you track domain names in your portfolio even after you let domains expire, you probably notice that people register the domains you let go.

That can be an emotional feeling, especially if the next registrant is an end user. Would they have bought the domain if you’d held onto it just a bit longer?

You might get the same feeling even if another domain investor picks the domain up on a drop.

But when it comes to new TLDs, keep in mind that the calculus is very different. I’m speaking specifically about domain names that have cheap first-year prices that escalate upon renewal.

I’ve taken a flyer on many cheap domains that have first-year prices of $5 or less. They sometimes renew for $50 or more.

In these cases, when someone registers the domain after I let it expire, I have to remind myself that they are paying the low first-year price. They might be just like me, taking a chance with plans to let the domain expire after a year.

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GoDaddy Auctions is pulling back some expired domains that were at Endurance

by — Expired Domains 3 Comments

Domains from partner registrar were mistakenly sent to GoDaddy for auctioning.

Over the weekend, a Domain Name Wire reader noticed that expired domain names from some domain name registrars had been pulled from GoDaddy Auctions. This included domain names that already had bids. When I looked the domains up, it seemed that some of them had previously been renewed by their owners.

All four of the registrars that this reader noticed–BigRock, Domain, FastDomain and Public Domain Registry–are owned by Endurance International Group.

Now at least one GoDaddy Auctions customer has received an email explaining that some of the domains they won are going to be pulled back due to a mistake. The domains should not have been sent to GoDaddy auctions from the partner registrar.

While it doesn’t name names, all of the domains I’ve seen are at Endurance registrars.

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Namecheap starts sending expired domains to GoDaddy Auctions

by — Expired Domains 4 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.)

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