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Favoring expired domains over other domain auctions

by — Expired Domains 15 Comments

Many domain investors will pay more for expired domains than ones owned by other investors.

Picture of expired parking meter.

Over the past few days, there’s been a lot of conversation on Twitter about expired domain auctions.

I believe it started with Josh Reason asking GoDaddy to allow private sellers to include their domains in the GoDaddy expired auction stream. He proposed running them like the other auctions (no reserve) but labeling them as private party on the auction page.

The closest comparison is NameJet, which lets private sellers on its platform. I think a lot of buyers are frustrated with reserve domains on NameJet, but Josh thinks as long as the domains have no reserve people don’t care if it’s an expired auction or private party seller:

I disagree and I know that others do, too. There are a couple of reasons that I’d prefer to buy an expiring domain than one that another domainer is trying to sell through the platform.

First, I think there’s less chance the domain has been shopped around in recent years. Less chance it’s on Sedo or Afternic. I’ve sold expired domains within weeks of buying them when someone who was watching the domain but didn’t know how expired domains work reached out. And if you add it to Afternic for the first time, some registrar partners will email customers with similar domains and let them know the domain is available.

Second, there’s at least some psychological feeling that if another domain investor is dumping a domain, perhaps it isn’t that good.

The other challenge I see to private party listings is shill bidding. It adds incentives for people to bid up domains. This is a problem NameJet recently had.

The fact that people want to get their domains in the expired auction streams at GoDaddy and NameJet says a lot. These domains tend to sell for good amounts. More than the domains would sell for if they weren’t expiring.

An interesting middle ground would be to have a separate auction stream of no reserve, private-party listings. The lists would be provided to services like ExpiredDomains.net so people could analyze them. Having a separate stream allows investors to apply whatever premium they want to domains that are expired.

Modern furniture company BluDot bought BlueDot.com domain

by — Expired Domains 13 Comments

Company buys “typo” of its misspelled brand.

Website for BluDot.com

BlueDot.com now forwards to BluDot.com.

There was only one explanation for why so many people bid on the domain BlueDot.com in a GoDaddy auction this month: the popular furniture company BluDot.

The dust settled at $33,100 and it appears BluDot was the winning bidder.

As Nikul Sanghvi observed, the domain now forwards to BluDot.com and the URL includes tracking code.

The tracking code is ?utm_source=godaddy&utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=bluedot-com. This shows that the company is tracking the “typo” traffic that BlueDot.com gets.

BlueDot.com was registered in 1995, two years before the furniture company was founded. The previous owner let the domain expire.

The Whois record for the domain is under privacy.

Auction front running pops up in cybersquatting dispute

by — Expired Domains 5 Comments

Front running makes for a confusing cybersquatting case.

Auction gavel with words "Auction Front Running"

Auction front running is black mark on the domain name market.

Front runners email potential buyers of a domain name before winning a domain name auction, usually as a domain name expires. If they find an eager prospect for the domain, they bid up the price of the domain to win it and sell it to the buyer.

The practice is highlighted in a recent UDRP, Stonz Wear Inc. v. Domain Admin, Level2 LLC.

Stonz Wear was bombarded with offers to buy the domain Stonz.com before the domain was auctioned on NameJet. The company engaged with some of the inquirers, including one “Dan Wilson”, who worked for the Respondent.

The Respondent, which won the auction, explained to Stonz Wear that the inquiries it received (other than from Dan Wilson) were from front runners. It called the practice nefarious and said it doesn’t condone it.

But Stonz Wear pointed out that, based on the auction timeline, Level 2 LLC was one of the front runners itself! Dan Wilson reached out prior to the end of the auction.

The World Intellectual Property Organization panel found in favor of Stonz Wear and ordered the domain transferred.

Stonz Wear lost a prior UDRP it filed on this name against a previous owner.

Glitch causes GoDaddy auction confusion

by — Expired Domains 32 Comments

You won the auction! Or not.

A glitch caused a GoDaddy auction bidder to think he’d won an auction, only to end up the runner up.

The bidder sent a screenshot to Domain Name Wire showing that he’d won the auction for OrganicFlowers.com:

Screenshot from GoDaddy auctions for auction showing winning bid

But the bidder was in for a surprise. He wrote:

Notice I won the auction fair & square, then someone else won it 5 minutes later, so shortly after I logged into my GoDaddy account to see the 2nd screenshot below and I was absolutely shocked because they were saying I didn’t win the auction, nor did they even give me the opportunity to win the auction AGAIN after I had already won it.

Here’s the second screenshot:

GoDaddy auctions screenshot showing bidder in second place

I reached out to GoDaddy to find out what caused this. Aftermarket GM Paul Nicks stated:

We have identified an issue that could cause the auction countdown timer to continue running even though the connection between the user’s computer and the server times out. This can happen from network latency anywhere along the path. Our team is working to resolve the issue now. To be on the safe side, we recommend customers refresh their browsers as auctions are ending. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused to our auction participants.

Especially in major auctions, it seems that refreshing the browser might be a good proactive move until this problem is fixed.

When you buy a dead person’s domain name

by — Expired Domains 4 Comments

I’m sure we’ve all done it…we just don’t know it.

Picture of clock with words "expired domains"

A Domain Name Wire reader sent a story about a gambling addiction group that had to change its domain name. Its founder passed away and the group’s original domain name expired. No one in the organization caught this until it was too late to renew the domain.

The original domain, BettorsAnonymous(.)org, went through the full deletion cycle and was picked up at DropCatch at the drop. The buyer appears to be in Malta.

So the organization changed its domain name to bettors-anonymous.org with a hyphen.

I wonder how many times I’ve acquired an expired domain name under similar circumstances. My most interesting story is when I acquired an expired domain while the previous owner was in prison. That made for some tough conversations when he got out of prison.

Some high-profile names have expired due to the owner’s death. Carrot.com was auctioned at GoDaddy after the owner died but was rescued.