Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

During the past two weeks I’ve had an onslaught of offers on Sedo.

While some sales came to fruition after negotiation and/or public auction, the majority were of the same kind: lowball offers.

I spoke to my account manager about possibly introducing a system where offer-makers are identifiable, the way sellers are.

The method would allow serial lowballers to be blocked by individual sellers from making further offers; first, for a set period of time and then – if necessary – for good.

I don’t set minimum prices for the domains that I list on Sedo and the reason is simple.

Many times I’ve seen an initial offer of e.g. $100 jump into the $x,xxx territory once negotiations – and non-standard messages – get rolling. A higher minimum price can be a roadblock, even if it’s in the low hundreds. That’s because a minimum asking price is only a selling threshold and not a selling point, but those two are often misunderstood by potential buyers.

The truth is, a lot of end-users offer the least amount of money, if they can get away with it.

The exception, perhaps, was when I sold a three letter .com via Sedo last year. The $xx,xxx selling price had a $9,999 minimum offer set.

Still, it’d be great to pass the message along to the time-wasting lowballers: without offering money, you don’t get the domain honey.

For some reason, I’m having a late Friday epiphany, motivated by the comment of a domainer who commented on Rick Latona’s honorable gesture to return a stolen domain.

The article was posted on DomainGang.com exclusively today and it definitely showed how much the domain industry needs more positive exposure.

Commenting on that post, Vito wrote:

These positive domaining stories need 1000x more exposure! [...] Its always the Bob Parsons/Elephant Killing/Snap Schill Bidding/Privacy Peeking/Trademark Infringing/Cybersquatting domaining stories that seem to get the most coverage in our Industry, which is why we have such a bad image to others.

I absolutely agree.

This is the type of story that deserves national publicity, so that the mainstream media catch up with the domain times. It’s ridiculous witnessing the domain industry sitting comfortably on its laurels and expect the general public to understand, digest and process what is going on behind closed conference doors!

This is a crucial moment in time, as the economy appears ambivalent about its direction, and social anxiety about the future requires more money-making options. Domaining is a function that goes beyond “registering domains”; it involves several industries: marketing, research and development, sales, support.

Domaining is a dwarf with the genes of giant. If this sounds like an oxymoron it’s because us domainers have been fed the same “dwarf formula” from the bottle, for a long time.

It’s time to think outside the box and grow ourselves to our full, gigantic potential. Bring forth the good side of domaining!

One of my favorite songs from the 80′s is “Don’t pay the ferryman” by Chris de Burgh. The song refrain goes like this:

Don’t pay the ferryman

Don’t even fix a price

Don’t pay the ferryman

Until he gets you to the other side

Today, Rick Schwartz announced in his newsletter how a new TRAFFIC auction formula “will shake things up.”

In essence, Rick is introducing flat fee pricing for any domain to be auctioned at TRAFFIC, unless it has gone through some yet-to-be-specified approval process by industry giants Sedo and Afternic.

Exactly how these domain lists by Sedo and Afternic will be formulated, using what type of criteria and who would approve which portion of those lists is yet to be seen. I foresee a lot of behind-the-scenes “networking” – in the byzantine sense of the word – in order to have domains approved so that no flat fee is charged.

Meanwhile, TRAFFIC currently displays the banner of an apparent member of the Domain Elite at web sites such as Domaining.com – the motto is “Because Poverty (still) sucks”.

I see some conflict between the motto and the new flat pricing for auctions.

In 2008 – my first TRAFFIC conference – I submitted a handful of domains, none of which was sold at the auction, despite setting low reserves at that time. Subsequently, I was fortunate to sell one of them – 360.org – for $25,500 on Sedo, all while nobody was willing to spend mid four figures for it at the TRAFFIC floor auction.

Don’t get me wrong.

TRAFFIC is still great for networking and for forging new relationships, although a lot of the same attendants and domain “icons” tend to make the event essentially a club meeting.

However, the ability to send some domains to auction at no pre-cost has been a definite reason in order to also attend the TRAFFIC conference, perhaps to further promote those domains. With the introduction of the flat fee for domains with a minimum asking price of $5,000 one wonders why this is done at a time that the economy is bad and domain capital is low.

At the same time, smaller, daily networking events introduced by DomainFest appear to have bitten down on the conference market, at an affordable attendance fee.

The Holy Grail of every conference-sponsored domain auction, is the elusive end-user, preferably one loaded with investors’ money. If these investors flocked en masse to TRAFFIC, then the flat fee would be justified.

I would still like to pay the domain ferryman his fees, *after* he delivers my domain to the other side.