By now, you should know my thesis on how the decision by Sedo to list “make an offer” domains on the GoDaddy TDNAM hurts the sellers and the buyers.
After an initial avalanche of lowball offers, apparently due to the spike in the TDNAM inventory, things got quiet.
In the interim, I have been moving my domain portfolio to Frank Schilling’s Internet Traffic. Not only the PPC is considerably higher, but I am getting daily inquiries about domains that don’t necessarily have traffic.
That’s another reason I invest in brandables: someone, somewhere, wants those domains and the “for sale” sign on Sedo parked pages isn’t going to cut it. On pages parked at Internet Traffic, you can’t miss that orange, customizable text banner.
Today, I exchanged a series of emails via the Internet Traffic platform, with a buyer who was asking whether the “auction” was over, and how would they get that domain. I realized, that they were referring to one of my domains listed at TDNAM without my explicit authorization, and which is parked at Internet Traffic as of yesterday.
It became obvious, that GoDaddy is now confusing end users, by listing domain names arbitrarily on TDNAM. I had to explain to the potential buyer, that I had never listed the domain on GoDaddy, nor started an auction at the $60 price.
It’s embarrassing for GoDaddy, to mislead buyers like that, and to Sedo that opened the floodgates by tossing out quality domain names that would have never been listed in TDNAM in the first place!
Not only are end-users getting “shafted” by following “dummy” auctions, but GoDaddy is now wasting the seller’s time and that of their own.
This, clearly, has to stop.
Nice article Theo. I have been writing a massive article as well for the past 2 weeks about this. I have not finished yet. I guess we think alike! I have about 5 different emails telling me something about auctions etc… This started with Afternic using TDNAM. At least Afternic is offering an opt out. Sedo does NOT. I am moving my domains to my VPS with my custom for sale lander. I am starting with my less trafficked domains to do some testing.
I asked Sedo to provide a method of removing my portfolio from TDNAM. They responded that it’s not possible at this time. As of today, 99.5% of my domain portfolio is at Internet Traffic. I guess I fixed the glitch.
I went back and forth with a buyer as well, he thought the domain was listed for sale for $60 at godaddy, and it could be bought for this much. Many newbies are logging into Godaddy, and thinking they can get this domain for $60, or it is valued at $60, causing a lot of work for sellers, with no return on that work. Not sure how I put a stop to this, I have fielded 20 or more offers via sedo, most did not reply, one I got upto $1k, some in the $100-250 range, but these are 4 figure type names, huge waste of time for me. I honestly do not blame the people that log into godaddy, looking to register a name, if you are new, and have no clue about the business, you have no idea how to price these assets. They are been led to think, instead of paying $10, they can pay $60 and purchase this premium name, what the heck…
Tom – That’s precisely the issue. Thank you for outlining the process, it’s a failure for everyone involved. Today I canceled 12 open transactions that led nowhere, seven days after the offers were made at GoDaddy.
Theo did you remove all your domains from your Sedo account? This is the only way to fix the “glitch”!
Almost all. The remaining 0.5% is staying there to keep my account active.
Nice. May I ask if you still see past offers on domains that you have removed?
Yes, all history on offers and transactions remains intact, even after a domain is removed.
I’ve gotten a few of these offers too, they should at least pass along the asking price from sedo to godaddy search result…might be looking for an alternative soon. I’m a firm believer in cross promotion, but this latest addition is just a headache.