You might have noticed that I’m auctioning Fanboys.com, Articles.biz, Obituarist.com and Reciprocations.com at no reserve through this month’s Sedo GreatDomains auctions… not because Sedo is actually buying external advertising for the event but because I bought a Domaining.com headline 🙂
I have to admit, I don’t understand this company (Sedo). The auctions started this week on Thursday and will end next week on Thursday. In other words, the event lasts 7 days. Approximately $1k would be enough to buy sponsored headlines on Domaining.com each day for the entire duration of the event. You promote the auctions and reinforce your brand while you’re at it, but they don’t do it. The same way, I don’t see their ad on NamePros.com either for example. These are the top two places where domainers hang out (Domaining.com and NamePros.com) and they don’t advertise there.
Weird.
Sedo charges a 15% commission, that’s not pocket change. Also, they charge a non-refundable 10 EUR for every domain you submit and I assume they only pick a fraction of them. Even if they only receive 1,000 submissions per month, it’s still a decent secondary income source.
At the end of the day, it’s their business.
If they take my advice and advertise on domaining venues, fine. If not, fine.
It’s just frustrating to know that I’ll be paying 15% and have to do the legwork for them on top of that by advertising on my newsletter and buying advertising as well.
At one point, there have been debates as to whether or not auction houses should hunt for end users to justify their commission. In other words, spread the word to potential end users about their auctions. I for one think that would be overkill and not viable/scalable. Most of the GreatDomains sales are domainer to domainer in nature, let’s face it. Therefore, I’d say at least reaching out to your #1 buyer category (domainers) would make business sense. Yet they don’t.
But again, this is just a rant.
At the end of the day, it’s their business. Nobody forces people to list domains with them, it’s their right to promote it (or not) as they please.
Anyway, here’s the full text of the newsletter:
“Have I lost my mind? Perhaps.
My (sanity) loss can be your gain, as I’m auctioning 4 awesome domains (Fanboys.com, Articles.biz, Obituarist.com and Reciprocations.com) without a reserve over at Sedo, the highest bidder gets the domain in each case. The auctions started yesterday and will end on the 27th (so on Thursday).
So without further ado, here are the auction links.
To go to the Fanboys.com auction page, click on the link below:
https://sedo.com/search/details/?domain=fanboys.com&trackingRequestId=5639472&origin=search&language=us&p=2_25
To go to the Articles.biz auction page, click on the link below:
https://sedo.com/search/details/?domain=articles.biz&trackingRequestId=5640291&origin=search&language=us&p=2_37
To go to the Obituarist.com auction page, click on the link below:
https://sedo.com/search/details/?domain=obituarist.com&trackingRequestId=5640291&origin=search&language=us&p=2_31
And, finally, click on the link below to go to the Reciprocations.com auction page:
https://sedo.com/search/details/?domain=reciprocations.com&trackingRequestId=5640291&origin=search&language=us&p=2_75
Happy bidding,
Andrei”
