I just shut down this daily newsletter listing the closing auctions from major maketplaces.

The main reason is our industry not only is small but certainly less than 5% make enough money to can buy auctionned domains as an investment.
There is a core of a hundred domairers at best that are buying domains daily from auctions, the others are simply spectators.
When they are important live auctions the number can double but rarely more.

I made the error to enroll automatically all our domaining.com members to this newsletter and as a result I had a dedicated server jeopardized 5 hours each day jut delivering this newsletter to people who rarely care. You know what happen, one often doesn’t take the time to unsubscribe and continues receiving the newsletter issues for months without read them.

So yes probably few dozens will miss the newsletter, but they can still visit ClosingAuctions.com each morning and benefit of the same info with a better interface than the newsletter.

This is the idea I had today when I was driving:

Allow sellers in the domaining.com’s marketplaces to decrease the reserve price of their domains that are in auction.

Remember that I allow a start bid under the reserve price and if the auction finish with the highest bid under the reserve price the domain does not sell except the seller declares the highest bid as sale price (we give him a maximum of 24H after the closing of the auction to decide).

Since this feature is up I noticed how some investors started to place bid in auctions under the reserve with the hope seller accept their lower bid.
And it’s what happen! When their lower bid is not a low ball offer this often generates a sale.

But there is no way for the seller to send a signal to the bidders like:
“Hey buyers, you are right! I just realize I asked too much in my reserve, but you are also not offering enough! If you meet me here then a sale may happen!”

And this is exactly the idea of this new change, allow sellers to decrease their reserve price to motivate bidders to bid just a little higher to generate a sale.
Today the buyer who placed a bid under reserve don’t know until the end of the auction if his bid will generate a sale or no.

So OK, let say this feature is already implemented, what should happen when the seller decrease the reserve price of a domain in auction?
We will send a mail to all the buyers having a bid placed in this auction informing them the reserve has been lowered.
Logical and fine, except some would like to abuse the system and lower their reserve just few dollars many times simply to have emails sent to bidders with the hope they remember their auction is running.
I cannot tolerate having buyers annoyed by multiples emails just saying the reserve is now $25 lower on domain where the current bid has a $3,000 reserve for example.
So the solution should be the same way they are minimum bidding increments I should setup minimum decreasing increments on reserve.

And the “Buy-It-Now” (BIN)?

Remember, the BIN is proposed while there is no bid over the reserve price creating some urgency to bid until reserve for the most motivated buyers.
Why not also allow to decrease it during an auction?
This way the seller could play with it in his sale strategy.
I don’t see why it should not be possible.

I welcome your comments on my ideas and if you think they should be an improvement or no.

What often happen is to create a safe marketplace you are obligated to put restrictive rules simply to avoid a minority without ethic to abuse of the system.

I am going to try to make abstraction of these people and focus on people of good will, serious and that want to make business.

No brokerage exclusivity

So starting today, none of the domaining.com vertical marketplaces will force you to accept any brokerage exclusivity for list your domains.
Basically this means that if your domain is listed at PremiumDomains.com for example then you can at the same time list your domain in others marketplaces or if you find yourself a buyer you may sell it without owe anything.
Now there is an exception on this, an exception that is logical but that I prefer to expose:
If your domain has been sent to auction (3 to 7 days) then during the auction we have the brokerage exclusivity.

Flexible listing time

This lead to the another point, the listing time: Here also there are changes that will make you the live better.
There is 2 ways to sell domains:

HOLDING:
Generally you are willing to wait a long time the best end-user offer.
PremiumDomains.com and Catchy.com are marketplaces for domains you want to hold.

FLIPPING:
It’s when you want to make money quickly and are willing for that to accept a lower benefice.
BargainDomains.com and Flipping.co are marketplaces for domains you want to flip.

So now when you will list a domain you could list it for a specified amount of time or until sold.
But keep in mind this is just a way to automatically manage your listings, at anytime you should be able to remove yourself any of your listed domain.
Here again, while the domain is not in auction.

Implementation of the above will be up before the end of this week.

BargainDomains.com, Flipping.CO and soon PremiumDomains.com and Catchy.com:

Until now the domain owner used to fix the reserve price of a listed domain and it was not possible to potential buyers to place a bid under this reserve price.

The problem was the reserve price was often too high, as a result domains of interest didn’t get any bid.

Worst, when this happened the owner has no clue if the lack of bid came from the low interest of his domain name or the too high reserve.

The solution I propose is offer a way to can start bidding under the reserve price, for example at 2% of appraisal price.

When the auction ends if the highest bid is under the reserve then the domain is not sold.
But the domain owner ill hve 24H after the end of the auction to decide if he accepts to sell his domain to the highest bidder.

This involves a change in the “B-I-N” option:

I was proposing a “Buy-It-Now” option while the domain was not in auction, now I will propose it until the domain get a bid over the reserve price.
This way buyers who bidded under the reserve price should allways be at risk to lose the domain pushing them to quickly raise their bid.

This change may lead to an abuse, a significant amount of domains may be sent to auction with a low bid just to promote them or with the hope the owner accept to sell at bargain price.

To fight abuse I may implement the following:

- Only domains with a bid over the reserve will be seriously promoted.
- Domains valuating less than $1K will be auctionned for 3 days maximum.
- If your domain has been sent to auction and didn’t sold then for 3 months this domain could no longer be sent to auction with a bid under the reserve.

Submission
Domains must appraise $250+
Typos, adult, gambling, or domains based on multiple terms where the sequence is not the usual are rarely listed.
CCTLDs written in a language that does not match the country language are ignored.
We don’t accept domain names with hyphens, numbers, IDN or domains based in trademarks or person names.

Listing
Submissions use to be reviewed within 24H.
Accepted domains wil be listed for 15 days to 6 months (you decide) at no charge.
We’ll act as the exclusive broker of your domain during this period and up to 7 days after have been dropped.

Buy It Now
While a domain has not been sent to auction it can be purchased immediately at 20 to 40% (you decide) of his appraisal value.

Auction
Listed domains will be immediately sent to auction after the domain receives a bid over his reserve price.
You define yourself the reserve price, the only requirement is it must be over $50 and under 15% of appraisal value.
Auctions will last for 5 days and will close the last day at 5h00 PM EST.
During the auction your domain will be promoted in Domaining.com and to potential buyers.

Cost
We’ll only charge you a 8% sales commission (escrow fee is included).

Sale closing
For sales $3,000+ we’ll create a special transaction at Escrow.com between the seller and buyer where Escrow.com will keep our sales commission. For lower sales we’ll use our in house escrow service.

Trying to create a daily rendez-vous:

A pair of years ago when I was working on another project Mike Berkens (TheDomains.com) suggested me to deliver my expiring daily listings everyday at the same hour to create some addiction. Saying that SnapNames closes at 3h00 PM EST and NameJet.com at 4h00 PM EST so stick at a time around these 2 major daily domainers rendez-vous will finish creating an habit.

Recently Mike Cohen (DomainStryker.com) suggested me the same.
Even if I have allways found it a good idea I never implemented it until now.

So it’s official, from now the BargainDomains.com auctions will close everyday at the same hour of the day:

I prefered this hour better than 2h00 PM EST, first by courtesy because AuctionPus.com closes at this time each day, and because it translates to 2h00 PM in Los Angeles, and I wanted Californian domainers be back at office and relax to can bid.

So now, you know, after the NameJet.com auction wait a moment and place your winning bid on your prefered BargainDomains.com auctions!

Tomorrow a next improvement, so stay tuned. Thanks!

 

This week-end I decided it was time to also start blogging myself.

WordPress looks to be the best software to create blogs, so I googled “wordpress hosting” (I never type-in for search and you?) and was lucky to land on this page:
http://wordpress.org/hosting/
I never hear about the hosting companies featured here except BlueHost (their marketing efforts pays) so I naturally selected this company.
I was suprised by the low price, and how the process was easy and fast: It only takes a click to install WordPress.

I did not wanted to use my own name for the blog.
I purchased DomainWare.com few years ago with the idea to host here a directory of domain resources.
But Rick Latonas given me a smart advice last month saying I should not multiplicate brands but put under the same roof most of my domain services.
Following his recomendation, I will create soon a “Resources” section in Domaining.com, so DomainWare.com was available to become my blog site.
It’s a good fit when a significant part of my posts should be about “(my) domain software”.

The template WordPress presents by default is really ugly so the first thing I did after was to search a nicer one.
I used TemplateMonster.com, this service has the largest web templates inventory and prices are reasonable.

After I installed some pluggins of interest: Twitter and FaceBook and registered with FeedBurner.com

I made my first blog (probably not a very good post for a welcome) and asked the feed inclusion to Domaining.com, no only I was immediately accepted but my setup fee was waived (there is some advantages to closely know the owner).

Finally it has been fast, and no brainer to create my first blog so now I can land you a hand if you need to setup a blog.

If you feel I should use some special pluggins, make some changes,… feel free to comment this post.

Thanks for your time!

 

First, a quick welcome to my blog. I will make a better/larger presentation further.

The core of this blog should be focused on my domain services with the hope to improve them thanks to your suggestions and positive critics.
Let’s start with something that takes me 30 minutes of my time everyday:

A Domaining.com account is needed to access the private area of Valuate.com, BargainDomains.com, PremiumDomains.com, Catchy.com and make transactions.
In an attempt to have the safest possible places many accounts are deleted daily:

Fake accounts:

Additional reasons:

Unethical or dishonest behavior, these persons are banned:

I may update this post with reasons I forgot.