If you skip through the articles archived here on the site, you’ll find we have tried to be open and straightforward about auctions and the auction process. We’ve attempted, on several occasions, to add some insight to bidding and buyers, results, selections and submissions.
In terms of submission, the subject here, there is an odd variable that comes into play when having discussions with potential sellers: expectations rise, sometimes to unattainable levels.
The oddity here is, if they HAVE a price, why not allow us to attempt to sell it?
Because the truth is, again if you have a price, do you really care how we get it? Even if I sold it out of a cardboard box on a street corner?
Collectively we have roughly $40m under our belts in sales and acquisitions – and growing. We have working and personal relationships with all the best buyers, bloggers, writers, promoters, etc. We can sell a domain if the market accepts the price.
In fact most domains are sold the “old fashioned” way, via email and conversation. Sedo and others send me emails all the time that sell domains – no promotion, no bidding, no nothing. Did the owners care Sedo sold their name in one push? I doubt it.
But mention adding it to an auction, one of the best ways to create awareness and competition, and the expectations suddenly rise and everyone becomes emperor of their ‘domain.’
Of Course, this is to generalize because there are many other factors involved but the truth remains that most of our sales are attained in simple ways – by connecting buyer to seller. This we can do, beyond simple brokerage, by creating a ‘competitive’ environment through widespread awareness. It is one of the reasons we retain the highest STR to date.
So if you have a domain and a price, don’t shoot the ‘broker’ because the truth is I once sold a domain name at a rest stop for five figures.
If it was yours, and you got your price, would you care?


#1 by Rashid Mahmood on March 10, 2010 - 9:12 am
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I don’t think anything that sold was a good buy. Possibly loancalculator.com depending on the PPC revenue.
Chances are none of the domains were bought by end users so they were all over priced.
#2 by Rashid Mahmood on March 23, 2010 - 1:33 am
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The auction process is fairly automated, and it doesn’t take them hours to process any domain unless it is a five figure domain or more. I wouldn’t expect anyone to spend time “individually” promoting a domain name to an end user, they should do “themed” auctions, or pick several themes, group the domains and then contact the end user market relevant to the themes of the auction. That way, if they were selling domains all having to do with “contractor supplies”, then they accept domains into that group for the auction category, and contact an industry related publication and take out an ad. That way many end users who can select from the group have a nice large pool of domains to choose from. Why am I posting my ideas here for free? Dang!