In order for any industry to grow or to do better, it must expand its participants. It’s no different in the domain name industry. A question you should ask yourself: To a business (SMB/Enterprise), who gives advice about domain names? Is it a friend, a passer by, a SEO company, a SEM company, a web hosting solution, a brand agency, a logo designer, others? Of course it is different to different groups, but what is constant is that whomever gives that
advice is most likely a web professional.
At Bido, this is one of the things we are focusing on, bridging the gap. It isn’t going to happen overnight but it is a goal we believe well worth pursuing.
Have a great Sunday!
Sahar
Thanks for the opportunity to market my domains. I am excited about holding my first auction of dataspecialist.info and .org. Finally a way to get exposure and have some assistance.
Thanks for thinking of the community as a whole.
I think this Gap has to be filled, if we want to increase our market and make it stable. You are doing a great Job with BIDO!
Nothing happens overnight, but as long as you make a start, good things can happen!
Thanks again for inviting me to participate in the chat this coming Tuesday for the auction of unlock.info.
mp/m
Thanks guys, we’re trying of course. If each of us does a little, it adds up.
Cheers,
Sahar
Maybe a trial period aka rent-a-redirect combined with foollow-up study that creates case histories would provide end users with awareness of the benefits of owning a good name with trafic.
This action might provide them the confidence they need to make the decision to own and use the direct nav domain names currently in the hands of domainers looking for new ways to monetize their holdings post landing page era
—-answer—-
Most end users from my experience do not buy based on traffic. I think rent-redirect maybe feasible to some businesses (Sendori possibly) but not for an auction house like us. Although, maybe it will make sense one day.
Thanks,
Sahar
First of all, let me say once again that I am a big fan of the BIDO system and appreciate very much the ability to use it.
I do have a few points that I wanted to make.
The first of which is that I really wish that we had a bit better FAQ section available. There are a lot of questions that I find myself looking for answers to, and even a google search doesn’t seem to answer many of them.
For instance: How long does it take, on average, to complete a transaction post auction close? Do you have a payment hold period? Do all domain sales require a transfer of the domain, rather than an internal push? Which payment method are you most likely to use when paying the seller’s funds out? How on earth do I add additional domains to an auction like I’ve seen others do? If you use the Guarantee program and choose to push it to auction with the guarantee as the starting bid, does the guarantee still hold even if the domain receives no other bids and, if so, for what kind of time frame (for instance, if you have the auction 2 weeks later, it seems unreasonable that the partners are going to guarantee to buy a domain for a set price weeks in advance).
I would very much like to see something that allows us to push domains to something like an escrow account. Personally, I would be willing to do this when I submit a domain name, but certainly upon completion of the auction. You could even put a marker or something by names that were set up this way, which would indicate that the domain was already in escrow and could be transferred “instantly” after payment and payment details are received by the winning bidder. This would reduce, I believe, the time required to complete the transactions (especially the time of your employees that are now manually handling the process as I understand it). This allow eliminates potential problems with transfers that can’t be completed due to 60 days after registration or modification, 40 days before expiration and cases of registrar refusal for other, often vague reasons. In addition, the seller and the buyer both are required, when using a transfer out, to watch for the emails from the registrar, which are very often sent to their respective spam folders. I know that I currently receive an average of about 12-15k emails each day and dealing with transfers out is one of the key reasons that I implemented internal pushes only on my domain sales years ago.
A tie into this would be a system to park the domain on the auction for it… Sure, we can do this by redirecting from our own hosting, but there seems (to me) to be numerous benefits to doing it through your system.
I do understand that there are registrars that don’t allow internal pushes, which is why I indicated putting it in as an option. However, I really wonder how many of the transactions that are using one of these other services end up being a lot of trouble to you in the process. In my experience, most of the registrars that don’t have internal pushes don’t make it particularly easy to transfer out either. Some don’t want to give you the EPP codes, some just automatically cancel them, etc. In any case, one just has to wonder if there should be a restriction that only domain registrars that have an internal push system could be utilized. That, obviously, is something that you would have to decide on, based on your unique business model, but it does seem somewhat logical (to me anyway).
I also wanted to ask you how you handle fraudulent buyers. I am not too interested in the exact details of how you go after them or protect yourself, as we don’t need to give your proprietary methods out and encourage more fraudulent activity. What I would like to know is how, as a seller, this affects me. For instance, if I were to sell a name and the buyer pays you, I transfer the domain, and the payment is reversed… I assume you are acting as an escrow service and I will still get paid? Quite frankly, your pricing schedule doesn’t seem to be high enough to allow you to make a profit if you get even a small percent of fraud. But, perhaps your monetization scheme is different than what I’m imagining.
Anyway, I hope that I’m not writing too much here and that you don’t feel like I’m being critical or hijacking your thread. I really have been impressed with the system and the advancements over the last month. Thanks!
Hi Jesse, we have clarified the Frequently Asked Questions section of our site, please have a look here:
http://www.bido.com/Info/FAQ
The FAQ is always a developing work in progress and we have added some of your questions there and clarified those that were there but weren’t as clear as you asked about.
To create a package, just add in the Notes section of your listing page the details, and we’ll set up your auction accordingly. The page I refer to is the page where you pick your auction date and time, fill the description, etc. This listing step is offered after your domain makes it past voting, or if voting was skipped due to a Reserve format or an Auction Acceleration.
When a seller decides to send a guarantee auction public, the guarantee still holds even if there are no other bids. Auctions may only be scheduled up to 1 month in advance and so with this in mind, the Guarantors hold and will honor their Guarantee when the auction finalizes.
Bido no longer holds Escrow of the domains, as the platform provider we provide the atmosphere for Buyer and Seller to transact.
We can discuss further over email if you would like, please head to http://support.bido.com to fill a request and ask for me if you would like to speak with me directly there.
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions on the other items, means a lot to us.