Have a great Sunday!
Sahar
So last few days since our new release the reviews have been generally positive. It’s only been few short days and I do expect things to evolve. The most important thing for us is for you to recognize while things are not perfect (nor they will ever be) we go out of our way to continue and improve them for all to the best of our abilities, as fast as we can. We hope by now you are already part of our story, and if it’s not the case, starting today is definitely not late. As you may know, we opened up lately and now you can list items up to USD 100K, with no fees. If your items are priced right the community will like them, and hopefully they will sell. I won’t bore you with the details, you can read more about it here as well as the links above. But back to my original point above, I truly believe patience is a virtue. The more we go forward the more I see our vision, which started many years ago, evolve into something we take pride of. None of it could have happened overnight, and it couldn’t have happened without our members. So while I sure hope those who cover Bido continue and be critical and unbiased in their coverage, I also hope they understand that things will get better, even if at times it seems like they are getting worse.
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I think the great plus of Bido is that you are innovative, and constantly trying to improve and adjust - you are not stuck with a model, but always on the move and preparing the next step forward.
No doubt the recent developments can be assessed positively. Bido has greatly improved in rcent months.
According to me, your next challenge will be to raise the value of the auctions: with the current model, many names end up with no bids. I do sometimes wonder how somebody who has just registered with Bido for bidding reacts: the newly-arrived sees so many names that received no bid, plus many that closed with low bids, and this does not encourage one to place a high bid. Maybe the way would be to create a separate listing, not immediately visible (only upon clickinhg somewhere) for those auctions that ended without receiving any bid. Seeing at first sight only names having been sold (even if only at relatively low prices) would encourage people to bid, and probably to enter higher pre-bids. (My suggestion of a “separate listing” might not be the best one, but you get the idea, and no doubt some clever people at Bido can develop it into something much better.)
Especially at a time you are opening up, you might otherwise get into a kind of conflict between “low-cost” and “top names”: as we know from airlines’ experiences, it is not easy to do both simulataneously.
Good luck! Bido has a bright future, I am sure!
BIDO’s constant evolution and responsiveness to the user community should in time lead to a very dynamic marketplace. The challenge BIDO still faces is bringing up the average sales price via a combination of higher quality inventory and enhanced bidding participation. Yes, some drop auction marketplaces do fine with sales of low $XXX but $50 sales prices alone will not sustain BIDO’s marketplace as that is not the sort of environment most domain holders want to sell inventory into. While I realize that BIDO puts the responsibility of domain promotion on the seller, I would recommend that BIDO utilize social media tools such as Twitter to promote its marketplace. There are thousands of small businesses actively utilizing the Twitter community to promote their businesses. Many have so-so domains and could potentially benefit from a competitively-priced domain tailored to their business.
Thanks Jean-Francois, Leonard for your feedback.
Next couple of months you will see a number of new programs from us that will again raise quality of items which make it to auction as well as bring prices up. Also in terms of marketing, again, resources are limited for us to market on a per name basis, and it isn’t scalable nor how we are building the site however, we took about two years to build the foundation and in 2010 we expect The Bido userbase to significantly increase, something that for now ( and until February) we are yet to focus on.
So, to sum it up, a lot of things are still cooking here, and we’re surely looking forward to the future.
All the best,
Sahar