Bido.com is closing

[David G]

Very sad news. Best of luck in the future to everyone there.

 

[DN BROKER]

i would not recommend re-launch, i would either sell the site or the design itself

 

[ksinclair]

Bido should relaunch in some other venue, not domains. They have nice software.
The domain market is small; very very few people deal with domain auctions.
There must be other markets with way more people involved.

Woot.com sells a single product each day, until it runs out. And they were the fastest
growing retailer in the US, in 2009.

Bido could do something like that, but have more than one product. Maybe use
drop shippers so they dont have to handle the product. Could be huge.

Or they could sell apps, super cheap. Or digital E books, its a huge and growing market.

 

[therunner]

the domino effect...just wait a few months or year...it is not going to be a big surprise, other big one will fall down...i hope that is not going to happen....

 

[John Baron]

Sad news , thank you Sahar and Jarred for your fair try - we need more guys like you in our industry .

 

[floname]

I have some experience with Bido, and this is my objective observation:

I have to agree on the quality of the inventory. Mostly poor quality, obscure extensions. I think they may have had a much better shot if they would have enacted some sort of a screening program. Maybe something similar to their bigshot counterparts that don't just take anything rather than leaving it in the hands of the users. They should have had restrictions in place to control the quality of the inventory. It got off to a decent start, but as it gained popularity the place was flooded with junkers. There were too many inexperienced "domainers" that hoped to turn $7 into $28 or more.

I think the nail in the coffin was the voter rewards program. Too many folks voting in domains hoping for a share of the proceeds & having no intentions of bidding on them. I can remember when it would take 5-15 days just to get those 5 votes needed. Back then, more often then not, my domains sold. But when the 10 vote system (coupled w/ voter rewards) came out, domains would make it through within hours. If you allowed Bido to schedule your auction ( as I did) you'd sometimes get weird start times & fail to get any exposure. I recently submitted around 10-12 domains that were ALL voted in within 2 days & not a single sale. They weren't "legendary" domains, but by comparison they were of fair quality.

Then they changed the "completed auctions" list to "recent sales", because the sales ratio was in the toilet. A perspective user may use that list to determine whether to use the service or not. Last time I checked, they were averaging around 10 sales a day. If I were a perspective customer, I may not have thought that to be a thriving marketplace - especially after seeing the quality of the domains. Most sales were below $100. With such a low commission, they couldn't have been turning ANY kind of a profit.

I think the $28 minimum produced quantity over quality. As the quantity snuffed out the quality, buyers got frustrated with sifting through junk hoping for the diamond in the rough. If I want to spend that kind of time, I'll go to eBay.

I think they shot themselves in the foot despite their best efforts. I wish all of them the best of luck.

 

[JuniperPark]

They were doomed from the start... remember the spamming of PM boxes right here on DNF?

As a result, I (and others to remain nameless) boycotted Bido and did a great deal of business with their competitors.

Starting any business by spamming is a was a dumb idea in 1997 -- it's a terminally stupid plan 10 years later.

This should be a lesson for those thinking of spamming.

 

[DomainScoop.Com]

/bido can never be sido

my 2 cents, there never was a quality, Bido.com now closed and should move back to Florida again lol. It was never meant to work, Bido.com = spam Spam, all over the place. I have never spotted sedo employees doing spam, ???

 

[ebuzconsultant]

Unfortunate for me, for the first time i was auctioning domains through bido

10 domains has been scheduled for auction on 5th may2010 (Today)
7 domains has been scheduled for auction on 6th may
and 1 domain on 11th may

 

[Soofi]

Doesnt matter really!! they were never a quality service..

I stopped using BIDO long back, I mean about half a year ago I had little problem with their customer service for the way their payments use to work..
I had used to send them payment through paypal masspay for my purchases to save extra 4% on my purchases. I had been doing this for a good while and they had no problem with it until one fine day I was asked to stop doing so cuz they didnt want to keep track of it and wanted me to follow 4% rule, so I asked to speak wit their executives and contacted BIDO executive Sahar & Jarred on facebook but they completely shut me off by saying follow the thumb rule.. so I got pissed at the way I was being treated for being their customer, and asked him to close my BIDO account cuz I wasnt going to pay extra 4% when you had other ways to save money or it would increase your purchasing price. Sahar was least bothered and said he doesnt mind me closing my account..

Now that I wasn't using their service and it had been almost over 6 months, they came running back.. calling me for good 2 weeks in March requesting me to get back and start using them again, but I made myself clear that I wouldn't use a company like theirs for the way I was treated earlier.. they apologized and what not and re-opened my account, but to be honest with the quality of domain names plus irrelevant bido price, I'm sure I wouldn't never wanna use them again and haven't gone back ever since

So goodbye BIDO, you guys never knew how to run a company in the first place!!

 

[clemzonguy]

The service was a lot easier to follow when they auctioned a couple of domains per day, but they got greedy. My submissions were never accepted, so I lost interest. I come back later to find that the site was akin to ebay flooded with junk names, and the website slow to browse. For me it was pretty much information overload. The fact that I have been in the business since at least 2001, and have not sold or bought any names using the service speaks for why it is a bad idea. Honestly, anyone could have created the same service on a shoestring budget. I hope they did not lose a lot of money on this venture. Maybe this will help boost purchase activity on the forums.

 

[mike031]

bido quickly became the ebay type for crap names and a joke with the "pros"

if it wasnt backed by sahar and jarred, the place wouldnt even survive a year and would of been torn apart by industry insiders but everybody went along with all the hype.. kept hoping for the best and fantasizing about this and that

quality of auctions was worse than most domains found on sale on domainer and internet forums

a few months ago... if you ran a poll to see which online venue has the most crappy inventory... bido would be #1

my 2c

 

[ksinclair]

Bido was very well run, in my experience as both buyer and seller.

Any domain auction that tries to operate daily or on a strict time schedule is going to have a lot of problems; we as human beings are not constantly attentive, and most of the domains are not high quality. I dont think this is a sustainable model no matter what the user interface or promotions.

In fact the entire auction mentality might not be sustainable. It seems to benefit mainly the people running the auctions. There are so many domain auctions now that the entire pool is very diluted.

Kevin

 

[mike031]

the platform was solid, it was just a case of "mismangement" all the way from day one really...

they focused on making the newbies happy i suppose, trying to get the "social networking" and "social media" type of crowd behind them for whatever reason

i only ran 1 big one week auction at bido, with "ok" results and i never even purchased anything because there was never anything worthy when i looked... waste of time

the closing is no surprise....... had to happen sooner than later

 

[fab]

Another one bites the dust!

 

[gafadi]

Actually i kind of loved bido because of their people , i called couple of times , they called couple of times. It wasnt like talking to CS of other hosting/services/sites , it was more friendly manner, i felt like i was talking to someone who i knew. But yes the domain sales were not so great but a great place for buyers .

 

[Seraphim]

Bummer, clearly they put a solid effort into it. Certainly can't knock them for trying.

GreatDomains.com looks like it's on it's way out the door as well.

 

[britishbulldog]

Life goes on and i hear there is another sedo coming on the scene shortly.......bido was just just complex,they should of just had a simple buy ans sell strategy and no matter what crap domains they were selling(even sedo has them) they would of made a profit and spent less on development costs...........

 

[INVIGOR]

...

 

[britishbulldog]

From day one the thing that was lacking most was the quality of the domain names.

You can still make money from shit,just look at ebay,car boots etc,somebodys junk is somebody elses gold......it was the platform which let it down rather than the domains,sedo with there shit greatdomain auctions starting low but with silly reserves are ruining it but nether the less they carry on regardless,a simple platform is what is needed(ebay & old sedo) and sedo ****ed that up as well with their new design.....