New Auction Site

[Headdog]

New domain name auction site at etomic.com. Check out the unique special features only found on this auction site.

* Domain Name Ranking Scheme. Tired of looking at listings with all the worst names up front? At this site, all names are ranked and the highest ranked names show up first. Buyers get to see the majority of the best names first and grouped together.

* Advanced Search. The advanced search panel has the options that buyers need to quickly find what they are looking for. Translation – increased sales and buyers that return.

* 2 or 3 Character Names. This site was designed to automatically categorize these names and not accept invalid entries into these categories. You will not find a two letter name like “12ab.com” in these categories.

* Advertising Names or Selling Names? No name advertising. This site only attempts to sell your names. If your names are good and rank high, they will be up front for all to see at no charge.

 

Main question: how are you driving buyers to the site and which type of buyer (reseller/end user) are you targetting if any?

 

[Headdog]

Thanks for the question(s). Sorry, but I can’t see any intelligent reason to post an answer to them though.

Why are you asking? Do you need some buyers at your site or are you promoting that service?

 

Well, an auction site is only as useful as the audience it attracts.

Thats why people use ebay, because they have buyers there (admittedly with domains its mainly other resellers).

If you don't have a policy to attractbuyers and don't think its an intelligent question to be asked - then I can't see how your site would be useful to domain sellers in general.

Or am I missing something?

 

[Headdog]

Sorry again, I thought my reply was clear but I guess it was not.

I did not say your questions were non-issue questions or not intelligent. My point – why would anyone, including ebay, want to post their strategies for attracting buyers to their web site? I simply can not see any good (or intelligent) reason for doing so. Sorry, but I simply have no desire to publicly share any marketing strategies.

I do have a desire to read anyone else’s marketing strategies though. Do you have any?

 

I guess its catch 22 then, without knowing that listing would bring any benefit it would be a waste of keystrokes. I've seen literally hundreds of auction sites spring up - most never get any visitors outside of the listees.

In regards to marketing, it depends who you are tagetting (as per my original question).

End users make the best buyers, but they tend to need to be marketed to proactively (like shoutloud do) or you need to have large coffers to attract them through "normal" marketing (offline/banners/search engines) etc.

Resellers are easier to acquire once you get a decent quantity of domains at attractive prices to them.

I didn't think it was an unreasonable question to be asking of someone asking other people to list their domains with them.

 

It's like post it it for sale here, almost no-one buys anything
Well, scrap this, I bought one

 

If you're targetting resellers I think this site is as good as any to get your name seen by the right kind of people. Over time it can only improve - so I see Dan being able to extend that side of things and turn a buck for himself and help the revenue of the site members too.

I love win/win scenarios

 

[NameBox]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the site seems like a quick and (relatively) easy implemention of an open source php/mysql auction solution, and then viola ... a new domain auction site springs up.

Where's the business model? I agree with safesys, unless sellers believe that there is a likelihood of a sale, why would they post? I drilled down 5+ categories only to discover that they were all empty.

I good example is the sedo.co.uk graveyard ... decent interface, but useless as a market :razz:

 

[David G]

Originally posted by safesys I guess its catch 22 then, without knowing that listing would bring any benefit it would be a waste of keystrokes. I've seen literally hundreds of auction sites spring up - most never get any visitors outside of the listees...

Agree, millions of hits are required to generate any domain sales activity. For example I had a very professional auction site myself, ran it for about 2 1/2 yrs.

It was well ranked on all the search engines, constant SEO work was done (including a few secret seo methods which worked well), there were approx' 1,000 excellent domains for sale, a number of them included developed websites. No ridiculous asking prices were posted as they were all Make Offer auctions with no or low reserves.

It had lots of active links from many websites and had a high link relevancy rating. The site was heavily promoted via emails and ezines. In addition, some ads were placed, including banners and even some in-print media ads.

After all of that the site only generated approx' 50,000 Uniques in all that time and never sold even one domain name or website!! In fact, the site only had 1 serious bid and a few other minor inquiries in all that time and effort! Isn't that amazing?

This shows how utterly futile it is starting a new domain auction site and really expecting to get much traffic, let alone buyers!

I am familiar with several other domain auction sites who experienced the same poor results and have now shut-down or are dormant. I shut down my auction site about 1 yr ago as a total loss.

The original auction software purchase and subsequent programming cost a few thousand dollars and the monthly server bill over 2 1/2 yrs was also costly. I am not even counting hundreds perhaps thousands of hrs of labor that went into the website in my losses. :sad:

I am sure most all other domain auction sites also lose money, many never making even 1 sale. Even Regsister.com has lost zillions on Afternic, now little more than a worthless automated BOT. Network Solutions also lost zillions on GreatDomains.com.