New to the industry, have question about Sedo's auctions.

[Fixhotep]

I've 'watched' the domaining industry for quite a while now. In November I decided to jump in and buy a few names. In December I decided that I enjoyed this and made it a hobby.

Now, I read loads of sites every day and consider myself fairly informed for someone who bought his first domain less than 2 months ago.

But I know that for all intents and purposes, I'm still a noob.

On to my point/question...

I've done a lot of browsing over at Sedo. I even park my names there (For now... I plan on learning how to monetize domains instead of just reselling them). The domains I own (about 20 now) aren't spectacular, I admit. I may have a decent one here or there, but nothing that will raise eyebrows.

I like to read Sedo to find out what people bid on and what sells.

And I see a lot of domains selling for high dollars on Sedo. Many of them I fully understand their value... But there are also some that make absolutely NO SENSE to me as to why they are selling for $10,000+.

Like I said, I'm fairly informed. I checked the age, PR, backlinks, index, OVT, and history and a some of these domains are just unimpressive (for the price).

So, my question is... how are these domains selling for $10,000? I'd like to think that the people selling these high dollar duds did some advertising rather than just got lucky. If so, where are they advertising their Sedo auctions? Are Sedo's $39 or $9 advertising packages worth it?

Again, I admit that I don't own anything spectacular. But frankly, I have one or two that are of higher quality than some of these selling at $x,xxx+ on Sedo.

 

[Peachesbackwards]

This is pure speculation on my part as I'm still unclear on the processes & not that familiar with Sedo but on Godaddys auctions, most of them are of the "Offer type" that I'm assuming can all be refused no matter what- correct me someone if I'm wrong. Therefore if someone has several different accounts or several friends, they can offer themselves the moon & not have to accept anything & all they need is a sucker who thinks, wow, this must be worth something & he plucks down a bid on an overpriced product. Its called shill bidding. That's my theory but maybe I'm wrong & maybe these people do have to take the highest price offered. I really don't have any other way of explaining how Godaddy could appraise something at say $150 and yet someone offers $50,000 for it (initial opening offer for instance). I may be in left field looking at right on this though, so someone come in and correct me.

 

[Fixhotep]

Yea, the listings I am referring to have a dollar amount with multiple bids and not 'make offer.' I can see shill bidding happening, but I can't believe it's that widespread.

As for appraisals, I don't believe any automated appraisal. Ever. Nameboy valued one of my domains at $27,527. Now, I wouldn't say no to such an offer and it is a decent NLLL.com. But no one in their right mind would offer a tenth of that for this particular domain.

Only appraisals I believe are from the members of the obvious sites, including Namepros. Even so, I've received some wildly different appraisals. On one particular domain I got appraised reg fee from one guy, and high $xxx from another. I personally felt I could get $50 for it, maybe $100 on a good day and the right buyer. Still, I feel it's always good to get others opinions just in case I'm delusional.

It's so crazy.

Thanks for the reply!

 

[Peachesbackwards]

I'm talking about the supposed $14.99 or so human appraisals on Godaddy not the $5.50 automated ones which are an absolute joke. On your bidding auctions, do people have feedback there? If not, these people could just be like Ebay shills with 0 to 2 feedback who won't pay if they win or whatnot. I'm not familiar with Sedo so maybe this isn't the case.

 

[draggar]

The same could be said about a lot of things. People pay $10,000 for a domain because they think it is worth it. A lot of us here may not see any value in VGYSQ.com (made up) but say someone finds huge potential (their business name, an acronym for something not in English etc..) they may pay big bucks for it (as long as the current owner doesn't not realize the potential and offloads it for $100 or so).

On this very forum, ss.com is selling for over $300K now.

 

[Peachesbackwards]

Out of curiosity how do you get a 2 character .com It won't take on Godaddy?