Domain marketplace Sedo will add auctions to its system.
Domainers will often tell you they prefer Sedo or Afternic better. These are the two heavyweights in the aftermarket community. They also have radically different market mechanisms.
At Sedo you negotiate with one buyer at a time, entering an offer-counter offer arrangement similar to buying a house. Afternic is styled more like an auction, where you receive escalating bids and then can trigger a fixed-term auction when you receive a bid you like. I like Afternic’s style better for a couple reasons. First, offers on your domains are always going up. At Sedo you frequently get new potential buyers who aren’t aware you just received a $5,000 offer, and they offer you only $100. Second, once you get a good offer on Afternic, your domains go into the “closing soon” section where they get great exposure. Last month I wrote about ThreePieceSuits.com, which received 40 bids after being sent to the “closing soon” section at Afternic
Today Sedo announced it is adding auction functionalities similar to Afternic:
“Sellers will have the option to push their domains to auction once their price expectations have been met through our traditional offer/counter-offer system.”
I envision this being a lot like Afternic. Let’s say you enter negotiations with one buyer and he offers you $3,000, which you think is a fair offer. You can then send the domain to auction and the original bidder will have the starting bid of $3,000. Your domain will then get more exposure, similar to domains in “closing soon” at Afternic. Not only will they get more bidders, but domain values might be pushed up due to auction fever. (See Why do auctions drive up domain name prices?)
This is great for sellers. However, buyers might be frustrated. After seemingly coming to an acceptable price, they will now have to duke it out with other buyers.
I find the timing of Sedo’s announcement interesting. The auctions start October 24, coinciding with the next TRAFFIC conference. Although this makes sense from a product announcement standpoint, I wonder if it also has something to do with Moniker’s lock on auctions at TRAFFIC conferences and Moniker’s new marketplace system.
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