Sedo This Sedo That
August 1, 2008 No CommentsI don’t like Sedo. Sedo is a parking and auction website for domain names, it hasn’t much competition. On the parking front yes, that’s always a toss up between several. I’m with NameDrive and I’m sticking with them for the time being, it’s easier now I have a tag to change nameservers on mass but I’m happy for the moment, there’s another reason I don’t use them.
DomCollect // .co.uk (LEEOWEN), a subsidiary of Sedo, no matter which way you cut it they’re connected. DomCollect compete with domainers in catching names on the day of the drop, they invariably pick up thirty to sixty new domains a day, they’re going to compete with BuyDomains at some point. Sedo state that they don’t share information between the two companies but most of us find it hard to believe so I do my best not to use Sedo as I try not to fund my competitor’s businesses. Makes sense.
So I don’t park with them because they compete directly with me by catching domains for keeps, I enjoy handling my own sales and with NameDrive you can enable a contact or sales link on the parked domain which suits me fine however I still list my domains with them, to date, in several years, I’ve not sold one through them, various low bids, one good one actually for £1000 which could have gone through but I turned it down, silly me, normally bids are far too low and they don’t rise much when countered.
Credit where credit is due, a company did contact them to negotiate one of my domains, Worky.co.uk, they advised selling for the offer price which was around €2000, I spent a few hours overnight researching who the buyer might be, comparing employment domain sales and came to the figure of €6000 as being reasonable, justified and I stated clearly my reasons why.
The broker was a little hesitant but I know my domain market, I advised her that when she gets a reply in the next half hour to text me, she was quite abrupt on reply “Oh that won’t happen I assure you, I will email you when they do.” She was right, they emailed back in five minutes with sold, unfortunately I’d gone out, a text would have been nice. I also got short changed on the exchange rate, €6000 turned into precisely £4700, I’m not sure how they came to that at Sedo’s end, they kept a few quid but no matter, big sale, no moaning, move on. So watch out for that exchange rate and being short changed.
I don’t like them but being contacted by a broker is miles, thousands of miles better than the faceless auction system that takes anonymous bidding which is why I’ve sold nothing through them and only get low bids, it’s a useless system. They would make a lot more money if there was more interaction on their part, but history shows even when I ask them to get involved in a bid to secure a sale, they won’t, I’ve asked numerous times but they just won’t get involved, interested in selling domains my arse, I was, they’re not.
However the broker system works, or it did for me this time even if I didn’t get full whack. £4700 bang on, not £4700.53, a bit suss if you know what I mean, so no sale via the faceless auction system, over priced domain listings for featured and top of the bill, at least minimum commission came down so can do low sales if you wish to. Yes I’m moaning, now for the really contentious part, how someone else views your domains and the discrepency between your view and theirs, your knowledge and theirs and so on.
I like to think I know what I’m doing, I work in a niche area but it keeps me in bread and butter and the occasional sand between my toes, yes I have a sand pit on the balcony. I like my domains but I learned early on about the domainer phrase “A good name and its owner are never parted.” You’ve got to know when to sell and take the money on the table, I should have took that £1000 offered on Sedo by the Canadian in 2005.
I get free valuations on my names, I’d never pay for one – you’re kidding right? Although I may have once, no it was a featured listing, never again. What a waste of money that would be yet people pay for them, nutters. You can tell I don’t like this company? good, it’s a business model that works because they have very little competition, someone should blow them out of the water. Free valuation? Yes I enter my domains into Sedo Auction every couple of months, you can select five a day.
I’ve been doing it for a few months and everytime the buggers amaze me on their depth of knowledge and how wide apart our views are on domains, they would accept PreSeason.co.uk and CaribbeanSea.co.uk but not PlanetJobs.co.uk and ChatHosts.co.uk, I could list others but those are the ones that come to mind. I can understand people having a different view, that’s accepted but the one that’s got me whinging.co.uk (LEEOWEN) is them turning down World-Cruise.co.uk yes one of my favourites at present but are they mad?
Let’s look at the email I received, bog standard;
>> Dear Lee Owen,
Thank you for choosing the ‘Premium Auction’ to sell your domains using the Sedo platform.
Unfortunately, after a detailed assessment, the following domains have not qualified (Please see the reason for refusal in parentheses):
- world-cruise.co.uk (Q)
(Q) = The domain did not sufficiently fulfill the quality criteria necessary for the auction venue.
(O) = The WHOIS information of the domain does not match the contact details listed in your Sedo account.
(R) = The Domain fulfills all quality criteria, however, the minimum price you suggested was considered too high by the Sedo brokerage team. Our brokerage team recommends the minimum price in the parentheses above, in order for the domain to qualify for the premium auction event. Please apply again with this minimum price.
(F) = Unfortunately all slots for this Auction Event are already taken. Please use Sedo’s Domain Management System in order to reapply for one of our future auction events!
Best Regards,
Your Sedo Team
OK, so we disagree. However when I look at the domains they do accept into auction on a monthly basis I am staggered as to why mine get turned down so often. They even turned down Chisinau.co.uk (LEEOWEN) – it’s the capital city of Moldova, ok little but nevertheless. Would it have sold? I don’t know but worth a try, look at the other names that get entered and come back and tell me mine aren’t worth a go, what profound and deep rooted criteria do they use to dismiss my names, upon what basis are their conclusions derived?
Yes I lost it and sent some feedback in true Lee Owen fashion, a half hearted sorry;
>> See below re auction entry
I have to be quite blunt here, you lot are terrible at your jobs, you knock back my domains as if they’re shit, have you seen the advertiser depth for that domain on google? look 75 > http://www.google.co.uk/sponsoredlinks?q=world+cruise&hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8 do you know what a world cruise is? do you know cruise domains are hot? how the hell do you do your assessments? I’ve already been offered £200 for it, it’s worth £2000 minimum.
Your domain knowledge is poor, you don’t know the uk market, you keep knocking back my domains, is it any wonder why you don’t sell much. I wish you had competition you might get better. You even knocked me back on Chathosts.co.uk multi million pound sex industry, madness. Get an education, how do you do your research? because it aint very good.
Cheers
Lee Owen
www.squillions.com
Me bad, hands up however I’d love to know their criteria and what research they do before adding several capitalised letters of the alphabet, in brackets no less and rejecting my domains. I know I hold some crap domains, we’ll all admit we hold a lot of rubbish but we surprise ourselves when we sell it, we hold a variety of sceptically, selective, wide ranging domains – it’s the domain business ssschtupid.
I call a spade a spade, a cutzit a cutzit and a furculita a furculita, it would be nice to get transparancy on the criteria and try and get sedo to understand there’s more to domaining than prime generics, there’s a niche industry getting sales too which they need to understand, comprehend and gain knowledge of so as to offer more options to those looking to buy. They basically need to front and highlight more wide ranging domains, yes more of my domains but yours as well, I know there’s only so much room but I feel the names I put forward for auction are acceptable.
See what they reply with, I don’t like swearing in email but it seemed appropriate. As I mentioned transparancy, I’d like to switch back to parking for a second, wouldn’t it be nice if we could see what percentage we get on a click at various parking companies, why the clicks are good and get reduced and so on, there’s a lot of moans in this blog post about one company but then they haven’t listened much for years, the business of parking and auctions needs a tidy up, transparancy would help.
I don’t like sedo, from parking, auctions, fees to being a catching competitor on the sly but thanks for the brokered personalised sale, I enjoyed that. *When providing feedback it should always be constructive – I forgot. Here’s the constructive bit, to assist in domain valuation and selection for a premium domain auction entry, sedo should allow a comments box so you can state your case, invariably we’re talking the difference between a domain on the shelf and a one in full view, marketed and a potential £5000 sale, let’s be more through please Ladies and Gentlemen this is our livelihoods.
