GoDaddy Domain Buy Service

[msn]

We have been sent two different offers from the GDDBS for domains, something which seems to cost the potential buyer $69. Oddly, the offers are only in the hundred dollar range - who spends $69 to then offer $100?? - but GoDaddy does not seem to check if the potential purchasers are qualified to own .ca domain names. This does not seem to be a very serious outfit.

Has anyone here ever used GD for buying domains, and if so, WHY?

[DropWizard.com]

Good question I just got one for a .com domain with a $150 offer after you sign up (of course)

I wonder if GD is generating them to try a build accounts and members using low ball offers?

[DomainsInc]

i've gotten $40 offers through it before. I just reply with something like five figures when they do that.

[msn]

It looks like a sucker game - no one will pay $69 to make a $40 offer.

Perhaps GoDaddy makes an initial low-ball offer, just as an example, of 10% of the amount the customer would be willing to pay. A $1000 budget becomes a $100 offer.

Then the owner is asked to click for the price - and so you show you are willing to sell - or click on 'not for sale' without knowing the offer. Most people cannot stand not knowing the offer amount, so they click on the link and are shown an unrealistically low offer. Because they know you clicked on the 'willing to sell' link, then it is just a matter of hitting you with a new price, but also informing their customer the domain can be bought.

We do not know if GoDaddy pockets the difference or shares some part of the money from what the offer was and the budget, but there must be something going on behind the scenes when $100 offers are being made on domains which earn more than that each month. Either someone is crazy enough to think paying them $69 for sending an e-mail with a $100 offer will get them the domain, or GoDaddy sets an unrealistic expectation for the buyer.

Or is GoDaddy using it to collect information on the owners?

[south]

Sold one through their domain buy service for $1k in december. Tried to sell it on the forums for low xxx, no offers. No complaints here.

---------- Post added at 11:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:54 PM ----------

Perhaps GoDaddy makes an initial low-ball offer, just as an example, of 10% of the amount the customer would be willing to pay. A $1000 budget becomes a $100 offer.

This has been a concern of mine with sedo for years. Playing both ends of the stick.

Side note: Adam, I though you were removing the inline ads for logged in users?

[Onward]

I think GoDaddy confuses newbie endusers with this...when the name shows that it is taken...there is the message: "You can view the WHOIS listing or use Domain Buy Service to get this name." This then leads the user to a page where it appears like you can "add to cart" - the domain name...it then takes you through the checkout process. My feeling is that the user believes they are going to get the name for cheap...they almost never do and godaddy takes an easy, non refundable $69. It is a little deceptive IMO.

[msn]

Sold one through their domain buy service for $1k in december. Tried to sell it on the forums for low xxx, no offers. No complaints here.

It could be different for you since you were looking to sell in the first place. Our customers usually are holding, not selling.

How much did they make as the initial offer?

[dominator]

via this system i received an offer for a 1997 domain name
they offered me the original reg fee from 1997, i.e. $100

i asked if this is a joke
after they replied some non sense i ended the negotiation

who spends $69 to then offer $100??

Has anyone here ever used GD for buying domains, and if so, WHY?

you are right, this is strange

[DropWizard.com]

Looking at the whois results for a domain it automatically offers the buy service. Go Daddy has probably attracted the largest customer base of unsophisticated buyers who would be fooled by being told they can buy the domain for $69. You really have to read the fine print. It offers an appraisal so they don't pay too much which is a joke because we all know the only real price is the one the owner is willing to accept and appraisals be damned!

But what really sets me off is the fact that they now immediately put your domain into a 48 hour auction if you respond and indicate you are willing to sell. I don't generally put a domain into an auction unless there has been some prep work done to attract potential buyers. It's just bad business and makes the domain look valueless. The auction is only 48 hours so the chances of attracting real attention is pretty minimal. Nor did I see any permission when I signed up to put the domain into an auction. Very deceptive IMO

2001 domain BTW

PS I noticed that Go Daddy auctions showed up with a lot of names on DN Journal last week. Perhaps this is a direct outcome of a "deceptive?" marketing program?


Quote Dn Journal
"GoDaddyAuctions piled up nine of the 20 chart entries with a group that included #6 Cicero.com at $40,000."

I don't think I've ever seen them score anything more than 1 or 2 names before.

[msn]

It may reflect the fact that the domain 'MLS' system now includes Godawful and if they push a forced auction upon clicking on a 'I am willing to sell' link, then they will associate those sales with the auction business, just like Seedy-o was including escrow deals with their booked sales.

[DomainsInc]

typically the domainbuy people are given some kind of budget but start by sending you the lowest offers possible. they will often work their way up if you keep countering but it usually results in nothing as their budgets are almost never beyond low x,xxx and also a very slow process.

[south]

It could be different for you since you were looking to sell in the first place. Our customers usually are holding, not selling.

How much did they make as the initial offer?

It was their first offer. On this one, I took the money & ran. I'm sure I could have done better looking back, but it was a fair price.

Looking back, here's a possible reason people may use the service: language barriers. If they don't feel comfortable negotiating in the sellers language, maybe they think it's worth the money to pay someone else to do it.

A plug for them: http://urbanlady.com/

I never would have looked in Korea for an end user

http://urbanlady.kr/

[msn]

Your own deal would seem to be the exception to the rule. You got a fair price and they went in with a reasonable offer right up front.

At least one customer got value for their $69 option, at least.

[dubstep]

I got a call from their Domain Buy service a couple days ago. It was about a domain I'd recently hand registered on a drop and initially the guy had this whole sob story about how GoDaddy had made a mistake in letting it drop and were now willing to pay me out of their own pocket for my domain. He kept stressing how GD really "needed" to get this back for their customer and were really hoping I would do them a big favor by working with them to correct the mistake in exchange for a quick flip and preferential treatment at GD. I did some research and called him back the next day and he backed off the whole "we made a mistake" story, admitting that the previous owner simply wanted to get it back. I turned down the $300 mainly because I didn't appreciate his selling tactics. I figured out who the previous owner is and they've got deep enough pockets to offer more than $300 anyways (the company they founded has revenue of 10-25 mil US$).

[Maxwell]

It was their first offer. On this one, I took the money & ran. I'm sure I could have done better looking back, but it was a fair price.

Looking back, here's a possible reason people may use the service: language barriers. If they don't feel comfortable negotiating in the sellers language, maybe they think it's worth the money to pay someone else to do it.

A plug for them: http://urbanlady.com/

I never would have looked in Korea for an end user

http://urbanlady.kr/

VERY solid point.

[ImageAuthors]

I realize this thread is a month and a half old, but I was looking through DNForum for some perspectives on GoDaddy DomainBuy; so I may as well add my latest experience.

In my case, the opening offer was $100 on a domain with only subjective value that I hand-registered within the last year. Immediately I was curious about this "Domain Buy" service, and I assumed that any buyer lazy or inexperienced enough to pay GoDaddy $50 to negotiate on their behalf must have a budget bigger than $100 for the domain in question. Naturally, I could have been wrong. But 2 weeks after my $5k offer, I received a counteroffer of $600.

So the question I find myself debating is whether $600 represents the buyer's maximum or not. If the buyer is simply an average naive person who fell for GoDaddy's "Domain Buy" service, then $600 might be as much as they've got. But I can also imagine that a large company would ask one of its employees to go get a particular domain name, and that employee will have no incentive to avoid extra costs (like GoDaddy's "Domain Buy" fee) and no incentive to do extra work (like contacting me through Whois and negotiating a price directly). And if this latter scenario is accurate, then the company's budget could exceed $600.

I've done a little digging, and I can't figure out who my buyer is. The domain corresponds to plenty of book and movie titles over the years; but novelists and publishers have negligible budgets, and Hollywood is liable to just tag on "themovie" in front of the .com to avoid paying for thousands of premium-priced domains over the years. So, if one of these guys is my buyer, I doubt I can push the price very far. The only other connection is to a World of Warcraft quest (which I just learned through Google, not being into that myself). They might have a bigger budget, but the WOW reference is several years old.

The weirdest thing about GoDaddy's "Domain Buy" service, though, is the pricing incentive for the broker. Unless I misread something, GoDaddy charges something like a $50 flat fee and 10% of the final sales price. This would incentivize the broker / GoDaddy employee to go straight for the buyer's maximum budget. But instead they opened with $100. Odd.

[msn]

It is also possible that GoDaddy gets a share of the difference between the budgeted amount and what the actual purchaser gets, perhaps with a small amount going to the person at GoDaddy who handles the deal.

[south]

The weirdest thing about GoDaddy's "Domain Buy" service, though, is the pricing incentive for the broker. Unless I misread something, GoDaddy charges something like a $50 flat fee and 10% of the final sales price. This would incentivize the broker / GoDaddy employee to go straight for the buyer's maximum budget. But instead they opened with $100. Odd.

You are also assuming the worst in people, something I also have learned to do over the years. Rare as it is, consider that perhaps someone might actually have the ethics and integrity to serve their customers interests ahead of mere greed and selfishness.