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- Jun 17, 2007
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Whenever I have participated in an auction on a premium domain name where the registration has expired, for example at GoDaddy's tdnam.com or SnapNames.com, I have always faced fierce bidding competition.
I failed to get RepublicOfLiberia.com for my bids in the mid three-figures range.
To get Congo-Kinshasa.com and CongoKinshasa.com, it cost me over a thousand dollars.
These names refer to poor African countries.
Of course, these names had been allowed to expire, meaning that the previous owner did not put any effort into promoting these auctions. This suggests that only a handful of people even knew about them.
Now, the auction for the official name of Portugal Dot-Com, which just ended, did not get any bids, even though 1,500 people viewed the post, and the minimum bid was only in the mid three-figure range.
Why is it that when a poor African country's name is expiring, the few people who know about it bid like crazy, but when a rich European country's name is well-publicized and on auction, no one is interested?
I submit that when a name is expiring, we feel like we have some kind of great secret discovery, taking advantage of the previous owner's stupidity for letting the name expire.
But if the current owner puts the name up for auction at a low price, we feel like he's somehow trying to rip us off, whatever the quality of the name. We have a suspicion that he's trying to play us for a fool, unless maybe it's a three-letter, one-word domain.
In other words, our actions are not logical. We are happy to pay more for a domain expiration auction, thinking we have made a hidden, once-in-a-lifetime discovery. But if the low price is there on dnforum for everyone to see, we don't have that, "Maybe I'm the only one who knows about this!" unconscious, knee-jerk reaction.
I failed to get RepublicOfLiberia.com for my bids in the mid three-figures range.
To get Congo-Kinshasa.com and CongoKinshasa.com, it cost me over a thousand dollars.
These names refer to poor African countries.
Of course, these names had been allowed to expire, meaning that the previous owner did not put any effort into promoting these auctions. This suggests that only a handful of people even knew about them.
Now, the auction for the official name of Portugal Dot-Com, which just ended, did not get any bids, even though 1,500 people viewed the post, and the minimum bid was only in the mid three-figure range.
Why is it that when a poor African country's name is expiring, the few people who know about it bid like crazy, but when a rich European country's name is well-publicized and on auction, no one is interested?
I submit that when a name is expiring, we feel like we have some kind of great secret discovery, taking advantage of the previous owner's stupidity for letting the name expire.
But if the current owner puts the name up for auction at a low price, we feel like he's somehow trying to rip us off, whatever the quality of the name. We have a suspicion that he's trying to play us for a fool, unless maybe it's a three-letter, one-word domain.
In other words, our actions are not logical. We are happy to pay more for a domain expiration auction, thinking we have made a hidden, once-in-a-lifetime discovery. But if the low price is there on dnforum for everyone to see, we don't have that, "Maybe I'm the only one who knows about this!" unconscious, knee-jerk reaction.
