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Thought it would be worth it's own thread.
The main reason for places like Afternic and GD failing businesswise is very simple:
To the end buyer(and that's where the most money comes vs.speculators amongst themselves) just the idea of bidding on a domain is uncommon and strange.
An end buyer, if at all willing to pay for a domain doesn't want to undergo complicated handlings etc; all they want is to buy the name, hear an asking price,decide if they think the price is ok and if so, then simply buy.
I mean, if you're lucky enough and an endbuyer is willing to buy your name, how stupid to make it more complicated than neccessary by implementing an auction system, escrows and such.I bet that through domain auction systems like afternic more domain sales have been prevented than pushed.
Bottom line:
- If you wanna sell a domain to an enduser, make it as easy as possible for him and avoid domain auctions
- As a result of this it means that on places like AN the only buyers/sellers you will find are speculators amongst themselves where the buyers are used to only pay like 20% of enduser value for a domain which again is the reason for AN's low comission.
- In the end AN's biggest mistake was to think their main business would be comissions from END USERS.
Of course, in addition to that other stupid things have added to especially AN's and soon GD's failing like expensive fees, cutting the community sections like chat,boards etc(how stupid do you have to be to do that?!),cutting off phone support, and not to forget AN's "Worlds worst handling of Escrow in the last 100 years" award they truly worked hard for.
Most bottomish bottom line:
The idea/concept of * AUCTIONING * domain names in itself is wrong.
Cuz it can't work.
My 2 cents.
The main reason for places like Afternic and GD failing businesswise is very simple:
To the end buyer(and that's where the most money comes vs.speculators amongst themselves) just the idea of bidding on a domain is uncommon and strange.
An end buyer, if at all willing to pay for a domain doesn't want to undergo complicated handlings etc; all they want is to buy the name, hear an asking price,decide if they think the price is ok and if so, then simply buy.
I mean, if you're lucky enough and an endbuyer is willing to buy your name, how stupid to make it more complicated than neccessary by implementing an auction system, escrows and such.I bet that through domain auction systems like afternic more domain sales have been prevented than pushed.
Bottom line:
- If you wanna sell a domain to an enduser, make it as easy as possible for him and avoid domain auctions
- As a result of this it means that on places like AN the only buyers/sellers you will find are speculators amongst themselves where the buyers are used to only pay like 20% of enduser value for a domain which again is the reason for AN's low comission.
- In the end AN's biggest mistake was to think their main business would be comissions from END USERS.
Of course, in addition to that other stupid things have added to especially AN's and soon GD's failing like expensive fees, cutting the community sections like chat,boards etc(how stupid do you have to be to do that?!),cutting off phone support, and not to forget AN's "Worlds worst handling of Escrow in the last 100 years" award they truly worked hard for.
Most bottomish bottom line:
The idea/concept of * AUCTIONING * domain names in itself is wrong.
Cuz it can't work.
My 2 cents.