There was a thread that’s now closed on Namepros where someone pointed out that a member wanted an auction to end 278 hours after the last bid.
Some felt that this is fine, let the seller take as long as they like, they are trying to promote a good name. The name is average at best imo.
071.info is not a premium domain name.
Now of course Namepros can at anytime implement a rule that there is a max on the amount of hours after a last bid.
3L.info are nothing special 10 reported sales in the last year:
105.info 101 USD 2018-01-14 NameJet
558.info 111 USD 2017-12-31 NameJet
233.info 111 USD 2017-08-29 NameJet
282.info 131 USD 2017-08-16 NameJet
345.info 300 USD 2017-07-21 NameJet
893.info 102 USD 2017-07-19 GoDaddy
395.info 155 USD 2017-05-25 GoDaddy
278.info 149 USD 2017-04-21 NameJet
739.info 109 USD 2017-04-20 NameJet
561.info 159 USD 2017-04-17 NameJet
GoDaddy and Sedo limit you to 7 days, I can’t say “Hey it’s my name so why can’t I run it for three weeks” Because it’s their platform.
It’s bad enough you have people like Rick Schwartz saying that Namepros might not be the best investment of your time on TheDomains.
We all want exposure for our auctions and Namepros is the only place where you have the ability to keep an auction lasting for infinity.
Here is the point people in favor of however long are missing, it’s the after last bid, if you want to run a month long auction cool, the auction ends 30 days after it starts.
With this method you can wait 277 hours 59 minutes to bid just $1 more and start the clock over again.
Years ago there was an auction I was in, it was a much better name than this name, there was another bidder going back and forth with me, he was waiting til the last minute to bid $1 more, and start the clock over, I posted to the thread starter this auction will never end, because I will just now wait to bid just $1 more and this will play out for months. My point was I started out bidding $10 or more trying to get the auction going and either get a buy it now set or see another bidder show their interest by bidding more than $1 every 4 days.
It was worth it on this auction because I sold the name for $2,500 on Sedo months later.
Even with 48 hours on a popular name the bid can go on for weeks if there is a lot of interest in the name.
Namepros posted their reply
There are excellent points on both sides of this (even our team is split on it), but we’ve ultimately decided to not create a rule for it at this time. We want to keep auctions as flexible as possible and let the market decide whether it’s a good idea by whether buyers decide to participate, and it would hinder that open market if we set rules for each unusual or undesirable type of auction that could be created. We offer suggestions of how to create auctions through templates, but we want sellers to have freedom to try different things.
Instead of a rule, if members see a New Member doing this (Or anything else that is uncommon or undesirable), we recommend politely and professionally reaching out to them in a DM to let them know that it is not standard and may result in less people bidding in their auction, which could cause the seller to change their auction before a bid is placed (Which is allowed).
Another solution is that if a bidder really wants a domain name that has this issue, they can negotiate a BIN with the seller or place a very large bid on the auction that ensures they won’t be outbid again (And thus, the auction won’t be extended).
As always, buyers should not bid in an auction unless they agree with all of the terms set by the seller. If the seller has set terms that don’t make sense or are impractical, we hope that veteran members will help guide them or offer advice to them in a DM so that the seller can decide whether that’s what they really want.
Thanks for your feedback that helped us take all angles into consideration while making this decision.
They later updated the second thread on the topic:
We will consider adding a separate section with more standardization (auctions run for no more than X days, priced reasonably, etc.). As was suggested in this thread, it would require manual approval similar to the Top Domains section, so we will have to consider that idea after we finish our existing projects and can dedicate time to the new workload it would require.
The point of the matter is it makes things look unprofessional and will only have the seller’s using the technique get ignored.
You should be promoting your auction, monitoring the bid action and then setting a buy it now when there are no more bids for 24 hours straight.
You are also going to get a lot on non payers as people forget they bid on a name over a week ago.
Jonathan says
Looks like Rick was right.
Charles says
These days Rick is more out of touch with the domain industry than Morgan. His opinion on something like this is worthless.
All Rick knows how to do is say “no” to $100k offers on domains worth $1 million dollars. Real hard (sarcasm). Has he sold any of the hundreds of domains he’s purchased in the last 5 years? NO, he has NOT.
He’s desperately trying to stay relevant at the sacrifice of competence.