Written by RH
I am a big fan of Go Daddy auctions so this is not a smear piece. When you go to Go Daddy auctions certain auctions have a valuation number. Seasoned domain investors know not to trust this number completely. New domain investors may not and that is where I think Go Daddy needs to explain this number in a more complete way.
Go Daddy says this when you click the ? next to the number: Pay Per Click (PPC) average revenue for a domain over a period of time.
What is that period of time ?
Let's look at some current big valuations listed at auction for much less than the Go Daddy valuation.
VisaForm.mobi 5 year old domain, Go Daddy estimates a good bit of traffic at 29,740 monthly hits. The valuation is $13,017. The auction ends at 3:34 Pacific time tomorrow and is just at $505. The site was developed and looked to be a site for those in the UK to get their visa. Its hard to imagine this site has generated $13,017 in PPC in the "period of time" Go Daddy would have this domain parked under their servers.
9ty.biz This domain is 1 year old. Estimated traffic is big at 96,240. The site looks to have been a music download site in the Netherlands. Even with the traffic those going there are not the type of surfer looking to pay for anything so cannot imagine enough clicks to make the $17,373 valuation make any sense.
There are more examples if you check out the auctions on Go Daddy. Go Daddy is the site for a lot of novice domain investors and new investors coming in. They don't know about Fabulous or Name.com or the many other domainer centric registrars. Go Daddy should explain these valuations better so new investors don't get fleeced and feel ripped off.
Again IMO
Way to tell it like it is, I wish I knew this info last year. Bought a few domains just because of the valuation. They have made nowhere near that.
They need a serious upgrade for godaddy auctions. I won the auction yesterday for the domain name indianjewelry.com for $16,005…i was bidder 3…bidding against bidder 11 all the way from $5k till $16k…and i had to keep refreshing my page to see if he or she out bid me.
Also, i would like to see more transparency…who the heck was bidder number 11…another halvarez?
I love Godaddy and i have all my domains at Godaddy…but come on Godaddy, its almost 2012…get with the program.
I heard the dead ladies estate is going to reclaim the domain indianjewelry.com, you overpaid by about $10k on the wholesale side.
“They need a serious upgrade for godaddy auctions. …i was bidder 3…bidding against bidder 11 all the way from $5k till $16k…and i had to keep refreshing my page to see if he or she out bid me.
Anunt,
This was complained about yesterday on another domainer’s blog.
A GoDaddy rep chimed in and said they would fix that issue.
Bidder transparency is another matter though.
How can they improve this? All they can do is use usernames, nothing else? They have certification on account, if users keep bidding, and don’t pay account gets killed. Yes, people can bluff and when you chase high profile names online your going to end up paying for them, as it is a big world out there, and your not the only one who noticed it.