Namepros member Arca put together a very interesting post on Huge Domains and their participation in GoDaddy Auctions.
Now it’s no surprise that other industry players bid on domain name auctions at GoDaddy. Arca’s test showed Huge Domains winning 50% of the auctions they were monitoring or bidding on against Huge Domains.
I’ve been wondering about the competition in auctions for expiring domains over at GoDaddy.com, because somebody is paying hundreds for seemingly every domain that gets a few bidders.
I’ve also noticed a clear pattern, with the last bidder (or one of the last bidders) entering the auction winning most of the time, which made me think that there is one large corporate buyer piggybacking of whatever domains other people find and bid on. Turns out that is the case: HugeDomains.com is buying most domains over at GoDaddy.com expired auctions. I looked up the WHOIS of the past 150 auctions I have lost at GoDaddy.com, and 84 of those are now owned by HugeDomains.com and listed for sale on HugeDomains.com.
While 50%+ may not be representative of overall domains bought at GoDaddy, they do seem to buy far more domains than anyone else. The 66 names not bought by HugeDomains.com were bought by a number of different individuals and companies (BuyDomains.com bought 6 of those 66, for example), so 50%+ were taken by HugeDomains, while “the rest” of the auction wins were by a number of different individual domainers and companies.
This might not be news to some, but I’ve never seen anyone mention that HugeDomains is this active over at GD expired auctions, so I thought it might be interesting for some people to know who is outbidding everyone in the lower range over at GoDaddy. I’ve read people mentioning that HugeDomains buy names in close-out status over at GoDaddy, but never that they buy most of the domains in auctions too.
HugeDomains absolutely dominates all auctions below $5XX, and they only picked up a single name above $5XX (cakemart.com) in my sample of 150 names, so $5XX seems to be a self-imposed limit for them. If I only checked domains sold below $5XX, the percentage bought by them would be even higher. I’ve been the second highest bidder in lots of auctions that HugeDomains.com won, and in my experience they will keep bidding until you give up or until the price passes $5XX. By outbidding most bidders in the lower end, and acquiring more than half of the domains other people also have interest, it leaves a far smaller pool of names for the rest of the domainers to compete for, so I guess that’s part of the reason why the reseller prices for names keep increasing so much for names in this range.
The only way to buy cheap domains at GoDaddy auctions now seems to be to let domains expire with 0 bids, so that they go to close-out status, and then try to snipe them as soon as that happens. However, some domainers seem to think it’s smart to bid $12 on any decent name when there is 1-15 minutes left, hoping that nobody else is going to place a bid, so fewer and fewer decent names are let to expire with 0 bids. However, that strategy never seems to work (I’ve tried it myself lots of names, and it did not work even one time), because there are always other people watching and waiting for the name to go to close-out, and they jump in and bid if you make a $12 bid, and most of those names are eventually won by HugeDomains.com. What experiences do other people have at GD recently? Anyone else have any good strategies for buying expiring domains @ GoDaddy.com these days?
Some examples of expired domains bought at GoDaddy.com auctions by HugeDomains:
Domain: skillsharing.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $540
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2995Domain: ledmaster.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $537
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2195Domain: cyberstrategies.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $262
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2895Domain: crablab.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $320
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $1895Domain: dailyportal.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $560
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2895Domain: fivesecondrule.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $42
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2695Domain: deltacloud.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $365
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $1795Domain: itace.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $499
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2595Domain: sunnykitchen.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $200
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2595Domain: baristaschool.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $449
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2895Domain: cakemart.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $695
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $3495Domain: visuala.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $315
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2795Domain: massanalytics.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $130
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2095Domain: edusport.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $535
BIN price (at HugeDomains): $2995Domain: acneguru.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $52
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $2495Domain: stylefolio.com
Purchase price (at GoDaddy): $195
Asking price (at HugeDomains): $1995
The discussion in the next 12 pages discusses whether prices are just too high for an investor on GoDaddy auctions. It’s one of the better discussion threads over the last few months.
Domainers don’t get it, they keep feeding their comp. to bid against them with their own money.
They have been crossing into 4 figures with their bids, why not keep bidding the newbies up. The higher prices close at the more money their portfolio is worth, added with the fact you pay more, you have to ask more for your names.
I guess 3 million names is not enough.
Not much bargain hunting to be had in public auctions anyway, all those eyes. Makes Berkens portfolio sale at ~$500 a piece good buying right now, his was much better quality.
Agreed. Nothing to see here.
It’s not news that HugeDomains is a big buyer at GoDaddy Auctions. That’s always been the case.
But it DOES seem surprising how high they’re bidding.
Then again, this isn’t a random sample of domains HugeDomains bought. The sales most likely to be reported by competing bidders like this are (not surprisingly) the domains that sucked those bidders into bidding wars. So it’s the high-priced acquisitions that garner attention.
Many other domains HugeDomains buys go unnoticed because there is no bidding war. Those purchases are not reported in this way. And they’re much cheaper.
It was news to me this many. Thanks to Arca for the detailed information.
If anybody’s curious how HugeDomains’s buying behavior at GoDaddy Auctions today compares to its purchasing habits in years past, you can easily do so.
Just go back and take a look at the weekly articles I was writing at DNW, which catalogued thousands of expired domain auction results at GoDaddy from the period. Randomly look up a bunch of domains in whois, and you’ll find plenty of HugeDomains inventory.
They only started in the past 14 months, has not always been this way.
@Trent,
Maybe. How do you know that, though?
We often assume something has just begun because we just began noticing it. I’ve watched HugeDomains buying at GoDaddy Auctions for years.
Possibly their bidding is more aggressive now; possibly domainers are just talking about it more.
There’s data out there, in case anybody wants to test assumptions and find out for sure. Annecdotal evidence isn’t worth much.
Wow, thank you for this article!
I got some really nice domains at closeouts and lost all the auctions recently.
Every time a watch a name and that I see an early bid, days,hours before end.. I know it’s not going to be cheap so I give up. I place my max bid with no hope of winning the auction.
I was getting crazy about this.
Weemly and Divvo are at auction. Both names have bids and more than 4 days to go…. Why!?????
If you want domains on GD auctions now you pretty much have to wait for it to go to closeouts.
I’ve bid on several domains with a few minutes to go. HugeDomains bot then bids the domain up wayyy past what I will pay.
Not surprise with HugeDomains participating in GoDaddy Auctions. They need to keep their inventory up high. They have deep pocket anyway.
They actually picked most if not all my expired domains. 🙂
Inventory high, they have 2,700,000 names, they should make it just fine.
No one should buy a domain from HugeDomains, or register one through Godaddy. Make them pay for their sleazy business practices.
The prices for registering a domain at gd, or redeeming one in redemption – something more or less concocted by godaddy since they still have control of the name, and total ability to let you redeem for much less – are ridiculous.
I agree which is why I have given up getting expired domains at Godaddy. You can’t compete against HugeDomains and the other companies doing the same as the price becomes overvalued and as an individual domainer, I don’t have the deep pockets these companies do to sit on lots of domains forever.
They live, eat, and breath doing this and we are all trying to get a piece, but they are dominating the market leaving everyone else with breadcrumbs.
Your absolutely right, the old smart thing to do for any auction was wait until the last minute and bid, especially if there arent any other bidders. There’s no point in driving up the bidding early only to be outbid later. This no longer works at all because these companies are on GD Auctions all day everyday just waiting for this to happen.
I placed the 1st bid on ExerciseBallChairs.com the last 1 minute and left thinking I had the domain for sure, only to come back and see someone outbid me. Sure enough after a couple weeks I check and it was HugeDomains.com which you can see today. They have done this to me so many times now and where they stop @ $5XX+, another company starts getting all the $600+ domains.
Whats the other company ?
HugeDomains.com are trying keep their domain name inventory afloat. They have more competition now.
Their DropCatch.com service is letting some names be bought at lower prices than what they would sell them for on HugeDomains.com.
They are also buying the names on GoDaddy auctions so they don’t delete and end up at SnapNames.com or Pheenix.com.
I’ve found out a pattern and have started bidding on junk names that i know they will bid on. I bet they’ve already spent $2000 this week on junk. Will keep doing it. I got the data.
Better strategy than a boycott I suppose, drive them out of the market using their own nasty strategy against them. But you and others who employ it could end up with a bunch of domains you have no use for, and expense.
I have a bunch of domains that I am considering selling but you people are at another level so when you talk about JUNK domains, Im not sure what you mean. I have a lot of BUYER domains, like Therecordbuyer, Thedollbuyer, Thetrainbuyer and quite a few more. The only one I am keeping is also a ***Buyer and it works really well for me and I get leads from all of the county on a very consistent basis, so I would think they would be desirable, but are they Junk?