Domain Marketplaces Still Grapple with Orphaned Listings

Lots of progress, but still an issue of orphaned domain name listings on marketplaces.

If you’ve been buying domains on major domain name marketplaces for any number of years you’ve certainly come across a domain listed for sale that isn’t actually for sale.

I still remember “buying” SugarCookies.com for something like $2500 many years ago only to find out the person who had listed it had sold it already.

Afternic and Sedo have taken steps over the years to resolve this problem. After a site started listing domains listed on Sedo that were freely available for registration, Sedo started implementing a number of systems to weed out old listings.

The problem is also creeping up on GoDaddy. It creates a particularly interesting situation on GoDaddy since the site started syndicating its auction listings to its registration path.

One Domain Name Wire reader has experienced this twice. A domain expired and was fully deleted, so he went to GoDaddy to register it. But the system wouldn’t let him register it, instead saying the domain name was available in auction:

The reader had to go to a competing domain registrar in order to register the domain name.

What happened here is that the previous owner had listed the domain on Go Daddy auctions. When the domain expired the auction listing wasn’t removed.

Marketplaces have worked to clean up such listings as they move to more fixed price, instant transfer listings. Most instant transfer systems constantly monitor whois records for changes and remove domains from the marketplace immediately if there’s an ownership change.

I’ve noticed Afternic go a step further recently. Afternic will completely remove your listing if you don’t respond to several notices of a price request for a domain name.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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Related posts:

1. Site Finds “Orphaned” Domains on Sedo and Afternic
2. Afternic Drops Basic Listings, Offers Commission Discount for Parked Domains
3. Survey: Domain Name Marketplaces

Priced Domains Can Sell in Go Daddy Auctions, Too

Premium Listings can also sell within Go Daddy Auctions — and at a lower commission.

I recently received a sale notice for one of the domains I listed at Go Daddy as a Premium Listing.

I assumed it was a standard sale through Go Daddy’s registration path. But a couple days later I got another email and realized the sale was actually on the Go Daddy Auctions site. It was still a fixed price sale based on my Premium Listing price, but occurred through the auction platform.

As a result I paid a mere 5% commission on the $400 sale rather than 30%. That’s an extra $100 in my pocket. I also got the payment faster than on a Premium Listing sale.

Sure, I had to manually transfer the domain to the buyer’s account instead of the “instant transfer” that comes along with Premium Listing sales. But since it was an internal transfer at Go Daddy it was a breeze.

So count this as another perk of Go Daddy Premium Listings — added exposure for your fixed price domains on Go Daddy Auctions.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.

Related posts:

1. Go Daddy Starts Featuring Auctions in Registration Path
2. Go Daddy Premium Listings New Business Model for Domainers
3. My Sales Results from One Year of Go Daddy Premium Listings