GoDaddy has been running a private auction featuring domain names from its NameFind portfolio. I have been following the auctions and bidding on a handful of domain names I like.
Yesterday, I won the auction for Molasses.com. As I shared on X, it was won, paid for, delivered, and a landing page was launched within a few hours. I want to share how I made that happen.
Yesterday morning, I noticed a handful of expiry auctions on GoDaddy Auctions that had a $1 opening bid. The typical starting bid for these types of auctions is $25, so that caught my attention. Most of the other auctions I visited yesterday had the standard $25 opening bid.
$1 expiry auctions at @godaddyauctions? pic.twitter.com/a90XMe1gbQ
— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) November 17, 2024
I reached out to GoDaddy to ask about this anomaly, and a company representative confirmed this is a test. He was unable to provide additional details about the test, so I don’t know how long we are going to see $1 opening bids. I was told GoDaddy does quite a bit of testing across many variables. For instance, the commas in prices and estimated values across different GoDaddy services were recently removed as a short-lived test.
In July of 2022, I was told about a GoDaddy change that was made with the hope of successfully delivering more GoDaddy Auction wins to customers. I believe the policy change is that if a GoDaddy registered domain name isn’t renewed 3 days before an expiry auction, it is no longer allowed to be renewed. I don’t bid on enough domain names to comment accurately, but by and large, it seems like I receive fewer refunds for GoDaddy Auctions wins.
When I buy a domain name, I list it on an Excel spreadsheet. If the domain name is not delivered instantly, I put a yellow highlight on the cell so I can keep track of it. Today, I scrolled up and saw a domain name I won at auction on October 27th was not delivered to my GoDaddy account. I paid for the domain name on October 30th. Two weeks is a long time for provisioning.
I was attempting to place bid on an auction at GoDaddy Auctions this morning when I was shown this message on the bid confirmation page.
My proxy bid amount was just above $100, and the GoDaddy Estimated Value was just shy of $2,000.
Namebio reported that Calor.com was sold for $20,440 at GoDaddy Auctions this past March. According to a lawsuit filed in Arizona, the winning bidder did not pay, giving the opportunity to an underbidder who reportedly completed the purchase for $11,427.17. Two months after completing the purchase and receiving the domain name, GoDaddy reportedly removed the domain name from the buyer’s account after proceeding to use the domain name. The buyer filed suit to regain control of the domain name.
As a domain investor who often buys domain names to re-sell, this is always something that has worried me regardless of the auction venue. This situation sounds similar to what GoDaddy referred to in the past as an “edge case” where a domain name was won in auction and was later removed from the account of the buyer due to an error.
I try to buy domain names at auction every day. I spend a lot of time bidding on auctions. More often than not, I come away with inventory quality domain names I opt to list for sale immediately. The vast majority of my domain auction wins are hardly memorable. I buy them to bulk up my portfolio to move inventory at nice returns.
Last week, Snagged.com posted a question on X that got me thinking for a very quick second:
