NameJet Retiring Classic Design

Elliot Silver
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13

Late last year, NameJet launched a complete website redesign, although the domain name auction house chose to allow visitors to use the previous iteration in “Classic” mode.

According to a message on the website that was posted over the weekend, NameJet will retire the Classic view, and all users will be required to use the primary design. NameJet Classic will be discontinued on Wednesday, September 12, 2012.

In January, I posted a poll asking how many blog readers continued to use NameJet Classic, and I was surprised that almost 40% of those who responded opted to use the Classic design. The 75 votes probably didn’t produce a statistically significant result, and I would venture a guess that a poll like that had a greater response rate from people who felt strongly about the Classic look.

If you have a major issue with the active website design, I would think now is the time to let NameJet and Enom management know about it because in a few weeks, it will be discontinued.

Five Ways to Find Good Domain Names on NameJet

Elliot Silver
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7

I am an active bidder on NameJet, and I purchase a considerable amount of names for my company’s inventory. I’ve bid a total of $389,000+ on NameJet auctions since I registered in 2008. Recent NameJet purchases include ChineseProverbs.com, PennsylvaniaRealEstate.com (with a partner), ConsultantBlog.com, Buddhists.com, RhinoplastyDoctors.com, SpeedingViolation.com, and many more.

I have had very good luck re-selling NameJet acquisitions, primarily because there isn’t much end user competition when bidding, and I can then re-sell these domain names at a premium price.

If you don’t use a tool like FreshDrop to scan lists of names coming up for sale at NameJet, and if you don’t have hours to spend each day looking through unorganized lists of dropping domain names, I want to share five ways to find great domain names that can be backordered.

These five tips to find good domain names may be fairly obvious, but they are helpful and I use these methods daily.

Read More

Social.org Sells for Nearly $150k

Elliot Silver
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1

Nearly four months after Social.org sold for $228,600 in a NameJet auction where the winning bidder didn’t pay, the second public auction for Social.org concluded today, and the winning bid was $149,999.

Unlike the last time, it appears that this auction should actually close. Along with the mandatory bidder verification, I believe the winning bidder has won previous NameJet auctions. Of course, there’s always a chance that the auction won’t be completed, but I imagine it will go through.

Since it’s past 5pm and most banks are already closed for the weekend, we will most likely need to wait until next week or two in order to confirm that the winning bidder paid. For the sake of the domain owner and NameJet, I sure hope that’s the case.

Social.org Auction Back on NameJet

Elliot Silver
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6

In March, Social.org sold for well over $200,000 on NameJet. Unfortunately for the seller and NameJet, the winning bidder failed to pay, and his account was suspended. I didn’t receive confirmation, but it would seem that the underbidders did not opt to move forward at their high bids either.

NameJet has re-scheduled the auction for Social.org, and the current high bid is $7,501. There are almost 350 bidders involved in the auction, many of whom presumably didn’t delete the name from their backorders and were re-entered after the first auction closed. The name will go to auction in a little over 16 days from today.

The lost sale is a bummer for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest issues is that there was considerable publicity for the auction, and the second time around will probably see much less coverage. It’s too bad the owner couldn’t (or didn’t) go after the person who placed the winning bid. Perhaps he could go after him legally if the second auction ends at a lower price than the first auction.

Hopefully there will be a better bidder verification system in place for this auction.

NameJet User’s Frontrunning Email is Bogus

Elliot Silver
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19

I was observing the conclusion of a private auction I had running at NameJet the other day, when I received the following email from what appears to be a throw away email address:

Hello,

I have a web name, <domain redacted>, you may be interested in.

Since you already own <different domain redacted>, I thought you may be interested in owning this one as well.

This is over 10-years old and is comprised of premium seo keywords, which makes it very valuable.

My asking price is $2,888 only.

I intend to sell this soon, and have mailed several parties. If you are interested, please reply back at your earliest convenience.

Thanks,
John

There are three problems I see with this type of bogus email:

1) I own this domain name that was in a private auction, and the person who sent the email did not. Misrepresenting ownership like this is borderline criminal in my opinion.

2) Should someone else have won the auction at a higher price and decided to go out and sell it, he or she may have been hampered by this person’s efforts to sell the domain name at a lower price. Put simply, an end user won’t pay $10,000 for this name if it was offered to him for $2,888 the week prior, even if the original offer wasn’t legit.

3) If the emailer found a buyer who later did not pay, he may not have paid NameJet. In the case of a private auction, the seller and NameJet would lose out.

At the time of the email, the auction was selling for somewhere around $1,000, although the reserve price was not met. I should have agreed to buy the domain name and tried to initiate a transaction at Escrow.com to see who this person is, but I didn’t want to chance ruining my auction with a potential non-paying bidder.

Have you received similar emails to this? What are your thoughts?

Register.com Expiry Channel Moves to NameJet From SnapNames

Elliot Silver
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4

For a number of years, Register.com partnered with SnapNames to auction and sell its expired domain names. Register.com was acquired by publicly-traded Web.com in 2010, and the company’s expired domain names will now be available via NameJet beginning this Thursday.

According to Christie Chute, Manager of Monetization and Aftermarket Sales at Web.com, the company has been testing NameJet with its private portfolio of domain names. “We’re really excited to have the opportunity to work closer with Matt and the NameJet platform,” said Chute. “We’ve seen great success using NameJet for our everyday/non-expiry auctions and I’m looking forward to the upcoming transition of our expiry names as well.

For SnapNames and its new owners, the writing has likely been on the wall for quite some time. Network Solutions has been a NameJet partner for several years, and like Register.com, Network Solutions was also recently acquired by Web.com in a deal that closed at the end of 2011.

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