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.
The $1 starting bid auction is certainly eye-catching, but for me, it feels more like a novelty since I rarely win minimum bid auctions. That said, it’s an interesting experiment. Lower quality domain names might attract some activity with a $1 opening bid, and auctions that receive even a single bid could catch the attention of other bidders who are drawn in by the low starting price.
Notably, all auctions will have the renewal fee tacked on to the final bid amount. Even with a $1 winning bid, the actual cost to the buyer will be higher due to this additional charge.
Interesting
Hope they keep it.