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.
For a typical expiry auction at GoDaddy, I will let the automated payment process go through to pay for the domain name a couple of days after the auction closes. Since delivery can take more than a week sometimes, there’s no rush on my end to pay so I let it happen automatically.
For the Molasses.com auction, I logged into my GoDaddy Auctions account, navigated to my auction wins, and clicked the payment button. I submitted my payment manually – immediately. This is what I did the last time I won a private GoDaddy-run auction after seeing someone else share their auction-won domain name that was quickly redirected to their website. It worked then as it did yesterday.
Knowing the domain name was owned by a GoDaddy entity (NameFind), I reached out to my Account Managers at GoDaddy and Afternic along with GoDaddy domain investor liaison James Iles to let them know I paid for the domain name and asked for the domain name to be provisioned.
About an hour and a half after I submitted payment, I received an email notifying me the funds were secured. I logged in to my GoDaddy account and the domain name was there. I have no idea if that happened automatically or if one of the people I emailed helped facilitate the fast account change. My bet is that it was automatically pushed once the funds were secured.
In between the time I paid and the time the domain name was pushed to my account, I logged into my Carrd account and created the landing page for Molasses.com. It is similar to other landing pages I use for my more valuable domain names so it was quick to put together and launch on my LiquidWeb hosting account.
I had been asked how I was able to get this domain name delivered so quickly, and I am sure it is a combination of making a quick manual payment and the fact that the domain name was privately owned by a GoDaddy-controlled entity rather than an expiry auction or a domain name registered to a third party. I can’t guarantee this will work to get a domain name provisioned more quickly, but that’s how it happened for me.
I bought four domains yesterday. After paying for them, they were in my account within about an hour. I think as long as they are at GoDaddy the process is fast regardless of whether you reach out.
Agreed – registered at GoDaddy and owned by GoDaddy. Expiry auctions don’t get delivered as quickly even if their registered at GoDaddy.
I joined GoDaddy today. And it’s my first experience
You guys are lucky. My domain name at Sedo is taking over a week to transfer, even after I paid immediately. I even told them the domain name is hosted at Godaddy and they should just push the domain considering its being transferred to my Godaddy account. It makes no sense for an auth code request. Anyways its my first experience with Sedo.
Different type of situation. Sedo is relying on the seller to start the transfer. There are many reasons why sellers are slow to respond.
In this situation, GoDaddy was the seller.
Yeah, you got a good one, Elliot.
I was going to bid on it, but I had bids out on some others.
Glad you got it.
I had a bidding war today on one domain, and I won. I probably overpaid 🙁
What did you win?
Most likely I was bidding against someone in the community. So I’d rather not disclose. It’s a good name.
I put in some more bids on other names — if I win 2, I’ll be happy.
That will be the end of my domain buying for 2024.
I bought lots of domains in 2024 — more than any year.
Mainly .com.
A few .AI, .IO and .ORG.
I might have purchased a .ME also. Can’t remember if it was 2024 or 2023.