Say that you need to cash out your domain investments ASAP. Perhaps you need to pay some bills, and you can’t afford to hold on to some of your domain names any more. Where do you turn? Right now, I don’t think there are any absolute reliable options, but I do think Bido is going to change this.
If you put your domain name up for sale on a domain forum, it’s unlikely to sell unless it’s a great name and you price it under market value. What happens is that you list your name, and if it’s not snapped up in the first several minutes, others will pass it over, and eventually it will end up on page 5 – the annals of the domain forum. You then have to lower your price, and wait and hope that someone sees it the second time around. This is no way to liquidate a domain name because it isn’t quick and you aren’t guaranteed to sell it for what the market will yield.
When you put a domain name for sale on a site like Sedo or Afternic, you are  competing with hundreds of thousands of other domain names, and a quick sale is very unlikely. It’s difficult (or expensive) to stand out on one of the leading aftermarket sales sites. These sites may be good for selling a domain name, but I don’t think they’re the right venue for a quick liquidation sale.
Auctions are also good spots to sell domain names, but they aren’t close to a sure bet, and  you’ll end up locking up your domain name for weeks due to auction house exclusivity. Domain brokers can be great, too – but again, you have to work with exclusivity, and competition from other listings.
So after all of this, I really think Bido is going to be a great place to sell your names quickly. People have been commenting that the sales are far from stellar. I disagree. The names for the most part have been far from stellar, so the sales prices are in line with expectations.
Yesterday, ZJP.com sold for $4,055. Â I believe this is in line with what other 3 letter domain names are selling for now, and it shows that the market will set the price if the starting price is below market value, which is true with Bido’s $1 auction starts. Especially at this time, you can’t expect to get end user prices by selling to domain investors.
Domainers watch Bido and observe the auctions – whether the domains are great quality or poor quality. Â Domainers can bring liquidity to the marketplace, and if you need cash, selling to a domain investor is usually the quickest way to make a sale. Â Bido offers a great platform for domain investors to get liquidity. Â I would imagine they will open up for more auctions soon, and that should make it easier for people to sell their names.
Hi Elliot,
I received an email showing interest in one of my names. I’ve heard that many of these emails are scams. How to proceed?
Thanks
@ Ron
Here are a few suggestions:
– You can search Google for the email address.
– You can search Google for quoted portions of the email
– Gut feeling
That’s good advice Elliot.
I’m sure many folks need to hear/read this right now. 🙂
Bido is great, but with 1 domain a day, you can hardly liquidate anything 🙂
Looking forward to their long promised expansion
Elliot, thanks for the coverage and review, much appreciated.
To all, as said before elsewhere we plan on opening the platform, however, it isn’t an overnight process and much thought and work is required to get there. We have a number of steps before that we will introduce gradually in coming months, including a major announcement next week.
Thanks all for the support!
Sahar
Also – Sahar has a great series about accurate domain pricing: http://conceptualist.com/2009/02/23/the-importance-of-accurate-pricing/
I’ve decided Bido must have some of the slowest programmers ever or it’s just not being worked on very much. The current Bido system while nice shouldn’t have taken more than a month max with a semi-decent programmer going at it full time.
I love Bido but that is the silliest post I’ve read this week. Sell quickly on Bido? They have one auction a day and they are taking names from friends and family first. The chances of you getting a name on Bido right now is somewhere between slim and none. Again, I love Bido and am a regular commenter and watcher but it slowly fade away until the amount of daily domains are increased. If you want cash you will have to wait several months even if they did pick your name.
@Shane – My post says that Bido will be a place for liquidity once they open up to more names. Obviously with one auction a day, they aren’t there yet.
Nice to point out this auction Elliot. I agree, we just have to bear with Bido for a while until their platform is up to speed.
The domains auctioned indeed went for fair prices. I am also looking forward to more liquidity but understand that time will come. I submitted a couple domains too.
If you really need to get rid of you domains fast, try the 1$ auction at DNF. You might get a few bucks in a matter of days.
I absolutely agree with Shane. If you want to liquidate a domain quickly, start an auction on DnForum or NamePros, where you domain will get tons of eyes. I challenge Bido to surpass this model.
Hopefully “when” and “if” they decide to open up the auctioning venue, that we won’t have to rely on someone at bido determining if 1 or many of the domains a user has are either relevant or worth of being placed into a bido auction.
It’s not the “auction” where the bidder’s determine a name to have intrinsic value, but to actually getting it listed.
I chuckled at the family and friends comment for the 1 domain a day, and if they truly would like to become any sort of player in the domain auction business, then they’re going to have to open this up..and sooner rather than later.
at least there may be some names of significance, instead of less than stellar ones, like MyDomainNameIsHotAndWillMakeYouA_LotOf$$$BecauseItISinNicheMarket.com
yep less than stellar…
Exactly the same reaction as other people who have commented here. Sell quickly on Bido? How, with one domain a day, and a long queue of domain names waiting to be accepted? Moreover, until now, there is no answer to people whose domain names have not been accepted – a major weakness.
I like Bido, it is good to have such a platform, but please explain how you can manage to have a domain name accepted quickly on Bido? If you know a way, everybody here will no doubt be anxious to know it!
This being said, I am pretty sure that Bido will evolve still, and this might open new possibilities.