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.
Dan.com Being Retired by GoDaddy
GoDaddy acquired Dan.com in 2022. The company reportedly spent north of $71 million USD to acquire the domain name sales platform. This morning, GoDaddy announced it is “merging” the Dan.com platform with Afternic. The announcement was made in a blog post, and the company provided answers to numerous questions domain investors and Dan customers will likely have in the wake of this news.
This news isn’t surprising as the company has hinted at this outcome for a while. It comes after GoDaddy acquired Uniregistry, another competitor it shut down following an acquisition of its assets. Two well-liked platforms have now been acquired and retired.
QW.com UDRP Denied Due to “Fraudster”
A UDRP was filed at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) against the valuable 2 letter QW.com domain name. The complaint was a bit confusing, pitting the Complainant, Quickware, Inc. / Williams Fred, against Quickware, represented by Fred Williams, as the Respondent.
The sole panelist, Scott Blackmer, ruled in favor of the domain registrant in this UDRP. The decision was published on the WIPO website this morning. Based on my reading of the decision, it appears that someone impersonated the domain registrant in an attempt to wrest control over this high value domain name using the fairly inexpensive UDRP:
No Negotiation Box with GoDaddy Offers
Afternic recently began offering Dan.com-lookalike landing pages with GoDaddy branding. I liked them enough to move inventory to them away from Dan.com. Afternic followed this up with the ability to allow prospects to make an offer to buy a domain name in addition to the BIN and LTO options.
Unlike how the Make Offer process works on Dan.com, there is no negotiation box for sellers to communicate with buyers directly. Instead, when a buyer submits an offer via the landing page, the negotiation is handled by a GoDaddy broker.
Will Google Change Be a Nail in the Parking Coffin?
Jen Sale of Evergreen.com posted an email Google sent to its Google Ads advertisers. It looks like Google Ads will automatically opting-out new advertisers from advertising on parked domain names:
Interesting 🤔#domains @DInvesting @DomainNameWire @DNJournal @DomainSherpa pic.twitter.com/5FkyjeJfcG
— jen (@JenSale) September 4, 2024
Domain name parking revenue has been on the decline for quite some time. I have never earned much revenue from PPC advertising on my domain names, but I know quite a few people who made a living from parking back in the day.