WHY Why Push It To Auction?

If you take a look at sedo auctions at any given time most of the auction listings only have one bid and the vast majority of them also end up with one single bid – the end user who made a bid and the seller decided to push it to auction.

When you push a domain with a high starting bid (high in relation to its reseller value) to auction one of the following is bound to happen, in this order of likelihood:

1. The domain will get no more bids and the initial bidder will win. However during the 7 days he had plenty of time to (a) find another domain; (b) reconsider his proposal and (c) also saw that no one else was interested in outbidding him – which only tells him that he is overpaying, and no one likes to pay more. The chances of the buyer not following through with the purchase are increasing significantly and we all know how high is the percentage of non paying buyers on Sedo.
2. The domain will receive one more bid from another interested buyer. Strangely enough many sedo auctions end with just two bids (not 3 or 4, but exactly 2) – with the first bidder not getting into a “bidding war”. However in that case the seller only gets an additional $50 for his domain – which usually is not worth the trouble of a 7 day auction.
3. The domain receives many additional bids and ends with a significantly higher price – this is very unlikely if the initial offer was higher than the market price already and is much more likely when the initial auction starting price (which also serves as the reserve in such auctions) is much lower than the market price.

Clearly the third case is the only one that justifies pushing a domain with a high initial offer to a sedo auction. However it’s only likely if there can be many potential end users for the domain, or if the initial price was low.

If the initial bid is higher than the market value don’t auction the domain, instead negotiate the max you can out the buyer and try to close the deal as quick as possible!