Well, the time has come for me to raise some funds by flushing out a few of my better quality domains. For this reason, I have decided to list 8 domains in a featured auction over at Boxcar.com.
If you are a domain investor or know someone looking for quality domains, please head over to Boxcar and check out my auction!
Potentially breaking news here. It looks like Francois Carrillo has just released a new domain escrow service – eCop.com! This doesn’t look like just any escrow service though, it provides flexibility among multiples parties and multiple scenarios all at an extremely low cost! Straight-up sales look like they cost $20 per action required by eCop (ie. $20 for possession + $20 for payment disbursement) or $25 for a non-possession-based escrow.
The coolest part of the new service is the flexibility in options. Leasing, swapping and complex sales can all occur with low fees of just $20 per action!
I am sure more details will be released soon as I only noticed the new site based on a banner at the bottom of Cax.com.
Congrats to Francois on another potentially great product!
Well, Bido has been back for a couple of weeks now. The media coverage was initially strong and the Bido team was consistently discussing their return publicly in forums and on their blog. For some reason, things have changed – everyone is quiet again. I understand the team is (hopefully) busy making changes, but the core audience/members would like to be kept in the loop. Here are a few of my observations from the last few days.
The Bido Blog. This was one of the features that Jarred initially discussed upon the return of Bido. The blog represents and outlet for the Bido staff to discuss new features, domains in auction and more. Posts were occurring every few days, but there has since been an 11-day silence.
Auction setup delay. In the past, Bido auctions were generally setup (after getting the votes needed) within a few hours and never more than 24 hours after the final vote was cast. I had a few domains get the required votes 3 days ago and have heard nothing. Perhaps the team is working on a revised auction schedule, but I haven’t heard anything.
Social interaction. Jarred has always done a great job addressing individual questions at the various domaining forums, but has remained silent over the past week. Also, the Bido Twitter accounts have remained largely inactive over the last week.
In 2009 and early 2010 I was one of the biggest Bido cheerleaders out there, but Bido will have to continue to improve to retain my attention. I sincerely hope that the lack of information over the last 10 days is due to some major changes, but it’s just hard not to think the worst.
Anyone else have any recent experiences or interactions to share?
UPDATE: My Bido auctions are now being setup so clearly their is some action going on. Hopefully Jarred posts to the Bido blog in the near future.
Short update here, folks! The domain, Possible.com, that recently sold at Cax/PremiumDomains for $351,000 is now a developed site. I can’t quite say the sale was official as there has been ZERO major media coverage of this sale – perhaps that buyer wanted to keep it quiet, but it was sold in a public auction. My previous post on the sale got a bit of attention, but mostly from people thinking the sale was the result of a deadbeat buyer – doesn’t look that way now.
Anyways, the domain is now a developed psychic portal with the tagline “The World’s Leading Psychic Network”. Congrats to the new owner on the domain and developed site!
Any long-time readers of Rural Technocrat know that I was a HUGE Bido fanboy. I feel that I made a pretty good chunk of change through them and always loved the customer service they offered. When Bido shut down, I was absolutely shocked, but guess what…now they are back! While I haven’t blogged on the return of Bido yet, and don’t plan to (it’s old news now), I want to talk about Bido’s new scheduling arrangement.
Basically, Bido has decided to group gTLDs and ccTLDs by geo-location so that auctions are ending at ideal times in those time zones. This is a great idea in theory, but really, I imagine that there aren’t many people from Cocos Islands looking to by .CC domains at Bido. Now, if the idea was to move these less desirable extensions to obscure times in order to focus on North American/European ccTLDs and gTLDs, then I think it’s a VERY solid idea, but not without flaws.
First, the current auctions and live auction pages are full of .EU, .IN, .CC and other ccTLDs (disclaimer: I have submitted a couple of .CC domains myself). Many of these are decent quality with some of them receiving bids at or above the Bido Price – so some ARE selling. The issue that I see is that better quality gTLDs are getting hidden amongst these more obscure extensions – this leads to my second and more relevant caveat.
Right now it appears that gTLDs make up maybe half of the upcoming auctions at Bido. With the current schedule layout, I was able to have a .CC auction setup for 3 days from now, whereas if I wanted to setup a gTLD auction I would have to wait until November 21st!! In the past I always viewed Bido as a quick way to sell domains. Auction setup was always very quick and generally you could find an available slot within 2 days. Waiting almost 2 weeks for your auction to start really doesn’t work for me. Perhaps I am just an impatient domainer looking for immediate results, but one friend of mine shares the same sentiment.
Before you think that I am bashing Bido’s new format, I’m really not. Jarred has been very open about taking the time to find a balance between domain quality and sales. This will take time and I think this scheduling experiment will help make Bido better in the future. A scheduling tweak that keeps ccTLDs to every 5 minutes in their time periods, but allows gTLDs to be auctioned every 2 minutes, instead of every 6, could be one of many solutions to the two issues I have presented. I am sure something is currently in the works and I am quite certain that Bido will continue to become better and better.
If you want to read some top-quality posts on Bido’s return check out the articles posted at the following sites:
FloName – Bido.com: Will they make it this time?
DotSauce – Bido Domain Auctions Are Back, But Will They Succeed?
ChefPatrick – Bido is Back!
MorgonLinton – Bido is Back!
