Plagued by £45 and £50 offers

Nigel · Sep 17, 2010

Don't know if anyone else is experiencing a plague of £45 and £50 offers. Think a lot of our £45 offers are coming from the same 'September 2010' new sedo user.

I'd like the facility of hitting a cancel button immediately but Sedo haven't given us us that facility even though we've asked. I've thought about putting a minimum bid of £200 across our whole portfolio but am worried that potential buyers might begrudge bidding much above the min bid level on a valuable domain. I think its time Sedo themselves introduced at least a min bid level on Sedo of at least £100 or give us a 'sorry - your bid has been rejected' button.

retired_member13 · Sep 17, 2010

Nigel said:
I think its time Sedo themselves introduced at least a min bid level on Sedo of at least £100

Out of interest, what do you think would be the real difference if the minimum bid was £100 as opposed to £45 on a valuable domain?

Brassneck · Sep 17, 2010

I set all mine at £150. You do get bids above that straight away although are lot end up being for £150. Once you have a bid you always have the option of putting in the auction too.

Stephen.

grantw · Sep 17, 2010

If you want £10k for a domain then accepting £45 offers is a total waste of time in my opinion. If someone is willing to go to 5 figures on your domain then they're not going to be put off with a 4 figure minimum offer. All raising the minimum offer is going to do is get rid of the tyre kickers.

Grant

Nigel · Sep 17, 2010

Ty_ said:
Out of interest, what do you think would be the real difference if the minimum bid was £100 as opposed to £45 on a valuable domain?

I agree it wouldn't make a great deal of difference but at least it might deter some of the tyrekickers who set up a new Sedo account and are firing off tons of £45 offers.

Nigel · Sep 17, 2010

grantw said:
If you want £10k for a domain then accepting £45 offers is a total waste of time in my opinion. If someone is willing to go to 5 figures on your domain then they're not going to be put off with a 4 figure minimum offer. All raising the minimum offer is going to do is get rid of the tyre kickers.

Grant

In our portfolio we've got over 4000 domains ranging from around £500 level to five figure sums. Putting variable minimum bid levels on all the domains would be a huge job and I'm not sure we would want to put a £1k min offer on a five figure domain. If I was the potential buyer I'd be thinking that the min offer is near the desired price. I still like the idea of sedo introducing a new £100 min bid level - do you really think they're selling many at £45? and if so can they make much profit on those sales. Might be interesting if Sedo have any stats on the number of £50 (or lower) sales they do in a year.

grantw · Sep 17, 2010

Nigel said:
In our portfolio we've got over 4000 domains ranging from around £500 level to five figure sums. Putting variable minimum bid levels on all the domains would be a huge job........

True, it's a horrrible job, I'm 1300 behind at the moment myself!

Nigel said:
If I was the potential buyer I'd be thinking that the min offer is near the desired price.

At least the offer would be in a similar ballpark and you'd know that the buyer was fairly serious from the off rather than potential buyers thinking that £45 or £100 might be close to the asking price

Grant

retired_member13 · Sep 17, 2010

Alternatively, Sedo lets you put the same account wide description on all of your domain names alongside an account wide minimum bid, so maybe it'd be worth using a comment like "The minimum offer price on this premium domain is not our asking price, but is intended to ensure that we only enter into price negotiations with serious buyers"... or something like that...

Nigel · Sep 17, 2010

Ty_ said:
Alternatively, Sedo lets you put the same account wide description on all of your domain names alongside an account wide minimum bid, so maybe it'd be worth using a comment like "The minimum offer price on this premium domain is not our asking price, but is intended to ensure that we only enter into price negotiations with serious buyers"... or something like that...

Yes agree that would be a good idea. I think we would be inclined to put down a min bid level if we could add a little explanatory paragraph.

namealot · Sep 17, 2010

How does setting the minimum bid at £100 £200 etc stop people putting in silly bids i.e £100 on £5k domains

Although personally would never use sedo for £5k + domain (auction maybe ) apart from revenue being bad alot of end users have never heard of them , Found a simple one page for sale and price page has always worked for end user (might be different for reseller but as they need the price to be lower tend not too market too them….

Agree the silly bids are annoying but there is little they could realistically do to stop them it annoys many more when they accept bids and the other side don’t pay

retired_member32 · Sep 21, 2010

i like it when your domain fails to reach it's reserve in the auction (x,xxx) and you get a £50 offer afterwards because it failed and your desperate to sell at any price

cm1975 · Sep 22, 2010

namealot said:
alot of end users have never heard of them

I would imagine that anyone offering £45 via Sedo is an end user, or someone lacking the knowledge and experience of a regular domainer.

The reason I say this is because someone with more experience would surely contact the seller directly and offer a price that would circumvent the £35 Sedo fee.

What's the point in offering £45, when the seller will only get £10??

That's no offence to Sedo, as I realise that they have to charge a minimum amount for their service!

Nigel · Oct 1, 2010

Got another £45 offer today and thought I'd take a further look at why we're getting so many £45 offers. I've discovered that when someone makes an offer on any Sedo parked domain and when that offer is less than £45 the following flags up in red:

You are required to enter a bid of at least £45

I'm proposing that Sedo pro clients are given the ability to amend this min bid level as and when they want to. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a button next to our account manager info asking for the required portfolio min bid level.

Rob_F · Oct 1, 2010

Nigel said:
Got another £45 offer today and thought I'd take a further look at why we're getting so many £45 offers. I've discovered that when someone makes an offer on any Sedo parked domain and when that offer is less than £45 the following flags up in red:

You are required to enter a bid of at least £45

I'm proposing that Sedo pro clients are given the ability to amend this min bid level as and when they want to. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a button next to our account manager info asking for the required portfolio min bid level.

You can do that already.

My Domains > update sales settings > click select entire portfolio > enter minimum bid > save.

- Rob

Nigel · Oct 1, 2010

Hi Rob,

Thanks - I've now set up a £250 min bid level on all domains currently up for sale. I assume that every time I add domains and place others up for sale then I'll need to re-set min bid level across portfolio.

Nigel · Oct 2, 2010

OK so I've put the £250 min bid level across our portfolio and this is the confusing message that bidders now get:

Please note:

Your entry contains errors

Your offer is too low.
Premium domain names typically sell for three or four-figure amounts, and sellers will simply not respond to a bid if it is too low. If you need help setting a price, you can request an expert Domain Appraisal. You are REQUIRED to enter a bid of at least 45 £. Unfortunately, your offer is too low and cannot be accepted. Please submit an offer above the seller's minimum bid threshold of 250 £.

'Your entry contains errors' seems unnecessary and confusing

Telling bidders that they need to bid at least £45 and then in the next sentence telling them that they need to bid above £250 is also confusing and might make some bidders think it is some kind of scam. I think Sedo need to clear this up fast. I think I'll have to take off the £250 min bid level on our portfolio on Monday as I think the present wording will deter potential buyers.

Rob_F · Oct 3, 2010

That's new I think – probably since they screwed up the Sedo search/marketplace a month or so back :roll:.

Fairly sure it used to read just...

"Unfortunately, your offer is too low and cannot be accepted. Please submit an offer above the seller's minimum bid threshold of 250 £."

- Rob