TBR Drop - Sep 20, 2023 (3.Viewing)

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MapleDots

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Here's the updated Active Bid List (presumably from highest to lowest number of bids) on WHC:

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MapleDots said:
Why are they not showing number of bids
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There is no more Number of Bids - WHC is emulating CatchDrop's system.

They aren't even supposed to show the domain with bids, but their old system still sorts the same way so anyone can see them. It's even sorted to some extent pricewise, as the ones on the Hot List delineate the price levels, as those get auto-sorted on top.

Lazy asses can't have everything handed to them on a silver platter, or WHC would have zero real bidders like me, RLM or Eby. You can't just remove all the pro-customer features without giving any back, as it would be totally counterproductive and likely put you out of the TBR business pretty quick.

I think even CD knows that they've gone pretty well as far down the anti-consumer path as they possibly can without totally pissing off TBR customers. Even so, I know some people won't bid there because of the design of their system and auctions, and likely won't at WHC either.

And why do you care? You don't pre-order bid anyway.
 
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DomainRecap said:
And why do you care? You don't pre-order bid anyway.
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I actually do, it depends on what I see, I don't have time to peruse thousands of domains but I do have time for a couple hundred.

I don't think one can say who will or who won't bid. I know I have chased domains all over the world, regardless of platform. So in my opinion TBR will only grow in strength when more people have access to them. It will make more money for the TBR carriers who will in return reinvest in their infrastructure and the cycle will continue.

If I were to predict I would probably say there will be a few mergers or acquisitions coming in the future streamlining the system even further.

Why does that excite me?

If I see a domain I want I like to participate to see if I can win it. If I'm busy and I forget to place an order it is to my advantage to be able and join auctions to see if I can win a particular domain.

WHC and Catchdrop have made the process easier and I predict places like BareMetal will follow suit. Why do I think that? They have no choice, they are leaving money on the table with every auction because they exclude users who may have bid the domain up further had they had access to the auction.

I know when I was given access to the Twitter.ca auction at Baremetal I was one of the driving forces for the domain to bid as high as it did. I was even disappointed to lose it but I had a limit in my mind as to how high I would go.

The trick in future TBR's is to find the hidden gold and allow everyone else to bid on the obvious domains. Everyone will be so busy bidding on those domains the sleepers will make it through and the astute domainer will still be able to build a healthy catalog.

PS. I will probably move this discussion into the WHC announcement topic to keep it separate from the TBR topic in a few days.
 
But you're only talking about the ultra top end, the cream of the cream of the crop of domains, which will likely yield higher prices in open auction, but how high, and what about the meat and potatoes pre-orders that pay the rent each month?

As we've seen with CD, when they don't win the premiums, it's kind of a dead zone in terms of auction activity. Look at the last few weeks where the premium wins were hard to come by, and I don't think there were many bids, if any, on their mid-and low-range wins.

This is simply a byproduct of the auction system they have chosen, but next month could be different, with CD winning a pile of premiums and laughing all the way to the bank... or not.

That's the chance you take when you put all your TBR eggs in the premium basket - you risk ticking off the rank-and-file TBR buyer, who will simply move elsewhere to a registrar with a system more consumer-friendly to hardworking bidders who put in the hard time.

Roll the dice, pay the price.
 
MapleDots said:
WHC and Catchdrop have made the process easier and I predict places like BareMetal will follow suit. Why do I think that? They have no choice, they are leaving money on the table with every auction because they exclude users who may have bid the domain up further had they had access to the auction.
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I think you are absolutely wrong here, as BM already offers their $200+ pre-auction bid domain wins (all premiums hit that price guaranteed) in open auction, while also keeping any lower-priced wins at a private level.

This is a perfect system, as they don't "leave money on the table" with premium auctions, but still cater to the rank-and-file TBR customer with a consumer-friendly system for the low- and mid-range domains. And the weeks BM doesn't win any premiums, they don't have to eat gruel because there are still plenty of bidders willing to use their system to buy low- and mid-range TBR domains.

I think with WHC going "all-open-auctions-all-the-time" on even "what were measly $35 bids" is going to create a bloodbath of TBR activity at BM this week. I think the BM servers might lock up at 2:44 PM.
 
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DomainRecap said:
I think you are absolutely wrong here, as BM already offers their $200+ domain wins (all premiums hit that price) in open auction, while also keeping any lower-priced wins at a private level.
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The process has already begun, BareMetal allows people to join on request for high level domains.
It could mean the difference of the domain selling below 5k or over 10k. Why would they want to leave that money on the table?

How many times have I seen domains sell for a couple thousand where I would have gone much higher, but I was excluded from the auction. I hate going through lists having to sort then bid. I would rather wait to see what company wins the domain and participate there. I will set a maximum bid (what I think is a fair price to get the domain) and then I can walk away from the auction. I get it or I don't, and I don't have to worry about a phone call that interrupts my attention at the auction.

I simply bid on what I want and wait for the win or lose email. It's convenient and keeps me on budget, if I won every domain I went after I would go over budget so it's a great control system for me.
 
MapleDots said:
The process has already begun, BareMetal allows people to join on request for high level domains.
It could mean the difference of the domain selling below 5k or over 10k. Why would they want to leave that money on the table?
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They aren't, that's the point.

All premium auctions are open auction to anyone with a BM account, the exact same as CD and now WHC.

But once you move the "open auctions" down to the lower-end of the TBR domain scale, you take a huge risk that some customers will just avoid you altogether. And you need the RLMs and the Ebys to feed your TBR system with their hard work and research, in order to find and win non-premium domains that can yield consistent revenue week-to-week.

You can't have it both ways. If you change everything to "open auction", some people will avoid you in favor of more consumer-friendly registrars like (gasp) MyID. Remember, WHC and CD are not "winning" anything, they are only fulfilling orders, so with no well-researched orders filling up their system, it's basically "Premium or Bust".

So without the RLMs and the Ebys heavily using your TBR system, you're just gambling that you can win well-known premiums and really have nothing to fall back on if you come up empty on domains like Rapid, Song and Basic.

I guess WHC is pretty confident in their ability to win the premium TBR domains on a very consistent basis, otherwise I don't think they'd be making such a drastic change. If so, good for them.
 
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And you want my prediction? Even if you don't, here it is.

Absolutely nothing is going to change. Domain investors are unusually quick to adapt to a changing market, so WHC will make a bit more on their Premium Auctions, but they'll lose some of their old $20-$50 market to other registrars. So it'll be a wash unless a ton of premiums start dropping on a weekly basis, and I don't see that happening anytime soon.

The .CA investor/wholesale market is small and .CA domains are not exactly flying off the retail shelves :LOL: . It's a tiny market with a finite weekly budget and I don't see how moving to a new auction format is going to significantly change revenues over the long term.

The only thing that might do it is a huge upturn in retail .CA sales to companies and other end users, but that kind of shift is not anticipated and is also not within our control.

If you know anything about business, then you realize that no amount of hype or capital infusion in the wholesale market will ever create long-term .CA growth unless is it matched by a commensurate jump in the the volume and pricing of .CA retail sales.

You can only buy so many domains before you figure out you also need to sell them at some point in the future, so there needs to be adequate money at both ends of the equation to create sustainable .CA growth.

So TBR registrars can hire dancing girls, runs ads, give out free hamburgers, and switch auction formats like I do underwear (daily), but that by itself is not going to change anything over the longer term.
 
I’m not sure who DomainRecap is fooling and maybe he is unaware but there are multiple registrars where if you ask them they will add you into an “auction” without backordering the domain.

I’ve done that dozens of times. I won’t mention the registrars but I can tell you it’s more than one. So if someone wants a domain that got picked up and I see it went to a specific registrar and I didn’t backorder I can send an email and I’m added. Even if it only had one backorder.

It’s all about money for the registrars. Im surprised it’s taking them this long to go with a public auction system. Maybe because they fear fake bids and losing out.
 
theinvestor said:
I’m not sure who DomainRecap is fooling and maybe he is unaware but there are multiple registrars where if you ask them they will add you into an “auction” without backordering the domain.
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Well that's pretty scammy (both to allow it and to ask for it) but I'm pretty sure I can mention one off the top of my head. The whole business is a scam and I think a lot of us know it.

I know WHC doesn't do it because I placed a pre-order at WHC that crashed due to a system bug and didn't complete, and only noticed it later, but Frank said it wouldn't be fair to the other bidders to let me in.
 
I too think that WHC wasn't allowing that till now and I appreciated them for that. I saw a post by BM making it very public about adding a person to the auction, in case if he/she didn't initially request it - again, well above board and I can understand and accept that decision.

I have never known or have I ever tried to be added to an auction, when I have not pre-booked it with the same Registrar who won it.
 
Life is not fair; get over it. You gotta be really naive to think it’s an honest system. I’m more concerned of the illegitimate auctions that are happening and how much that has cost me over the years. Unfortunately no one regulates this nonsense.
 
Eby said:
I saw a post by BM making it very public about adding a person to the auction, in case if he/she didn't initially request it - again, well above board and I can understand and accept that decision.
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BM actually changed their position to "open auctions" for anyone with a BM account, but I think they still need to manually add your ID.
 
Below, you'll find some of the hottest .CA domains available to bid on this week. These names will likely attract attention, so place your bid before 2023-09-20 at 2:45 pm ET sharp to get in on the auction.

If you're looking for something more specific, you can always search the full list with your own keywords.





Want to learn more about domains and backordering? ... We recommend you read about the lifecycle of a domain name, domain investing and domain backordering.

Don't see the name you want? Stay tuned for next week's backorder list!

Happy bidding!

Cheers,
Frank (Chief Domain Nerd here at WHC)
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