DomainNoob.com

I’m still here. Still have a few hundred what I feel are awesome names for sale. Others I’m getting closer to being able to develop myself. I sell a handful a year. Some of the names on this blog have sold. I keep hoping one will turn into a Unicorn. But a few things have happened that have caused me to pull energy out of domaining.

I have absolutely no interest in the new gtlds. None.
It seems to me the market has gotten a lot tighter over the last year. It’s harder and harder to pick up a decent dot com using my previous methods. The wholesale prices I’m seeing being paid for crap domains makes me feel like a handful of players with deep pockets and clever bots are intent in owning the entire domain space (though Chinese domain investors are certainly adding to the froth).
But what led me to cut back drastically on my domaining is that Godaddy quit displaying closing prices on domains in my Watching List!  It started in March. A Godaddy Twitter response said it was due to the ‘quiet period’ around the IPO. Then the IPO ended.

Aww C'mon @godaddyauctions @Godaddy The IPO is over. Give us back closing sale prices in our Watching list. You're taking the fun out of it!

— John Humphrey (@DomainNoob) April 26, 2015

>@godaddyauctions @GoDaddy Would YOU buy houses in a market where you can't see what similar houses went for? #transparency #OldGodaddy

— John Humphrey (@DomainNoob) May 21, 2015

If I spend an hour combing through thousands of domains to find a handful that are interesting, shouldn’t the platform reward me by allowing me to confirm my hunches? Or conversely, If Godaddy doesn’t value my time on their platform enough to even share price data on the domains I decide to watch, what does it say about their attitude towards me, their loyal customer?

I would guess that a new manager took over the auctions at Godaddy after the IPO and decided that too many domains were slipping through their fingers for $12. And so decided to pressure users to make bids in order to see results. That’s what it felt like and that’s low!
And then they bought Afternic! Plunging head first into the domain resale business. Yuck!
How long do you think it will be before they start warehousing drops and putting premium pricing on those?

Godaddy was the last bastion of the fair shake for the little guy when it came to domains. But the lure of  just a little more profit seems to have dragged them into the slime with all the rest.