Thoughts of JS

Dear all,

If you are in the domain marketing you already know about Sedo, if not, check their site here. This post will be on their category showcase stuff.

I am working with Sedo for a few years now. They were good and used to intermediate decent sales for me. If you ask me, one of the most important factors of their success (and implicitly mine) was the fact that they used to list the ending auctions on their homepage, this way they were exposing those ending auctions to many potential clients. However, this no longer happens. They no longer list ending auctions on their homepage.
The result: most of the domains/websites are sold for less because there are less bidders.

I have tested their Category Showcase to. After I paid them to showcase my domain on 3 different categories and a month passed, here are the results:
Visitors to this Sedo offer page: 15 (previous 31 days)

Let’s suppose that nobody was directly interested and those 15 offer views are their merit, still, that’s extremely low, totally useless, I would say. Sure, it could happen that the 1st viewer BID $999999 and earn me some cash but we all know that things are not happening like this by default.
All in all, I was expecting at least 100 offer views (potential clients).

In the first 7 days, when I started to see the “results”, I’ve sent them an e-mail, letting them know that I am concerned and I was asking if there is something that we could do to have some benefits of of this category showcase stuff.

Here is what Jeff Wood, their customer representative, told me:

Thank you for your email. Unfortunately, the Category Showcases do not guarantee that your domain will sell. Category Showcases have been proven to increase the likelihood of a sale by five times.

Please keep in mind that the amount of traffic a domain receives depends on the current market for the particular category. Also, Category Showcases run for a month, please allow some time for any traffic to develop.

So, I allowed some time for the traffic to develop. When I wrote them, I had 6 views, now I have 15, he was right, the traffic did develop, NOT.

So, I recommend to you to think not twice but thrice, before paying them for showcase!

Today I wrote them another message asking for a refund. I can’t wait to see their reply.

Oh, one more thing that I really HAVE TO SAY: when it comes about their fees, they suck big time!!! If you sell a domain (that is not parked at them) for $60, you will get $10, the rest ($50) is their fee! Now, how that sounds to you?

[EDIT] Here is their response:

A Category Showcase is a promotion for your domain. The domain will appear on a separate list entitled “Featured Domains” at the top of the selected category in the Domain Catalogue. As with Featured Listings, Category Showcases run for 30 days. This type of promotion is ideal for highly-targeted domains, or those that fit well into a specific category/niche of the domain aftermarket with a narrower buyer base.

We do not make any guarantees that listing your domain in a Category Showcase will result in buyers making offers or a sales agreement being reached. We advise that listing your domain in a Category Showcase increases your chances of receiving an offer.

Unfortunately, a refund cannot be made just because no offers have been received.

Of course, I am upset because I got no offers but that would be OK if they would have sent me potential customers. Fifteen views for $14?! I better go advertise somewhere else.

Please do leave a comment, I really want to know what you think about all this.

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Written by Joseph

If you need someone to code/fix your site, contact me here.