标题：《Paul Nicks Godaddy Interview》
原文：http://www.domainsherpa.com/paul-nicks-godaddy-interview
迈克尔·赛格：大家好，我叫 迈克尔·赛格。而且，我是 DomainSherpa.com 的发布者，域名权威机构，在这里您可以直接从专家那里学习如何成为一名成功的域名企业家。你知道我们在这里做什么。我们邀请成功的域名投资者、企业家或主题专家，请他们分享技巧和策略，然后我们在您的专业领域激励您。然后，您可以参加节目并向其他人回馈您学到的知识以及您是如何成功的。无论您是当今正在寻找划算交易的域名投资者，还是正在为您的企业寻找完美域名的企业家，访问最大的域名市场都是您的最佳选择。由于 GoDaddy 是最大的域名注册商，管理着超过 5000 万个域名，因此从每月的销售量来看，他们也是最大的域名售后市场之一。和我一起告诉我们 Go Daddy 拍卖和售后市场的所有秘密的是 保罗·尼克斯。 Paul 是 Go Daddy 售后市场部门的产品开发总监。保罗欢迎来到这个节目。
保罗·尼克斯：嗨迈克！谢谢。
迈克尔·赛格：Paul，世界上大多数人可能不会在域名行业之外徘徊；世界上大多数人可能没有意识到域名可以像房地产一样买卖；并且，售后市场和拍卖甚至存在。 Go Daddy 的研究是否支持这一点？
保罗·尼克斯：哦，当然。我的意思是，在过去的几年里，我们今天一直在努力做的事情之一就是了解售后市场，提供可用的拍卖，一般来说售后市场上可用的库存，在去那里购买和修理它的顾客面前。而且，你知道，随着我们作为一个行业开始成熟，显然质量更高的名字，真正的品类杀手，甚至不一定是品类杀手，但听起来很酷，那些不是’可用。但很可能会有买家购买。因此，当他们前来在 GoDaddy.com 上进行注册或可用性检查时，我们非常关心地开始将库存呈现在他们面前。只要把它放在每个人面前，突然间，你就会提高整个售后市场的意识。这就是我过去几年一直在做的事情。您实际上是在尝试增加库存，只是增加对空间的了解。我认为你只能通过向用户和潜在买家展示这些名称确实存在，并且如果不能重新注册，他们可以在某个地方获得名称。
迈克尔·赛格：明白了。那么，帮助普通观众了解售后市场是您工作和您领导的团队的一部分吗？或者，这仍然是 Go Daddy 营销团队的一部分职责吗？
保罗·尼克斯：你知道，我们都是一起工作的。所以，你知道，售后市场部门，我们有营销人员，我们有支持团队。 GoDaddy 的执行客户代表非常好，我们得到了专门的拍卖支持等。所以，我们大家一起努力。我不能说这是一个人的工作胜过另一个人。作为产品经理，就像这里定义的那样，是的。我的意思是，我有责任确保客户能够使用我们的应用程序；满足客户所说的需求。因此，我们非常关注客户反馈等。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。因此，让我们先了解有关 Go Daddy 的一些基本信息。一般来说，大多数域名持有者都知道 Go Daddy 有多大。但是对于那些企业主或企业家的听众，你能描述一下 Go Daddy 有多大，以及你认为最相关的指标吗？
保罗·尼克斯：当然。好吧，我认为我们大致——您已经说过——我们拥有超过 5000 万个域名和管理，这比接下来的 80 个最大的注册商还要多。因此，它管理着大量域。但就 SSL 证书而言，我们也是第一。我们有相当大的业务份额，托管是我们业务的很大一部分，我们也处于领先地位。因此，除了域名注册之外，GoDaddy 还做很多事情，我们拥有 870 万客户群。因此，仅此一项就相当多了。因此，我想，这很好，在那里引导工具，以确保所有拥有 Go Daddy 域的客户也能够获得其他服务等，并准备好他们需要的东西。所以，我想说，你知道，我想这是一站式服务。虽然我们有域名注册，但我们也有所有其他服务，这些服务与建立小型企业到大型企业等有关。
迈克尔·赛格：当然。所以，你知道，对我来说，作为一个对域名行业比较了解的人，域名业务似乎是一个迷失的领导者。你知道，你一直在提供优惠券。如果人们去搜索，有很多网站似乎有 Go Daddy 优惠券，这些优惠券提供便宜的 dot com，或便宜的 dot biz，你知道，你可能会提供这些优惠券，你知道，一个小的加价，但随后您尝试出售托管服务和电子邮件，您知道，还有许多其他服务。真的是这样吗？
保罗·尼克斯：嗯，你知道，我认为这就是我们正在努力做的；很明显，一旦有人购买了域名，那么他们就决定了他们将在网上出现的地方，你不想认为这是理所当然的，对吧？如果有人把他们的名字放在那里，就是说，‘我想创业。我希望这是我在网上的存在’。它取决于使用以确保它们得到很好的支持。因此，一旦我们有了这些，Go Daddy 最重要的事情就不是我们注册域——我们注册域的成本很低——而是我们拥有的支持。您知道，我们在美国提供 24/7 全天候支持，这确实是我们吸引客户的地方；让他们感到舒服。如果他们需要其他服务，我们也可以提供。因此，我不会将其描述为追加销售概念，而是找到想要建立在线业务的人，并通过内部服务帮助他们实现该目标。
迈克尔·赛格：是的。好吧，我不得不说，刚开始，你知道，我确实使用 Go Daddy 作为我的注册商之一，前几天我想不出如何在一个域上获取电子邮件缓存转发到另一个，我看到了聊天按钮，我点击了它，你知道，不仅支持，你知道，帮助我启动并运行在那个域名上设置缓存，这样我就可以得到所有电子邮件，但他们还说，顺便说一句，您的帐户中还有一百个信用额度用于电子邮件，您不需要为此支付 2.95 美元，所以只需将电子邮件发送到账单和他们会退款给你，你知道，我还没有这样做，但我不得不说，你知道，就客户服务而言，这是一流的建议。因为它确实表明他们专注于客户服务。
保罗·尼克斯：是的。好吧，我们建立了整个公司。我的意思是，这绝对是公司的基石。
迈克尔·赛格：是的。那么，既然我们要谈论售后市场和拍卖，那么您在 Go Daddy 有多少客户，他们可能正在登录他们的账户，看看拍卖，在那里进行？
保罗·尼克斯：正如我所说，我们有 870 万客户。
迈克尔·赛格：哇。
保罗·尼克斯：而且因为我们将 GoDaddy 拍卖库存扩展到 GoDaddy 的可用性检查部分，可能每个客户——任何客户——或者甚至不是 GoDaddy 的注册客户的人正在寻找域名注册，接触售后市场。
迈克尔·赛格：对。所以，我可以去那里，到 GoDaddy.com，我可以输入 MichaelCyger.com，它会，因为我拥有它，它可能会出现并说这是可用的，你可以花两千美元购买它，或者如果我要卖它，价格是多少。然后它会将该用户直接带到拍卖部分。它是这样工作的吗？
保罗·尼克斯：有几种不同的方法。如果名称只是在拍卖会上，说出价，还价模式，但卖家真的没有在上面加上一口价，那么它将是拍卖网站的链接，用户将能够对该名称出价，并以该方法来回进行。但如果它通过我们的高级列表服务列出，这是我们具有快速传输能力的地方，那么最终用户（客户）的购买体验就像注册和修补一样。所以我们通过，我们说是的，它是可用的；这是它的价格。他们将其直接添加到购物车中。一旦他们付款，它就会自动转移到他们的帐户中，就像他们已经注册一样。因此，无缝流程确实是我们试图推动很多人等的地方。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。我会回来问你关于无缝流程的问题，因为我想知道从外行的角度来看它是否真的令人困惑，你知道，一些不了解系统的人。但我们会回到那个。 Go Daddy 拍卖售后市场有多少个域名？
保罗·尼克斯：我们现在有超过 440 万。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。而且，您每月大致销售多少个域名？
保罗尼克斯：每月；我认为上个月大约有 38000 个域。
迈克尔·赛格：三万八千。
保罗·尼克斯：那对我们来说是个好月份。是的。我想前一个季度我们的平均成绩是 34、35。
迈克尔·赛格：还有，在你们的拍卖会上，一个域名的平均售价是多少？
保罗·尼克斯：你知道，因为我们混在一起，而且我们在公开上市中也有过期的名字，所以很难对其进行衡量，但总的来说，公开上市的价格在千美元范围内。这真的是我们的甜蜜点。
迈克尔·赛格：是的。这就是 Tim Schumacher 在 Sedo 上所说的。大多数域名的售价都在一千美元左右。所以如果我们，你知道，如果我们回到信封计算，如果你卖了大约三万六千个域名，三万八千个域名，每个域名一千美元，那就是每月三千六百万美元，而且你知道，每年超过四亿美元。当然，这是总收入，并非所有收入都由 GoDaddy 保留，但这是您在那里管理的巨大售后市场。
保罗·尼克斯：我们做得很好。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。那么，现在GoDaddy的收入公开了吗？
保罗·尼克斯：不。Go Daddy 仍然是一家私人公司。
迈克尔·赛格：我在网上看到一些报道称，截至 2011 年 7 月，Go Daddy 的收入至少超过 11 亿美元。你能证实这一点吗？
保罗·尼克斯：是的。实际上，这就是我们今年的趋势，是 11 亿美元。听起来不错；听起来不错。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。因此，我们将深入了解您如何运营世界上的——让我们称之为——最高速度的市场，因为您有如此多的域名在您的市场上流通，并且每个月都在销售。但在我们这样做之前，让我问你几个私人问题，保罗。您拥有多少个域名，属于哪些 TLD？
保罗尼克斯：我有不到一百个。我想我现在大约有七十五岁了。我曾经有一百五十个左右，但我已经让一些人在 [Unclear 11:18] 之前掉了下来。大多数情况下，我有很多 COM。这些天我喜欢 ORG，所以我一直在做一些 ORG，但在投机方面不像现在我只是做一些个人事情并帮助人们解决领域等问题那么多。
迈克尔·赛格：明白了。您拥有 PaulNicks.com 吗？
保罗·尼克斯：我愿意。我愿意。还有 Nicks.mania、NicksFamily.com 和各种个人名字。是的。
迈克尔·赛格：是的。作为 GoDaddy 的主管，如果您看到好的域名下降并以拍卖告终，您是否可以参与市场交易？
保罗·尼克斯：不，不在 Go Daddy。我不允许通过我自己的市场竞标或出售名称，但没有任何限制，你知道，去另一个市场等等，并这样做。
迈克尔·赛格：太好了。并且，您是否拥有任何通用域名？类别杀手域名；任何会让人们垂涎欲滴撕毁您的域名组合的东西？
保罗尼克斯：我只希望。不，不，我仍然可以接受那些交易。
迈克尔·赛格：让我们深入了解一下 Go Daddy 售后市场。你知道，我知道售后市场不仅仅是拍卖。您能描述一下 Go Daddy 域名售后市场是什么，它包含什么吗？
保罗·尼克斯：当然。是的，我们对我们的服务进行了相当广泛的售后市场分类。所以，在最一般的意义上，就是拍卖和停车。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。
保罗·尼克斯：每个人都有自己的细分，你知道，我们的现金停车计划有一个名为 Quick Content 的产品，但我们也有现金停车计划。我们有评估，我们称之为域名购买服务，基本上是销售代表，如果用户感兴趣但售后市场没有，他们会尝试联系所有者，看看那里是否有任何谈判空间.所以我们有一些这样的产品，但这就是它的要点。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。因此，拍卖、停车、评估、域名购买服务，以及可能在每个类别中的一些额外服务。
保罗·尼克斯：当然。确实。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。那么，如果我们只关注拍卖部分，您的拍卖中有哪些域名？他们只是在您的拍卖中出售域名的人吗？
保罗·尼克斯：没有。实际上我们有。我想我们的拍卖行有点独特，因为我们有过期的域名库存以及我们所说的公共域名库存，这是有人实际上试图出售他们的域名。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。所以你得到了过期的，你得到了公众。那么，让我们暂时谈谈过期的。您能描述一下域名生命周期，以及 Go Daddy 拍卖售后市场如何适应吗？让我把它留在那里。
保罗·尼克斯：是的。因此，我们在生命周期中基本上拥有的是，一旦域名过期，一旦无法续订，或者原始所有者注册人没有，您知道，选择不续订，或者我们无法代表他们续订，您有 18 天的宽限期，原始注册人可以在此期间续订该名称并仅以续订价格赎回该名称。因此，没有额外费用或任何其他费用。十八天之后，你还有二十四天。因此，到期后总共有四十二个。你有二十四天的额外时间，注册人仍然可以赎回域名，但这次需要支付服务费，因为我们的呼叫中心方面需要做一些额外的工作。最后 24 天的最后 15 天，也就是发布回注册管理机构之前的最后 15 天是它通过我们的过期名称拍卖服务的时间。而且，仅此而已。基本上这是一个十天的拍卖。如果在十天的拍卖中没有人出价，那么我们会做的，我们会认为它是在价格不断下降的情况下立即购买的，比如说，从 10 美元降到 9 美元，8 美元。而且，如果在五天结束时没有人购买它，那么它就会回到注册表中。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。我想我明白这个过程是如何运作的，我有点了解它，但很难把它全部弄清楚。所以这非常有帮助。所以它会过期。所以，如果我的域名在今天过期，它就会过期，然后我有 18 天的时间可以实际续订它，即使它已经过期，而且 Go Daddy 不会向我收取任何费用。然后经过 24 天的期限，您需要支付赎回服务费。所以，即使它已过期，我仍然可以取回它。而且，服务费通常是多少？
保罗尼克斯：你知道，我不知道。这是我很久没看的东西了，所以……
迈克尔·赛格：好的。有任何想法吗;大约一百美元或二十美元？
保罗·尼克斯：我想说不到一百美元，但老实说我不知道多少钱。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。所以，一些费用。而且，你知道，老实说，我不愿意承认，我确实遇到过这种情况。你知道，我曾经经营一家媒体公司，我的一个域名刚刚停止工作；该网站刚刚停止工作，我认为它是主机。我打电话给他们，我很生气，结果发现它过期了，我不记得当时的注册商是谁。出于某种原因，我没有收到通知，所以，它可能发生在你身上，因为它发生在我身上，我对这样的事情有点胜任，能够打电话给他们非常有用，让它重新启动并运行，并有那个宽限期。好的。于是，十八天。之后的二十四天。这二十四天的最后十五天，它会被带到拍卖现场。
保罗·尼克斯：是的。
迈克尔·赛格：因此，作为买家，我实际上可能会在拍卖中看到一个域名，我可以出价长达 15 天，然后可能会被从拍卖中撤下，因为注册人决定续订以支付额外的服务费。
保罗·尼克斯：是的，当然。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。我明白那个。然后，它会进行为期 10 天的拍卖，如果没有人出价，它就会经历 5 天的降价，最后它会从您的注册表中删除，并可以通过其他任何人进行注册。
保罗·尼克斯：是的。
迈克尔·赛格：我的意思是通过任何其他注册商。
保罗·尼克斯：是的。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。我明白。
保罗尼克斯：如果它通过它。我的意思是，有那种潜艇。请问一下，如果通过了子类。如果我们将它发布到注册表，那么它就会进入 drop catching 世界。是的，所以在它可用之前，您还必须确保所有掉落收集器。
迈克尔·赛格：明白了。所以，GoDaddy 拍卖会实际上在它进入掉落捕手之前一直拥有它。
保罗·尼克斯：是的。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。我明白。然后滴滴捕手，实际上有多个登记处，也可以在像我这样不了解滴滴捕获整个过程的人可以手动注册之前尝试抢夺它。
保罗·尼克斯：当然。
迈克尔·赛格：我理解这个过程。每个过期的域名都经过这个过程吗？
保罗·尼克斯：在 Go Daddy 是的。所有过期的 Go Daddy 名称都会进入过期拍卖流程。
迈克尔·赛格：所以没有其他例外流程，GoDaddy 员工可以购买东西，GoDaddy 的合作伙伴可以购买东西？像这样的东西。
保罗·尼克斯：不是。没有那样的事。所有过期的东西 100% 都在拍卖市场上，显然仍然可以赎回，但我们没有任何附带交易，或类似的东西。
迈克尔·赛格：因此，Go Daddy 拍卖中有两种类型的域名。有过期的、类似于预先删除的域名，然后是您称之为公共域名。所以，有自己的域名。我可能拥有一些域名。我可以将它们列在 Go Daddy 拍卖中出售。
保罗·尼克斯：是的。
迈克尔·赛格：那些显示在过期域名旁边。有没有一种方法可以在不进行 WhoIs 查找来确定到期日期的情况下在两者之间进行确定？
保罗·尼克斯：当然。是的。我们有;拍卖网站本身具有复杂、高级的搜索功能。因此，在拍卖的右侧，您可以通过多种方式对数据进行过滤和排序。我的意思是，你知道，你可以按年龄来做；您可以通过字符数、TLD 等来完成。其中一个选项是，如果您想查看公开列表或过期库存。这也是我们在搜索中标记它们的方式。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。所以，我在这里打开了一扇窗户；我只是在看，保罗。所以，我会点击右侧的导航；有一个名为“类型”的部分，然后是“即将到期的拍卖”。那么，那些实际上是在域名生命周期中过期的那些，对吗？
保罗·尼克斯：是的。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。然后我看到公开拍卖的其他选项，这是另一种类型。然后你现在有公开购买，所以，如果有人只是想设定价格而不是将其发送给拍卖。然后您还有一些其他选项：平仓、价值价格名称、要约 – 还价和域连接。我们可以通过其中的一些吗？比如，你能告诉我什么是封闭域吗？
保罗·尼克斯：是的。实际上是最后五天，我们将不再拍卖的过期名称放在那里。现在是一口价。这就是我们所说的平仓。
迈克尔·赛格：在这五天里，价格每天下降一美元。
保罗·尼克斯：没错。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。然后，什么是超值名称？
保罗·尼克斯：一个定价的名称是这样的，比如说有人注册了十年或五年的域名，或者不管它是什么，然后我们从注册处得到它，他们无力支付。我们无法为此获得任何东西，所以它就在那里，我们被困在注册表中。如果我们不能收回我们的钱，我们就把它放在拍卖会上，基本上收取续订费。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。并且，报价/还价。
保罗·尼克斯：对不起。
迈克尔·赛格：报价/还价。这是如何运作的？那显然是公有的；有人拥有该域名，对吗？
保罗·尼克斯：是的。是的。报价/还价是我们的公共新闻。这是卖方没有定价的必需品，因此您进入了谈判期。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。类型中列出的最后一个是域连接。
保罗·尼克斯：是的。这对我们来说有点新鲜。我想我们推出了那个；我们称它为六个月前左右。这是我们第一次真正从我们的客户那里获取一些相当不错的库存，并能够逐步完成。这是很好的代理经纪业务，但这是我们拥有域名的事情之一，我们正在努力寻找和寻找与我们的客户群真正匹配的买家。所以，这是一种特殊的列表类型。我们的行政客户代表确实处理了很多这样的事情。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。所以这可能就像一个附加到域名的经纪人的高级列表。
保罗·尼克斯：注意术语。高级列表是 Go Daddy 中的一个东西；那是我们的快速转移挂牌服务。所以，我不会称之为溢价。它可能是一个带有域连接列表的高级域。说某事好有很多种方式，对吧？所以。
迈克尔·赛格：对。似乎每个人都以不同的方式定义这些术语。
保罗·尼克斯：对。正确的。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。嘿，你知道，我有一个问题，保罗，关于正在进行拍卖过程的域名，它们是否已过期或是否为公共 – 由另一个人所有。 GoDaddy 是否拥有任何投资组合，以便您可以通过该过程出售这些投资组合？
保罗·尼克斯：我们不会出售任何东西。显然，我们拥有 Go Daddy 域名组合，但仅此而已。我们不在售后市场工作；我们不出租房屋名称。没有沿着这些线。不。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。因此，我不会让 Go Daddy 与我竞标某个正在拍卖的名称。
保罗·尼克斯：无论是 Go Daddy 还是我们的任何员工。
迈克尔·赛格：现在，Go Daddy 是否真的会在拍卖之前剥离任何域名，如果它是一个过期的好域名？
保罗·尼克斯：不。这就是我之前所说的，所有库存都用于拍卖。这真的是所有的库存。我们没有任何隐瞒。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。伟大的。好的。而且，您知道在您的拍卖中过期域名与公共域名的数量大致是多少吗？
保罗尼克斯：是的，这很有趣。随着我们获得新库存，这个数字每天都在剧烈波动。它不到一半，但你知道，我们所有名字中的大多数都是公开的。但它有点波动。我不认为； expired 从未超过一半标记。
迈克尔·赛格：所有域名都经过拍卖。我有一个读者的问题。 Go Daddy 上所有每日丢弃域名的百分比是多少？这是一个有趣的问题。所以，我什至不知道所有域下降的数量，你知道的。
保罗·尼克斯：我们是在整个互联网上聊天吗？
迈克尔·赛格：我相信是这样。
保罗·尼克斯：你知道，显然这很难回答，因为可能不知道每天掉落的域名数量。但是因为我们拥有的域比说的要多，接下来的八个注册商，我们知道这可能是——我认为可以公平地说——可能是一个合理的假设，即有多少域在我们的系统中与其他系统相比实际下降了多少。所以，我会说。你在那里做数学，但是。
迈克尔·赛格：我认为 Go Daddy 拥有世界上大约一半的域名注册，这样说是否合理？
保罗·尼克斯：你知道，我不知道那个数字。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。
保罗·尼克斯：我不确定总数是多少。我知道我们有超过五千万。总注册商在亿级范围内似乎是正确的，但我不确定。
迈克尔·赛格：在 Go Daddy 名称过期、拍卖后多久，另一家注册商或 drop catcher 可以注册该域名吗？
保罗·尼克斯：那是在第四十天之后。
迈克尔·赛格：它是在任何掉落时间立即出现的？
保罗·尼克斯：不管是什么掉落时间，对吧。所以，它熄灭了，但很明显。注册表处理可用于手动注册的内容的方式，就是落水捕手真正发挥作用的时候。因此，一旦我们将其重新发布到注册表中，我不能百分百确定它的后勤工作，但我很确定它不会立即可供注册。注册管理机构必须完成他们的工作，然后将其丢弃并提供给注册管理机构。
迈克尔·赛格：明白了。好的。 GoDaddy 今天大概有多少员工？
保罗·尼克斯：哦，大概是三千三百。我想我们已经超过三千三百人左右了。
迈克尔·赛格：所以，三千三百。你知道，你必须有一定数量的域名投资者在 GoDaddy 工作。他们活着。他们呼吸它。他们可能像许多域名投资者一样迷上了域名。
保罗·尼克斯：当然。
迈克尔·赛格：Go Daddy 不允许每个员工都参与拍卖？
保罗·尼克斯：对。
迈克尔·赛格：哇！
保罗·尼克斯：这是一个非常严格的规定。但是，你知道，它是几年前提出来的。 Andrew Aldo 在 Bob Parson 的广播节目中说，嘿，你知道，这给人的印象是人们或员工在竞标你的客户，从那天起，Bob 说，没有更多，他说的是.所以。
迈克尔·赛格：那么，让我问你一个关于安全的问题。你知道，你有什么安全措施来防止员工抽烟休息、走到外面和打电话投标吗？
保罗·尼克斯：你知道，安全的具体细节，显然，我们不能深入了解，但是，你知道，我们有一个 24/7 的反欺诈团队。我们有一个 24/7 的安全团队，实际上已经赢得了奖项。我们赢得了 2011 年 SE 杂志顶级安全团队，我认为他们是 2012 年的决赛选手，所以。
迈克尔·赛格：哇。
保罗·尼克斯：显然，我们非常重视域安全和保护我们的客户。一旦发现员工竞标会损害我们客户的利益。你知道，即使是对我们的客户造成损害的看法，你知道的，所有这些都成为安全计划的一部分。因此，我们在安全领域所做的一切都是为了保护我们的客户。
迈克尔·赛格：是的。好的。
保罗尼克斯：包括，你知道，显然（不清楚 28：34.9）。
迈克尔·赛格：很明显，你知道，员工投标在过去一直是个问题，你知道的。我知道在 2005 年到 2009 年之间的四年里，你们的一个主要竞争对手发生了一起竞标事件。你知道，我想很多域名行业以外的人会看着并说，你知道，这是整个行业，我不明白事情是如何运作的。什么是阻止其他人，你知道，来自 GoDaddy 的外部人员，或者 GoDaddy 内部的人从托儿出价，从出价我，只是为了卖更高的价钱。您知道，什么可以阻止域名卖家创建第二个帐户并出价尝试提高域名价格？
保罗·尼克斯：当然。你知道，我认为外界的看法，如果他们要看，你知道，潜在的投标等，我认为无论我们获得什么样的安全奖项，或者任何类似的东西，品牌，你知道， Go Daddy 品牌、Go Daddy 的知识和舒适度以及理解和知道您正在与谁一起工作确实是新手最终用户中最大的一部分。他们想和他们觉得舒服的人一起工作。所以，他们来找 GoDaddy。他们见过我们；他们了解我们。他们知道我们不是夜以继日的行动，所以他们相信这一点。然后，在内部，我们的工作就是不把事情搞砸；那种信任，对。因此，在内部，我们已经准备好所有的流程提要，因此可以很好地找到新手用户对我们的信任。所以在内部，我们做我们所有的工作来确保没有像你知道的那样，皮肤或任何类似的事情发生，并且在品牌中向外延伸，在品牌认知中，并且在，你知道的，确保没有什么是真正出错的。所以，它的所有部分舒适度是描述它的最大方式。
迈克尔·赛格：是的。好吧，我明白了。而且，你知道，我体验过客户服务，我认识 GoDaddy 的一些人，包括你自己。因此，我对那里的员工类型有所了解。而且我认为我可以信任 Go Daddy 以及您提供的服务。但我认为世界上很多人在超级碗期间只看到 GoDaddy 三十秒，而且他们看到的只是穿着紧身衣服的女人，或者飞驰的汽车，或者类似的东西。你在 GoDaddy 内部讨论过你在 GoDaddy 描绘的文化类型吗？群众的内部与外部；非域名投资者。
保罗尼克斯：我可以说是的。他们有。对话确实一直在发生。我可以说，我有那些对话（不清楚 31:36.8），但品牌肯定是我们非常重视的东西，我们在营销方面做得很好。显然，它帮助我们做得很好。而且，如果您有点阅读该网站，您会知道，您会在网站上看到 (Unclear 31:53.8)，但您不会看到轻薄的，您不会看到背心等。这都是生意。因此，一旦您将用户吸引到该网站，我们就会开始描述我们作为一家公司可以提供什么，作为一项服务。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。这就说得通了。那么，Go Daddy 的售后市场有哪些最大的拍卖销售额？
保罗·尼克斯：我们有过一些。房主保险是我们最大的保险；抱歉，HomeownersInsurance.com。我们以 570,000 美元的价格卖掉了那个。
迈克尔·赛格：哇。
保罗·尼克斯：Color.com 是许多技术博客中实际出现的较大博客之一。它成功了，并基于该域名制作了一个非常漂亮的应用程序。以 350,000 美元的价格售出。所以，我们喜欢；我们在这个十万美元的范围内玩过几次。还没有达到百万美元的销售额。
迈克尔·赛格：因此，在宣布出售后，我实际上联系了 Color.com 的创始人兼首席执行官，我试图让他在节目中谈论拥有通用高级域名作为公司的好处名字，他拒绝申请我的电子邮件。所以，没有难过的感觉。如果他想上节目，我们还是可以商量的。我知道该应用程序的第一个版本并不成功，但我相信人们会喜欢听听它的进展情况。那么，您是否积极寻求其他域名投资者或域名所有者，他们拥有可以以五十万、一百万、一百万半的价格出售的优质域名，并尝试通过拍卖出售它，或者如果他们有兴趣吗？
保罗·尼克斯：你知道，在这一点上，我们更多地站在它的一边。所以，有很多机会。今年是特定的，你知道，2011 年，2010 年末。所以，一切都在蓬勃发展，你得到所有这些库存，让市场按照它所做的去做，领域评估就这样上下波动，但有在域售后市场领域有太多机会，我一直专注于只是让列表进入。所以它是，获得更多库存；高质量，低质量，你知道，这对我来说无关紧要。如果有人在拍卖会上寻找低质量的名字，我不会说对不起，你不能在这里找到它，而是去这个质量更高的名字，对吧。所以，这是一个，我想确保一般售后市场中可用的所有库存（不清楚 34:34:27.2），但域名售后市场可供我们的注册使用，我们的客户群正在寻找这些名称.这就是我现在的生活。
迈克尔·赛格：是的。嗯，所以你提出了一个有趣的观点，关于趋势。保罗，你担任这个角色多久了？
保罗尼克斯：在这个角色上，称之为一年半。我在 GoDaddy 和售后市场工作了四年半，现在已经快五年了。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。所以，四年，五年。您已经看到了 Go Daddy 拍卖的趋势。全年是否有特定趋势？您是否经常看到更多的域名在年底进行拍卖，然后在假期逐渐减少，然后在税收季节之前重新出现，或者类似的事情？您是否注意到一年中某些时候与节假日、冬季月份或其他相关的特定趋势？
保罗·尼克斯：你知道，那是相当接近了。这是季节性的。因此，就像调用 6 月、7 月的范围一样，您会看到购买量减少。人们刚刚开始尽其所能享受他们的家庭时光。一般而言，在秋季收获颇丰。我认为秋天对我们来说非常好。而且，你会看到感恩节有所下降，所以基本上我们将开始看到下降，我想，这周，将持续到周末和网络星期一。然后我们会再次回来直到圣诞节。所以这在很大程度上是季节性的。批量注册或批量购买的人也必须休假。
迈克尔·赛格：对于买家和卖家来说，这是季节性的吗？
保罗尼克斯：哦，好吧，是的。我的意思是，基本上，是的。对整个市场来说都是季节性的，所以对双方都有影响。
迈克尔·赛格：是的。好的。你知道，我只是想看看是否有与季节性相关的内幕消息。您知道，如果市场上的域名较少，并且在 6 月或年底假期期间买家较少，那么现在是购买的更好时机，因为域名上的报价会减少有空吗？
保罗·尼克斯：是的。我认为购买的时机是购买方竞争较少的时候。所以，我认为买入这些名字的最佳时间是季节性下跌、Junish、感恩节周末、圣诞节等。最好的卖出时间肯定是在圣诞节之后。你不想在创业者在年初的时候接手；他们正在制定商业计划；他们正准备全力以赴。我们通常认为一月将是一个非常好的月份；从历史上看，这对我们来说是个好月份。因为你得到了新一波的创业新年决心等。那时候你肯定希望你的库存出现在那些人面前。
迈克尔·赛格：对。好吧。很棒的提示。很多人可能会在 Go Daddy 上完成手动注册过程，如果卖家在系统中有他们的域名，那么他们也可以利用这一点。
保罗·尼克斯：当然。当然，还有超级碗月，也不应该打折，对吧？所以。
迈克尔·赛格：这是一个很好的观点。这可能是一个很好的观点。你们今年还会参加超级碗吗？
保罗·尼克斯：你知道，我不确定我的停车位在做什么。我不确定我们做了什么，或宣布了什么。
迈克尔·赛格：哦，来吧！在这里给我们一些好东西！
保罗·尼克斯：你知道吗？老实说，我希望我有营销方面的内幕，但这不是我的领域。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。让我们谈谈定价和佣金。如果，您知道，显然某个域名已过期并且正在通过 Go Daddy 拍卖，您将获得该域名售价的 100%。如果我作为域名所有者，想拍卖我的一些域名；如果我想把它送到十天的拍卖会上；如果我想以固定价格出售它；如果我想，比方说，做出报价类型的投标情况，我可能会付给你多少佣金来代表我出售域名？
保罗·尼克斯：因此，如果您以您描述的方式列出拍卖，那么 7 天拍卖或要约/还价等，将收取 10% 的佣金。这是在那些名称确实可以看到可用性检查注册路径的地方设置的。那不是快速传输系统，而是相当多的暴露于数百万的可用性检查等。我们有我们的优质上市网络，这实际上是我们的快速传输系统，这是百分之三十的佣金，这主要基于确保快速传输发生等所需的基础设施。但到目前为止，这种风险敞口是，优质房源是迄今为止我们最大的销售率，因为从本质上讲，这与新鲜注册的体验是一样的。
迈克尔·赛格：嗯。好的。如果我想对域名进行投标，我需要支付什么费用？
保罗尼克斯：那将是百分之十。
迈克尔·赛格：那将是百分之十。好的。那么，优质房源与非优质房源的销售率是多少？
保罗尼克斯：更高。你懂。
迈克尔·赛格：我们是在谈论百分之二十对百分之十，还是百分之三对百分之一？我正在寻找的只是一个数量级。
保罗·尼克斯：根据我的经验，优质房源的售出率大约是拍卖品的八到十倍。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。我要买它。好吧。那么，GoDaddy 拍卖系统与其他拍卖服务有何不同？你知道，每个人都知道那里的所有拍卖服务。 Sedos，Name Jets，你知道的，Snap Names。您的系统与他们的系统相比有何优势？您如何将您的系统与其他人的系统区分开来？
保罗·尼克斯：嗯，显然，任何市场都有两个方面。那将是买家和卖家，对吧？因此，在销售方面，我们所拥有的是，如果您想了解您的名字、您的库存、向我们的买家展示我们的客户可用性检查路径，那么我们将获得最低的佣金来做到这一点。所以，我们得到了百分之十的佣金；我们会让你参与其中。现在，我们显然与 Afternic 达成了协议，我想我们已经宣布了，他们的名字也出现在那里的流量，但你要支付 Afternic 佣金，这并不比你知道的高一点百分之十。但除此之外，你知道，在列表网站上，这是一个有你名字的地方。它在购买方；是 870 万客户在寻找域名，我们注册了。我认为是我们每 0.77 秒注册、续订或转移一个新域，或者类似的一些荒谬的统计数据。因此，除此之外，您还进行了如此多的可用性检查，这实际上是在 Go Daddy 库存的购买方。因此，您必须通过合作伙伴或直接通过 GoDaddy 获取它。我们正试图将所有这些名字放在那里。所以这真的让我们与众不同；它不一定是世界的上市方面。相反，它是世界的购买方，它进来了。如果我知道的话，我会试着列出你的名字。所以，确保我知道你的名字，我会在可用性检查路径上找到它。
迈克尔·赛格：对。好吧。所以，实际上，人们想去最大的买家市场所在的地方出售他们的域名。这就是人们去亚马逊销售产品的原因。因为亚马逊为他们带来了历史上最大的市场，供人们寻找新东西。或者，他们去 Ebay 寻找二手货。
保罗·尼克斯：是的，当然。我认为这也是一个公平的类比。我的意思是，亚马逊不一定拥有来自人们去亚马逊的所有库存（不清楚 42:17.2），而且他们也与大卖家有合作伙伴。他们将自己视为销售产品的地方，无论他们的产品在哪里。这与我们的运营方式非常相似，我有一位客户正在寻找域名。我绝对知道。我知道他们要找的名字。如果我不知道该名称在售后市场上可用，那么卖家就失去了机会。
迈克尔·赛格：Sedo 推广他们的多重列表服务，该服务允许注册商出售域名以及列出他们自己的域名。 Go Daddy 是一个注册商，所以很明显你不会与其他注册商合作来出售你的域名库存，即他们服务的拍卖库存。您是否为您的合作伙伴提供类似的多重上市服务，或者您如何在买家面前进行拍卖？
保罗尼克斯：你知道，我们的拍卖，对我来说，我们有买家。我们不需要像其他注册商一样努力工作以获取拍卖库存，您知道，另一个注册服务商可以使用检查路径。而且我认为我们显然已经进行了绝大多数可用性检查。所以我们在那里做得很好。所以，对我来说，更多的是关于将库存存入我们系统的合作伙伴关系，而不是将库存推出。
迈克尔·赛格：是的。
保罗·尼克斯：就是这样，Aternic 交易可能是最好的例子，他们在（不清楚 43:50.8）拍卖中列出了他们的库存；我们将显示它以利用检查路径，这对我们来说效果很好。
迈克尔·赛格：让我们谈谈您之前提到的无缝流程。所以，有人看超级碗广告，你知道，这是一个在企业工作的人，他有了一个企业的想法，他看到了超级碗上的广告，所以他去了 GoDaddy.com，然后他输入 PimpOutMyCar.com 或其他任何内容。我，你知道，我编造了这些域名，我敢肯定域名投资者会说，’是的！我拥有那个域名。我没有对它做过任何检查。所以，它说，是的。它返回“是的，这个域名可以用两千美元购买”。我不记得你用的是什么术语，是什么短语，但对我来说有点混乱，因为我无法第一眼分辨域名是否出售，比方说，用于手注册十美元、十二美元，或者是否通过拍卖出售。您是否有客户实际上对您说这令人困惑？为什么这个域名要收我两千块钱，或者十几块钱？
保罗尼克斯：嗯，你知道它是什么吗？我们总是遇到将一万美元的名字添加到他们的购物车的人，并且很困惑为什么它突然一万美元用于一个名字。除了“是的，这个名字可以 X 价格购买”之外，我们还提供了一个电话号码。因此，我们的支持人员，我们的呼叫服务人员在解释优质清单的价值、拍卖清单的价值方面训练有素；解释为什么，你知道，比 10 美元的新注册要多钱，而且你知道，肯定会有某种程度的混淆，但是当我们在公众面前出现更多这样的名字时，这种混淆只会减少，对。所以，获得尽可能多的列表是我的世界的一部分，是的，这个名字可以以一定的价格出售，或者是的，这个名字可以在最终用户面前拍卖以提供/还价，我可以，这只会培养对整个系统的熟悉。因此，随着我们的客户对这一点的了解越来越多，他们就会告诉他们的朋友等等，然后这只会促进售后市场的发展。不仅仅是 Go Daddy 售后市场，还有整个域名售后市场。我认为我们有责任——我有责任——确保我们的最终用户了解这个可用的，或者这个库存是可用的，并且可以拥有；我们有电话号码来解释它。你知道，对于 Go Daddy 来说，这是一个很棒的提议，因为有人可以解释一个域的价值，解释这个，你知道，PimpYouCar 等等只要一千美元就可以买到，不管它是什么。一旦他们明白了这一点，您就知道有人愿意用这个域名投资他们的业务，然后就可以轻松地进行对话，您知道，您将需要什么安全性name，您将需要 SSL 证书；以下是我们如何通过我们的服务帮助您打造这个品牌。所以，很明显，这符合 GoDaddy 的最大利益。拥有域名符合客户的最大利益。我们可以在内部做所有事情来帮助他们开展业务。这就是整个模型。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。而且，用户能否继续使用 Go Daddy 并进入售后市场，购买他们想要的任何类型的域名 TLD？他们可以购买加拿大域名或列支敦士登域名 – .LY 域名吗？您支持所有不同的 ccTLD 吗？
保罗·尼克斯：.LY 是 Lybia。
迈克尔·赛格：哦，Lybia。这是正确的。
保罗·尼克斯：但要回答这个问题，是的，你知道吗？我们不提供所有 TLD。 CA，我们在拍卖平台上提供CA，但不提供LY。并且有多种原因。您知道，一些注册管理机构只是稍微限制了他们对注册人规则的更改。所以我们确保，你知道，我们一直在为着眼于售后市场的注册机构工作，他们了解注册人的变化；你做的越容易，就我而言，你注册的名字就越容易。所以，是的，绝对。我们现在提供尽可能多的。我们总是希望在它们进来时添加更多。
迈克尔·赛格：在 Go Daddy 拍卖售后市场购买域名是否收费？
保罗·尼克斯：有会员费。所以，是的，我们有一年的会员资格，用于上市或购买。 4.95 美元；大约五美元。
迈克尔·赛格：那么，为什么要收取每年 4.95 美元的会员费来竞标域名？
保罗尼克斯：你知道，最大的原因是，我们想要一种方法来验证这个人是他们所说的那个人。所以，你知道，我们的市场上有 440 万个奇怪的域名。你知道，你可以放心，一个人，实际上通过我们的购物车进行了购买，并验证了信用卡，是一个列出这些的人。或者，如果你在出售，而有人在竞标你的名字，这是相同的基本想法。我们已经与投标人进行了交易，以确保我们已经验证了他们的身份。所以这是投标人验证。 （抱歉，搞砸了。）投标人验证。但是，是的，这基本上是我们措施的安全措施。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。所以在其他我不需要支付任何费用的域名市场上，我可以获得一个帐户，你知道，一个名字和一个电子邮件地址，这将允许我潜在地竞标域名，然后走开从它，而在你身上，你至少拿了一张信用卡，所以你有一些时间去金融系统。
保罗·尼克斯：对。是的，其他系统，我的意思是，他们通常都有，如果你出价超过这个特定金额，那么他们将继续对信用卡进行某种象征性的收费以验证该信用卡。我们只是在前面做。我们要确保，即使是价值较低的名字也不是像所有较高价值的名字那样最好的欺诈审查类型。
迈克尔·赛格：是的。好的。所以，如果一个域在另一个没有 GoDaddy 那么大的注册商处注册，该域将可以注册，你知道，在它过期并经过赎回期之后，你知道，从注册商处删除，它是您知道，可用于接球或手动登记。但正如我们所讨论的，在 GoDaddy，域名会进行拍卖，这基本上要求域名买家每年支付额外的 4.95 美元会员费才能对其进行竞标，以尝试赢得它来注册该域名名称。这是，你知道，它有点像有与无。有一些域名注册商的规模大到可以创建这个拍卖系统，还有一些注册商的规模还不够大，无法拥有这样的系统。在域名行业中，拥有这种类型的系统是否公平，在某些注册服务商存在售后市场或拍卖而其他注册商不存在的情况下？
保罗·尼克斯：你知道，我想讨论公平的定义总是很有趣。所以，就我而言，是的，它比许多替代方案公平得多。所以我们在 GoDaddy 的拍卖平台上创建的是一个真正免费的拍卖系统。因此，我们不会夸大任何域名的价值，我们不会有所保留、存储等等。他们都去拍卖系统。他们以十二美元起步。如果对名称感兴趣，那么您将拥有一个公开拍卖系统而不是封闭式拍卖系统。然后显然随着过程的进行，然后它会进入立即购买，平仓等等。因此，我们创建的是一个完整的自由市场系统，在该系统中，域名买家实质上将决定域名的价值。如果我们将它们全部送回注册管理机构等等，您得到的仍然是这些名称的拍卖。所以你仍然会，如果这个名字足够好，得到将要玩的掉落捕手，把这些名字拿出来，然后把所有这些都放在私人拍卖中或者自己留着，这个系统实际上更加孤立比我们在拍卖系统中拥有的要多。所以我认为，去其他你必须了解内部运作的系统实际上是不公平的。你知道，它试图解释，你知道，我的妈妈，什么是 drop catcher，以及你如何不得不以 70 美元的价格延期订购一个名字，而你甚至在你买完之后仍然得不到这个名字承诺支付那笔钱，因为你必须和一群其他人一起去拍卖。你知道，这很难解释。解释我们的系统要容易得多，它在拍卖的地方，有人出价，它是完全免费的，而且在那里。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。这就说得通了。
保罗·尼克斯：我认为这是有道理的。我认为这是公平的。我认为这很好。
迈克尔·赛格：所以，你提到了延期交货。我们来谈谈吧。你确实提供延期交货。那是对的吗？
保罗·尼克斯：是的。
迈克尔·赛格：什么是延期交货？
保罗·尼克斯：对于我们来说，延期交货本质上是，一旦我们进入删除期，那么注册管理机构将一次性释放当天删除的所有名称，延期交货系统将尝试在代表拥有延期交货的人。因此，我们将使用我们与注册表的连接，并尝试代表延期交货持有人获取该名称。这就是它的本质，你知道，每个注册服务商都与注册管理机构等建立联系，这就是一切的结果。它是谁拥有最多的联系，或者谁正在追求一个特定的名字而不是另一个，通常是那些会得到它的人。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。因此，在域名方面，它基本上是 Go Daddy 的一项捕捉服务。
保罗·尼克斯：是的。是的。基本上是这样。我的意思是，我们的延期交货系统将以某种方式尝试获得它。如果您可以在通过过期平台的名称上放置延期交货的名称，那就是 Go Daddy 将其过期。如果你说你不想出价，并且在那里得到了出价，那么也许你有其他感兴趣的节目，你可以延期交货。如果通过关闭系统并掉落，那么我们将尝试将其捡起。而且我认为，显然，我们更容易在我们这边拿起它，然后将它转移过来。但我们也会在其他注册商那里处理延期交货订单。
迈克尔·赛格：明白了。所以，但如果域名实际上是在 GoDaddy 注册的，它会经历，它会过期，会经历 18 天的宽限期，会经历额外的 24 天赎回期，然后你知道，会经历你的五天降价。在整个时间里，没有人对其出价。我通过 Go Daddy 收到了延期交货订单。在它被删除之前，你能以 10 美元、12 美元的手牌注册成本为我得到它，并且可以让 drop catchers 捡起来吗？
保罗·尼克斯：是的。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。
保罗·尼克斯：如果是通过 Go Daddy。将发生 Go Daddy 延期交货订单。
迈克尔·赛格：它会在从注册表中删除之前将其拾取。
保罗·尼克斯：是的。这是我们在放弃它之前进行的最后一次检查，并说，我们是否有关于这个名字的 Go Daddy 延期交货订单。
迈克尔·赛格：完美。而且，您是对每个域名接受多个延期交货订单，还是每个域名只有一个延期交货订单，因为您可以将它交给第一个人？
保罗·尼克斯：不。我们做了很多。我们过去只做第一人称，但现在我们实际上做多人，如果有几个人下订单，我们得到它，那么我们所做的只是这些用户之间的私人拍卖。
迈克尔·赛格：哦！又一场拍卖！
保罗·尼克斯：是的。这是行之有效的方式。第一个参加的人得到第一个出价，而且很多时候这些拍卖活动并不多。显然，因为这个名字在我们的系统中已经存在了整整十五天，所以。但这就是我们的做法。我们不想做先到先得，因为它仍然对技术更好的人有优势的错误。你知道，我们想尽可能多地消除系统的游戏性，这是我们发现的最公平的方法。
迈克尔·赛格：我明白了。好的。如果我是唯一一个延期交货的人，我会自己花注册费买吗？
保罗·尼克斯：嗯，延期交货本身是有成本的。因此，您将获得域名。延期交货本身，我们从那里拿走中间价。所以，假设这是一个 20 美元的延期交货订单。然后你会得到 10 美元的积分用于你的 .com，等等。
迈克尔·赛格：明白了。而且，延期交货的费用是 20 美元吗？
保罗·尼克斯：可以。上次我查了一下，是的。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。附近某处。
保罗·尼克斯：价格有时会波动。
迈克尔·赛格：当我下订单时，或者当域名实际进入延期交货流程时，我是否会被收取延期交货费用？
保罗·尼克斯：你知道，这是一个基于信用的系统。因此，您要做的是购买延期交货信用额度，然后将其应用于域名。如果我们能够代表您捕获域名，那么我们就可以消耗信用额度和二十美元的费用，或者系统是二十美元。如果没有，那么我们将把信用返还给您。所以，这是一个继续。因此，如果我们只向您收费。我们预先向您收费，但我们实际上只吃钱，我们实际上吃信用，当它赢了。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。如果确实需要花钱的话，这可能会阻止很多人退回订单。
保罗·尼克斯：你知道，我不确定。我的意思是，钱少了。是啊，确实是钱，只是钱少了点。它只有在我们为您赢得名字时才真正使用，所以。现有的其他系统必须对延期交货收取某种费用，因为代表注册服务商本身进行了实际工作。
迈克尔·赛格：对。好的。所以，如果有人在那里，他们想要对域名进行延期交货，你知道，他们不想竞标，但他们想看看它是否会下降，然后收回他们的延期交货订单；如果它是在 GoDaddy 注册的，他们应该在 GoDaddy 下延期订单，因为他们有第一个机会在他们付费或不付费的任何其他第三方掉落捕捉服务之前将它送到那里。
保罗·尼克斯：当然。如果该名称在 GoDaddy 注册，并且他们不想在过期拍卖中出价，他们会向 GoDaddy 发出延期订单。是的。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。好吧。保罗，我们简短地谈过交通会议。我在 Go Daddy 拍卖会上发现了一个售后市场注册的域名，一个朋友希望我为他们购买。是住在西雅图地区的朋友。她经营着一家刚起步的健身公司。她买了一个域名。我说，’你为什么要买一个有四个字的域名，而实际上三个字的域名对你的生意更好？我看了看，它可以在 Go Daddy 拍卖会上买到；这是一个出价做出要约类型的情况。因此，我问我的朋友她想出价多少，并向她解释了域名售后市场的运作方式。她说，‘我想出价五十美元’，所以我代表她出价。所有者，我相信，所以我试图回忆起所有细节，因为当时我对 Go Daddy 拍卖并不熟悉；所有者将其发送到 7 天拍卖，如果我没记错的话，在 7 天结束时，我是该域名的唯一竞标者，然后拍卖延长到大约 60 或 70 天的拍卖.而且，正如你早些时候在这里向我描述的过程，你谈到了，你知道，拍卖时间，你没有提到任何关于六十或七十天拍卖的事情。在那种情况下发生了什么？
保罗尼克斯：我真的看过了。那么你的特殊情况发生了什么？因此，我们系统的一部分是，当您列出名称时——称之为报价/还价清单——，我们从现在开始永远不会让您列出它。我们所做的是，我们做了六十天的报价/还价清单，而那是在六十天结束时，它会自动更新。现在我们可以做的是，在续订时，我们可以验证您仍然拥有该名称。我们可以验证一些事情；确保我们的拍卖库存保持清洁。这就是更新过程的运作方式。在你的情况下发生的事情是，你接近 60 天周期的末尾，所以当你出价时，名称的所有者，名称的卖家没有；我认为他们实际上进行了反击，但他们没有接受最初的报价，然后该域名一直运行到六十天列表的最后七天结束，然后自动续订了另一个六十天列表.
迈克尔·赛格：好的。
保罗尼克斯：所以，你知道，当我们讨论它时，我觉得很奇怪。这对我来说似乎很奇怪，因为你显然不能接受报价并将其推向拍卖，我们为卖家提供了这种选择。如果您在报价/还价中获得喜欢的报价，您可以按照您的描述将其推至 7 天拍卖。我们不允许这样做，所以一旦您将其推到 7 天的拍卖会上，就意味着您将出售该名称。您已经达到底价。该名称将通过您因该出价而推动拍卖的人或跳入的其他人出售给击败高出价的任何人。因此，我已经确认无法取消拍卖，你知道，一个推动的拍卖清单已经送到那边了，所以。只是时机有点奇怪。
迈克尔·赛格：所以，我还是不清楚。它参加了为期 7 天的拍卖。我是七日拍卖的投标人。但是后来，发生了什么？
保罗·尼克斯：它没有去拍卖。
迈克尔·赛格：它没有去拍卖。
保罗·尼克斯：不。你看到的不是它进行了为期 7 天的拍卖，而是你在最初报价/还价清单的最后几天。
迈克尔·赛格：哦，好的。
保罗·尼克斯：所以它说，嘿，还有 7 天的时间，但原主人从未真正接受过要约，所以这不是真正的拍卖。相反，这是一份要约/还价清单，即将再续订 60 天。这基本上就是那个发生的事情。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。好吧。我明白。所以，如果我是一个域名投资者，我在看 Go Daddy 拍卖会，那里有大量域名，很明显，你的注册商很大，你有很多客户，你有很多过期的域名，您知道，有人可能会注册一个域名，但他们只是不想支付续订费。对于希望使用 GoDaddy 拍卖来关注拍卖中的优质域名的域名投资者，您有哪些提示？
保罗·尼克斯：你知道，我认为做得很好的域名持有人，他们会做两件事中的一件。因此，很多人每天都会根据流量查看拍卖。我的意思是，我们确实得到了一些指标；无论我们知道关于该名称的任何指标，我们都会尝试在过期网站上为您提供。因此，他们会按流量或出价对每日列表进行排序。看看其他人在竞标什么。
迈克尔·赛格：是的。
保罗·尼克斯：然后让他们做决定。当然，另一种方法是使用关键字。因此，如果您是一名地理域名管理员，并且正在寻找亚特兰大、锡达拉皮兹、斯科茨代尔等等，就您的关键字而言，您所做的就是最终设置安全搜索。拍卖平台允许您进行安全搜索，您可以输入任何过滤条件，将其保存下来，然后将其设置为每天通过电子邮件发送给您。因此，您每天都可以收到一份通过电子邮件发送给您的列表，而无需访问拍卖网站，该网站会显示今天的匹配结果与您过滤的结果是什么。所以，这就是很多做得好的人，他们是大宗买家等等；这就是他们将如何浏览列表的方式。就是设置那些早上的电子邮件，边喝咖啡边看邮件，然后看看他们想投资什么。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。而且，在你的平台上，当它说域名，出价/报价数量，然后是流量时，如果它说流量254，那到底是什么意思？
保罗·尼克斯：我们所做的就是我们；过去几周，所以一旦我们过了那 18 天的时间段，你就有了这 24 天的时间段。我们所做的是放一个公园页面，我们在公园页面的顶部有一个非常醒目的横幅，希望告诉原来的注册人，嘿，你的名字现在要删除了。
迈克尔·赛格：对。
保罗·尼克斯：点击这里续订，对吧。但是当它在那里时，当它在那个系统中时，就会有一个停放的页面。我们能够收集任何指标来帮助拍卖平台上的个人买家。因此，它是对某些天的流量的一种衡量标准。
迈克尔·赛格：外推大约 7 天？你就是这样完成的吗？
保罗·尼克斯：我实际上是这么说的。而且，我们会花时间，然后尝试根据该流量确定该域可能看到的内容。我在这里是合法的，因为我不记得它是三个月、六个月还是一年，但它是标准的一段时间。那不会改变，所以。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。好吧。因此，我假设我可以访问 GoDaddy 帮助系统，它会告诉我流量已超过一段时间。
保罗·尼克斯：是的，我不确定这是否对我们有帮助，但我们可能会解决这个问题。我们会就此回复您。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。伟大的。然后很多域名也有与之相关的评估。该评估是来自您系统中的评估，还是您的拍卖平台刚刚分配给它的自动评估？
保罗·尼克斯：那需要很多因素。所以，你有流量；你有可能在那段时间获得的 UPC 收入；而且，您显然知道关键字等。因此，我们使用我们拥有的有关域的所有数据来尝试提出一些名义上的措施。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。这就是您自己对该域名的自动评估。
保罗·尼克斯：是的。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。我明白。所以我正在查看 DownloadChrome.net，它的评估是 18 美元，这是基于单词、扩展名和 248 的流量，你知道，可能还有许多其他因素。我明白。好的。
保罗尼克斯：似乎是正确的。是的。
迈克尔·赛格：然后，如果我查看特色域名，我会看到一个域名就在这里，我相信它拼写为 IListenTo.com。我不知道那是什么意思，也许是用另一种语言之类的。它说，零出价，零报价，价格四千七百美元，这让我觉得有点奇怪，然后我看了看，它有一个带黄色圆圈的小 A，上面写着查看评估。当我点击它时，它说，“这个域名有一个经过认证的评估”。保罗，我想这是你提供的服务之一。
保罗·尼克斯：是的。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。并于2010年7月28日进行了认证评估，评估价格为$11,234。因此，这意味着您组织中的某个人了解此域名的用途。也许它是另一种语言，并根据该语言和许多其他因素为该域名分配了一个值。
保罗·尼克斯：是的。评价体系。我们混合了自动评估和人工评估，或认证评估，这个人最终得到的是我们拥有的最高级别的评估，确实经过了一些人工干预。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。因此，如果它有经过认证的评估，您将展示它与自动评估的对比。
保罗·尼克斯：嗯，自动化的。您看到的评估仅针对过期名称。那是基于那个特定的算法。它使用我们知道的数据。如果是客户出售他们的名字，那么我们就没有能够执行该特定算法的数据。
迈克尔·赛格：我明白了。好的。好吧。让我问你一个更高层次的问题。业界可以做些什么来提高域名的流动性？
保罗·尼克斯：在流动性方面，一切都与定价和便利性有关，而这两者都是许多参与者试图通过立即购买定价来做的事情的核心。让它更容易获得；尽您所能，更容易获得名称。你知道，基本上，通过 Go Daddy 上的高级列表渠道。浏览一些（Unclear 1:09:04.4）等等，但为您的库存定价并将其送到 Go Daddy 的人那里，寻找该名称进行注册，而不必与您协商。现在，如果这个名字有很大的价值，那么我不建议在那里设置“立即购买”的价格。然后它值得对客户进行一些教育，了解为什么它如此值钱。但是，如果它是一种推测，或者如果它具有一定的价值，但在 1500、2000 或您可能已将“立即购买”价格定在的任何范围内，那么当然可以。给它一个立即购买的价格。通过那里列出它。尽可能让该客户更容易将该名称记入他们的帐户。很多人害怕报价/还价列表，或者甚至害怕去 Go Daddy 拍卖并对该名称进行报价或出价。这就是为什么我们大力推动高级列表网络。这是因为除了添加到购物车、结帐之外别无他法。而且，这就是最佳路径。
迈克尔·赛格：对。说得通。 Go Daddy 售后市场面临的最大竞争威胁是什么？
保罗尼克斯：天哪。你知道，我没有看到我们。我看待我们的方式不一定是很多竞争对手。我的后兜里有 Go Daddy 客户群、Go Daddy 可用性检查系统和 Go Daddy 品牌。因此，就与 Sedo 等竞争的拍卖而言，我看不到这一点。你知道，这就是为什么你会看到合作伙伴关系发生的原因；你会看到库存整合，因为我们都参与其中；我们都有彼此独一无二的名字，我们应该能够出售它们。所以，这才是真正推动 Afternic 交易的原因。我们在路上提到的只是他们有我没有的存货。我不认为他们是销售竞争对手，因为他们不通过 Go Daddy 拍卖进行销售。相反，我将他们视为上市合作伙伴。
迈克尔·赛格：是的。好的。昨天我打开Auctions.Godaddy.com 转了一圈，在特色域名中有个域名TechCrunch.info，拍卖价在一万五千美元左右。对于那些不阅读技术博客的人来说，TechCrunch.com 是美国最大的网站之一，也许是全球最大的网站之一。 GoDaddy 如何处理商标侵权域名？
保罗·尼克斯：关于商标的事情，最好留给我们的法律和政策人员。所以，我不一定愿意谈论这个。
迈克尔·赛格：如果我去 NameJet，然后点击一个域名，实际上在页面底部会有一个声明说，如果这是你的商标，请联系我们。您是否鼓励商标所有者在看到其商标的变体可供出售时与您联系？
保罗·尼克斯：当然。我们制定了所有政策和流程，如果商标所有者发现任何侵犯其商标的内容，他们会与我们联系，并且我们有一个完整的团队与他们合作解决这个问题。
迈克尔·赛格：太好了。在过去管理和了解 Go Daddy 拍卖的内部运作过程中，您最大的“惊喜”时刻是什么，您知道，在您目前的职位上一年半，以及在过去的四五年中与 Go Daddy 拍卖合作？
保罗·尼克斯：“啊哈”时刻只是了解我在市场上的位置，以及在 Go Daddy 中的总体情况。所以它只是，称之为八、九、十个月前等等，所以在一年之内。然后，我们开始向该可用性检查路径显示拍卖列表。所以知道，你知道，我已经挣扎了很长一段时间。把这个拍卖平台搭建起来，确保技术达到标准，确保安全性良好。你知道，所有那些产品经理应该做的事情，对吧。真的忽略了一个事实，我有数以百万计的人在 Go Daddy 的其他地方敲门，你知道，所以我的侧门询问名字，但我没有给他们看。所以，我最大的“啊哈”是，嘿，我为什么不让人们知道，是的，这个名字是可用的。我们的售后市场有售，过来出价。这是驱动的，你知道，我的 2011 年路线图，我的 2011 年路线图。这一切都是为了确保买家和卖家在一起，也许我应该更快地意识到这一点，但我们现在就在那里。
迈克尔·赛格：所以，你知道，在这次采访之前我问了很多问题，其中一个问题与洞穴有关。你知道什么是洞穴，对吧？
保罗·尼克斯：我对这个洞穴很熟悉。是的。
迈克尔·赛格：什么是洞穴？你为什么不向听众描述呢？
保罗·尼克斯：嗯，实际上，当我们在爱荷华州时，我们曾经在 GoDaddy 设有多个办公室。在爱荷华州，我们有一个办公室，它是从一层楼拼凑起来的，然后你可以转租这栋楼、那栋楼或那间办公室，我们试图把尽可能多的部分拼在一起。他们尽可能地靠近彼此。并设计了一件特别的作品；想象一个圆形的走廊，在圆圈的中间有墙壁和一个没有窗户的巨大空间，还有两扇上锁的门。这就是我们在停车场和拍卖网站上进行了很长一段时间的大部分操作的地方。这实际上被称为“洞穴”，因为当然，没有窗户，有时会有小缝隙的光线穿过门。因此，无论如何，我们倾向于在相当长的一段时间内关掉灯，因为漂亮的显示器发出的环境光足以，非常狡猾，你知道的。
迈克尔·赛格：当然可以。人们会去那里小睡吗？随便找个小角落来。
保罗尼克斯：没有时间了。不。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。保罗，我确实要感谢许多域名管理员帮助我提出问题来问你。我不确定他们是否希望我说出他们的全名，所以让我们对 Brad、Troy、Chris、Mark 和 Jim 表示感谢。我发推特了。他们回应了。我们都非常感激。所以让我们结束这个保罗。在接下来的 6 到 12 个月内，人们可以期待在 Go Daddy 上看到与域名拍卖相关的哪些内容？
保罗·尼克斯：你知道，我认为我们现在拥有的是去年年底，我现在已经多次提到这一点，就是真正获得库存，并让最终用户轻松使用。而且我认为我们今天在定价库存、立即购买库存等方面做得很好。所以我在接下来的几个月和明年的日程表上，真的会想出一种方法来获得更好的名字，需要一点教育的名字，提供/反击的名字提供，并且应该提供/还价。那些名字真的没有一个简单的方法。没有一种非常用户友好的方式来吸引我的 Go Daddy 客户，让他们进入，向他们展示该名称可用，与他们互动，向他们传授有关域名的知识，所有这些都不会影响他们的用户体验。所以，这是一个非常大的挑战。这就是为什么我们还没有必要解决它。我的意思是，很明显，第一个挑战是让我们定价库存，让我们先把简单的东西放在那里，然后我们会在继续的时候升级库存。但是现在我们如何处理不在其中且不一定要定价的名称。那是我的下一个挑战。这就是你将在未来一年左右看到的。
迈克尔·赛格：好的。如果您有后续问题，请在下面的评论中发布。我们会请 Paul 回来尽可能多地回答。保罗，如果人们想关注你，你在推特上吗？您在 Go Daddy 上有博客或个人博客吗？
保罗尼克斯：天哪。我只是不太喜欢社交俱乐部。
迈克尔·赛格：我听说你只是不了解技术。
保罗·尼克斯：你知道吗？我是个工程师。我爱我的技术。我只是不太喜欢分享自己。我是真正的内向工程师。我会这么说。不，我们有 Go Daddy 拍卖 Twitter 帐户，这不是我，但它是，你知道，这是我们的营销努力。
迈克尔·赛格：@GoDaddyAuctions。
保罗·尼克斯：@GoDaddyAuctions。我们有 Go Daddy Twitter 页面和 Go Daddy Facebook 页面，以及所有我们通过这些页面完成大部分工作的页面，以及那里的一些整合渠道。
迈克尔·赛格：非常好。我建议任何观看、收听或阅读此节目的人，或与此相关的任何节目，客人来到这里，他们投入大量时间并分享他们吸取的惨痛教训。请花点时间感谢他们。通过推文、电子邮件和评论感谢保罗。如果你在会议上看到他，就像我在交通中看到的那样，让他知道你很欣赏他的表演。 Go Daddy 拍卖和售后市场总监 保罗·尼克斯。感谢您抽出宝贵时间参加节目，并成为其他企业家、投资者和企业主的领域夏尔巴人。
原文：
Michael Cyger: Hey everyone, my name is Michael Cyger. And, I’m the publisher of DomainSherpa.com, the Domain Name Authority, and the place where you can learn how to become a successful domain name entrepreneur directly from the experts themselves. You know what we do here. We bring on a successful domain name investor, entrepreneur, or subject matter expert, ask them to share tips and tactics, and then we motivate you in your area of expertise. Then, you can come on the show and give back to others about what you learned, and how you became successful. Whether you’re a domain name investor today looking for a great deal, or an entrepreneur looking for the perfect domain name for your business, you’re best served by visiting the largest marketplace for domain names. Since Go Daddy is the largest domain name registrar, with more than fifty million domain names under management, they’re also one of the largest domain name aftermarkets in terms of quantity of sales per month. Joining me to tell us all of the secrets of Go Daddy auctions and aftermarkets is Paul Nicks. Paul is the director of product development for the aftermarket division at Go Daddy. Paul welcome to the show.
Paul Nicks: Hi Mike! Thanks.
Michael Cyger: Paul, most people in the world probably don’t reel outside of the domain name industry; most people of the world probably don’t realize that domain names can be bought and sold like real estate; and, that aftermarkets and auctions even exist. Does Go Daddy research support that?
Paul Nicks: Oh, absolutely. I mean, one of the things that we’ve been making a concerned effort to do over the past couple of years today is put the knowledge of the aftermarket, put the auctions that are available, inventory that is available in the aftermarket in general, in front of the customers that are going there to buy and mend it. And, you know, as we start to mature as an industry, obviously the higher quality names, the really category killers, even the ones who aren’t necessarily category killers, but just kind of sound cool, those are the ones that aren’t available. But there very well could be a buyer available for it. So, as they come and do a registration, or avail check, on GoDaddy.com, we made a very concerned effort to start bringing that inventory in front of them. Just put it in front of everybody, and all of a sudden, you increase that awareness of the aftermarket throughout. That’s kind of what I’ve been doing in the past couple years. You’re really trying to increase the inventory, increase just the knowledge of the space. I think you only do that through showing the users, showing potential buyers, that those names do exist, and there is somewhere they can get a name if it’s not available to register fresh.
Michael Cyger: Got it. So, is it part of your job, and the team that you lead, to help educate the general audience about the aftermarket? Or, does that stay part of the role of that marketing team at Go Daddy?
Paul Nicks: You know, we all kind of work together. So, you know, the aftermarket division, we have marketing folks, and we’ve got the support team. The executive account reps at Go Daddy are really good, and we got dedicated auction support and such. So, we all work together. I can’t say it’s one persons job over another. As product manager, as that has sort of been defined around here, yes. I mean, it’s my responsibility to make sure that customers are able to use our applications; that meets what customers are saying it needs. So, we’ve got quite a bit of focus on customer feedback and such.
Michael Cyger: Okay. So let’s start the show with some basic information on Go Daddy. Most domainers know, in general, how big Go Daddy is. But for those in the audience that are business owners, or entrepreneurs, can you describe how big Go Daddy is, and whatever metrics you feel are most relevant?
Paul Nicks: Sure. Well, I think that we’re roughly, – you already said – we’re over fifty million domain names and managements, which is bigger than the next eighty biggest registrars. So, it’s a significant number of domains under management. But we’re also the number one as far as that do SSL certificates goes. We’ve got a pretty large chuck of our business, and hosting is a very large chunk of our business that we’re right at the top there as well. So there’s a lot of things that, beyond domain name registrations, that Go Daddy does, and we have a customer base of 8.7 million customers. So, that alone, is quite a bit. So it’s nice, I suppose, lead tool there, to make sure that all those customers that have a domain with Go Daddy are also able to have other services and such, and get what they need out there ready. So it’s, I want to say, you know, the one-stop shop I suppose. While we have the domain registrations, but we also have all the other services that go along with building a small business up to a larger business, etc.
Michael Cyger: Definitely. And so, you know, to me, as somebody relatively knew to the domain name industry, it seems like the domain business is sort of a lost leader. You know, you offer coupons all the time. If people go and search, there’s tons of websites that seem to have Go Daddy coupons that offer, you know, dot com for cheap, or dot biz for cheap, and that you might offer those for, you know, a small mark up, but then you try and up sell the hosting, and the e-mail, and you know, a host of other services. Is that truly the case?
Paul Nicks: Well, you know, I think that what we’re trying to do; obviously once you have somebody who’s purchased a domain name, then that’s where they’ve decided their presence online is going to be, and you don’t want to take that for granted, right? If somebody is putting their name out there, is saying, ‘I want to start a business. I want this to be my presence online’. And it’s up to use to make sure they’re supported well. So once we have that, the biggest thing about Go Daddy is, not that we register domains – we register domains cheaply -, it’s the support we have. You know, we’ve got 24/7 all US based supports, that really is where we get the customer in; make them feel comfortable. If they need another service, we have that to provide as well. So, I wouldn’t characterize it as an up sell notion, as much as, finding someone who wants to build an online business, and helping them achieve that goal through in-house services.
Michael Cyger: Yeah. Well, and I have to say, just off the bat, and you know, I do use Go Daddy as one of my registrars, and the other day I couldn’t figure out how to get an e-mail cache all on one domain to forward to another, and I saw the chat button, and I clicked it, and you know, not only did support, you know, help me get up and running on setting up the cache all on that domain name so I can get all the e-mail, but they also said, by the way, you also have a hundred credits in your account for e-mail, and you didn’t need to pay the $2.95 for this, so just e-mail over to billing and they’ll refund you, which, you know, I still haven’t done, but I have to say, you know, in terms of customer service, that was top notch to say, to suggest, that. Because it really shows that they’re focused on customer service.
Paul Nicks: Yeah. Well, we built the entire company up. I mean, it’s absolutely the rock foundation of the company.
Michael Cyger: Yeah. So, since we’re going to be talking about the aftermarket and auctions, how many customers do you have at Go Daddy, that might be signing into their accounts, and looking at auctions, going on there?
Paul Nicks: Well, as I said, we’ve got 8.7 million customers.
Michael Cyger: Wow.
Paul Nicks: And because we extend our Go Daddy auctions inventory into the avail check section of Go Daddy, potentially every one of those customers – any customer -, or person who’s not even a registers customer at Go Daddy who’s looking for a domain name to register, gets exposed to the aftermarket.
Michael Cyger: Right. So, I can go there, to GoDaddy.com, I can type MichaelCyger.com, and it will, because I own it, it may actually come up and say this is available, and you can buy it for two thousand dollars, or if I we’re selling it, what the price would be. And then it would just take that user directly to the auction section. Is that the way it works?
Paul Nicks: It’s a couple different ways of going there. If the name is just at auction, saying an offer, counter-offer model, but is the seller really hasn’t put a buy it now price on it, then it’ll be a link off of the auction site, and the user will be able to bid on the name, and do the back and forth in that method. But if it’s listed through our premium listing service, which is where we have the fast transfer capable, then the purchase experience to the end user, the customer, is exactly like registering and mending. So we go through, we say yes it is available; here’s the price on it. They add it right to their cart. Once they pay, it automatically transfers to their accounts, just like as if they had registered it. So that seamless flow is really where we’re trying to, you know, push a lot of people and such.
Michael Cyger: Alright. I’m going to come back and ask you about that seamless flow, because I want to know if it’s actually confusing from a layman’s perspective, you know, somebody that doesn’t understand the system. But we’ll come back to that. How many domain names are there in the Go Daddy auctions aftermarket?
Paul Nicks: We’re over 4.4 million now.
Michael Cyger: Okay. And, how many domain names do you sell per month roughly?
Paul Nicks: Per month; I think last month it was roughly thirty-eight thousand domains.
Michael Cyger: Thirty-eight thousand.
Paul Nicks: That was a good month for us. Yeah. I think the quarter prior we averaged thirty-four, thirty-five.
Michael Cyger: And, what does an average domain name sell for in your auctions?
Paul Nicks: You know, because we mix, and we’ve got out expired names in the public listing as well, its hard to put a gauge on there, but in general, the public listings are in the thousand dollar range. And that’s really our sweet spot.
Michael Cyger: Yeah. And that’s what Tim Schumacher said from Sedo. That most domain names sell in the range of a thousand dollars. So if we, you know, if we just back at the envelope calculation, if you’re selling about thirty-six thousand domain names, thirty-eight thousand domain names at a thousand bucks a pop, that’s thirty-six million dollars a month, and you know, over four-hundred million dollars a year. Of course, that’s gross revenue, and not all of it is Go Daddy’s to keep, but that’s an enormous aftermarket that you’re managing there.
Paul Nicks: We do well.
Michael Cyger: Okay. So, is the revenue of Go Daddy public right now?
Paul Nicks: No. Go Daddy is still a private company.
Michael Cyger: I’ve read in some reports online that Go Daddy has revenue over 1.1 billion dollars, at least, as of July 2011. Can you confirm that?
Paul Nicks: Yeah. That’s actually, that’s where we’re trending for the year, is 1.1 billion dollars. So that sounds right; sounds good.
Michael Cyger: Okay. So, we’re going to dig into how you run the world’s – let’s call it – highest velocity marketplace, because you have so many domain names going through your marketplace, and selling per month. But before we do that, let me ask you a few personal questions, Paul. How many domain names do you own, and in what TLDs?
Paul Nicks: I have less than a hundred. I think I’ve got about seventy five now. I used to have a hundred and fifty or so, but I’ve let some fall by the [Unclear 11:18]. Mostly I’ve got a lot of COMs. I like ORG these days, so I’ve been doing some ORGs, but it’s not as much on the speculative side as now I’m just doing some personal things and helping people out with domains and such.
Michael Cyger: Got it. Do you own PaulNicks.com?
Paul Nicks: I do. I do. And, Nicks.mania, NicksFamily.com, and all sorts of personal names. Yes.
Michael Cyger: Yeah. As director at Go Daddy, are you allowed to play the market if you see good domains dropping and ending in auction?
Paul Nicks: No, not at Go Daddy. I’m not allowed to bid on or sell names through my own marketplace, but there’s no restrictions as far as, you know, go and do another marketplace and such, and doing that.
Michael Cyger: Great. And, do you own any generic domain names; category killer domain names; anything that would, you know, make people salivate tearing your domain portfolio?
Paul Nicks: I only wish. No. No. I could still take those transactions.
Michael Cyger: Let’s dig into Go Daddy aftermarket. You know, I know the aftermarket is more than just the auctions. Can you describe what the Go Daddy domain name aftermarket is, and what it encompasses?
Paul Nicks: Sure. Yeah, we put a pretty broad categorization of aftermarket on our services. So, in the most general sense, it’s the auctions and parking.
Michael Cyger: Okay.
Paul Nicks: And each of those has its own, sort of, subdivisions of, you know, our cash parking program in which got a product called Quick Content, but then the cash parking program that we do as well. And we’ve got appraisals, and what we call our Domain Buy Service, which basically are sales reps who, if a user is interested and it’s not available in the aftermarket, will try to contact the owner and see if there’s any negotiation room there. So we have some of those products, but that’s the gist of it.
Michael Cyger: Okay. So, auctions, parking, appraisals, domain buy service, and probably some additional serves within each of those categories.
Paul Nicks: Sure. Definitely.
Michael Cyger: Okay. And so, if we focus only on the auctions part, what kind of domain names are in your auctions? Are they only people selling domain names in your auctions?
Paul Nicks: No. Actually we’ve got. Our auction house is sort of unique, I suppose, in that we have expired domain name inventory along with, what we call, public domain name inventory, which is somebody actually trying to sell their domain.
Michael Cyger: Okay. So you’ve got the expired, and you got the public. So, let’s talk abut the expired for a moment. Can you describe the domain name life cycle, and how the Go Daddy auctions aftermarket fits in, you know? Let me leave it there.
Paul Nicks: Yeah. So what we’ve got essentially in our life cycle is, once the domain expires, once it fails to renew, or the original owner registrant doesn’t, you know, chooses not to or we’re unable to renew on their behalf, you’ve got an eighteen day grace period, where the original registrants can renew that name and redeem that name for just the price of the renewal. So, there’s no extra charge or anything on that side. After that eighteen days, then you’ve got twenty-four extra days. So, for a total of forty-two after expiration. You got twenty-four extra days, where the registrant is able to redeem the name still, but this time at a service charge, because there’s a little bit of extra work on our end, our call center side. The last fifteen days of the final twenty-four, so the last fifteen prior to releasing back to the registry is when it goes through our expired name auction service. And, that’s it. Basically it’s a ten day auction. If nobody bids on it on the ten day auction, then what we would do, we would consider it a buy it now where it keeps on dropping from, say, ten dollars to nine dollars, eight dollars. And, if nobody buys it at the end of the five days, then it just drops back to the registry.
Michael Cyger: Okay. I think I understand how that process works, which I sort of knew in pieces, but it was difficult to figure it all out together. So that’s very helpful. So it expires. So, if my expiration on a domain name is today, it expires, and then I have eighteen days to where I can actually renew it, even though it’s expired, and Go Daddy doesn’t charge me anything. Then it goes through a twenty-four day period, where you have a redemption service charge. So, I can still get it back, even though it’s expired. And, what is that service charge typically cost?
Paul Nicks: You know, that I don’t know. That’s something I haven’t looked at in quite a while, so…
Michael Cyger: Okay. Any ideas; at like a hundred dollars or twenty dollars?
Paul Nicks: I want to say it’s less than a hundred dollars, but honestly I don’t know how much.
Michael Cyger: Okay. So, some fee. And, you know, to be honest and I hate to admit it, I’ve actually had this happen to me. Where, you know, I used to run a media company, and one of my domain names just stopped working; the web site just stopped working, and I thought it was the host. And I called them up, and I was irate, and it turns out it expired, and I can’t remember who the registrar was at the time. And for some reason I didn’t get notified, and so, it can happen to you, because it happened to me, and I’m somewhat competent about things like this, and it was very useful to be able to call them up, get it back up and running, and have that grace period. Okay. So, the eighteen days. The twenty-four days after that. The last fifteen of those twenty-four days, it goes up on to the auction site.
Paul Nicks: Yeah.
Michael Cyger: So, as a buyer, I may actually see a domain name in auction that I can bid on for up to fifteen days that could then get pulled down from the auctions because the registrant decided to renew it for the additional service fee.
Paul Nicks: Yeah, absolutely.
Michael Cyger: Okay. I understand that. And then, it goes to a ten day auction, and then if nobody bids on it, then it goes through five days of price drops, and then finally it is deleted from your registry, and available for registration through anybody else.
Paul Nicks: Yes.
Michael Cyger: Through any other registrar, I mean.
Paul Nicks: Yes.
Michael Cyger: Okay. I understand.
Paul Nicks: If it passes through it. I mean, there’s that sort of sub. Excuse me, the sub-category of if it passes. If we release it to the registry, then it plays into the drop catching world. Yeah, so before it’s available, you have to make sure all the drop catchers as well.
Michael Cyger: Gotcha. So, Go Daddy auctions actually has it for all that time before it even goes to drop catchers.
Paul Nicks: Yes.
Michael Cyger: Okay. I understand. And then the drop catchers, who actually have multiple registries, also can try and snatch it before it’s available for hand registration by people like me, who don’t understand the drop catching whole process.
Paul Nicks: Sure.
Michael Cyger: I understand that process. Does every domain name that expires go through this process?
Paul Nicks: At Go Daddy yes. All the Go Daddy names that expire go to the expired auction process.
Michael Cyger: So there’s no other exception process, where Go Daddy employees can purchase things, partners of Go Daddy can purchase things? Things like that.
Paul Nicks: Not. Nothing like that. 100% everything that then expires is on the auction market, and obviously still available to redeem, but we don’t have any side deals, or anything fancy like that.
Michael Cyger: So, there are two types of the domain names on the Go Daddy auctions. There’s the expired, sort of the pre-pending delete domain names, and then, the, you called them, the public domain names. So, there’s owned domain names. I may own some domain names. I can list them in Go Daddy auctions for sale.
Paul Nicks: Yes.
Michael Cyger: And those show up right next to the expired domain names. Is there a way to determine between the two without doing a WhoIs lookup to figure out what the expiration date is?
Paul Nicks: For sure. Yeah. We have; the auction site itself has sophisticated, advanced searching capabilities. So, on the right side of the auction there’s lot of ways you can filter and sort the data. I mean, you know, you can do it by age; you can do it by number of characters, TLDs, etc. And one of those options is, if you want to see public listings, or expired inventory. And that’s how we label them on the search as well.
Michael Cyger: Okay. So, I’ve got a window open here; I’m just looking through it, Paul. So, I would click on the right hand side navigation; there’s a section called ‘type’, and then you have ‘expiring auctions’. So, those are the ones that actually, you know, in the domain name life cycle of expired, correct?
Paul Nicks: Yeah.
Michael Cyger: Okay. And then I see other options for public auctions, which is the other type. Then you have public buy now, so, if somebody just wants to set a price instead of sending it to auction. And then you have some other options: Close Out, Value Price Names, Offer – Counter Offer, and Domain Connect. Can we run through some of what those are? Like, can you tell me what a close out domain is.
Paul Nicks: Yeah. Close out actually is that last five days, where we put the expired name that’s no longer on auction. It’s in a buy now price. That’s what we call our close outs.
Michael Cyger: And it decreased by price a dollar a day as they go through those five days.
Paul Nicks: Exactly.
Michael Cyger: Okay. And then, what’s a value priced name?
Paul Nicks: A value priced name would be one that, say somebody registers the domain name for ten years, or five years, or whatever it is, and then we get it from the registry, and they’re unable to pay. We’re unable to get anything for it, so just it’s there, we’re stuck with it at the registry. If we can’t get our money back, we just put it on the auction and charge basically the renewal fee for it.
Michael Cyger: Okay. And, offer/counter offer.
Paul Nicks: I’m sorry.
Michael Cyger: Offer/counter offer. How does that work? That’s clearly a public owned; somebody owns that domain name, right?
Paul Nicks: Yeah. Yeah. An offer/counter offer is our public news. It’s essentials ones where the seller hasn’t put a price on it, so you enter into that negotiation period.
Michael Cyger: Okay. And then the final one that’s listed in the types is Domain Connect.
Paul Nicks: Yes. That’s kind of newish for us. I think we launched that; we’ll call it, six month ago or so. That’s our first foray into really taking some pretty nice inventory from our customers and being able to walk that through. It’s nice acting brokerage, but it’s one of those things where we have the domain names, and we’re trying to pursue and find buyers with our customer base that really match up with it. So, it’s a special listing type of thing. Our executive account representatives really handle a lot of that.
Michael Cyger: Okay. So that could be like a premium listing that has a broker attached to the domain name.
Paul Nicks: Be careful with the terminology. A premium listing is a thing within Go Daddy; that’s our fast transfer listing service. So, I wouldn’t call it premium. It is a, probably a premium domain with a domain connect listing. There’s only so many ways you can say something is good, right? So.
Michael Cyger: Right. And it seems like everybody defines these terms in a different manner.
Paul Nicks: Right. Right.
Michael Cyger: Alright. Hey, you know, the one question that I had, Paul, regarding the domains that are going through the auction process, whether they’re expired or whether they’re public – owned by another person. Does Go Daddy own any portfolio such that you would sell those through the process?
Paul Nicks: None that we’d sell. Obviously we have our portfolio of Go Daddy domains, but that’s it. We don’t work in the aftermarket; we don’t rent house names. Nothing along those lines. No.
Michael Cyger: Okay. So, I wouldn’t have Go Daddy bidding against me for a certain name that’s going through auction.
Paul Nicks: Neither Go Daddy nor any of our employees.
Michael Cyger: Now, would Go Daddy actually peel off any of the domain names before it goes to auction if it’s a good domain name that’s expired?
Paul Nicks: No. That’s where I said earlier, you know, all the inventory goes to auction. It’s truly all the inventory. We’re not holding anything back.
Michael Cyger: Alright. Great. Okay. And, do you have any idea what the quantity of expired domain names versus public domain names in your auctions is roughly?
Paul Nicks: Yeah, it’s funny. That, sort of, that number fluctuates pretty dramatically day over day as we get new inventory in. It’s less than half, but it’s, you know, the majority of all of our names are public. But it sort of fluctuates. I don’t think; expired has never gone over the half way mark.
Michael Cyger: All domains go through the auctions. I have a question from a reader. What percentage of all daily drop domains are on Go Daddy? It’s an interesting question. So, I don’t even know what the number of all domain drop, you know.
Paul Nicks: Are we talking in the entire Internet?
Michael Cyger: I believe so.
Paul Nicks: You know, obviously that is hard to answer from maybe not knowing the number of domains that drop everyday off hand. But because we have more domains than say, the next eight registrars, we know that’s – I think it’s fair to say – probably a reasonable assumption of that of a percentage for how many domains actually drop in our system versus the others. So, I would, say. You do the math there, but.
Michael Cyger: Is it a fair assumption to say that, I think Go Daddy has roughly half of all domain registrations in the world, right?
Paul Nicks: You know, I don’t know that number.
Michael Cyger: Okay.
Paul Nicks: I’m not sure what the total number is. I know we’re over fifty million. It seems right that the total registrar is in the hundred-million range, but I don’t know that for sure.
Michael Cyger: How long after a Go Daddy name expires, goes through auction, can another registrar or drop catcher register the domain name?
Paul Nicks: That’s after that forty-second day.
Michael Cyger: And it’s immediately at whatever drop time it is?
Paul Nicks: It’s whatever drop time it is, right. So, it goes off, but it obviously. The way that the registry handles what is available for hand registration, that’s when the drop catchers really do their play. So, once we release it back into the registry, I’m not a hundred percent certain about the logistics of it, but I’m pretty sure it’s not immediately available to register. The registry has to do their work, and then drop it for and make it available to registry.
Michael Cyger: Got it. Okay. How many employees does Go Daddy have today roughly?
Paul Nicks: Oh, roughly, thirty-three hundred. I think we’re over thirty-three hundred or so.
Michael Cyger: So, thirty-three hundred. You’ve have to have a certain number of domain investors working at Go Daddy, you know. They live it. They breathe it. They probably are hooked on domain names like a lot of domain name investors are.
Paul Nicks: Absolutely.
Michael Cyger: Every single employee is not allowed to bid on auctions at Go Daddy?
Paul Nicks: Right.
Michael Cyger: Wow!
Paul Nicks: It’s a very strict rule. But, you know, it was brought up a few years back. Andrew Aldo went on Bob Parson’s radio show, and said, hey, you know, this gives the impression that people, or employees, were bidding against your customers, and from that day on, Bob said, no more, and what he says goes. So.
Michael Cyger: So, let me ask you a question about security then. What security measure do you have in place to prevent employees from, you know, taking a smoke break, walking outside, and getting on their phone to bid?
Paul Nicks: You know, the specifics of the security, obviously, we can’t get too much into, but, you know, we’ve got a 24/7 fraud team. We’ve got a 24/7 security team that actually has won awards. We won the SE Magazine Top Security Team for 2011, and I think they’re a finalist for 2012, so.
Michael Cyger: Wow.
Paul Nicks: We’re very serious about, obviously, domain security, and protecting our customers. And once it was identified that employees bidding was at the detriment of our customers. You know, even the perception of being at the detriment to our customers, all that, you know, becomes part of the security plan. So, everything we do in our security world is to protect our customers.
Michael Cyger: Yeah. Okay.
Paul Nicks: Including, you know, obviously (Unclear 28:34.9).
Michael Cyger: And clearly, you know, employees bidding has been an issue in the past, you know. I know that there was an incident of shill bidding that happened at a major competitor of yours for four years between 2005 and 2009. You know, I think a lot of people that are outside of the domain name industry will look at and say, you know, here’s a whole industry where I don’t understand how things work. What’s to prevent somebody else either, you know, external from Go Daddy, or inside Go Daddy from shill bidding, from bidding me up, just so something sells for a higher amount. You know, what’s to stop the domain seller from creating a second account and bidding to try and increase the price of domain name?
Paul Nicks: Sure. You know, I think that the outside perception, if they were to look at, you know, potential bidding and such, I think that no matter what sort of security awards we get, or anything along those lines, the brand, you know, the Go Daddy brand, the Go Daddy knowledge and comfort level with understanding and knowing who you’re working with is really the biggest piece of the kind of novice end user. They want to work with somebody they’re comfortable with. So, they come to Go Daddy. They’ve seen us; they know us. They know we’re, you know, not a fly by night type of operation, so they trust that. And then, internally, it’s our job to not mess it up; that trust, right. So, internally then, we’ve got all of our process feeds in place, so that the trust that the novice user place in us is well found. So internally, we do all of our work to make sure nothing like, you know, that skin or anything along those lines happens, and that extends outward in the brand, and in the brand recognition, and in the, you know, making sure there’s nothing out there that really goes wrong. So, it’s all part of comfort level is the biggest way to describe it.
Michael Cyger: Yep. Well, and I see that. And, you know, I’ve experienced the customer service, and I know a few people from Go Daddy including yourself. And so, I get a feel for the type of employees that are there. And I think I can trust Go Daddy, and the service that you’re providing. But I think a lot of the world only sees Go Daddy for thirty seconds during the Super Bowl, and all they see are, you know, women in tight clothes, or fast cars, or something to that effect. Do you have discussion internally at Go Daddy about, you know, the type of culture that you’re portraying at Go Daddy? Internal versus external for the masses; the non-domain investors.
Paul Nicks: I can say yes. They have. Conversations do happen all the time. I can say, I have those conversations (Unclear 31:36.8), but certainly the brand is something that we take very seriously, and we do a very good job with our marketing. Obviously it’s helped us do very well. And, if you kind of read the web site, you know, you’ll see (Unclear 31:53.8) on the web sites, but you won’t see the skimpy, you won’t see the tank-top, etc. It’s all business. So, once you get the user to the web site, then we’re all about describing what it is we can offer as a company, as a service.
Michael Cyger: Okay. That makes sense. So, what are some of the largest auction sales that have been made in the aftermarket at Go Daddy?
Paul Nicks: We’ve had a few. Homeowners Insurance was our biggest one; sorry, HomeownersInsurance.com. We sold that one for $570,000.
Michael Cyger: Wow.
Paul Nicks: And one of the bigger ones that actually came up in a lot of the tech blogs was Color.com. It went off and made a pretty slick app based off of that domain name. That sold for $350,000. So, we like to; we’ve played several times in that hundred-thousand dollar range. Haven’t had the million dollar sale yet.
Michael Cyger: And so I actually reached out to the founder, the CEO, of Color.com after the sale was announced, and I tried to get him on the show to talk about the benefit of having a generic premium domain name as the company name, and he refused to apply to my email. So, no hard feelings. If he wants to come on the show, we can still talk about it. I know the first version of the app wasn’t successful, but I’m sure people would love to hear what’s going on with that. So, do you actively pursue other domain investors, or domain owners, that have premium domain names that would sell for five-hundred thousand, a million, a million and a half, and try and sell it through the auctions, or it’s there if they have an interest?
Paul Nicks: You know, at this point, we’re more on the it’s there side. So, there is so many opportunities. And this year is specific, you know, 2011, late 2010. So, everything is sort of blooming where you get all this inventory to get the market sort of doing what it does, and domain evaluations go up and down as such, but there’s been so many opportunities in the domain aftermarket realm, that I’ve been concentrating lightly on just getting listings in. So it’s, get more inventory in; the high quality, low quality, you know, it doesn’t matter to me. If somebody is looking for a low quality name on auctions, I’m not going to say I’m sorry, you can’t have that here, instead go to this higher quality one, right. So, this is a, I want to make sure that all the inventory that is available in the aftermarket in general (Unclear 34:34:27.2), but the domain aftermarket is available to our registrations, and our customer base looking for those names. And that’s kind of my life at this point.
Michael Cyger: Yeah. Well, so you brought up an interesting point there, about trends. How long have you been in this role, Paul?
Paul Nicks: In this role, call it a year and a half. I’ve been with Go Daddy and on the aftermarkets side for four and a half, nearly five years now.
Michael Cyger: Okay. So, four, five years. You’ve seen the trends in Go Daddy auctions. Are there specific trends that happen throughout the year? Do you usually see more domain names coming up for auction at the end of the year, and then dying down during the holidays, and then coming back up before tax season, or things like that? Do you notice specific trends at certain parts of the year that are related to holidays, or winter months, or anything?
Paul Nicks: You know, that’s, it’s fairly close. It is seasonal. So, like in like call that June, Julyish range, you’ll see less purchases. People are just off enjoying their family time all they can. Picks up pretty well, generally, in Fall. I think Fall is very good for us. And, you’ll see a dip Thanksgiving, so basically we’re going to start seeing a dip, I imagine, this week, extending through the weekend and cyber Monday. Then we’ll pick back up again until Christmas time. So it is very much a seasonal thing. People who bulk register, or bulk buy, have to have vacations too.
Michael Cyger: And is that seasonal for buyers and for sellers?
Paul Nicks: Oh, well, yeah. I mean, basically, yes. It’s seasonal for the entire market, so it affects both sides.
Michael Cyger: Yeah. Okay. You know, I was just trying to see if there was an inside tip related to the seasonality. You know, if there’s less domain names on the market, and less buyers in June or at the end of the year during the holidays, is that a better time to buy, because there’ll be less offers coming in on the domain names that are available?
Paul Nicks: Yeah. I think that the time to buy would be when there’s less competition on the buying side. So, I’d say the best time to buy the names would be that seasonal dip, the Junish, the Thanksgiving weekend, the Christmas week, etc. The best time to sell would certainly be right after Christmas. You don’t want to pick up when the entrepreneurs are out there, the beginning of the year; they’re getting their business plan set up; they’re getting ready to roll full steam. We usually see January is going to be a very good month; it’s been a good month historically for us. Because you get that fresh wave of entrepreneurial new years resolutions, etc. And that’s when you want your inventory certainly in front of those people.
Michael Cyger: Right. Alright. Great tip. And a lot of those people are probably going to be running through the hand registration process on Go Daddy, and if sellers have their domain names in the system, then they can, you know, take advantage of that as well.
Paul Nicks: Absolutely. And then of course, there’s the Super Bowl month, which shouldn’t be discounted either, right? So.
Michael Cyger: That’s a good point. That’s probably a very good point. And are you guys going to be in the Super Bowl again this year?
Paul Nicks: You know, I’m not sure what my parking’s up to. I’m not sure what we’ve done, or announced.
Michael Cyger: Oh, come on! Give us something good here!
Paul Nicks: You know what? Honestly, I wish I had the marketing insides, but that’s not my realm.
Michael Cyger: Alright. Let’s talk about pricing and commissions. If, you know, clearly a domain name expires and is going through Go Daddy auctions, you take 100% percent of the sales price of that. If I, as the domain name owner, want to list some of my domain names in auction; if I want to send it to a ten day auction; if I want to put it up for a set price; if I want to, say, make offer type bid situation, what are the commissions that I might pay you to sell the domain name on my behalf?
Paul Nicks: So, if you’re listing an auction in the methods you described, so the seven day auction, or the offer/counter offer, etcetera, that would be a ten percent commission. And that is set up where those names actually do get visibility to the avail check registration path. That’s not the fast transfer system, but that is quite a bit of exposure to the million of avail checks, etcetera. We have our premium listing network, which is actually our fast transfer system, and that’s a thirty percent commission, and that’s mostly based off of the infrastructure it takes to make sure that fast transfer happens and such. But that exposure is by far, the premium listings is by far our largest sell through rates, because is essentially it’s the same experience fresh reg’ing.
Michael Cyger: Hmm. Okay. And what would I pay if I wanted to have a take bids on a domain name?
Paul Nicks: That would be a ten percent.
Michael Cyger: That would be ten percent. Okay. So, what is the sell through rate for the premium listing versus the, you know, the non-premium listing?
Paul Nicks: Higher. You know.
Michael Cyger: Are we talking about like twenty percent versus ten percent, or three percent versus one percent? Just an order of magnitude I’m looking for.
Paul Nicks: In my experience, the sell through rate of the premium listings is roughly eight to ten times higher than that of the auctions.
Michael Cyger: Okay. I’ll take it. Alright. So, how does Go Daddy auction system differ from other auction services? You know, everybody knows all the auction services out there. The Sedos, the Name Jets, the, you know, Snap Names. What are the advantages of your system versus theirs, and how do you differentiate your from everybody else’s?
Paul Nicks: Well, there’s two sides, obviously, to any marketplace. That’s going to be the buyers and the sellers, right? So on the selling side, what we have is, if you want to get your name, your inventory, exposed to our buyers, our avail check path of customers, then we’ve got the lowest commissions to be able to do that. So, we got the ten percent commission; we’ll get you into that. Now, we do obviously have the deal with Afternic, I think we announced, and that traffic where their names go up there as well, but you’re paying the Afternic commission, which isn’t, you know, a little higher than the ten percent. But otherwise, you know, on the listing site it’s a place to have your name. It’s on the buying side; that it’s the 8.7 million customers looking for domain names, and we register. I think it’s we register, renew, or transfer a new domain every .77 seconds, or some ridiculous stat like that. So, beyond that, you’ve got so many avail checks happening that that’s really on the buying side of Go Daddy inventory. So, you’ve have to get it in there either through, you know, a partner, or through Go Daddy directly. We’re trying to put all those names up there. So it’s really what sets us apart; it’s not necessarily the listing side of the world. It’s, instead, the buying side of the world, where that comes in. I’m going to try to list your name if I know about it. So, make sure I know about your name, and I’ll get it up on the avail check path.
Michael Cyger: Right. Alright. So, really, people want to go to sell their domain names where the largest marketplace of buyers are. That’s why people go to Amazon to sell their products. Because Amazon brings to them the largest marketplace to people looking for new stuff historically. Or, they go to Ebay, for people looking for used stuff.
Paul Nicks: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s a fair analogy too. I mean, and Amazon doesn’t necessarily have all the inventory necessarily from people going to Amazon (Unclear 42:17.2), and they’ve got partners with the large sellers as well. They view themselves as a place to sell product, wherever their product may be. So that’s quite similar to how we’re operating is, that I have a customer looking for a domain name. I absolutely know that. I know the name their looking for. If I don’t know that the name is available in the aftermarket, then that’s lost opportunity for the seller.
Michael Cyger: Sedo promotes their multiple listing service, which allows registrars to sell domain names as well as list their own domain names. Go Daddy is a registrar, so clearly you’re not going to partner with other registrars to sell your domain name inventory, the auction inventory on their services. Do you provide a similar multiple listing service for your partners, or how else do you get your auctions in front of buyers?
Paul Nicks: You know, our auctions, for me, we have the buyers. We don’t need to work as hard to get the auctions inventory in front of, you know, another registrars avail check path. And I think we obviously have the vast majority of avail checks happening. So we do pretty well there. So, for me, it’s more about the partnerships of getting inventory into our system rather than pushing inventory out.
Michael Cyger: Yeah.
Paul Nicks: So that’s, and the Afternic deal is probably the best example of that, where they list their inventory with on their (Unclear 43:50.8) auctions; we’ll display it up to avail check path, and that’s worked out pretty well for us.
Michael Cyger: Let’s talk about that seamless flow that you mentioned earlier. So, somebody watches the Super Bowl ad, you know, it’s a guy that works in a business, and he gets an idea for a business, and he sees the advertisement on the Super Bowl, so he goes to GoDaddy.com, and he types in, PimpOutMyCar.com, or whatever. I, you know, I make up these domain names, and I’m sure domain investors are saying, ‘Yes! I own that domain name.’ I haven’t done any checks on it. And so, it says, Yeah. It comes back with a, ‘yes, this domain name is available for two thousand dollars’. I can’t remember exactly what the terminology, what the phrase is that you use, but to me it was a little confusing because I couldn’t tell at first glance whether a domain name was for sale, let’s say, for hand registration of ten, twelve dollars, or whether it was for sale through the auctions. Do you have customers actually saying to you that this is confusing? Why are you charging me two thousand dollars, or more than ten dollars for this domain name?
Paul Nicks: Well, you know what it is? We always get the person who adds ten thousand dollar name to their cart and it is confused as why it’s, you know, all of a sudden ten thousand dollars for a name. Along with the, ‘yes, this name is available for X price’, we put a phone number as well. So, our support staff, our call service staff is very well trained in explaining the value of a premium listing, the value of an auction listing; explaining why it’s, you know, more money than the ten dollar fresh registration, and you know, certainly there’s always going to be some level of confusion, but as we get more of those names in front of the public, then that confusion will just lessen, right. So, it’s part of my world to get as many listings, as many, yes, this name is available for a set amount, or yes, this name is available on auction for offer/counter offer in front of end users as I can, and that will just breed a familiarity with that entire system. So, as our customers understand that more, then they’ll tell their friends, etcetera, and then that’ll just grow the aftermarket. Not just the Go Daddy aftermarket, but the domain aftermarket in general. I think it’s a responsibility we have – I have – is to make sure our end users are understand this available, or this inventory is available, and can be had; we’ve got phone number to explain it. And you know, for Go Daddy, it’s a wonderful proposition, because one you have somebody that you can explain the value of a domain, explain that this, you know, PimpYouCar etcetera is available for a thousand dollars, whatever it is. Once they understand that, you know you’ve got a person who’s willing to invest in their business with this domain name, then it’s so much easier just to have that conversation about, you know, what you’re going to need security on this name, you’re going to need SSL certs; here’s how we can help you build this brand with our services. So, it’s obviously, it’s in Go Daddy’s best interest. It’s in the customers best interest to have the domain name. And we can do everything in-house to get them set up with their business. That’s the entire model really.
Michael Cyger: Okay. And, can users go on to Go Daddy and into the aftermarket, and buy any type of domain name TLD they want? Can they buy Canadian domain names, or Liechtenstein domain names – .LY domain names -? Do you support all the different ccTLDs?
Paul Nicks: .LY is Lybia.
Michael Cyger: Oh, Lybia. That’s right.
Paul Nicks: But to answer the question, yeah, you know what? We don’t offer all the TLDs. CA, we do offer CA, but not LY on the auctions platform. And there are various reasons for it. You know, some registries just restrict their change of registrant rules a little bit more. So we make sure that, you know, we’ve been working for registries that have an eye towards the aftermarket, and they understand that change of registrants; the easier you make that, then the easier the more names you stay registered as far as I’m concerned. So, yeah, absolutely. We offer as many as we can right now. We’re always looking to add more as they come in.
Michael Cyger: Is there a charge to purchase domain names in the Go Daddy auctions aftermarket?
Paul Nicks: There’s a membership fee. So, yeah, we have a one year membership, and that’s for listing or buying. It’s $4.95; five dollar roughly.
Michael Cyger: So, why do you charge a membership fee for $4.95 per year to bid on domain names?
Paul Nicks: You know, the biggest reason for that was, we wanted a way to validate that the person was who they say they were. So, you know, we’ve got the 4.4 million some odd domain names in our marketplace. You know, you could be assured that a human being, that actually had a purchase run through our cart, and verified a credit card, was a person listing those. Or, if you’re selling, and somebody is bidding on your name, it’s the same basic idea. We’ve already done a transaction with the bidder to make sure we have validated who they are. So it’s a bidder validation. (Sorry, screwed up there.) Bidder validation. But yeah, it’s basically a security measure for our measure.
Michael Cyger: Okay. So on other domain marketplaces where I don’t have to pay anything, and I can get an account with, you know, a name and an e-mail address, that would allow me to potentially bid on domain names, and then walk away from it, whereas on yours, you’re at least taking a credit card, so you have some time to a financial system.
Paul Nicks: Right. Yeah, the other systems, I mean, they all generally have, if you bid above this certain amount, then they’re going to go ahead and do some sort of nominal charge to a credit card to validate that credit card. We just do it up front. We want to make sure that, even the lower value names aren’t the best sort of name sort of fraud scrutiny as all the higher ones are.
Michael Cyger: Yeah. Okay. So, if a domain is registered at another registrar that’s not as big as Go Daddy, the domain would become available for registration, you know, after it expires and goes through the redemption period, and you know, is deleted from the registrar, it’s available for, you know, either drop catching or hand register. But at Go Daddy, as we’ve discussed, the domain name goes to auction, which essentially requires domain buyers to pay the additional $4.95 membership fee per year in order to bid on it, in order to try and win it to register the domain name. Is this, you know, it’s sort of the haves and haves not. There are some domain registrars that are big enough to create this auction system, and then there are other registrars that just aren’t big enough to have a system like that. Is it fair in the domain name industry, to have this type of system, where aftermarkets, or auctions exist at some registrars and don’t exist at others?
Paul Nicks: You know, the definition of fair is always fun to discuss, I suppose. So, as far as I’m concerned, yeah, it’s far more fair than many of the alternatives. So what we’ve created at Go Daddy’s auctions platform is a truly free auction system. So we’re not inflating the value of any domain names, we’re not holding any back, warehousing it etcetera. They all go to the auction system. They start off at their twelve dollars. If there is interest in the name, then you have an open auction system instead of a closed one. Then obviously as the process goes on, then it goes to the buy it now, close outs etcetera. So what we’ve created is a complete free market system where the market, the domain buyers will in essence determine the value of the domain name. If we were to send them all back to the registry etcetera, what you would get would still be auctions for those names. So you would still, if the name is good enough, get the drop catchers that are going to play, pull those names out, and then put all those into a private auction or keep them for themselves, and that system is actually much more insular than what we have at our auction system. So it’s actually far less fair, I think, to go to the other systems where you have to know the inner workings. You know, it’s trying to explain, you know, my mom, what a drop catcher is, and how you have to put a back order on a name for seventy dollars, and you still won’t even get the name after you’ve committed to paying that because you have to go to an auction with a bunch of other people. You know, it’s hard to explain. It’s far easier to explain our system, where it’s on auctions, somebody bids it up, it’s completely free and up there.
Michael Cyger: Okay. That makes sense.
Paul Nicks: I think it makes sense. I think it’s fair. I think it’s good.
Michael Cyger: So, you mentioned back orders. Let’s talk about that. You do offer back orders. Is that correct?
Paul Nicks: Yes.
Michael Cyger: What is a back order?
Paul Nicks: Back order essentially for us is, once we get to the deletion period, then the registry will release all the names that’s gotten deleting for that day in one fail swoop, and the back order system will attempt to register the name on the behalf of whomever owns the backorder. So we’ll go with our connections to the registry, and try to acquire that name on behalf of the back order holder. So that’s essentially what it is, and you know, every registrar gets a connection to the registries and such, and that’s how that all plays out. It’s whomever has the most connections, or whomever is going after the, you know, one particular name over another, those are generally the ones that are going to get it.
Michael Cyger: Okay. So, in domainer terms, it’s basically a drop catching service for Go Daddy.
Paul Nicks: Yeah. Yeah. Basically it is. I mean, in ways our back order system will try to get it. If you can put a back order name on a name that goes through the expiring platform, that are Go Daddy’s expiring it. If you say you didn’t want to bid on it, and get a bid up there, then maybe you have other show there is interest in it, you can put a back order on that name. And if goes through the close out system, and drops, then we’ll try to pick it up. And I think it’s, obviously, it’s easier for us to pick it up on our side, and transfer it over. But we also do back orders at other registrars as well.
Michael Cyger: Got it. So, but if the domain is actually registered at Go Daddy, it goes through, it expires, goes through the eighteen day grace period, goes through the additional twenty-four days where there’s the redemption period, and then you know, goes through your five days of decreasing price. Nobody puts a bid on it through the entire time. I have a back order on it through Go Daddy. Will you get it for me for then ten, twelve-dollar hand registration cost before it gets deleted, and is available for drop catchers to pick it up?
Paul Nicks: Yes.
Michael Cyger: Okay.
Paul Nicks: If it’s through Go Daddy. A Go Daddy back order will happen.
Michael Cyger: It will pick it up before it’s deleted from the registry.
Paul Nicks: Yeah. That’s the last check we run before we drop it off, and say, do we have a Go Daddy back order on this name or not.
Michael Cyger: Perfect. And, do you take multiple back orders per domain name, or there’s only one back order per domain name because you could just give it to the first person?
Paul Nicks: No. We do multiple. We used to do first person only, but now we actually do multiple where if several people put a back order in, and we get it, then what we do, is just a private auction between those users.
Michael Cyger: Oh! Another Auction!
Paul Nicks: Yeah. It’s the way that works. The first person in gets the first bid, and a lot of times those auctions don’t have a lot of activity. Obviously because the name will have been in our system for the entire fifteen days prior, so. But that is how we do it. We didn’t want to do first come, first serve, because it still has an error of an advantage towards somebody with better technology. You know, we want to try take away the gaming of the systems as much as we can, and that’s the fairest way we found to do that.
Michael Cyger: I understand. Okay. And if I’m the only person to put a back order on it, would I get it for the registration cost by itself?
Paul Nicks: Well, the back order itself has a cost. So, what you would get is, you would get the domain name. And the back order itself, we take the middle price out of there. So, let’s say it’s a twenty-dollar back order. Then you’ll get the ten dollar credit for your dot com, and all etcetera.
Michael Cyger: Got it. And, is that how much a back order costs, is twenty dollars?
Paul Nicks: It could. Last time I checked, yeah.
Michael Cyger: Alright. Somewhere around there.
Paul Nicks: The prices will sometimes fluctuate.
Michael Cyger: Do I get charged for the back order when I place it, or when the domain actually goes to the back order process?
Paul Nicks: You know, it’s a credit based system. So what you do is, you purchase back order credits, and then you apply them to domain names. If we’re able to capture the domain name on your behalf, then we can consume the credit, and the twenty dollar fee, or the system is twenty dollars. If not, then we’ll just give you the credit back. So, it’s a continue on. So if we only charge you. We charge you up front, but we only actually eat the money, we actually eat the credit, when it wins.
Michael Cyger: Okay. And that probably dissuades a lot of people from putting back orders in if it actually costs real money to do it.
Paul Nicks: You know, I’m not sure it does. I mean, it’s less money. Yeah, it’s really money, but it’s less money. It’s only really used when we win the name for you, so. The other systems that are out there, there has to be some sort of fee for a back order, because there’s actual work taking place on behalf of the registrars etcetera itself.
Michael Cyger: Right. Okay. So, if people are out there, and they want to put a back order on the domain name, you know, they don’t want to bid on it, but they want to see if it drops, and get their back order in; if it’s registered at Go Daddy, they should put the back order in at Go Daddy because they have the first chance of getting it there before any other, third-party, drop catching service that they pay for, or don’t pay for.
Paul Nicks: Absolutely. If the name registered at Go Daddy, and they don’t want to bid on it in the expired auction, they put a Go Daddy back order on it. Yeah.
Michael Cyger: Okay. Alright. We talked, you know, briefly and the traffic conference, Paul. I found a domain name that was registered on the aftermarket on Go Daddy auctions that a friend wanted me to purchase for them. It’s a friend that lives here in the Seattle area. She runs a startup fitness company. She bought a domain name. I said, ‘Why did you buy a domain name with four words in it, when really the three word domain name is much better for your business?’ And I looked, and it was available at Go Daddy auction; it was a bid make offer type situation. So, I asked my friend how much she wanted to offer, and explained to her how, you know, domain aftermarket work. And she said, ‘I want to offer fifty dollars’, so I made the offer on her behalf. The owner, I believe, so I’m trying to recall all the details because I wasn’t as familiar with Go Daddy auctions at the time; the owner sent it to a seven day auction, and if my memory serves me correctly, at the end of seven days, I was the only bidder on the domain name, and then the auction was extended to something like a sixty or seventy day auction. And, as you were describing the process here to me earlier, you talked about, you know, the auction length, and you didn’t mention anything about sixty or seventy day auction. What happened in that situation?
Paul Nicks: I actually looked at that. So what happened with your particular situation; so, part of our system is, when you list the name – call it a offer/counter offer listing -, we don’t let you list it from now for eternity. What we do is, we do a sixty day offer/counter off listing, and what that does is at the end of the sixty days, it automatically renews. Now what that allows us to do is, on the renewal, we can verify that you still own the name. We can verify some things; make sure that our auction inventory stays clean. So that’s kind of how that renewal process works. What happened in your situation was, you were towards the end of that sixty day cycle, and so when you put the bid on it, the owner of the name, the seller of the name, didn’t; I think they actually made a counter off, but they didn’t accept the initial offer, and then the domain ran its course through the end of the last seven days of the sixty day listing, and then automatically renewed itself for another sixty day listing.
Michael Cyger: Okay.
Paul Nicks: So, you know, it was strange to me when we discussed it. It seemed odd to me because you shouldn’t be able to, obviously, accept a offer and push it to auction, which we have that option for our sellers. If you get an offer you like on offer/counter offer, you push it to a seven day auction as you described. And we don’t allow that, so once you push it to a seven day auction, that means that you’re going to sell that name. You’ve already met your reserve price. The name will sell to whomever beats the high bid via the person that you pushed the auction because of that bid, or somebody else that jumps in. So, I have verified there’s no way to cancel an auction, you know, a pushed auction listing that had been sent over there, so. It was just the timing was a little bit strange.
Michael Cyger: So, I’m still unclear. It went to a seven day auction. I was a bidder on the seven day auction. But then, what happened?
Paul Nicks: It didn’t go to auction.
Michael Cyger: It didn’t go to auction.
Paul Nicks: No. What you saw was, not that it went to a seven day auction, but instead you were at the last few days of the initial offer/counter offer listing.
Michael Cyger: Oh, okay.
Paul Nicks: So it said, hey, there are seven days left on this, but the original owner never actually accepted the offer, so it wasn’t a true auction. It was, instead, a offer/counter offer listing that was about to get renewed for another sixty days. That’s essentially what happened with that one.
Michael Cyger: Okay. Alright. I understand. So, if I’m a domain investor and I’m looking at the Go Daddy auctions, and you have a ton of domain names going through there, clearly, your registrar is so large, you have so many customers, you have so many domain names that expire that, you know, somebody might register a domain name and decides they just don’t want to pay the renewal fee. What are some tips that you would provide to domain investors that want to use Go Daddy auctions to keep an eye on great domains that are in auction?
Paul Nicks: You know, I think that the domainers that do very well, they’ll do one of couple things. So, a lot of people will have a look very day at auctions based off of the traffic. I mean, we do get some metrics; whatever metrics we know about the name, we try to give you on the expired site. So they’ll sort their daily list by traffic, or by bids. See what other people are bidding on.
Michael Cyger: Yep.
Paul Nicks: And let that sort of run their decision making. And another way is, of course, with keywords. So if you’re a say, a geo domainer and you’re looking for Atlanta, or Cedar Rapids, Scottsdale, whatever, as far as your keywords, what you do is you end up setting up a safe search. The auctions platform allows you do to safe searches, and you could put whatever your filter criteria is, save that off, and then actually set that up to e-mail you every day. So, you can get a list e-mailed to you every day without even going to the auction site that shows you what today’s matches are for whatever your filtered result is. So, that’s how a lot of people who do well, who are bulk buyers and such; that’s how they’ll scrape through the list. Is by setting up those morning e-mails, looking at it over their cup of coffee or whatever, and seeing what they want to invest in.
Michael Cyger: Okay. And, on your platform, when it says the domain name, the number of bids/offers and then the traffic, if it says traffic two-hundred and fifty-four, what does that mean exactly?
Paul Nicks: What we do is we; the last couple weeks, so once we get past that eighteen day period, you’ve got this twenty-four day period. And what we do is we put a park page up, and we have a very visible banner at the top of the park page in the hope of telling the original registrant, hey, your name is now up for deletion.
Michael Cyger: Right.
Paul Nicks: Click here to renew, right. But while it’s there, while it’s in that system, there’s a parked page. We’re able to gather whatever metrics we can to help the individual buyer on the auction platform. So it’s a measure of the traffic there extrapolated out for some set of days.
Michael Cyger: Extrapolated out for some seven days? Is that how you finished that?
Paul Nicks: Some set of days is what I said actually. And also, we take the time we have it and then we try to determine based off of that amount of traffic what that domain might see. And I’m lawful here, because I don’t remember if it’s three months, six months, or a year, but it’s over some set of time that it’s the standard. That doesn’t change, so.
Michael Cyger: Okay. Alright. So, I assume I can go to the Go Daddy help system, and it will tell me that the traffic is over some period of time.
Paul Nicks: Yeah, I’m not sure if that’s in our help or not, but we could probably figure that out. We’ll get back to you on that.
Michael Cyger: Okay. Great. And then a lot of the domain names have evaluations associated with them as well. Is that evaluation that comes from an appraisal in your system, or is that evaluation that is automated that your auction platform just assigns to it?
Paul Nicks: That one takes a lot of factors on that. So, you’ve got the traffic; you’ve got a UPC revenue that may have come in during that time; and, you know, obviously, the keywords and such. So, we use all the data we have about the domain to try to come up with some nominal measures.
Michael Cyger: Okay. So that’s your own automated evaluation of that domain name.
Paul Nicks: Yes.
Michael Cyger: Okay. I understand. So I’m looking at DownloadChrome.net, and that has evaluation of eighteen dollars, and that’s based off of the words, and the extension, and the traffic of 248, and you know, probably a host of other factors as well. I understand. Okay.
Paul Nicks: Seems correct. Yeah.
Michael Cyger: And then, if I’m looking at the featured domains, I see a domain right here that I believe it’s spelled IListenTo.com. I have no idea what that means, Maybe it’s in another language or something. And it says, zero bids, offers, prices forty-seven hundred dollars, which struck me as a little strange, and then I looked and it has a little A with a yellow circle that says view appraisal. And when I clicked that, it says, ‘this domain has a certified appraisal’. I assume this is one of the services that you provide, Paul.
Paul Nicks: Yes.
Michael Cyger: Okay. And the certified appraisal was done July 28, 2010, and the appraisal price was $11,234. So that means that somebody from your organization understands the purpose of this domain name. Maybe it’s in another language and assigned a value to that domain name based on that and a host of other factors.
Paul Nicks: Yeah. The appraisal system. We have a mixture of automated versus manual appraisal, or certified appraisal, which this person ended up getting was the highest level appraisal that we have that does go through some manual intervention there.
Michael Cyger: Okay. And so, if it has a certified appraisal, you’ll show that versus the automated appraisal.
Paul Nicks: Well, the automated one. The evaluation that you see is only on expired names. That’s based off of that particular algorithm. It uses the data we know. If it’s a customer selling their name, then we don’t have that data to be able to do that particular algorithm up.
Michael Cyger: I understand. Okay. Alright. Let me ask you a higher level question. What can the industry do to improve liquidity of domain names?
Paul Nicks: In liquidity, it’s all about pricing and convenience, and those both kind of go to the heart of what a lot of the players are trying to do with buy now pricing. Make it as easier to get that; easier to get the name, as you can. You know, basically, go through the premium listing channel on Go Daddy. Go through some of the (Unclear 1:09:04.4) etcetera, but price your inventory and get it to where a person coming to Go Daddy, looking for that name to register, doesn’t have to negotiate with you necessarily. Now, if the name has great value, then I wouldn’t recommend putting a buy it now price on there. Then it deserves a little bit of education to the customer on why it’s worth so much. But if it’s a speculate of or if it’s one that has some value, but in the fifteen hundred, two thousand, or whoever range you may have put the buy it now price on, then certainly. Put a buy it now price on it. List it through there. Make it as easier for that customer to get that name into their account as you can. You get a lot of people who are scared away from offer/counter offer listings, or even are scared away from going to Go Daddy auctions and putting in an offer or a bid on that name. That’s why we push the premium listing network so much. It’s because there’s nothing else other than add to cart, check out. And, that’s, you know, the optimal path.
Michael Cyger: Right. Makes sense. What’s the biggest competitive threat to Go Daddy aftermarket?
Paul Nicks: Gosh. You know, I don’t see us. The way I view us is not necessarily with a lot of competitors. What I have, in my back pocket, is the Go Daddy customer base, and the Go Daddy avail check system, and the Go Daddy brand. So as far as auctions competing with, you know, Sedo etcetera, I don’t see that. You know, that’s why you’ll see partnerships happening; you’ll see consolidation of inventory, because we’re all in it; we all have names that are unique to each other, and we should be able to sell them. So, that’s what really drove the Afternic deal. We mentioned while we were on traffic was simply that they had inventory that I didn’t have. I didn’t view them as a selling competitor because they don’t sell through Go Daddy auctions. I view them as a listing partner instead.
Michael Cyger: Yeah. Okay. Yesterday I brought up Auctions.Godaddy.com to take a look around, and right in the featured domains was a domain name TechCrunch.info, and it was listed at auction at around fifteen thousand dollars. For those who don’t read tech blogs, TechCrunch.com is one of the largest in the United States, maybe worldwide. How does Go Daddy handle trademark infringing domain names?
Paul Nicks: The trademark stuff, that’s best left to our legal and our policy folks. So, I’m not necessarily comfortable talking about that.
Michael Cyger: If I go to NameJet, and I click on a domain name, there’s actually a statement on the bottom of the page that says, if this is your trademark, contact us. Do you encourage trademark owners to contact you if they see a variation of their trademark available for sale?
Paul Nicks: Absolutely. We have policies and processes all set up that if a trademark owner sees anything that had been infringed on their mark, they contact us, and we’ve got an entire team of folks that work with them on this.
Michael Cyger: Great. What’s been your biggest ‘aha’ moment having managed and seen the inner workings of the Go Daddy auctions of the past, you know, year and a half in your current role, and over the past four, five years in working with Go Daddy auctions?
Paul Nicks: The ‘aha’ moment was simply understanding where I am in the market, and within Go Daddy in general. So it was only, call it eight, nine, ten months ago and such, so within the year. Then, we started displaying auctions listings to that avail check path. So knowing, you know, that I’d struggled for quite a while. Building this auction platform up, make sure the technology was up to par, make sure the security was good. You know, all those things that the product manager is supposed to do, right. With really ignoring the fact that I had millions and millions of people beating down the door somewhere else at Go Daddy, you know, so my side door asking for names, and I wasn’t showing it to them. So, my biggest ‘aha’ was, hey, why don’t I just let the people know, yeah, this name is available. It’s available on our aftermarket, come over here and put a bid on it. And that’s driven, you know, my 2011 road maps, my 2011 road maps. It’s all about making sure that the buyers and sellers are together, and that maybe I should’ve gotten to that realization a little faster, but we’re there now.
Michael Cyger: So, you know, I ask for a lot of questions before this interview and one of the questions that came in was related to the cave. You know what the cave is, right?
Paul Nicks: I’m familiar with the cave. Yeah.
Michael Cyger: What is the cave? Why don’t you describe it for audience members.
Paul Nicks: Well, we used to actually, when we were in Iowa, so basically we’ve got several offices in Go Daddy. And in Iowa, we had a office that was kind of scraped together from a single floor going to those places where you’d sublease this building, or that building, or that office, and we tried to get as many pieces together. They were kind of close to each other as we could. And one particular piece was designed; envision a circular hallway, and in the middle of the circle you have walls and one huge space with no windows, and two locking doors. And that’s where we did most of our operations on the parking and the auction site for quite a while. And that was in factually referred to as ‘the cave’ because certainly, without the windows, little slits of light come through the door sometimes. So we tended to have the lights off quite a bit of the time anyway because the ambient glow of the beautiful monitors was enough for, very devy, you know.
Michael Cyger: For sure. Would people go in there and take naps as well? Just find a little corner to.
Paul Nicks: There was no time for that. No.
Michael Cyger: Alright. I do want to thank a host of domainers for helping me come up with questions to ask you, Paul. I’m not sure if they wanted me to say their full names, so let’s just say thanks to Brad, Troy, Chris, Mark, and Jim. I tweeted out. They responded. And we’re all very appreciative. So let’s finish up with this Paul. What can people expect to see in the next six to twelve months related to domain name auctions at Go Daddy?
Paul Nicks: You know, I think that what we have now is the end of the past year, and I mentioned this a couple times now, is really getting the inventory, and making it easy for the end user. And I think we’re doing quite a good job at that today with the priced inventory, the buy it now inventory, etcetera. So what I have on my docket for the next few months, and into the next year, is really going to be figuring out a way to have the better names, names that require a little bit of education, the names that are offered/counter offered, and should be offered/counter offered. Those names really there’s not an easy way. There’s not a very user friendly way to get my Go Daddy customer, get them in, show them that name is available, engage them, teach them about the domain name, all without upsetting their user experience. So, that’s a very big challenge. That’s why we haven’t necessarily tackled it yet. I mean, obviously the first challenge was let’s get priced inventory, let’s get the easy stuff in there first, and we’ll upgrade that inventory as we go on. But now what do we do about the names that aren’t in, and shouldn’t be necessarily priced. That’s my next challenge. And that’s what you’re going to see in the next year or so.
Michael Cyger: Alright. If you have a follow up question, please post it in the comments below. We’ll ask Paul to come back and answer as many as he can. Paul if people want to follow you, are you on Twitter? Do you have a blog on Go Daddy, or personal blog?
Paul Nicks: Gosh. I’m just not that into the social club.
Michael Cyger: You’re just not into the technology is what I’m hearing.
Paul Nicks: You know what? I’m an engineer. I love my technology. I just don’t like sharing myself that much. I’m the true introverted engineer. I’ll say that. No. We have the Go Daddy auctions Twitter accounts, which isn’t me, but it’s, you know, it’s our marketing efforts.
Michael Cyger: @GoDaddyAuctions.
Paul Nicks: @GoDaddyAuctions. We have the Go Daddy Twitter page, and the Go Daddy Facebook page, and all those that we do most of our stuff through, and sort of consolidated channels there.
Michael Cyger: Excellent. I recommend anybody watching, listening, or reading this show, or for any show for that matter, the guests come on here, they make a sizable commitment of time and share their hard lessons learned. Please take a moment to thank them. Thank Paul through a tweet, an e-mail, a comment. If you see him at a conference, like I did at traffic, let him know you appreciated watching his show. Paul Nicks, Director of Go Daddy auctions and aftermarket. Thank you for taking the time, coming on the show, and being a Domain Sherpa for other entrepreneurs, investors, and business owners.