It’s a simple question a fellow domain investor asked me last week. Is Sedo’s only value their ability to provide domain name buyers? Sedo is a big part of my annual sales.  The reputation they’ve built over the years has made them, Afternic, and Godaddy  THE three public places to park your domain portfolio. The security of the transactions and the quantity of domains has made them a first stop for many domain investors and end users looking for names.  But if you’re looking to actually make money parking, that’s another story.

I’m not sure anyone other than those in the “Circle of Frank” are excited about their parking revenue.  I had the pleasure receiving 1 penny for three clicks the other day on a name parked at Sedo.  My sarcasm on that huge amount of income is what generated the comment from my friend.  He asked why I don’t just move the names to Afternic.

My opinion is this.  Regardless of where I park my domains I am most likely not going to make much money.  At this point in time my goal is to have my domains in view to as many potential buyers as possible.  I park at Sedo because of this reason. Afternic, Godaddy,  and many other parking companies provide this same opportunity but in my opinion, of the publicly available parking/sales sites, Sedo has had the best results for me.  I do think this is changing.  I think Godaddy and Afternic are coming on strong.

To answer the question about parking.  Sedo is most likely one of the worst in the industry.  I don’t know their payout rate because it really doesn’t matter how much you get when you are dividing up a bag of poop.  They know that people will stay for the sales opportunity.  If they were only a parking company they would be a very very small company. They are a domain sales company that happens to provide parking.

They rely on that strength to save on marketing expenses that others have to incur to promote their wares.  They release their sales to a select few (still trying to get that weekly list) but other than that, they don’t buy ads. No need.  But as Godaddy and Afternic come on strong and start grabbing market share will that change?

It’s hard to tell.  Because we don’t get sales numbers from Godaddy we can’t tell how much their weekly sales have risen.  My guess is that Godaddy has eaten into their sales numbers and the relationship between Afternic and Godaddy will shift power.

So now I put this question out there.  Which platform do you use and do you think one is better than the other and why?