Exciting News From Bido.com

I’m a little late in posting this as I received the email yesterday. Since the email covers a number of topics pertaining to the latest updates involving the Bido.com auction platform, I felt it was better just to paste exactly what it said in a blog entry.

We’ve just released a few new changes at Bido and we’re really excited to let you know about what’s new. In addition to many minor enhancements throughout the site, these are the big changes that you’ll notice, and we hope you enjoy:

• Guarantee Program – The Bido Guarantee Program allows you to reduce the risk of selling. Submit your domains to the Bido Guarantee Program and either make a sale or get a Bido Guarantee – with no obligation. If the Bido Guarantee is not acceptable to you, you can simply walk away. Bido has assembled the top buyers in the domain industry, our Guarantee Partners, who submit their offers for domain names that they are willing to buy in a private auction not open to the public. After the private auction takes place, you have 3 choices: 1. Accept the Guarantee Offer as a sale. 2. Send the domain to a No Reserve auction open to all, using the Guarantee as a starting bid. 3. Pass on the Guarantee and walk away. Learn more – http://www.bido.com/BidoGuarantee

• Auction Acceleration – Recently, Bido started allowing our members to vote on the submitted domains go to No Reserve auction. All the members can vote, and domains receiving the highest amount of votes are those that are sent to No Reserve auction. Auction Acceleration builds on top of this format. If your submitted No Reserve domain is not chosen for auction, or you don’t want to wait for the votes to come in (30 days of voting), you can now accelerate it to auction by paying a small fee, as well as discounts for multiple. For more information please visit http://www.bido.com/AuctionAcceleration

• $28 Auctions – All No Reserve auctions will now start at $28 instead of $1. The balance between the number of submissions and the quality of submissions is something we have been working on for a while. We feel this change will allow sellers a bit more peace of mind when selling their domains on the Bido platform. We think the quality of what’s for sale will increase due to this change. Bidders on all upcoming auctions have been notified accordingly.

• One contract for sellers – Previously, sellers needed to fill a contract for every name they sold. We have done away with that format. This was a well needed format change and we hope it makes your life a lot easier when selling domains on Bido. There is no need to fill an individual contract for each auction anymore. Now, regardless of how many auctions you run, there’s only one contract to agree to, and agree to it only that one time. This makes life a lot easier for sellers. We realize your time is valuable and we know this will help you put more valuable time in your day to do more important things.

• Auction Ticker - Some of you remember the Channel Chat that we previewed for a few days a couple of weeks ago. We completely redesigned the Channel Chat and its now a ticker of all the auction activity. See in real time what’s going on at Bido. See when commentaries are left, when bids are placed, when auctions start, when they end, and much more. You can customize your ticker and show the elements that are of interest to you, change their color, and more. Be sure to click and check out your Ticker Settings to customize yours today.

• Chatroom enhancements – You can now switch chatrooms as easy as flipping a dropdown menu to the room you want to join. Also, see how many people are in the room before you enter it. Previously, it was hard to know what chatroom was the active room, and so we’ve addressed that issue and made it a lot easier to chat with you peers on Bido. Check it out and let us know what you think.

• Pre-Bids are now Absolute – All Pre-Bids that are placed on Bido are now placed as absolute bids when the auction starts. Once the auction starts, scales are then followed with bids placed after the auction start. Previously, all Pre-Bids would follow scales. All bidders have been notified of the change.

Those are the big changes but there’s so much more in this new release, literally hundreds of smaller enhancements too numerous to list here. Explore the site and let us know what you think. Some other noteworthy recent developments here at Bido include:

• Multiple auctions per day. Instead of 1 domain per day, Bido is now running multiple auctions. If you previously submitted domains that didn’t get selected for auction, please resubmit them at this time. Your chances of them making it to auction are much greater since we can support many more auctions now than previously.

• Member Voting. Bido used to select the names for No Reserve auction, by picking the best of what was submitted. We recently changed that and started allowing the Bido Experts to vote on the names. Now, however, all members are allowed to vote. Verify your account and get started today. Please do your part when you come to the Bido website and vote for as many domains as you would like. If the domains make it to auction, you’ll get a notice.

• 2% Cashback Bonus if your Pre-Bid wins the auction. Place your bid early and earn 2% cashback if your Pre-Bid was the bid that won the auction. Sellers still earn their full proceeds, as Bido sparks the cashback.

• Sellers may now pick their dates, times, and description of auction right on the Bido website. This was previously done over email, and is now much more of a self-serve process.

Although I don’t plan on purchasing any new domain names until 50% of my current portfolio has been developed, this is still exciting news. My favorite upgrades are the no reserve auctions starting at $28 as opposed to $1 and the new auction ticker. The $28 starting point will help buyers feel a little better about submitting there domains names with no reserve. The new ticker system provides a great way to catch all of the bidding action without having to flip through the different links on the site. Bido has listened to the members of the site and will continue to impact how domain names are auctioned in our industry. Great job guys!