Opinion: Sending Domains to Auction At Sedo

May 15, 2008 in Domains

I don’t know who came up with this idea, but it seems to be a new trend of 2008. Several domainers came up with the idea to send your domain to auction by posting the starting bid at Sedo. Which seems ok when you first think about it. Now the topic of shill bidding arises. Lets take a look at the definition of shill bidding:

A shill is an associate of a person selling goods or services or a political group, who pretends no association to the seller/group and assumes the air of an enthusiastic customer.

Wouldn’t this technically be considered shill bidding? I think so. I’m also happy to know that Sedo doesn’t allow this type of activity. A recent post by Keith from Sedo on NamePros confirms that it is illegal. Will people stop? Of course not. Should they? We all know the answer to that one.

I wonder what long term effects this will have on the Sedo Marketplace…