What's Bido All About?

Bido.com was launched last week by some friends of mine and has been causing quite a stir.

The main question seems to have been, "What's that all about"? It certainly was mine.

I received an invitation to become one of their panel of experts and comment on some of the domain names they have coming through on auction, which I readily accepted of course, because it's not every day I can call my self an expert on something.

The idea behind the site is to hold a domain auction every day. The difference with Bido though, is that only one domain name per day will be auctioned.

The auction today is for CerealBox.com, a generic name that I took a moment to comment on as follows:

"I can't see the value in this to be honest. It's generic enough, but the term "cereal box" is hardly on the tip of everyone's tongue is it?
For me, this one's registration fee only - but that's only be cause I just don't see where the revenue would come from."

Some of the "experts" agree with me, which is always a bonus, valuing the name at less than $500, though one or two don't, as you'll see from these comments:

"This is a very valuable generic domain name with enormous marketing potential."

"Cereal Box Manufacturing, while a niche market, is probably a billion dollars in annual turnover, and this is a category killer for that market."

As you can see, Bido offers an opportunity to comment on someone else's names and once the auction is over, only one camp will be right! How exciting.

The end result doesn't matter to me, as it's not my domain, but already we can see how different people view domains.

My question is if a name like this is potentially so valuable, especially to a niche market like cereal box manufacturers (as one expert says above), then why didn't they approach that market themselves. (This is a house auction of their own domain).

You see, I don't know how Bido is going to attract cereal box manufacturers to the auction. (actually, let's get something straight here. The industry term for this kind of thing is actually "carton" not box).

Some suggest that it's a great name for kids' TV. Again, what's the Bido team going to do to get media people along to the online auction?

I'm sure Bido will be a great success. The downside for me, is that if they're pitching at domainers, it's the wrong people to pitch at in my opinion. Many haven't got a clue, most are potless speculators who wouldn't know a good name from lolipop and the rest already own some great domains.

Anyway, here's the next seven auctions from Bido.com:

Some people will invariably knock the Bido model, but personally, I hope it does well.

The concept of having a single name up for auction per day is a good and unusual one.

With a commission payable to Bido of just 8%, they clearly intend to get some high prices for their sellers.

If they do, I might just throw some in myself. Could I stand the pain of havbing my names criticised by my peers? I doubt it, I take it all too personally.

Good luck Sahar, Jarred, et al - I wish you every success with this. Anything that gets domains into the mainstream can only be a good thing.