namer.ca

Auction day:	4
Sunken Loss:	$490.63
Next Losing Bid:	$3.01
Domain:	A Mystery

Is MysteryDomainAuction.com a scam?

Sometimes when a controversial issue arises we need to take a stand, in order to do the right thing, for the greater good of the community, for those who may not see as clearly or have less experience than us and rely on our opinion. Staying neutral is not an option because it puts one in the camp of the guilty\ignorant for failing to reveal to your readers (who i assume you respect) the pitfalls and shortsightedness of certain schemes.

I have never been introduced to the concept of an all-pay auction before, so when i saw this “auction”, the first thought was that it was an interesting project, however $1,000,000 revenue with only $10K grand prize, and a chance of winning approaching zero faster than a lottery ticket set of alarm bells really quickly. A quick research into it revealed the dirty little secret of its inner workings.

The twist that tricks people in this case is the promise of value delivered from advertising of ones bids that link to your site.

How much advertising value are you really receiving from this form of untargetted advertising? Have you calculated your CPM for your $3 bid? if advertising is your goal, is the price of admission worth it?

For example If you advertise at dotSauce Magazine, a site that receives over 30,000 unique visitors a month, assuming conservatively only 2 visits per unique, that is 60,000 impressions (probably you’ll get more). So a highly visible monthly 125×125 button will cost you ~ 0.67 CPM,
so $3 would translate into 4478 impressions. Is the mystery auction going to bring you that many impressions, which one is a better deal?

Not only the mystery volume is not there to justify the cost impression wise, are those few clicks if you are lucky to receive them going to convert for a positive ROI? highly doubtful.

Even if ROI was positive, the whole concept leaves a bad taste in people’s mouth for good reasons, so it’s up to you to decide if you want to link up your site with that kind of flavour.

But what are others saying about this topic?

• Jamie Parks explains What it is and offers some advise.”What it is though is a shady advertising model that needs at least 50 days to really work; ideally 100 days to sucker as many people as possible out of a few bucks”"Times are only gonna get tougher people. Put your time, attention and money into the things that are most important. Like DEVELOPING your best domain names and driving targeted traffic to meaningful, relative, quality content.”"Focus on what is REAL. Don’t fall for every new scheme out there”
• The truth about Mystery Domain Auction
• Will it create a buzz? Read Elliot’s analysis

Related readings:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/an-all-pay-auction/

http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/09/24/swoopo-entertainment-shopping-or-scam

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/12/profitable-unt

i.html

Examples of All-Pay Auctions:

. Swoopo.com
. KingoftheBill.com

This post is tagged