This may not come as a total shock to most but if you look at the numbers it’s pretty shocking. Afternic’s auction service is fueled by the 3rd largest registrar by volume Tucows, with over 6.8 Million domains. I have seen MelbourneIT.com expired domains and I am also pretty sure I have seen "other" registrar domains in the Afternic Expired Domains list.

Now to give you an idea, over 7,400 domain name hit Expired Status yesterday ALONE at Tucows…. That is a little higher number then normal as it’s normally closer to 2,000-3,000 ish per day. Now some of these get renewed, Tucows keeps some, some go to auction (very few) and if they do not go to auction, they get dropped.

Visiting Afternic.com’s "Closing Soon" section today, which are basically all the domain names that are At Auction currently you will see a total of 12 Domains! 10 of these are "expired" auctions. The highest Expired domain was bid up to $80.

Now I have never really seen many domains "closing soon" at Afternic and this always amazed me. I know part of it is because Tucows dips into it’s expired domains and keeps what it thinks are "good" or that have "traffic" and so on.

Keep in mind that Afternic has over 3 Million domain names listed for sale and any of these can be sent to auction as well on an offer that the seller wishes to send to auction. Currently Two are at auction this way.

Tucows had stated they would be "adding 100,000" expired domains this year to the system which would average about 274 domain names Per Day.

Afternic requires at least One Bid before 24 hours of the auction starting for the domain to go to auction which makes sense. Afternic also offers a search feature to find domains but I must admit it’s pretty weak. This could be one reason behind so few domains at auction.

Example, I did a search just now. I selected to Exclude numbers and hypens (digits and dashes), .com only and typed in Min Characters 4, Max 4 and left everything else at it’s defult setting.

Results: iypw.com, r3dx.com, wgs5.com, wmhv.com, zngm.com

Well, clearly the "filter" system isn’t working properly. Out of the 5 results displayed, 2  held numbers which I selected to Exclude. Secondly, the 3 that matched what I am looking for are Very Weak in quality. This most likely goes back to Tucows dipping it’s hands into the goodies.

I think the search function is as basic as it could be, which I see as another large problem. The $1.00 fee to become a buyer as another. It’s only $1.00 but Afternic could also take that $1.00 and put it toward a "credit" for the buyers first purchase, so really it wouldn’t cost anything and still help prevent "not real bidders".

Overall, I think Afternic needs to rethink it’s Auction Service. As a seller, I wouldn’t send a domain to auction since I know nobody even really looks at it (lack of domains). The search functions need improvments. The expired domains need to be displayed more like SnapNames and NameJet have them. I would like to see "special" auctions held like GreatDomains.com/Sedo does as well. Lastly, I wish Afternic would put it’s foot down and tell Tucows to stop warehousing all the good domains for it’s expired domains because I fell that Tucows is hurting Afternic more then helping…

 Afternic basically offers what Sedo does (minus the expired domain which should be a Plus) and Sedo clearly has a lot more domain names being offered at auction and none of these are "expired". They are All user submitted…

I think with a More Active auction service at Afternic could also spice up "offers" on member listed domains as well since I never seem to have any luck with those either.