Learning By Doing ~ Sedo Discrepancy

Learning by doing is something I love to do. The other day I did a list of nice .us domain names that were freshly listed on Sedo with Buy It Now prices. The article was enjoyed by many and several people purchased domain names directly from my list using the affiliate links provided by me.

Here are some things I learned.

284 outbound clicks were done on the first day I published the story! Nice! See:

What did Sedo report in my Partner Program stats for clicks coming in? 47? See:

I’m not sure what is up with that, simply because I’m not sure how their tracking system works. Maybe it tracks “unique” visits and only 47 unique Sedo customers did the 284 clicks? That is a potential. Again, I’m not sure.. but I do know that 284 clicks went from DotWeekly to specific Sedo domain listings and Sedo is showing me 47 clicks came in from my affiliate code on March 25, 2015 on the day I did the story.

I didn’t expect “sales” to show up yet, because the process takes time to complete. Payment from the buyer, transfer codes or push and payment out to seller. I assume after that stuff is done, I see the commissions for the affiliate sales.

Did I miss out on some sales with the large difference of clicks that I show and what they are showing me? No clue! This is 100% where trust has to come into play!

So I wanted to learn more.

I reached out to people who purchased domains through my links (who posted comments in the story that they said they purchased). Several have paid for the domain names after using the Buy It Now, yet the listings they purchased remain Active with Buy It Now’s on Sedo’s site when I searched for them today. This is likely because the transactions have not fully completed? The domain was paid for, but has yet to transfer kind of thing? I’m not sure why the listing would stay active AFTER the domain has already been paid for though. This is something new and doesn’t really make sense to me. Why they would do that, I’m not sure or if it may be unique for some reason, an error on the system?

Here is a screenshot I just took and I know for a fact this domain name was purchased via the buy it now on March 25, 2015 and paid for. (I also have the screenshot from the buyer in his account that the domain was paid for)

I also just noticed something from the above screenshot that I didn’t think of before. See that 12 visitors to this sedo offer page. Again, I took that today, March 27, 2015 at 1:00pm Central Time. 12 visitors? Remember that very first screenshot above with the outbound clicks? 21 went directly to the Reward.us domain names listing page! Yet Sedo is only reporting 12 visitors to the listing page?

Sadly for website owners and affiliate marketers like myself that depend on commissions like this to keep my website alive, trust is a HUGE factor. I have to trust that Sedo is going to report honestly to me. They are going to give credit where credit is due. Often, more questions than answers exist by just looking at the numbers! Why do I show 284 clicks out and Sedo is reporting 47 clicks in for March 25, 2015?

I’m not saying that Sedo did anything wrong, it’s just when you look at the numbers… things are not adding up! Always seems “better for them” than “better for me” though!

The whole… domain purchased, paid for but the listing remains active thing I haven’t seen before, but I seen it with my own eyes today on domains that were purchased already and paid for? That one is odd.