Sedo Cares? Gives HALF the funds to charity!

If I asked you to tell me the first things that come to mind when I say “Sedo” – what would you say? I might be completely wrong, but I’m guessing the word “cares” wouldn’t be one of them.

This morning I received an email titled “Wishing Well Promotion:: Win Cash and Promote Change!“. At first I thought spam, then I thought “promote change” – that sounds like CNN’s “be the change” promo…. so I opened the email from Sedo.

At the top of the email was a picture of the world, a large green leaf and a little African child. Wow, the marketing guys really picked one issue from each category for this promo! It looks like something from an NGO like WorldVision.

So what’s the bottom line? Well, if you spend 1,000 USD/EUR/GBP or more, Sedo puts $10 into a bucket (Wishing Well). At the end of the month half of the money in the “Wishing Well” is given to CHF International “in response to the drought occurring in Ethiopia“. The other half will be given at random to a buyer or seller who closed a transaction through Sedo during the month of August. What the? Am I living in the twilight zone here? What we have is – drought in Ethiopia vs large latte at Starbucks. Hmmmm… Some people might find this hard to believe, so here is their landing page for the promotion with all the info.

So let me get the straight – domainers buy stuff from Sedo for $1k and Sedo gives $5 to charity and the other $5 to a domainer. Great concept around the charity, but very BAD execution. It should be a competition OR a charity.

Here is an extract from CHF International which explains how much $$ is required:

• $300 provides a family with proper sanitation;
• $600 provides a year’s supply of food and water for one growing child;
• $1,000 repairs an existing well that will provide 400 people with clean water;
• $7,000 builds a new well, which could save the lives of 800 people;
• $12,000 builds a new school building, providing children with valuable education.“

Sedo, why don’t you donate 100% of the funds to the charity? $5 is nothing to a domainer. If you really cared, you would give it all to charity.

Don’t get me wrong – conceptually this is a great idea. I believe that Western countries and wealthy individuals have an obligation to give something back to society. I personally donate to several charities on a monthly basis.

Sedo should be congratulated on making the first step as they didn’t have to do it. There is now an opportunity to get it right and set an example to the rest of the industry.

Sedo Promotes CJ7

Early this morning I received an email from Sedo customer support, promoting .Asia domain names.

Sedo listed www.cj7.asia and www.cj7cares.asia as “successful” examples, with cj7cares.asia receiving more than 500,000 users “within a few days of the campaign”. I’d never heard of CJ7 before… so when I typed it into google I got IMDB and Wikipedia links at position #1 and #2 followed by Sony Pictures at #3. It turns out that CJ7 is a SCIFI/Fantasy movie for kids.

The interesting thing is…. I couldn’t find any .asia listed in Google related to CJ7. However cj7.asia was listed on many press releases promoting the .Asia TLD. I wonder how much traffic is related to the press release vs the domain being indexed by the search engines?

Sedo writes:

“Now is the time to invest into the future. Make history and reap returns on the most prestigious virtual real estate in Asia.”

It’s obviously in Sedos interest to promote new TLD’s like .asia. That way the buyers can list the names on Sedo for auction. Provided they sell – everyone wins.