GoDaddy: Getting In the Black Friday Sale Game
When you hear of “Black Friday,” you tend to think of hundreds of thousands of shoppers lined up outside brick-and-mortar stores at two in the morning on the day after Thanksgiving.
It’s become one of the most famous—or perhaps infamous—weekends in the U.S., since people are starting off this last month before Christmas by finding the best deals on physical gifts, and perhaps, at times, crushing other people to get to those deals, hence the ominous name.
This hot-as-Christmas-coal weekend has become such a tradition, even for e-retailers, that the Monday after Thanksgiving is called “Cyber Monday.” Not quite as dubiously original or even frightening-sounding as “Black Friday,” but at least with online shopping, you don’t get the physical crush of salivating deal-seekers. You simply might have to deal with crashed servers instead, which might be just as annoying.
Big Daddy on the Block
Speaking of servers, guess who’s offering Black Friday deals in the cyberworld, right along with the regular e-tailers?
GoDaddy is. In fact, for those e-tailers who have Black Friday/Cyber Monday dollars in their eyes, there is an actual domain available called “.blackfriday,” which originally costs $49.99, but is being offered at a cool $9.99, plus an $.18 ICANN fee.
That’s not the only deal they have going right now, of course, which might be pretty sweet pickings any time of the year, but hey, as long as you’re going to browse GoDaddy for the specialty Black Friday domain, go ahead and check out the “$1/month for 12 months” deal. Considering most domains will run you between $7-10 on the low end of things, $1/month is pretty good, giving the competition a run for their electronic money.
The Caveat
In case you’re wondering about things like domain renewal, like many other hosting companies, GoDaddy’s only offering these deals for new domain registrations. It’s only fair, of course. They have to make their money somehow beyond the last hours of Cyber Weekend. The deals are naturally there to help draw people in and gain new customers.
Of course, it’s not just businesses that are buying domains. People who want to create personal sites to host family pictures (and other personal stuff that won’t get them in trouble if they show it to others), and for the cash-strapped, a $1/month deal is pretty sweet. Naturally though, e-tailers just might snap up the .blackfriday domain for $9.99, which is a steal if you’re still in the growing-pains phase but want to cash in on the whole Black Friday/Cyber Weekend thing.
Is GoDaddy’s Black Friday Sale More of a Fizzle than Sizzle?
One thing a seasoned domain buyer might notice is, as nice as GoDaddy’s deals seem to be, after doing some research and poking around, there really isn’t a whole lot on their site that specifically mentions Black Friday other than the $9.99 special.
What gives? After all, isn’t Black Friday supposed to be this big, ginormous sales push for retailers, both cyber-style and brick-and-mortar? Sure, there are coupon codes via RetailMeNot and Coupons.com, the presence of which is great and all, but they all say “this is an ongoing offer.” And on the GoDaddy site itself, there doesn’t seem to be much of a “hoot-and-holler-and-howl-at-the-moon” about Black Friday deals as there is on other hosting sites.
It’s actually kind of disappointing, really, since Black Friday is supposed to be such a big sales event, and GoDaddy’s one of the premier hosting and domain registration sites out there. You’d think they’d make a much, much bigger noise about sizzling hot offers and whatnot, and actually have big, limited-time, weekend-only blazing-bonfire sales—not just ongoing coupon codes–on ALL their stuff to go with the weekend.
Big Thrills on Black Friday? Eh, Not So Much
The offers GoDaddy is putting forth this weekend seem a bit anticlimactic, really.
It’s a bit like the weather forecaster promising big snowfalls for making snowmen—and all we get is a drizzling rain. Or worse yet, it’s like promising a kid they can open one gift on Christmas Eve, but instead of getting them the Big New Toy they wanted, you get them something you know darn well they could save up and get with their allowance in just two weeks’ time. And the kid wonders, “What the heck were you thinking? After all that hinting of, ‘Maybe we’ll get you that Big New Toy for Christmas,’ you get me this every-day thing that I actually feel kind of neutral about?”
If GoDaddy really wants to get in the spirit of the big sales weekend, they need to up the ante on their Black Friday game next year, or else people really looking for those white-hot, super-temporary domain deals will realize they need to look elsewhere for the thrilling feeling they get when they’re about to drool on their ugly Christmas sweater over a few bucks saved on their holiday domain shopping.
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