DOMAINfest Extended Auction Bombs
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
Extended auction fails to live up to success of live auction.
Last week DOMAINfest had a successful live domain name auction. Unfortunately, the extended auction didn’t perform too well.
Only 8 out of 797 domain names sold, or a sell through rate of only 1%.
It’s disappointing, but I’m not terribly surprised. I only came up with five domain names to mention in my preview post a couple days ago. (Mind you, none of the five I chose sold. But it goes to show that it wasn’t easy finding “sure things” in the auction at the reserve prices).
Another anomaly: only two of the domains that sold were .com.
Here are the sales:
vhs.com $17650
relationship.net $12950
dedicated.net $8830
earnextramoney.org $525
accenttables.co.uk 300
associatesdegree.co.uk $1066
energyteas.com 425
flannelshirts.co.uk 300
Relationship.net and Dedicated.net were peculiar. They each received one bid and fairly early on. I’d also say the prices are rather high for this quality of .net. I can see how the domains are related though.
Further Reading:
- DNW Picks for Tomorrow’s DOMAINfest Extended Auction
- TRAFFIC Extended Auction Ends Thursday
- My Picks for the Moniker Extended Auction Ending Wednesday
Tags: domain auction, DOMAINfest, Moniker, SnapNames
It seems pretty rare that any extended auction does well.
Often times there are just way to many domains in it and not priced to get some action.
Well online dating for relationship.net – Maybe they’ll depend on adwords…
Also, dedicated.net (dedicated servers?)
Actually – we sold a few names outside the auction such as Arbitration.com for an undisclosed amount but well into the 6 figures. Several other larger priced names are in the works with end users who are still getting used to the online auction process…..so not over yet
I will say that more end users purchased names from the live and extended auction (or will be) than all of our auctions combined. That is a very positive sign!
That is a good sign Monte. Even though not very many sold you delivered incredible value to the sellers on relationship.net and dedicated.net. I would be thrilled if I owned one of these.
Those buyers must be end users. If they are domainers god help them. They will be bankrupt in no time.
Yes – admittedly, less quantity of names sold in this one extended auction (we usually have 100 – 400 names selling), the totals will rack up to a comparable number of the past and we are starting to see a transition to end user interest like never before. That is because this is where we spent most of our time on this one, rather than domainers…..which ironically is exactly what you all want us to do.
You will see a much more targeted and vertical marketing effort on these high profile names like you have never seen before going into our next two live auctions – DFG/Moniker NY in Aug and DFG Prague in October. My gut says, this will prove to be very good for our industry through high end sales results now from after auction activity through the end of the year and beyond.
So hold tight and get us all those top key word domains you can because that will be our sweet spot.
Thanks!
The Internet is still very young and many end users and owners of domain names were not aware of the prime value and benefit of domain names until just a few years ago. It was not too long ago when a prime 3-letter domain name was selling for $700-$800. I now see that vhs.com has sold for $17,650. That is a huge jump. Due to the limited number of prime domain names and the growing awareness of the end user of its value when creating a website, God knows what the value of the same domain names will be 10 years from now, since the supply remains the same, and the demand for premium domains continues to increase at a steady pace. Acquiring prime domain names for an investment is great, but for an end user is irreplaceable.
I don’t see any reason for extended auctions. There should be small amount of domains (but high quality and low reserves!!) in live auction and that’s it. That’s how we do our live domain auctions at MeetDomainers conference.
Oversea auctions appears to be doing great – congrats!
@ Mansour – VHS means something, so I don’t think I’d put mark it down as a standard three letter domain sale.
@ Andrew – How about 36o.com I sold it for $14,000 and registered for $10.00 (notice that the ‘o’ is not a zero; it is the letter ‘o’)
@ Mansour – nice sale!
I’m referring to kind of the “investor” price of three letter domains. I’m a fan of them, by the way.
Daniel, back in the early days of TRAFFIC, I think the reason for an extended was that there was no online bidding at the live events and the extended provide that functionality. Since they were successful they’ve always been a part of most live auctions.
Additionally it doesn’t cost anything extra to throw a bunch of names out and see what sticks. Buyers may have missed the name during the event or may not wanted to be the sole bidder in a live event (don’t want the attention).
Also, the ball is rolling on marketing and the sellers want to ride with that and get their names sold. No harm in having them if it works.
I wonder if the extended auctions might get more action if they were shorter.
A three day extended auction might create more immediacy. Currently, bidders just wait 5 or 6 days before bidding close to the end.
A lot of the “fizz” is gone by that time.
VHS means VolksHochSchule in German, don’t know the expression in US. This is where you may learn additional languages, or computer lessons, how to use Word, Excel…. in the evenings on a private base. Seems to be a big business
@ Reinhard – VHS is the abbreviation for “Video Home System”, basically the video tapes you used to watch instead of DVDs.
The acronym VHS actually means “vertical helical scan”! It describes the technical basis in which the VHS recorder plays and records on to the tape.
Betamax was Sony’s competing videocassette recorder technology. Sony, incidently, lost the battle for mass adoption by the consumer!
E
@Greg, “Those buyers must be end users. If they are domainers god help them. They will be bankrupt in no time.”
Sounds like another guy I know…me lol
@Josh Sounds like those guys who send me offers of $300 for 3 letter domains. I believe VHS.com is worth 4X what it was sold for. It is a steal @ $17650.00 Seller – good luck next time.
me 4x lol
@Manure, I would never offer anyone anything for a LLL dot com, could never afford to play at that high a level yet. I am learning though so appreciate the insight intot he big leagues.
@ Josh if you want to have a piece of the next pie register multilingual domain names ($15.00 or less ) in 7 years you will have something very valuable.
Thanks, I only speak english though so not sure how well I will do. Can you send me a list of the top 1000 most popular generic words in french/italian/spanish/german and chinese? I could you a multilingual mentor. I am not able to pay you anything at the moment but in years when those names are worth mad cash I can at that point thank you handsomely.
I bet the Seller of VHS.com
wishes it were 1990 again…
I didn’t get a chance to submit
any for this auction…
Now I don’t feel so UNORGANIZED…
LOL… I was considering listing
SeniorLifeline.com (5x)
Back to research I go — Working on
an Internet Project Related to
The World of CHESS…
Have a great weekend…
~Patricia Kaehler – DomainBELL