Moniker Auction Analysis
Jeff writes:
Hi Frank,Did a bit of a write up about what happened at the auction, as well as a bit of analysis on the bids:
http://www.domainbits.com/geo-auction/
***FS*** Thanks Jeff.. I have heard several folks criticise these results.. just 680k worth of names sold in the LIVE auction.. I didn’t participate in this one because I’m not as into geo-domains. This isn’t so much an indictment of the geo domain market as it is non .com extensions, geo-domains and compound phrases without big Overture value apart. I think many of the sellers had too high an expectation.. lots of bids which I thought were fully valued, that the seller chose to pass on. Monte could charge a listing fee for the LIVE event next time to incentivise sellers to let close names go. This wasn’t as big a domain auction ‘venue’ and some of it could be due to the ongoing uncertainty and problems relating to the credit markets, the trickle effects of which will affect all of us in the year ahead.
I have to say as a seller I was not impressed.
It was difficult for an inexperienced observer to differentiate between real bids and amounts just made up by the auctioneer. Until Monte gets this sorted, rumours of shill bidding will persist, and may even be justified. India.com in Hindi for example seem to go from $2M to $3M and then he was asking for $4M. I would be astonished if there was actually a bid for $2M in the first place. Is this really ethical and transparent? I am sure there were plenty other examples of the same.
I was also personally annoyed about the auction of my two IDN “Kanto.com” and “Shangdong.com”. I wouild have thought the Auctioneer could have come up with pronounciation that would have been recognisable for what it was. The Auction was also marred by the making of stupid jokes about the domain be only worth $20, when there was a bid of $16K just short of the reserve of $20K. This just show the ignorance of much of the community. The Chinese characters actually generate 109M search results on Google compared with only 43M for the term Perth.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=perth&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%E5%B1%B1%E4%B8%9C&btnG=Search&meta=
If you are looking for reasons why the US economy is going down the tubes, then you probably need to look no further. The US cannot possibly succeed when their is a general culture of contempt for its creditors and potential overseas customers. The US economy is insolvent and without outside help it is going down. If Americans continue in the vein they are going to reap a “Harvest of Tears”.
Hi,
Consider this…
Auctions are for selling things to ‘end users’.
Granted…there are ‘domainers/investors’ that end up being…well…’end users’.
But,
Domain auctions…have gotten WAY ahead of the ‘real market place’.
Better to hold…domain conferences…for ‘non domain…’sports fans’…then to kept offering domains at auction for the ‘in domain crowd’.
If someone would have spent 1-2 months…’educating’…the ’suit’s…in the Dallas Cowboys organization…the prior 1-2 months BEFORE the auction for cowboys.com…
They might have gone as high as 1 MILLION+…instead of folding at $275.00 dollars.
***This post has to do with domain auctions in general…and is not a ’specific’ post on Geo-domain auctions.
IMHO…as always.
Best,
Dan
Hi again,
LatinPussy .com ($135,000.00)
LatinLegs .com ($1,200.00)
I am thinking… like most thinks in lfe…the ‘journey’…ends up being the best part of it all.
So,
If you ’start’ at the ‘toes’…
I am thinking…
LatinLegs .com
Is the ‘real winner’…
LOL
Be Good!
Dan
wrong link to the geo auction in your post: http://marketplacepro.moniker.com/auction/events/182/results.html
Hi,
When I think of ‘GEO-domains’…I think of domains like:
plamsprings.com or caymenislands.com etc…
But,
I guess you cannot get a better GEO specific domain name than:
latinpussy .com
Talking about being GEO specific…lol
Sure will not need a ‘GPS unit’ to find that place…maybe just a ‘unit’.
Ok…I am done…promise…lol
Best,
Dan
I have posted a question to Monte to ask if the starting bid price was just a starting price or whether it was the result of the highest left bid. The auctioneer said many times “I have $XXXX to open, who’ll give me $XXXX+?” but the domain passed because it did not meet the reserve.
No problem either way but a starting price is not an opening bid. I just think that should be cleared up.
I will post when I have an answer.
Frank,
union.com passed at $125K?
From what I’m learning from you (short, easytoremember, natural type-in, relevant, category-defining, etc, = union.com
Isn’t this the equivalent of business.com, but for a different audience?
***FS*** No.. union is more like promotion.com .. Business.com is more like Food.com Mobile.com .. ity’s a subtle difference but this is a business of subtleties.. similar to the diamond biz.. but I think this particular one is obvious to even the naked eye.
No doubt numbers of bidders (especially who they are a Domainer or an End user), sellers prices, and venue managers choice of Domains have a lot to do with the success (or lack of it) of any auction…
Having watched or listened to many of the TRAFFIC, DRT, Domainfest, Geo, auctions…I can tell you that the above are not the problem…throughout all of the auctions…there is one thing in common to them all that holds back each, from being Great!!!!
There isn’t a single Auctioneer So Far, that has a clue about domains, and can work what he knows about the domains he is auctioning, into his bidding routine, he cant work the crowd (knowing your bidders is a must) as is knowing the potential of each domain, its earnings and where, the background of the industry it is in, why it is valuable and to whom….
The Auctioneers have been the BIGGEST detriment to the Auctions success overall (across the Board) in every Domain Auction I have seen.
If you want these Auctions to be GREAT you need to have 3 or 4 Good to Great Domainers Do the Auctioning)that know all the Industries and all the Players within the Industries…Domainers and end users alike.
It would be easier to teach a Domainer to be an Auctioneer, than to teach an Auctioneer to be a Domainer
1 Domainer that can actually verbally run an Auction, and 3 working the Crowd, the People they” know” should be interested, talking up the selling points, the value points, the Numbers of Each Domain, the Dollars in the Market the Domain is used in, and Common sense appreciation of the Value to an end user that the Bidder may end up selling to, if the Bidder is another Domainer Speculating.
You need to have a Domainer Auctioneer that is Passionate and knows the Business inside and out….and that is the Bottom Line.
But equally as important, is the Pre Auction work the Auctioneers and Auction Promoters, should be doing and are not.
They need more Promotion of the Auctions’ Domains, to the People (Domainers and end users) in the various Industries, the Domains in the Auction can serve.
As someone there I can say:
1. I don’t get why they do this after lunch. Has no one ever heard of itis? By the second hour I was dropping into deep sleep.
2. They started late. Again. Starting late like a dozen times in a row (starting from the first TRAFFIC auction) is getting a bit tiring.
3. There was absolutely no energy. Every body was cramped in the back, but after Perth, there was a huge drop in the # of people there.
4. There was a lot of crap. Sorry - just how it is.
5. Most geodomain owners are *NOT* domainers. Eg I met the guy who owns Austin.com. Great guy - and real old school internet (he had great stories about how he set up his ISP). So he bought Austin.com because that is where he lived. He was basically done after that. He doesn’t buy domains. He just owns Austin.com for other reasons. Same reason for over half of the geodomain owners. They aren’t domainers, and buying other domains isn’t at the top of their minds. Remove Kevin Ham’s perth.com bid (where the other bidder was Shaun P), and it perfectly underscores that the auction wasn’t the greatest fit.
Frank completely offtopic, How do you feel about the Agoga play. I am sure you and Ham are damn good friends but what do you think about it.
You have any info that extensions like .xop will ever make it into the market.
Thanks.
***FS*** I like Kevin, not so crazy about the Agoga play because it takes traffic intended for my sites.. would like it better if I could license my existing traffic flow back.
Hi Frank,
I submitted several .com domain names to Moniker which were less than 8 characters and had no numbers in them (independently valued >25K) and had none listed for the live auction. Then I saw many weaker names up for the auction. The good news? It helped me to decide now to aggressively develop them instead of sell. Like many ranchers, land rich but cash poor!
I missed the auction feed, but it looks like there were a couple bright spots. Two NNN.com names (not mine, I didn’t enter any) sold for $33k each. Though they are both California area codes, its a good reminder that short numeric domains are truly “generic” too, as they can be sold based on a wide variety of interpretations.
I agree that Union.com, while not in the same league as business.com, should have sold at $125k or more. Not many names left in the wild suitable for a 100-year industrial company (”american”, “national”, “western”, “pacific”, “universal”, “united”, etc.)
Most of you are starting to realize that shill bidding and lying are rampant in auctions and also on message board listings. Most everyone who questioned these practices the last few years was shunned and run off the boards because they didn’t have any proof.
Someone will go to jail soon, or get in major legal trouble and then maybe people will realize that honest questions about bullshit sales should have been listened to early on.
Keep pumping the crap names and extentions….that is the cause of much of the deterioration of the the message boards.
Even great names have fraudulent fake bids at the auction. I will never participate in any auction again…..even by those with a clean slate. I don’t think I have ever seen an auction that seemed fair.
Realestate, homes, insurance and loans. If you have a state name in front of any of these terms you should get a least 25k for a low populated state. Example Delawareinsurance.com went for 13k last month in the auction. What does this make Californiainsurance.com with 30 million people worth. Or texasloans.com just using an examples
I was hoping to see something like this available for sale but not one person was selling. Maybe we will see one of these at domainfest in Jan.
Also I think they should have a prebid auction for a starting price, this way the guy is not up there begging for a bid on a .org or .net name that should not even be in the auction. Just my thoughts.
I watched most of the auction. Obviously geodomains was too narrow a category for an entire auction.. just a relevant subset of a bigger auction format is obviously better.
but hey, Moniker has had a lot of successful events, so its probably about time to have one that wasn’t a homerun.
We might think an auction with $10 million in sales is a huge event. But in the big scheme of things, the dollar volume is really quite tiny overall. Compare it to any other aspect of the economy, stock market volumes, real estate transactions, currency trades, and we’re just a speck.
domains haven’t even gotten started yet. I’ll wager you could roll up all the domain transactions there have ever been, and you wouldn’t equal 60 seconds of the dollar volume in equities on the stock market.
its very early.
I was there and Monte did a great job, but it was a Catch-22. All of the great Geos, particulary popular US city Geodomains, are long gone and the present owners are not interested in selling them. Most of us have turned down offers well into seven figures. The only decent one for sale was the Australian city Perth.com and it was snapped up for 200K. With all due respect to Iran.com, Iraq.com and Kuwait.com, they’re nowhere in the same universe as monetizing a SanFrancisco.com, PalmSprings.com or Atlanta.com.
***FS*** That last line is dead on..
Thanks for such a great blog Frank. There are many relevant points displayed here. The Geodomain auction was for a niche market and the first one at that. We are all helping to promote this growing market while keeping our eye on the bigger picture. A lot of this we are all writing as we go. Let’s have fun seeing where it all plays out. These are exciting times.
Many/most of the Geo Domains looked like domains for business owners - not PPC domainers. I don’t think the right people were invited.
The Geo Domain Auction was not a flop, it was an introductory auction that was considered successful. This was a first time event that performed 2X better than our first time event at Affiliate Summit…which later became successful by adding $500K+ in the silent event that followed. The Geo Silent auction goes on through the 28th and will likely add many more sales.
The Geo market is a new one where many of the attendees have spent their life savings on some of the most valuable names in the world. We knew this going in and still produced close to a half million dollars worth of sales…that is also more than the first 3 TRAFFIC auctions.
There will be many more improvements coming for the niche auction market and we are still very bullish on the domain market as a whole and in these niche markets.
The updated sales are located here: http://marketplacepro.moniker.com/auction/events/182/results.html
And the silent event runs through November 28th so there is plenty of time for more sales for this niche event.
Don1,
TexasLoans.com and this is a developed site for lead generation so that is why it was not for sale. We do own many names like you describe and are waiting for the right time and place to make them available.
The fact that some domains didn’t sell isn’t necessarily a failure. We all say that good domains will be worth so much more in the future, perhaps the sellers just aren’t ‘motivated’ to sell at less than their desired price. The Dallas Cowboys fiasco also shows that many people outside the domain industry still don’t ‘get’ the value of domains. So why not keep holding til more people understand and are willing to pay higher prices? Also, as more premium names get bought up and developped, the quality of ‘pure’ undeveloped domains available to auction will diminish over time.
An ongoing challenge is continued press and promotion to attract new players/investors. The domain community itself is very small in comparison to the global market. We’re not done … second inning.