Almost $11 Million in 3.5 Hours

http://domainnamenews.com/domain-sales/moniker-targeted-traffic-live-auction/

Moniker did an excellent job at the TRAFFIC domain auction in NYC.. This was a much better organized much tighter event than the recent TRAFFIC Las Vegas auction. Better names, quicker pace, better organized. I can't fault Moniker.

They sold 115 of the 217 domain names at auction to get that 10.9 million..  An average sale price of nearly $96,000 per name.  These were good names but they weren't all mind-blowers.  I have seen better.

Anyway,  the real story here is the names that did not sell.  There were bidders bidding millions for names where the seller wouldn't budge.  Had Moniker sold the rest of the names at the highest proxy offered, this auction would have brought more than $63 Million dollars.

That's a lot of cheddar for 217 domain names.

Comments

[Brian]

Don't you think the bidding on .mobi looked phony. I can't help but think this .mobi thing smells funny.

***FS*** I did see an inordinate number of them cross the block realtive to more established .info etc.

[Kevin]

The biggest "we're there" moment for this industry will be when the huge money guys from outside the domain industry show up with their checkbooks wide open and start buying the mind blower domains for mind blowing numbers and it's $100 Million of "Home Run" sales in 3 hours.

There were some seriously incredible domains offered, as always, and I still find it amazing that after all the fantastic and top notch PR and promo work Rick, Howard and others have all done to get the message out, that the huge money guys, i.e. Wall St, Corporate and Madison Ave land aren't grabbing these killer domains.

What the hell. Are these billion dollar corporate CEO's ever going to see the fricking light or what???????

[Domainer's Gazette]

$4.5 Million offer for auction.com and no sale.. crazy.. maybe I'm the idiot though, and auction.com rakes in lots of dough from adsense...

[Dave B Happy]

I've got to agree on the .mobi issue. I've got two great names, can't wait to auction them off after they're built out.

[Alex]

WOW!

Business.com Being Auctioned With $300-400M Asking Price

business.com.png
It's tough for us to view Business.com as much more than a solid domain name. Sure there is search on the site and plenty of content but from a user perspective its useless to us. But the power of the domain shines through and the site gets traffic. Business.com tell The Wall Street Journal that its 2007 EBIDTA came in about $15M and its online traffic grew by 50% in 2007 over 2006.

The current Business.com was bought by Sky Dayton and Jake Winebaum in 1999 for $7.5M. They let the journal know today that they have tapped Credit Suisse to auction off the business with an expected going rate of $300-400M.

Given a fair valuation, we think this could be a great deal for a media company that could breath some life into the site.

http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/

[Gabe]

Any buys Frank?

***FS*** I bought 10 names .. tried for significantly more but prices consistently escalated past where I thought the value line was.. Most surprising were the twenty or thirty names I bid as high as six figs only to have the seller pass.. There was certainly some auction-fever on both sides.. Buyers overpaying on some stuff... sellers overwhelmed with the demand, getting awarenes about the print-to-online media sea-change and then withdrawing names. I think prices were higher cuz it was in New York.

[Kevin]

One more comment, I think the most impressive thing of all are the 17 domains that owners turned down million and multimillion offers on.

Offers Turned Down:

Six.com $1 Mil
Scotland.com $3 Mil
PressReleases.com $2.5 Mil
Stuff.com $1.5 Mil
Slots.com $4.5 Mil
Draw.com $1 Mil
Commodities.com $1.75 Mil
Student.com $3 Mil
PuertoRico.com $3.5 Mil
DSL.com $1.5 Mil
HorseRacing.com $4.5 Mil
Cats.com $2 Mil
Dermatology.com $4.5 Mil
Naked.com $1.5 Mil
Meopause.com $1.5 Mil
Auction.com $4.5 Mil
OBGYN.com $1 Mil

That is an even better indicator of how incredibly strong the domain market is now when sellers blow off Millions so easily.

That is totally the BIGGEST impression of all and in one word Fantastic!!

***FS*** Well said

[Steve Morsa]

As it seems to be the case more and more w/these auctions...some great bargains for some buyers (IrishWhiskey for only 8k? Really?)...and; as Kevin points out; some very surprising, "may be sorry later they said 'NO!'" declined sales (PressReleases at 2.5 mill; Dermatology at 4.5?).

[Jason]

Will you list the 10 names you purchased and possibly why you felt they were a good price?

[Snoopy]

Business.com Being Auctioned With $300-400M Asking Price

business.com.png
It's tough for us to view Business.com as much more than a solid domain name. Sure there is search on the site and plenty of content but from a user perspective its useless to us. But the power of the domain shines through and the site gets traffic.

//////////////

This sounds like a domainer wet dream, no the domain itself isn't worth hundreds of millions.

[Snoopy]

I wouldn't take much notice of the bids on names which didn't sell, some of these bids look like fluff eg Dermatology.com $4.5 Mil

There is no chance the name is worth that kind of money. It was apparently quoted with a $5 million plus reserve so any bidder would have known their bid didn't count.

Having said that from what did sell I'd say this auction is a huge success for the industry. It seems prices have risen quite substantially since the last auction and they seem to have got the formula right in terms of the number and quality of listings (over 50% clearance with the whole list gone through). Also it seems there was no obviously undersold names, it has become a very solid market to sell into I think.

[Rob]

Before you say dermatology.com isn't worth 4.5M, do you have any idea what the skin care market is worth? Or what drug companies spend on R&D alone every year? Dermatology.com would make any buyer appear like the authority on skin care issues - just imagine how that domain would look on marketing material to people interested in this subject. And no, I don't own the domain.

***FS**** But your friend does and you have some other dermatology names ;) Just kidding w. you.. I think the name is valuable.. but 4.5mm is getting fully valued imo. Most people don't look for that word.. they type 'skin care' or specific ailments like 'wrinkles'.

[DP]

PressReleases.com passed at 2.5m when announce.com sold for 90k (not in the auction, a few months back)?

Maybe that's why I don't live in the Caymens, coz I'd take Announce.com over that any day. Announce is an action word. PressReleases describes a relatively narrow form of announcing something.

Announce.com covers press releases, covers any kind of marketing you can think of, is just begging to be developed into a full-service marketing bureau.

Buying pressreleases.com isn't going to help you unseat Reuters and Businesswire anymore than buying auction.com is going to help you unseat Ebay. I'd have taken the 2.5m and been glad the sucker in the room wasn't me (even though in reality it might have been, all about perception I suppose :)

[Robert]

> Scotland.com $3 Mil

It looks like a lot of money for 11 letters. But that is what you will pay for a 3 bedroom on south point, here in Miami Beach. Make it a 4 bedroom if you want and slightly over 2000 sqft, where there are also another 50/75 units just like that. So comparing apples to cyberapples... which is a better piece of real estate?

There is only one Scotland.com

... and hurricanes -neither time- will make a dent on it.

***FS*** I would rather own Scotland.com than a Miami Condo.

[Joe Davison]

There have been a few comments about PressReleases.com that are missing an important point: that auction included 300 related domain names and an existing business with over 5000 clients and mid six figure per year net revenue.

***FS*** That definitely has value! If the names were any good, then even more so.

[David Wrixon]

What amuses me is the way these guys at TRAFFICS still think that that English Domains are the only game in town.

Did any one notice dot CN shoot through the 5Million registration mark last month? 5,303,115 according to CNNIC data!

The data is admittedly a little erratic but growth rates are around the 20% mark. No not 20% per annum. 20% per month!

We have all heard the $100 dollars per annum wage argument, but with their Carbon Footprint now bigger than that of the US, and their Power Station Count increasing by 2 Units per Week, they must be doing a lot of something, however, inefficiently!

[Peter Best]

PressReleases.com didn't sell, what are your thoughts about BestPressReleases.com? It was actually part of one of the portfolios still accepting bids in the Silent Auction. What do you think?

[Snoopy]

Before you say dermatology.com isn't worth 4.5M, do you have any idea what the skin care market is worth? Or what drug companies spend on R&D alone every year? Dermatology.com would make any buyer appear like the authority on skin care issues - just imagine how that domain would look on marketing material to people interested in this subject. And no, I don't own the domain.

//////////////////////

Who cares what drug companies spend on R&D each year, that doesn't make dermatology.com worth an insane amount in comparison to the rest of the market.

[Vic]

Hi,
For a relative newbie to the domain name industry how do you know how much a domain name is worth? I have a .mobi which I think is pretty good but it was refused by the TRAFFIC people when I tried to put it in their auction, although it may have been an administrative mess up, I'm not sure. Regards, Vic