$3 million auction was well executed.
If anyone was scared about how yesterday’s live domain auction at TRAFFIC would go, their fears dissipated about 30 minutes into the auction. Domains were selling and bidding was intense.
Sure, the final tally of $3 million ($4 million for all auctions this week) was much less than the $10 million last year, but it’s a coup given what’s going on in the economy.
So how did Monte Cahn and his crew at Moniker pull it off?
1. Good mix of low priced and high priced domains. Moniker managed to list some killer domains at no reserve and low reserve, guaranteeing that bidding would be intense. It also mixed up the high priced and low priced domains, so there weren’t exceptionally long periods of domains not selling. Perhaps they were a little heavy on $1M+ domains, but selling just one of those can make a show. FinancialAid.com et al at $800,000 is a case in point.
2. Great auctioneer. These guys are professional and know how to pull bids out of the audience.
3. Monte. It’s hard not to get sucked into his enthusiasm on stage.
4. Good execution of online bidding. Although I again had difficulty completing the download/registration process using Firefox 3, the auction flowed smoothly and internet bidders were always given the option to bid the same amount as floor bidders.
5. Trust and experience. Moniker has built up a reputation of trust in online auctions, which means a lot of people were willing to sell their domains at low and no reserve, knowing that the combination of Moniker and the TRAFFIC conference almost always delivers.
KH says
Congrats to Moniker, Monte and Crew! Sends a real signal on domain name values, especially in today’s world of collapsing assets.
jp says
I second that, two thumbs up to Monte and the Moniker team!
Steven says
Good names at good prices
A winning formula!
Steve M says
Congratulations to all the auctions and their hard-working staffs.
All-in-all, a great showing in a financial world temporarily turned upside down…
…and with not a mortgage-backed security anywhere to be found.
Matt says
They did well, but I don’t agree with #5… look at all the complaints of how they handle sellers in the forums.
Ron says
The signal is sends is that no one has any money
jeff schneider says
My only comment on #1 is ” Domainers get Auction Reserve Sqweeze ” This is not the time to go to auction for domain owners. There is not an end user in sight at these auctions.
Jeff Schneider says
There has been little discussion of why the end sale values are dropping precipitously. Some say economy, we say NOT.Being the former marketing analyst for the Rockefeller foundation I know a thing or two about Market dynamics. The valuations of domain names have a direct correlation to a concerted effort to beat down Reserve prices ( Auction Reserve Sqweeze Play ). MANY fine names never saw their way to auction because their reserve prices were deemed to high by the powers that be. Domainers wonder why valuations that are being manipulated in this fashion are coming down? ENOUGH !!
Andrew says
Jeff, that’s silly. Moniker wants to sell as many names at as high a price as possible. They would have much rather sold 100 names at $100k each. But they have a good idea of what will sell and at what price. Hence, if they ask you to lower your reserve that’s because they don’t think they can sell it at what you proposed.
Jeff Schneider says
Andrew whenever you limit the supply in any marketplace you tamper with open market dynamics, and therefore affect prices either upwards or downwards. If you dont believe me do some research. I am saying the total take could have been much higher if all qualified names were aloud into the pool and then and only then can market dynamics fairly price these names. The way it is now random subjective cherry picking decides.Not good for fair pricing. Auctions are not fair pricing mechanisms. Especially when you limit supply.
jp says
I doubt that anyone at Moniker held a gun to anyone’s head and forced them into a selling decision. Moniker is a business too, and although they don’t mind helping out domainers, I’m sure #1 is their main concearn as it should be. I imagine there were alot more qualified names that could have been put up, however there was unfortunately a finite amount of time to run the auction, as the auction costs $$$, and a finite amount of time for Moniker to make as much $$$ as they could. Good news is that since we are moving to this multiple auction format, if you want to start another auction, you can right where you feel they went wrong and sell all the qualified names in your auction.
Steve (webdropoff - RCD) says
Moniker is primo. I tried to submit some names with aftermarket.com also but there was just 2 many errors with their system and many names were owned by the same domainer(s).