Here are a dozen domains worth watching at Thursday’s domain auction.
DomainSponsor’s first DOMAINfest Power Networking day is this Thursday in Fort Lauderdale. The day concludes with a live domain name auction featuring 120 domain names.
Several of the domains in the auction are tied to Rob Monster’s Domain Strategies. Karate.com, a partnership between Domain Strategies and Live Current Media, is on the block for $500,000-$750,000. Wifi.com, an early partnership for the company, is priced somewhere north of $1 million. Wifi.com was purchased by Salient Properties for $225,000 in 2006, and Domain Strategies partnered with Salient in early 2008. A lot of investment has gone into the web site. Monster also has HardDrives.com priced $500,000-$750,000, a domain he picked up last year for just over $200,000.
Hobbies.com, which was purchased in combination with iToys.com for $102,000 at the eToys bankruptcy auction, is up for sale between $250,000-$500,000.
Here are 12 domains in the auction that I think are worthy of attention:
Antidepressant.com – the plural would be better, but it might be worth the $10,000-$25,000 reserve.
BoardGames.com – I know the reserve is hefty at $250k+, but this domain could be awesome for a casual games web site or for one of the big board games companies. So far most board game sellers have gone with branded domains instead of category killers. As a bonus, it’s an active site with good traffic according to Compete.com. Probably only end users at this price, although I can think of a couple domain investors that might bid in the lower range.
CarSecurity.com – an entire category for under $5,000.
CherryTrees.com – a great buy at under $1,000.
Collapsed.com – I can think of a lot of things that have collapsed over the past few years. Worth the money at $1,000-$2,500.
EFP.com – good three letter domain for $5,000-$10,000.
FitnessStore.com – with a reserve between $10,000-$25,000, the price might be a bit hefty. But worth a look.
FrontSeats.com – Perfect domain for an online ticket brokerage, although you might need to snag frontseat.com as well.
GolfResorts.com – Priced $10,000-$25,000; I like it near the lower end of the range for sure.
Petroleum.net – I’m kind of down on .net these days, but a good one for under $10k.
Sentimental.com – I can get sentimental about this domain between $5,000-$10,000.
Taunt.com – OK domain, but at no reserve we should see some bidding action.
William says
Quite an impressive line-up for Thursday. Best of luck to Rob and Erik (Epik/Domain Strategies), two of the best in the industry, hope that everything goes well with the auction.
Rob Monster says
Thanks guys.
Incidentially, my group is also behind the Hobbies.com site. We are part of the syndicate that bought the site from eToys.
I think Hobbies.com will totally rock as a product portal. However, some of the syndicate members want to exit now rather than develop.
Right now, the site is #8 on Google for “Hobbies”. With a bit more work, it should be in the top 3.
So, we’ll sell the site because is now ranked with traffic. That said, we would welcome the opportunity to work with the new owners.
Snoopy says
I would think they have pretty significant losses on those names. Reserves don’t look realistic at all for the first bunch mentioned, 2007 pricing.
chris says
overpriced, they wont sell.
Domainer says
>Hobbies.com, which was purchased in combination with iToys.com for $102,000 at the eToys bankruptcy auction, is up for sale between $250,000-$500,000.
Typical domainer. 🙂
Andrew Allemann says
@ Domainer – the two domains were bought below market value in the auction for various reasons. I don’t know how much it’s worth, but they definitely got a deal.
Domainer says
How so Andrew? There was an auction with substantial bidders in attendance. Sounds like market value to me.
Andrew Allemann says
1) Very few people knew about the auction in advance
2) You had to deposit substantial money to participate and create a legal document
Keep in mind only Toys.com was re-run from the auction (because it was the best), and sold for about 4x what it originally auctioned for.
Again, not passing judgment on how much it’s worth, but this auction was definitely a buyer’s opportunity.
Snoopy says
Well soon see wheter these names were bought cheaply or not, personally I don’t expect any sales from those names.
Howard says
Just curious, why are you down on .net domains?
Andrew Allemann says
@ Howard – Resale values seem to be down, and I think they’ll lose some of their value as new TLDs come out.