LLLL Live Auction - The Exclusive DNBuff Report

First of all, kudos to Ty (bfluid on NamePros) who organized the entire auction and conducted it in the utmost professional manner and mwzd who generously offered to help with the auctioning. These two guys put their heart and soul into the auction and all of us domainers appreciate your dedication and sincerity.

However, the auction’s turnout wasn’t as much as what I expected. I expected at least 200-300 people to attend the event but the maximum people in the auction room at any given time never exceeded 113. Many major players Reece and Michael_Goldman in the LLLL arena also gave this auction a miss. The listings were well-organized and the quality of the domains was exquisite (SHAM.com, Weak.net etc.) then what exactly caused the auction to miss the status of a roaring success?

1) The buyout clause - This clause basically stated that a seller could pay the winning bidder $5 and be free of all obligations to sell. The clause was originally introduced to make up for the lack of a reserve system but it ended up making the whole thing look like a joke.
The buyout option hindered buyers too as they could never be sure whether the seller would enforce the buyout option or not. In case of a reserve the buyer would be able to ascertain whether he would possess the funds to continue bidding on further names but with the clause there is no way to know unless the seller is online.
Also, there were several bids above $10K and the buyout clause made them look a bit ridiculous as the seller could simply choose to pay $5 and not sell.
If the buyout clause had to be enforced, we could have had a higher amount to be paid, say 5%-10% of the winning amount.

2) Time Confusion - The auction actually started an hour later than it was supposed to start.Ty had no other choice than postpone the auction and he did it but it did cause a bit of mayhem. I cannot complain, as I just got to it 10 minutes before it started believing I was 50 minutes late.

3) Dates - The Easter Weekend was a bad choice for the auction as many people decided to give the event a miss due to other commitments.

4) Excess Of Names - A payment for every lot/name submitted for the auciton would have been a good idea as it would have kept out the rubbish and restricted the length of the auciton to something more reasonable. (FYI, the auction lasted around 4 hours)

Anyways, let’s come back to the auction for now:

The auction started off with some decent LLLL.com’s followed by 7 odd LLLL.net’s. The LLLL.net’s received practically no attention and all of them resulted in buyouts as they went for ridiculously low prices like $5.2 for a quad premium.

Then came the really valuable names like Sham.com, Weak.net and Coil.com (all three resulted in buyouts) . Later, the auction started losing it’s fervor and many big-players had to withdraw as they were out of funds after bidding on the earlier names.

One notable bidder in the final stages was bgmv who was the highest bidder for at least 8 auctions (I wonder how many were buyouts?) and I’m sure he must’ve gotten at least some real steals.

All in all, it was a decent event and an EXCELLENT first attempt. Next tiem, if the changes are implemented then we’ll surely be on our way to having a giga-event guaranteed to turn eyes.

The Future Of 4L.nets

Recently, a massive debate (more like an argument :-p ) has been conducted on whether all LLLL.net’s will eventually rise in value just like their .com counterparts?

I honestly, think so as when supply = limited, demand = extreme. Imagine, a company looking for a website and their intiials tend to be a LLLL domain. If they are a small scale company more often than not, they won’t be able to afford those oh-so expensive premium .com quads so logically they turn to .nets which can be bought for 1/10th the price.

The next question is who will grab the low quality domains after all the good ones are gone? Answer: The same people who bought the high quality domains ad want to exhaust stocks ASAP (ie. us domainers). SO what, if their quality isn’t *that* good but they are 4L.net’s nevertheless. Prices will skyrocket soon after the buyout and us 4L.net investors will finally start reaping the fruits of our hard work. (You call sitting and regging names, hard work?)

NamePros Live Auction

Ty Maier (bfluid on NamePros) has put in loads of hard-work and has been making preparations to organise an exclusive 4 letter auction. Lots of LLLL.com’s and LLLL.net’s shall be included and most importantly, it is a live auction

Bill, a prominent member of the NamePros staff generously agreed to let out the live auction room in the NamePros Live Chat for the big night. We owe you one Bill!

Anyways, back to the auction, I honestly believe that this is going to be a roaring success with the quality of the names we have and the buyers who shall be attending the auction.

You may go here to view a list of the lots up for auction and you are surely going to be astounded by the featured lot which has some super-premium LLLL.com’s which anyone would kill to possess.

The auction shall be held on March 22nd at 3PM EST (GMT-5), the timing is a bit awkward for me (12 : 30 AM) but I’ll surely sit through the entire auction hoping to snipe off some names and will present an exclusive report of the auction for the benefit of those of my readers who couldn’t attend.