Moniker’s TRAFFIC Auction Sees Some Kickass LLLL.com Sales

Sorry for the sudden absence but had the flu and was busy with other things. This transition of seasons is pretty bad as it’s the time when most people get a bout of the flu and I got to say, it’s irritating as hell.
I’m more an outdoors kind of guy (couldn’t tell, could you) and I really go insane once the flu hits me. Breaking things around me, tearing my carefully maintained “offline journal” (those things still do exist) are frequent occurrences in this time.

I like to rant for hours and believe me, it’s easy to keep going when you’ve started, but I’ll spare you the torture and get to the essence of the matter.

The much-publicized Moniker TRAFFIC Live Auction saw some sales of dictionary words cum LLLL.com’s which should put the industry in a pretty good mood.

DVDs.com sold at 300K which is understandable given the nature of the word. One of the most popularly used words in today’s world, this one was bound to get at least this amount. Kudos to the new owner.

Now, the slightly controversial part, Hoax.com sold for $70,000 which was a bit too pricey, in my humble opinion. It’s certainly not a commonly used word and I don’t see much monetization revolving around the word. I mean, which reputable business would like to have a site called Hoax.com?

On the other hand, Gags.com sold for a mere $40,000 which this time I feel is a tad undervalued. Gags are hot and the products revolving around them are even hotter. A site like Bored.com would have been an ideal choice for an end-user (presumably?) Feel free to disagree with me but I feel the buyer got a steal at that price.

OKay, got that out of my mind so I’m back to smashing things around me :p

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.