The next couple days will be busy for domain name auction providers Rick Latona and Moniker / Snapnames with the New York T.R.A.F.F.I.C. auctions taking place. Some of the BEST domain names that are currently on the market will be on the clock.

The first of the two auction events at TRAFFIC will take place today, with the auction presented by RickLatona.com .

This brings up one little thing that bugs me and I thought it was going to change but it hasn’t. Rick has built several nice domain related brands. DigiLoan.com, DigiPawn.com, ccTLDs.com and RickLatona.com which is really the blog / newsletter of Rick Latona. Rick Latona Auctions is the newest venture but I have always had an issue with people being able to Find the actual auction site.

Rick uses Proxibid.com as the "online auction service" to handle the live online auction. The auction service provides a category for it’s members, so Rick’s page is proxibid.com/ricklatona .

This is OK, but I still think it is a problem.

Now Rick owns some great domain names but yet doesn’t market the actual auction page with a domain name? He does own RickLatonaAuctions.com but forwards that to the Auctions category on RickLatona.com . The page does provide a link TO the auction page on Proxibid, but this doesn’t seem like enough to me.

I know Rick has had issues using Proxibid in the past and I thought he was going to be building an in-house auction service, but that has not happened. I think the biggest issue with using a 3rd party service is lack of control. Secondly, it feels a bit less professional IMO as well. When you are selling items for 1/4 Million or more, I think it’s important to be as professional as you can to stick directly with your brand.

If bidders have a hard time finding the actual auction page, this clearly can be a problem. Is a category link on a 3rd party service enough or easy to remember and find for most?

We will see how the auction goes today and it appears that some nice domain names have met reserve already in online Pre-Bidding. Boy.com is one at $26,500 . Kasino.com at $35,000 is another and Z6.com/.net/.org package at $10,000. A handful of other domains have bids with reserves met as well.

Moniker.com / Snapnames.com domain auction will take place on Wed. Oct 28th. Moniker uses the very popular SnapNames.com to host the live auction which makes a lot of sense to me. The one thing that doesn’t make a ton of sense, you have to make a download to use the live auction system.

A download doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but it can prevent bidders from doing so. I personally have never downloaded it yet and I am a domainer! I would like to see Snapnames get this system worked into Snapnames directly without any download for the user. Then any current member or newly signed up member can simply login using there daily login details as they normally would on SnapNames.

Moniker / SnapNames does not offer Pre-Bidding that I am aware of.

I personally think the BEST current live domain auction system in place is Aftermarket.com which uses what DomainTools.com had in place. This is a very slick auction interface and I think it should be used all the time for live domain auctions. I hope in the near future Rick Latona Auctions teams up with Aftermarket.com and puts their auction system to use.

Sadly, Aftermarket.com has been idol for sometime now.

For the domain industry has a whole, I hope the two auctions bring in Millions with End User bidders! I just wanted to share those couple things above that bug me a little bit and I think with those couple fixes can greatly improve the auction results for both companies.

You can view RickLatona.com’s auctions here.

You can view Moniker’s inventory here.

Best of luck to all bidders, sellers and auction services!