I watched the whole auction that took place via Aftermarket.com / DomainTools.com for the Domain Madness auction presented by DomainConsultant.com and was pretty impressed!
I am glad DC added in the video feed / Chat as I think it really added to the auction. Now was it perfect? No. Miguel had a cold and was sniffling a lot, and he had happy fingers with a pen in his hand that he kept clicking. Two people total did a play by play of the auction and again, overall I think it was a good thing to have.
So how did the auction turn out. Many times there were well over 100 people in the chat (I think that’s what the number was for, but could of been the number for online bidders / watchers). I was personally having issues with my computer, but heard a couple other people say they were having issues with the DomainTools.com auction software in both FireFox and Internet Explorer.
I had several computers running at once. One that was locked up, but the other two were rolling. One had the chat / video on it and the other had the auction software.
From what I can tell, 16 domains sold during the Live Event (JerusalemTrip.com is showing it sold, but it didn’t, and also wouldn’t mean 32 lots are still open. Pre-Bidding is still open until 10 PM CT tonight at DomainMadness.com . 32 Lots are still open at posting.
I totalled up $113,200 in domains that ended at auction with reserve being met, with the highest domain being Loco.com (Crazy in Spanish) for $60,000. The lowest bid amount was for UVDamage.com at $600. The two most active bid domains were the No Reserve domains IceSkating.net which ended for $7,000 and StayThin.com which ended for $3,000. Both NO Reserve domains had several bids in place before they were up live, and both had a great deal of live bids.
The auction lasted pretty long. I think it was about 3 hours for 48 domains total.
Here is what ended at auction meeting it’s reserve price if one was in place:
- Antiseptic.com $6,000
- BirdProof.com $2,500
- BlockAds.com $1,200
- Calfskin.com $ 3,500
- Doodling.com $4,700
- ePills.com $9,000
- FinancialGrowth.com $1,400
- Groomed.com $3,000
- IceSkating.net $7,000
- ITEmployment.com $3,300
- LearnToGolf.com $1,600
- Loco.com $60,000
- PartyToys.com $2,600
- PopupTrailers.com $3,800
- StayThin.com $3,000
- UVDamage.com $600
Domain names are listed in the order they were auctioned offer.
I think the event went very well considering it was really an online only auction and the first for DomainConsultant.com , but the live feed from Vegas did help IMO and it would of been a totally different auction without it.
Troubles with the auction software were low, but it’s a pretty proven system. The domain selection was Very Good, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the listing price / not the reserve. Stats would of really helped with each domain.
I think many people thought the opening bid Was the reserve, but it was not the case. A little Fire Symbol was put by the price if reserve was met, but this didn’t happen during live bidding that I could see. Next time, it should be made a little more clear that the listed price is not always the reserve.
If the listed price was Not the reserve, why not start them all at a lower price? I know this can kind of "make" a domain look lower valued, but it’s clear the bidding was Very Hot on the 2 domains that started at $0 and had No Reserve.
I will keep an eye out to see if any more domains get bids, but several SHOULD as several are at some very fair prices yet. Again, you can see those at DomainMadness.com and it’s open until 10 PM CT.
My hat goes off to DomainConsultant.com for a very nice auction! We will see who wins the $1,000 domain contest that was held before Pre-Bidding opened and it’s not likely to be me 
but I didn’t have time to look at my sheet yet .
Bidding was a bit lower then I expected, but I did pick only 12 domains to sell and 16 did. I must admit the whole DomainMadness.com, DomainConsultant.com, Aftermarket.com, DomainTools.com deal was a bit much 
since I promoted my domain (StayThin.com) to end users. Since the auction was run by DC, and it was called Domain Madness, I understand those two domains but using what seemed like a different site for the auction may have hurt a little. Why Aftermarket.com isn’t just Aftermarket.com totally yet instead of going to DT is the part I don’t get really, but I can see an end user scratching there head on all the different domains.
All in all, Good Stuff! Nice list of domains, nice auction and several that sold, sold at fair prices.
Hey Jamie, great analysis thanks! Sorry about the sniffling, I’ve had allergy issues since I got to the hotel.
As you asked above, we reached 300 vieweres on a couple occassions and retained almost 90% until the end. We thought the retention rate was an especially welcome number as they normally start dying out as they go on. We were happy with these numbers but perplexed by the lack of bidders among them. Tale.com can still be had for $9500…hello? Little to no risk there.
Five more names sold in the extended, bringing th total to 21 with a couple more pending -not over yet ;o)
Your comments are noted and appreciated, we try to do all we can to learn from auction. And this time we went in a few new directions and the result was positive in sme areas, lacking in others. We will grow from this.
Thanks to all who tuned in.
April 1st, 2009