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Final Domain Auction List
August 7th, 2007 by 
Jay Westerdal
The Final List is out! Check out the cast and crew of the 2007 DomainTools Live Auction. We have a lot of great names on the auction block and will be going into more stories about those domains as we lead up to the auction next week on Wednesday August 15th.
The impressive list of domains was assembled by DomainTools members that submitted their domains to our first every DomainTools Live Auction. There were a few domains that just squeaked in at the last moment like AZ.com. AZ is one of the best 2 letter dotcoms left in the world not owned by a huge corporation. It is so rare to see a 2 letter domain of this magnitude. Exterminators.com also got in at the last moment, a generic term that incorporates a huge industry that is worth billions of dollars a year in revenue. Our cut off date for new submissions to the auction was August 6th at midnight. There was a rush in the last few hours and the total number of domains submitted swelled to 35,000 domains submitted. The average person submitted 5-10 domains so the amount of interest DomainTools had was more then we could have asked for. The amount of people that use DomainTools on a daily bases as been growing by leaps and bounds over the last year. This auction will ultimately be followed by more people than any other Domain Auctions in History.
Sellers get the most money in a Live Auction format and the caliber of buyers is always much better. We have also invited domain professionals from around the world to attend the Domain Roundtable conference prior to the Auction. Strategies and methods of building million dollar portfolios are talked about during the sessions. However the real tips tend to come out when talking to fellow domainers after the official events while at the parties each night.
This auction will be the largest Live Domain Auction ever held. We are excited and amazed that there has been so much attention on this event. Only 450 domains were allowed to be in the auction. So it was a very hard process of selecting all of them. We used countless statistics and measurements of revenue to determine what domains would make the cut. We used the wisdom of the crowds to tell us the bombs that would not sell and we listened to the feedback as much as we could. We are striving to be the most transparent auction house in this industry. We embrace Web 2.0 to the fullest in this auction as you can read about in how we are using the technologies that have never been used before in an online/offline auction format.
So without further chatter, here is the August 15th Final List.
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Posted in Domain Auction, Domain Roundtable, DomainTools Auction |
August 7th, 2007 at 3:01 am
Congrats to everyone that has domains in the auction. I have 4 lots and can’t wait to see how they do next week. See everyone in Seattle.
August 7th, 2007 at 3:49 am
Wow. This list is incredible and better than any I’ve seen at TRAFFIC or elsewhere, BUT IS IT TOO GOOD? Will there be enough buyers to support the purchase of such high profile (and costly) domains? That’s the big question now.
I’m going to reach out to business targets for my name (OrlandoTravel.com) and I encourage others to do the same.
Cheers and good luck to all that made it in.
-Mike
August 7th, 2007 at 4:22 am
We submitted some of our domains yesterday, but none of them made it this time obviously. Status is still “unconfirmed” and “pending review”, so I guess we can delete them now? Good luck with the auction. I’ll follow it online. Exciting!
August 7th, 2007 at 4:54 am
I just want to publicly give a “chapaux”–in Spanish, a high compliment, literally a “tip of the hat” to Jay for his efforts in this auction. We all owe him for his hard work, and I for one will be quite pleased to pay him the commission if my portfolio (villas.com) sells.
This guy not only talks the talk (very well indeed) but he f’in walks the walk, too! He has done a superlative job at making it known that all of our assets are coming up for sale.
If any of you other owners have ever been subjected to the tackiness, bullying and incompetence of the other “auctioneers” out there (you know who I mean), you’ll know what I mean.
Well done, Jay. Kudos.
I wish all owners the best for next week.
Steve
August 7th, 2007 at 5:00 am
i made the time cutoff and my domains has scored in the 700 and even 800 range….but show as under review - were they even considered?
August 7th, 2007 at 5:46 am
I submitted Grant.com and it didn’t make it. How that makes sense is beyond me.
UPDATE BY JAY: Your reserve was $900,000.00. It is not only good domains that we look at. We also look at the reserve.
August 7th, 2007 at 7:03 am
not cool that you sent out contracts last night saying it is confirmed for auction only to show it not in the auction this morning.
August 7th, 2007 at 7:18 am
Well, it seems that those who got in are happy and the rest of us ain’t!
However, I am ASTONISHED at some of the names selected.
Yes Crinkle, grant.com is better than a few of those accepted I would have thought.
I also would have thought that these ones of mine below stood a good chance of being accepted too.
But what do I know?
What do you think out there? Are these names of mine better than a lot of those accepted names..or am I just dreaming!
Maybe I’m not a pro domainer but stats etc can’t always overide a catchy/intuitive name can they?
Here’s some of the names I submitted, what do you think?
NYCdaytour.com
NYCdaytouring.com
Nontoxicosmetics.com
Whaletrip.com
Cityferries.com
Lesbianmeetingpoint.com
Vegetariancaterers.com
Hongkongringtones.com
Riverfestival2008.com
Discountautohire.com
Discountpizzadelivery.com
Urdupop.com
Traffictipoffs.com
Phone-domina.com
C’est la vie huh. Anywho, there’s always the next gig…Wolftalker.
August 7th, 2007 at 7:21 am
Same for me, I have two submitted two days ago with high ratings that made the deadline but still say ‘under review’.
I know it must be hectic, but to be fair, please have a realistic cutoff so those who work under the rules don’t get left out next time. Thanks!
August 7th, 2007 at 7:36 am
Yea…I believe lots of domainers who submitted late still have their list under “pending review” and that is very sad. So, we don’t know whether the domains were given a fair review.
August 7th, 2007 at 7:46 am
With the deadline for submission at midnight, I thought that there would be a “quiet period” of at least a day for you to review and rank the names. Why did the list need to be rushed out a few minutes after the deadline?
UPDATE BY JAY: We had the submission period open for a month. Those that waited for the deadline have to compete with all the others that were already chosen. In the next auction I would encourage people to submit earlier.
August 7th, 2007 at 7:57 am
There were/ are some dumb names in the list, but the valuation seems to be toward more generic names, less to high-targeted niche names. intuitive and catchy and memorable is probably more the wave of the future than now, for investors. But I think this is an awesome first event!!
Thanks for including the “little guys” in this process!
August 7th, 2007 at 8:11 am
My domain didn’t make the final list but I would like to give Jay and his team a big round of applause for making this auction happen and all the efforts around it. Hope you and all the domains selected have a smashing success!
To Steve_Russell : chapeau is the word in French
August 7th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Conclusion:
===========
This live auction has really much more “garbage” then others use to have.
I am wondering if the people at DomainTools.com realize that most of the buying demand are for premium domains.
Names with no/low metrics like a lot of the ones listed here rarely receive bids due to the lack of motivation (even with low reserves).
The first step for sale is having an “appealing domain”, only after come the pricing problem.
Let’s hope the lack of quality of some of these names will be compensated by a larger buyer audience and that auction will be a success.
Have a great auction!
August 7th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Hi Jay,
> Sellers get the most money in a Live Auction format
> and the caliber of buyers is always much better. - Jay
I do not understand why you are preaching that the live auctions bring the most for the sellers. Are you sure? Ofcourse you know more and better…
What I am wondering is the next event of Roundtable. I just like the JQuery stuff and would very much like to use your auction plattform. (Uh, I could not make some JQuery functions to work with Xajax…)
Would the next Roundtable held after a year?
Why dont you continue a monthly auction of domains with your cleverly designed master piece? (Uh, I still miss the Asc/Desc queries in the headers of the domain list.. nevermind…)
There are talks that people do not want or like Sedo for several several several reasons. Then why are you still sleeping for the monthly auctions until now?
What stops you to select some more domains now and have them for a SILENT AUCTIONS AFTER the live auctions like Moniker did or does?
Why dont you listen to the public demands that they want you to auction their domains on your master piece? I suggest that you just go for it. Let the domains attract the buyers, regardless of where they are put into the auctions. Let the market decide.
August 7th, 2007 at 9:21 am
I have been trying to fax the Auction Agreement form to the Fax # Listed on the form, but it keeps failing.
UPDATE BY JAY: The fax number is powered by eFax. So it should work fine. You may also scan and send it to the email address on the agreement.
August 7th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Stats:
161 names, are so far voted “Good” more than “Bad”
Top 10 (sorted by Best):
Event.com
Dreaming.com
Rebate.com
Invention.com
How.com
Autobiography.com
HerbalProducts.com
Az.com
LoveStories.com
PerfectVision.com
Bottom 10 (sorted by Worst):
DomainInternetRegistration.com
GrannyKnot.com
ChinaDaddy.com
InsuranceCovers.com
Null.eu
bs101.com
BackSack.com
BlackCouch.com
ContinentalRestaurant.com
CouchLand.com
How.com, HerbalProducts.com, LoveStories.com and PerfectVision.com are my personal picks.
August 7th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Wow, when your showing finecars.com and goodcars.com and your number 1 and 2 spot that is strange. You need to have invention.com rebates.com autobiograhy.com and event.com and az.com at the top.
Or separate them into bronze silver and gold and premium. 100 names in each. I dont want to look at 450 names i can goto sedo for that.
UPDATE BY JAY: We are spreading out the really good domains. We want people to be focused and ready for a few big ones at the end of the list.
August 7th, 2007 at 11:56 am
I also have submitted (admitedly late) on 4-5 August over 200 domains for review and possible selection for the live auction and I am frankly dissapointed with Jay giving a deadline for submission, only to have hundreds of domains (mine and a lot others) not even looked at. Why the rush to finalize the list more than a week before the live auction? Who benefits? certainly not us and certainly not the potential buyers. And for that matter, not even DomainTools!
Maybe Jay can shed some light on this rush-to-deliver before its time the list.
Congrats to all those who have made it to auction. And also not in the least to Jay, despite this false deadline hiccup, for a job done with excellence.
a2
UPDATE BY JAY: We had to have a cut off date. Hopefully we will allow even more time next auction and we will not have so many submissions close to the deadline.
August 7th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
unbelievable- with #1 and 2 yahoo placement,over 1 million hits a year,an operating business, grossing over 500,000 a yr,dmoz #1 search terms, 7 years. hotdogcart.com is a winner. the industry and competition is huge for this business. maybe they could not get stats on this, as i detached it from pointing at my main web address for this aution. hotdogcarts.com ???
UPDATE BY JAY: PShoot, I would love to have the domain in the auction. We will have to put it on the list for the next auction. Hopefully it ends up getting more in the long run.
August 7th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
im sorry to say it a2 but you are part of the problem, fancing submitting 200 names moments before the cut off and expecting them to be fully considered. Only 450 names are to be auctioned, why wouldn’t you pick your best 5 say and submit those. You know which ones they are. Throwing 200 at the fan and hoping one will stick is not the right approach.
August 7th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
I don’t believe all sellers received sales agreements to fax back to you. I have not received anything for my names in the auction.
UPDATE BY JAY: There is a possible problem with email to everyone. It seems most people got the email if they are in the auction. We already have 40 signed agreements in our inbox. I will have a link in your Live Auction control panel in less then an hour. We will also put a status message in there letting people know if we have received the agreement.
August 7th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Well, folks, my domains were submitted early (mid-July), and other than a refusal for one within the blog itself, my names were also noted as still “under pending” (I have since deleted them).
Admittedly, two of my submissions domains were weak and probably should have been kicked out immediately (I have learned quite a bit in the last month), but two of them were quite strong, with 600+ scores.
But it’s Domain Tools’ auction, and next week will determine the success of his event. He will not go wrong with the generics, though some of those stange two-word combinations did leave me scratching my head.
However, he and his staff know more about this field than I do.
Best to all whose domains made the auction!
Best, jss
August 7th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
My Dear Sir Jay , hi greetings ,
me seems ,
u[you] havent let the bidders 2[to] vote up
the properties 4which they have the interrest 2[to] bid ,
right ?
?
ThANKye , 2w
August 7th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
We have not received our sales agreements.
Checked both the Domain level email account and contact email on file.
August 7th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Don’t give up hope, everyone. Your name still might be added. Two new names were added a minute ago (Snowboards.com and DigitalCameras.com), and I’m sure that a few existing names will drop off because the seller wouldn’t agree to the DT agreement or whatever. Clearly, Jay needs some backup names in case a few don’t work out for various reasons. It’s all very exciting!
August 7th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
I just want to say “Thank You” to Jay and his staff for re-inventing the domain name auction business. This has been an incredible journey over the past month. I thought the game was very fair, and am proud to have several domains in the auction–including a couple that I lowered the reserve and rewrote the description (thanks Jay for encouraging us to stay on it, in your blog posts, over the past few weeks). Now, let’s hope we have major buyers show up in person and online. There are some great, great names for sale. One of mine is LoveStories.com. I think it is a steal at 100k. The dag on domain gets so much traffic, and we spend nothing promoting it! Good luck to everyone! MrHit
August 7th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
MrHit,
I too think lovestories.com is an excellent name, and I wish you well. I also made it to the auction with one lot. I am excited to see what happens with all the names especially mine since it is outside the norm. It is a good phrase with great search engine placement and lots of traffic and revenue, even though it isn’t just a short generic name.
I also want to thank Jay and Domaintools for the opportunity.
RGN
August 7th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
“”UPDATE BY JAY: We had the submission period open for a month. Those that waited for the deadline have to compete with all the others that were already chosen. In the next auction I would encourage people to submit earlier.”"
I sumitted mine almost a month ago…and still have some “pending review”
Peace,
Dan
August 7th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Bottom 10 (sorted by Worst):
DomainInternetRegistration.com
GrannyKnot.com
ChinaDaddy.com
InsuranceCovers.com
Null.eu
bs101.com
BackSack.com
BlackCouch.com
ContinentalRestaurant.com
CouchLand.com
_____
IMHO…if these domains as well as other domain(s)listed made the auction…you need a better selection method.
Peace!
Dan
August 7th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Going back to my sore point (deadline for submissions), as I understood it from Jay’s clarifications some time ago, that deadline (cutoff date) was 06 August, not 01 or 03 Aug or whatever misterious date. Hence, I complied with it in good faith and was sure that my submission will be looked at, at least in part. In my case, for reasons beyond my control I could not submit my domain names earlier than I did. I just wasted a big chunk of my time for no avail…
I think that, for the future, in order to eliminate/minimize confusion and disapointments, it would be useful to have right from the start a cutoff date spelled out clearly as part of the rules. More so, once that dealine has passed, there should be no possibility to enter/add names to the list. Hope that helps.
And I’m sure there will be more opportunities and venues soon for everyone. And if not offered, we’ll have to create them ourselves…
Cheers!
August 7th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
my travel domain did not make it.good luck to the lucky ones
UPDATE BY JAY: EarthLocations.com is your best domain. But I am afraid that would not make the cut.
August 7th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Hi,
> Bottom 10 (sorted by Worst):
Someone listed some worst domains above as being the worst because they were voted as “Most likely will NOT sell”.
I just think that his action on the reserve price as well as choice of domain names in the listing is not impressive as compared to the entire platform of auction and all the great efforts Jay is making.
Just putting one hundred extra names, that are simply a combination of some generic terms, does not imply that a name is good and could be sold. It is a complete waste of time of many bidders and the entire infrastructure to maintain, watch, write on it, years long talk about what was not sold, etc.
This could have been simply avoided by choosing some quality generic names. I predict that this auction, due to the choice of some garbage domains will have more domains that are not sold than others in the past comparing to the total-listing/sold percentage of other auctions.
BTW, we have not received any auction agreement.
UPDATE BY JAY: We have received about 100 signed agreements back so far. So we know we emailed them out. You may want to check our spam bucket. We have just posted a link in the control panel of everyone that has a top 500 domain. You can find the link here: http://www.domaintools.com/members/ Or there is another link from here: http://www.domaintools.com/live-auction/
Once your agreement is received by us we will update the announcement and let you know we have received it in the same area.
August 8th, 2007 at 6:40 am
Hi Jay,
I am delighted to have two lots included in the auction, especially among the awesome names featured in your most recent blogs! I wish I could attend the Roundtable Conference next week — instead I’m going to watch the auction online.
Like some of the other successful submitters, I did not receive the agreement by e-mail, but I was able to access it in the control panel this morning. I will return the signed agreement a.s.a.p.
Cheers,
Tony K
August 8th, 2007 at 7:39 am
Hi Jay
First, I did not receive an email (checked my spam box). Secondly, when I clicked on the agreement online, it shows about 40 names on the contract. I only had ONE in the auction. Please explain this to me so I can proceed.
Thank you,
Dale
startupnames.com
UPDATE BY JAY: Dale, You have a lot of names on a reserve list. Those domains would fill in holes if some people do not fax agreements back to us. You happen to be one of the few with a lot of confirmed domains not on the 450 list.
August 8th, 2007 at 10:02 am
I submitted a domain back in July that still says pending review, does this mean it was never considered?
UPDATE BY JAY: We have reviewed domains as they come in. We have not changed the status on those domains.
August 8th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Interesting, but also no mail here for the domains in auction
But no problem, as the fax is sent and I hope recieved too.
Best regards and good luck to all
August 8th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Hey Jay.
I’d love to see a write up to help attract those in the travel industry. I added a suggestion in the comments section of BeachRealEstate.com for your review.
Best
-Mike
August 8th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Jay, I was wondering if you would mind giving me a quick comment about why my domains didn’t cut it. I only submitted two, and am not surprised they’re not on the list considering the quality of the ones that did make it, but am wondering if they’re just bad domains, or simply weren’t good enough for the small list.
Thanks in advance.
August 8th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Hi Jay,
I just noticed that the Google scores for my domain names appear to be seriously understated on the auction list.
#440 CanadaBrew.com/.net — Google for Canada + brew is 2,130,000
#443 CanadaBeer.com/.net — Google for Canada + beer is 19,200,000
Please correct these numbers on the auction list. Thanks.
BTW CanadaBrew.com is #5 in Google search for Canada brew. Cool!
UPDATE BY JAY: We got Google results for “Canada Brew” with quotes.
August 10th, 2007 at 4:02 am
It will be interesting to see the prices they go for.
I submitted a few names and then heard nothing, a message saying your names weren’t successful would have been nice, rather than hanging on for weeks with no news wondering what the hell is going on. So the auction may be OK and good news, but customer support sucks.
August 10th, 2007 at 5:29 am
It would be great to see a blog entry for a ’sleeper’ domain - one with a low reserve that should bring way above it … just to keep it real - -
i’m lovin’ this!