DomainTools Blog

We are now reviewing all domains submitted for the Aftermarket.com September 24th Live Auction at the Targeted TRAFFIC Conference. There are so many great domains — thanks to everyone for your submissions, AND for your feedback on our new Auction Manager interface!

We’ve got some tough work to do. With only 90 minutes allotted for the auction, we have got to maintain a rigorous selection process in order to trim the list of submissions down to the 50-or-so lots we have as our goal for the final auction catalog. To that end, Aftermarket.com has elected to work with the team at Domain Consultant.

Domain Consultant is a neutral third party comprised of leaders in the domain community, and has been contracted to review submissions and advise on the final list of lots going to auction. This is a team of professionals who actively participate as buyers, sellers, advisers and brokers, collectively contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars into the domain economy. We are excited about the knowledge and experience Domain Consultant brings to the auction and its participants.

To maintain fairness and objectivity in the selection process, sellers and Domain Consultant will remain anonymous to each other, and Aftermarket.com will serve as the interface between the two.

The Aftermarket team (TrafficZ and DomainTools) is also reviewing submissions. Together as a team with Domain Consultants, we will decide on the final active list of lots going to auction -this final list will be available on September 17, 2008.

Items listed in “Published” status are currently being reviewed. If the review team wants to negotiate a reserve change, the item status will change to “Pending Changes” and customer is notified via email. Items determined to be put into auction will be updated to “In Auction” status and published on the final list September 17.

The auction will be simulcast live and online, starting at 5:00pm Eastern Time on September 24, 2008. The bidding interface will be web-based, no special download required. A DomainTools account and a quick eligibility verification are required for online participation. For in-house participation, please go to the TrafficZ booth at the conference to register and get your bid paddle. More details will follow on the bidding system and new features!

Stay tuned for additional announcements about the Aftermarket.com Auction.

We are very excited about the live auction on Monday, April 21. There are excellent domains on the list with a broad appeal. The auction will start at 11:00am PDT and ends at 4:00pm PDT. If you are in San Francisco, please come join us for the live event at Palace Hotel the auction day is FREE to attend. You can find the details at: www.domainroundtable.com/2008/venue. It is also available on line at: www.domaintools.com/live-auction/bid.html

We had to make some tough decisions at DomainTools about the Live Auction. Reviewing the submissions to determine value and strength of a name is both interesting and challenging. With over 35,000 domain submissions, we identified roughly 350 domains that we would like to have in the auction.

With the top names selected, we then worked with a domain consulting team to review the auction list. The group, Domain Consultant is a collection of top domainers in the community. Their experience in the industry and knowledge of domains is impressive as you can see from the list of appraisers. With their input, adjustments were made to the list of onsite Live Auction versus those in the Extended Live Auction. We appreciate their perspective and input on the final auction list. And, believe working with this team will prove beneficial to buyers and sellers in this auction.

Recognizing auction fatigue occurs, we have continued to trim the list. Also, we have a hard close time of 4:00pm PDT of the onsite Live Auction. However, we have an Extended Live Auction for additional domains submitted that were identified as potential for Live. The names that sell in the Live Auction will immediately close. Any domain not sold will remain open for 1 week following the live in the extended online auction. In addition, those names that we originally acknowledged as potential listed domains for the Live Auction are going to be available in the Extended Live Auction. That auction closes on Monday, April 28^th at 1:00PDT.

Do not wait for the last minute to figure out if you can bid. Visit the bidding page and look in the second yellow box. If the auctioneer is telling you that you are not eligible go through the wizard and become eligible. If you have ever purchased ANYTHING on domaintools then you are eligible, just sign the contract. If you have never shared your credit card with us and we do not know who you are, we ask that you purchase a $1 verification item prior to the auction so that we can verify your identity and make sure you are a real person.

The latest list of domains in full auction are available at: www.domaintools.com/live-auction/bid.html

LIVE AUCTION: starts at 11:00am and the last lot will be called at 4:00pmPDT. Anything not sold or called out in Live Auction will go to the extended Live Auction.

EXTENDED LIVE AUCTION: Monday, April 28^th at 1:00PDT.

Looks like the domains with zero dollar reserves have little mini bidding wars going on several days before the auction closes. It is sort of fun to watch. One example is the combined two domain lot of SecretCode.com & SecretCodes.com. We let this Lot into the auction with a zero dollar reserve and people are aggressively bidding on it. Typically everyone waits for the last 15 minutes of the auction and then they try to snipe it with all the other like-minded snipper people. But once you see one bidder it is safe to say there will be a battle. The DomainTools auction system allows people to bid ahead of time because unlike other live events we broadcast to the Internet and let remote bidders participate just like they are in the room. Thanks to AJAX (and not some windows download) we are able to open up the bidding up to everyone that has a modern web browser.

For the pre-bidders, the current winner can set a proxy bid and defend their position while not even attending the auction. No one can see the proxy bid price including the Auctioneer. This means a leader of an auction can successfully defend against auction snippers while sitting on a beach without Internet access.

Testing the bidding system
If anyone wants to test the bidding system, we have setup a test spot on lot 1. The domain is called “Xx–Practice-Domain.com“. Anyone is free to bid on this domain, the current price is $1,500,000. This is the only domain in the auction that is for testing the interface and getting used to our controls. The domain is currently not registered, so hopefully no one goes out and registers it and tries to claim $1,500,000.00 from us. Once again, the domain is xx–practice-domain.com, please do not register it.

Are you eligible to bid?
Don’t wait for the last minute to figure out if you can bid. Visit the bidding page and look in the second yellow box. If the auctioneer is telling you that you are not eligable go threw the wizard and become eligible. If you have ever purchased ANYTHING on domaintools then you are eligible, just sign the contract. If you have never shared your credit card with us and we don’t know who you are, we ask that you purchase a $1 verification item prior to the auction so that we can verify your identity and make sure you are a real person.

Domain Roundtable
The conference begins today and I am extremely excited, I get on the plane this morning and hope to see everyone soon. I am looking forward to hearing all the speakers and moderators. I want to personally thank, Susan Prosser, she has done a fabulous job selecting speakers and coordinating the whole event. The Domain Roundtable would not be possible without her and the rest of the wonderful team. As the founder of the conference people look to me, however she is the one that truly deserves the respect for putting on such a great show. When you see us, be sure to thank her, I am more of just an observer.

Secret Announcements
We have so many cool things to share with everyone. We have not officially announced this one yet, but I will let you readers in on a small secret. We quietly launched Thumbnail History this week (The service is still in beta, don’t try it in IE8!). It allows people to see what domains looked like years ago. Sort of like Archive.org except we take thumbnail images and not just HTML copies. The thumbnails have been taking by us with Internet Explorer over the years, so they have Flash and the other things that archive.org doesn’t seem to capture. We have hundreds of millions of these thumbnails, several Terabytes actually. More on the thumbnail system later… There are a lot of details I can tell you about it but I will use a dedicated blog post after the conference to really tell you the ins and outs of the service.

Super premium domain the Illusionist.com is for sale at the Domain Roundtable Live auction event on April 21st. The Illusionist.com is for a company that wants amuse an audience. The brand is perfect because it is used by some many people around the world. Everything from TV shows to Movies have used the generic description, there is really no way around talking about an Illusionist without using the proper name.

The Reserve on Illusionist.com is $280,000.

Bidding is available online at the DomainTools.com or live in person at the Domain Roundtable in San Francisco. Bidding is now open and will close Monday at 11am PST.

The live auction event will be broadcast on DomainTools and the Bidding page.

Here is a complete list of what is available during the auction.

This is an excellent reserve price, the domain has been owned by the same person for 11 years.

Some of the best Presidential domains are going to auction as a bundle. All 6 domains are being offered for $150,000 on Monday at the Domain Roundtable Auction. Bidding for the live auction is also available online at DomainTools.com.

WASHINGTON, DC — April 15, 2008 — The 2008 presidential election has generated a flurry of news and commentary, and, as has been the case in the last two elections, is sure to continue to generate interest beyond November. With more and more people turning to the web for their information, the value of targeted political domain names is at an all-time high.

Domain Market, a WashingtonVC company possessing one of the premier domain asset portfolios in the world, has today announced the inclusion of six highly-valued targeted political domain names into the Domain Roundtable conference live auction to be held on April 21, 2008 in San Francisco, CA. The domains are: presidentialcampaign.com, presidentialdebates.com, presidentialprimaries.com, presidentialrace.com, presidentialrace.org and presidentialaddress.com.

Generic domain names, like those being offered by Domain Market, have seen prices skyrocket as the market’s awareness of their value has escalated. In the past 6 months alone, there have been notable sales of such premium domain names as iReport.com to CNN for $750,000 in January, Fund.com for $10 million, DataRecovery.com for $1.7 million, SkiResorts.com for $850,000, and Pizza.com for $2.6m dollars.

“Media companies are increasingly looking for opportunities to drive their audience to destination sites with highly focused content, particularly during major events such as elections,” says WashingtonVC Chairman Mike Mann, who believes that this opportunity is indicative of the greater market trend towards wrapping business models around prime Internet real estate. “Whoever owns these domain names will have significant influence over the US political process on the Internet forever.”

Interested parties have the ability to attend the auction live or participate from anywhere in the world via computer to bid in the auction in real time. Auction registration can be completed through Domain Roundtable’s website, http://www.domainroundtable.com. For additional information or to request an interview, please visit WashingtonVC at
http://www.washingtonvc.com or by email at media@washingtonvc.com.

About WashingtonVC:
WashingtonVC is an early stage fund and incubator that grows companies through the exchange of complementary technologies and marketing services. Our portfolio of interlocking companies share resources, talent and technology to deliver innovative products and services across a broad range of industries.

Our investment focus is in online media and marketing, software technologies, telecommunications services, domain name services and consumer Internet services. We seek out and fund world-class teams and products with the potential to be leaders in their markets, and back their companies with premium, highly relevant Internet domain names (i.e. phone.com, software.com).

A significant percentage of our investment returns go toward supporting and financing our nonprofit organizations, Grassroots.org and MakeChange! Trust.

For those of you that want to preview the auction list…..

http://www.domaintools.com/live-auction/sanfrancisco2008.html

We are still moving things around a little, tweaking things here and there. Once the list is finalized we will publish in EVERYWHERE on the DomainTools.com website. Right now it is only being made available to the 15,000 people that read our blog. We will push the list out mid Tuesday morning to the 400,000+ people that visit DomainTools daily.

UPDATE: The entire DomainTools site is now showing the domains going to auction.

Invites.com is FABULOUS domain for an online invitation company. If you have ever wanted to compete in this space you know it is crowded but the biggest factor has to be the domain name. No one remembers the companies that have crappy domain names. I am sure there are good companies that compete with evite but no one remembers their name. This is the only time to get this domain.

Then you can start a company that helps people with Baby Shower Invitations, Birthday Invitations, Party Invitations, Special Invitations, Birthdays, Showers, Weddings, Baptisms, or Graduation invitations.

Invites.com is a ground breaking reserve of $185,000. This is a huge commercial generic domain.

Domain Roundtable is a great place to buy generic domains and get premium access to the world’s best domains.

An extremely generic domain is making its way to auction next week. Family Planning is the most used term in the US for adults that are thinking about having kids. Family Planning works to promote a positive view of sexuality and to enable people to make informed choices about their sexual and reproductive health and well-being.

Family Planning provides sexual and reproductive health information, clinical services, education, training and research.

FamilyPlanning.com is only $225,000.

Bidding is available online at DomainTools.com on Monday the 21st or in person at the Domain Roundtable in San Francisco.

Home Improvement domains are worth a lot of money. So we are pleased to present HouseRemodeling.com is going to auction with only a $50,000 reserve. I can think of no better name for a HowTo site about House Remodeling projects.

The domain will be available at the Domain Roundtable auction on the 21st of this month.

You may bid remotely or in person.

For the full catalog, please see our site on Monday the 14th. We have priceless domain with prices. Domains that have been locked up and never offered for sale since they were registered over 15 years ago. These domains may only change hands once in the next 30 years and now is your chance to lock them up. Do not let this opportunity pass you by.

What do Country Western and Spreadsheets have in common? They are both owned by Rick Latona and they are going to auction on Monday the 21st in San Francisco at the Domain Roundtable. It is your chance to own some very generic domains. Spreadsheets.com and CountryWestern.com are killer domains.

CountryWestern.com has a reserve of $30,000.

Spreadsheets.com has a reserve of $75,000.

There is a huge list of great domains going to auction. Check out the full list on Monday the 14th. We have showcased several domains on the blog and will continue to do so. We have an online bidding interface and that allows remote bidders to bid as well.