DomainTools Blog

Domain Roundtable (DRT) 2009 is a little over a month away. The conference is in Washington, DC, June 14 - 17, 2009, at the centrally located Grand Hyatt. Laura Schmidt, Director of Corporate Events for Thought Convergence, is creating a exceptional event following the origins of DRT bringing together diverse interests.

This year’s show is shaping up to be an exciting one! In addition to the knowledgeable speakers, we’ll have sessions covering topics such as:

• domain valuation
• technology trends
• alternative monetization
• legal policies
• online tools

Discount Registration is only available for a few more days! Register by May 15th online and pay only $895; registration increases to $995 on May 16th. We’ve come up with 5 great reasons why you should attend Domain Roundtable:

1) You need to know what your domains are worth in order to get top dollar for them
2) Industry experts will brief you on all issues and policies facing the industry
3) We’ll provide information on all domain monetization options
4) There will be opportunities to network with industry insiders, as well as, influential people in related industries
5) All the cool kids will be there!

Be sure to submit your domains for the Aftermarket.com auction taking place on June 16th. Submission deadline is May 31, 2009.

Check out the Domain Roundtable site to register - now while discount is still available. It is easy to follow DRT on all the latest progress on Twitter or Facebook! We made it easy for you to not miss a beat.

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.

Have you ever wanted to own SanFrancisco.com? Well, you are too late, that name is worth many millions of dollars and is not for sale. However the city next door is for sale. SanMateo.com is going to auction on April 21st at the Domain Roundtable. The city pivotal to the bay area is right across the Highway 92 Bridge. For the cost of less then one acre of land in the same city you can own the domain. It is perfect for development and is a growing city. If you have a chance to visit the city on the way to the conference you might think about bidding as well.