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An informative coverage of Moniker’s Geo Expo auction at Domain Bits:
It’s hard to say exactly why things failed. IMHO the reserves of a lot of the auctions seemed unreasonably high - I do think that the bids for many of the domains that did not sell went up to what they would at a regular Sedo or Afternic auction. Of course, if you were so inclined I guess you could spin this that the domain holders were so confident about the value and the future of their domains that they refused to let them go even for the generous amounts of money offered. The silent auction over the next few days will likely add some more insights into what is really happening.
Sold and unsold domains listed as well. The greatest deal, as the author pointed out as well, is SantaMargarita.com for USD1,250.00. Congratulations to the buyer on a this deal and If you want to flip it quick for a few hundred percents profits, send me a note.
wowzers… 3 million turned down for India.com (IDN)
The IDNers are going to strike it rich
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That bid is really out of touch with reality. Sounds either incorrect reporting or… Time will tell.
Sahar
I have posted a question to Monte to ask if the starting bid price was just a starting price or whether it was the result of the highest left bid. The auctioneer said many times “I have $XXXX to open, who’ll give me $XXXX ?” but the domain passed because it did not meet the reserve.
No problem either way but a starting price is not an opening bid. I just think that should be cleared up.
I will post when I have an answer.
I don’t believe that India.com attracted any Buyer Bids.
What has happened is that there has been huge confusion caused amongst onlookers. Most people think that there were Multi-Million dollar bids here. It would seem that there were not.
I think if we are going to achieve transparency it should be much clearer when the Auctioneer is soliciting a bid and when he is accepting a bid.
I am not suggesting that there was intent to deceive, but this kind of behaviour is going to lead to more questions about the integrity of the auctions. Nobody can afford that at this time. The impression that many more significant bids are being placed would also seem to be in part responsible for the high reserves. Sellers are simply getting a false impression. This result in fewer sales and so is completely counter-productive.
It needs to be transparent. And it needs to be seen to be transparent!
IMO the reserves were geared toward end users…traffic seems more a domainer to domainer auction, this may have been a domainer to end user auction…thus so many “recently” regged domains
Sahar,
India has over a billion people and has several languages.. Hindi is spoken by a great number of them. Hindi will be BIG on the internet so I wouldn’t be surprised if in 10 years it does fetch that amount.
You just have the anglo saxon view that wherever we go we should be able to speak english . We should expect others to bow to us and speak to us in our language not theirs…
I was the seller of SantaMargarita.com and I’m extremely disappointed with the final sales price. Fountainhills.com sells for 15k? Google trends comparison: http://google.com/trends?q=fountain hills, santa margarita
Not sure what happened but I was expecting at least 5k…
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I like both names. I think FountainHills could have done better at the TRAFFIC auction, I know I would have bid on it as well. Maybe it is a lesson to sellers to stick with TRAFFIC for now?
Sahar
all shill bids
moniker is corrupt
domain tools has proof
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Jay @ domaintools apologized for making these unfounded remarks. I know Monte, CEO of Moniker, and the Moniker team for many years now. From my experience these folks are top notch, Monte in my opinion is the hardest working person in the domain industry.
Cheers
Sahar
It was a Catch-22. All of the great Geos, particulary popular US city Geodomains, are long gone and the present owners have no interest in selling them (I know of at least five US city Geos that have declined $1,000,000 offers in the last six months). The only major US city being auctioned was OklahomaCity.com and it had a high reserve. For someone not experienced in monetizing Geodomains, that’s a hefty leap of faith.