Impressions of the TRAFFIC Auction
The TRAFFIC auction fell victim to the recurring curse of live auctions – lack of quality inventory at reasonable prices leading to poor results.
There were some high quality domains, Power.com, Dubai.com, Prague.com, Avatars.com, Cheese.com, Tie.com, and Movies.xxx etc, but the reserves were too high. UPDATE. Per Mike Berkens the movie theater domains did not sell. The highest selling lot was the pair of MovieTheater.com and MovieTheatre.com for $45,000, pending seller approval of a bid that was well below the published reserve. That leaves two number domains as the top lot, with 002.com and 689.com selling as a pair for $38,000.
The auctioneer was entertaining and kept things moving fairly well.
Rick’s innovation to start low and bid up until the market price was reached provided useful market information even when domains failed to meet reserve. But the bids on passed domains were likely suppressed and lower than they would have been in a No Reserve auction as there was little reason to bid if the reserve was out of reach, so it wasn’t that useful a gauge of market values.
A Live Auction works best when there are multiple competing bidders going for high value domains. The dynamics of a live auction can add interest and excitement. The visceral experience of going head-to-head with a competing bidder in the same room leads to bidding wars and higher prices.
A live auction has a high hurdle to justify the investment in time and effort to put it together, and the investment in time for those attending. An online auction can handle multiple auctions efficiently. A live auction has to go through each domain in the auction list sequentially over the course of several hours.
Did the Live Auction provide value over an online auction? In this case, the answer is ‘No’.
Just once I would love to see a live auction of high quality domains all at No Reserve. That would be exciting.
It would require the domain owners to sell their domains at the prevailing market price. If they aren’t willing to do that, then why even hold an auction?
Other impressions-
.CO domains didn’t have a great showing. The values were approximately 1% or less of what the corresponding .com would fetch. Sex.co had a high bid of $60k, less than 1% of the $10m+ valuation of sex.com. GoldJewelry.co went for $750. GoldJewelry.com would likely fetch at least $75k. Duchang.co (casino in Chinese) sold for $500. I don’t know what the .com would be worth, but $50k sounds reasonable. Touchdown.co had a high bid of $1,000 (didn’t sell). Touchdown.com would be a six-figure domain. Her.co had a high bid of $500. Her.com would be at $50k or close.
It is deflating to have the premium domains such as Power.com, Optical.com, Dubai.com fetching high bids so far below the reserves. It is also disorienting to have the auctioneer beat up bidders for an extra hundred dollars for iPerformer.com (sold for $200) and then move on to ask for million dollars bids for Power.com and the other premium domains. Low quality domains like iPerformer.com and iCabin.com shouldn’t be in a live auction wasting a combined live and online audience of hundreds of people. You don’t see auction houses hawking motel-quality landscapes at a Picasso auction. You wouldn’t expect a serious bidder for super premium domains such as Power.com and Dubai.com to sit through auctions for iConsumers.com and FreePreviews.tv.
What is the total value of the .XXX name space? Orgy.xxx sold for $25k, Movies.xxx received a high bid (without selling) of $80,000, Personals.xxx sold for $25,000, Chatroom.xxx sold for $10,000. How many domains in the .XXX extension would sell for $10k or more? 3,000? 5,000? I have no idea. Let’s say it is only 1,000 domains, that would set the floor for the .XXX name space at $10,000,000, and of course some domains would fetch much higher prices such as Gay.XXX for $500k.
It’s incredible that so much value can be created out of thin air, just by rolling out a new domain extension. It’s understandable why there is so much interest in the new gTLDs from marketers hoping to recreate .XXX’s success.
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Unofficial results provided by DNN.com’s auction coverage