Promediacorp

Pubcon 2007 First Annual Live Domain Auction Recap

Filed under: Domaining, Pubcon 2007 Las Vegas

- “I can’t believe I didn’t get $5,000 for Wednesday.org! You know what Thursday and Friday would go for!” - Auctioneer

Today I had the privilege of attending a Moniker.com live domain name auction in Las Vegas, Nevada. Moniker.com is the leading provider of domain name registration and management services for small and large companies. This was Moniker’s 9th live auction and first ever live auction at Webmasterworld’s Pubcon 2007 annual convention. Moniker regularly sells and auctions off unclaimed or expired domain names on their website.

Now I know as much as the next web guru that “Internet real estate” is a growing market, with many crazy business owners and web developers willing to pay top dollar for domain names, but I had no idea to what extent seemingly useless names would demand! In today’s auction, domain name cabo.mobi was set at $10,000 and woodcabinets.com set at $25,000! Both didn’t meet their reserve prices.

Moniker.com raked in $326,650 in today’s auction alone – with the majority of domain names not sold because they did not reach their reserve prices. He expects the silent domain auction to generate an additional $200,000. According to Monte Cahnn, President and CEO of Moniker.com, past live auctions have earned over $1 million in one day.

Today’s top sales, both won by the same anonymous phone-in caller, were SoccerTV.com for $80,000 and Grandpa.com for $55,000. FamilyServices.com earned $45,000 and BlindDating.com earned $14,000.

(more…)