Operate.com was sold today for $190,000 in a public auction on NameJet. It looks like there were more than 100 bidders who participated in the auction with at least a backorder. Operate.com was one of the Thought Convergence domain names put into auction at NameJet.
According to NameBio, this is the largest sale on the NameJet platform in at least three years. The $148,134 sale of eShop.com in March of this year was the previous high water mark at NameJet during the past three years.
I received an email from NameJet announcing a special auction that is filled with exceptional, privately owned domain names. The NameJet website also has banners on-site announcing the auction. These domain names are owned by Thought Convergence, a company co-founded by Ammar Kubba and Kevin Vo.
Some of the domain names that are included in the auction are:
A couple of weeks ago, Namecheap announced its Namecheap Market, a platform for buying and selling domain names. There are buy it now listings as well as domain name auctions on the platform. I bid on a few auctions, and I won my first auction over the weekend. As a result of winning the auction, I learned a few things that I want to share as an auction buyer.
Most importantly, not all auctions are expiry auctions. I was under the impression that auctions on Namecheap were for expired domain names that are registered at Namecheap. This assumption was wrong. It appears that domain registrants can send their Namecheap-registered domain names to auction on the platform. This adds a couple of elements to consider, including the seller’s control of the domain names and the expiration date of the domain names won in auction.
After winning an auction, I had a bit of difficulty seeing where and how to pay for the auction. My unpaid auction page was blank and there was nothing in my shopping cart. I decided to visit the domain name directly to see if that led me to the payment page, and it had a purchase link I could use. This brought me to the checkout screen, and I was able to pay for the auction. The total price was $49.
Over the weekend while reviewing a Dropping.pro list of domain names coming up for auction that day, I saw a domain name that stood out to me. It’s the unique name of a popular beer in the .com extension. The domain name had been registered for many years before expiring and dropping. I am pretty certain the beer name is a trademark of the brewery.
I backordered the domain name and prevailed. I am now the registrant of this trademark domain name.
You’re probably asking yourself why I bought the domain name and what I am going to do with the domain name. I will share a story and explain.
Yesterday I wrote about why I think expiry auction prices have grown inflated over the past few years. This has made it more challenging for me to buy good inventory quality domain names at reasonable prices. It seems like the days of buying a good name under $100 are pretty much long gone.
It’s not impossible to find good domain names in expiry auctions that have no competition, but it is quite a bit harder. In fact, in years past, I would stay up to the NameJet bid deadline when I found what appeared to be undetected gems that I might be able to poach without other bidders if I waited until the last minute. I can’t even remember the last time I did that (although the bid deadline is an hour later – midnight – for me).
Fiscal.com appeared to be destined for an expiry auction at GoDaddy earlier this week. The domain name auction was due to conclude on Monday afternoon, and bidding had surpassed the $30,000 mark. I was a participant in the auction (bidding over $30,000), and I was prepared to spend considerably more than the high bid. In fact, I had offered more for the domain name earlier this year.
The Fiscal.com auction disappeared from GoDaddy Auctions at some point between Sunday night and Monday. This was surprising because the domain name was registered at GoDaddy and there was less than 24 hours remaining in the auction. As far as I know, a 2017 change in how the expiry process works was supposed to ensure that GoDaddy-registered domain names that make it to 3 days or fewer in an auction with bids can no longer be renewed by the registrant since the redemption period had passed.
