My Picks for Today’s Brannan’s Auction

Elliot Silver
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The Brannan’s auction is ending today, and I want to share my top five names based on the posted reserve prices. The company is using Proxibid to host the auction, so you’ll need to sign up for an account to place any bids.

I asked David Clements, founder of Brannan’s for his thoughts on the auction. “We worked hard to bring domain buyers good deals. I feel really good about the 50 names we have for sale. If anyone reading this needs inventory, we’ve got names and we’ve got them at low prices, too.”

I also asked Clements how he thinks the auction was going to play out, and he was very optimistic. “We expect a lot of activity and bidding is going to be interesting to watch since our auction ends today. Our Returning Visitor percentage has spiked so the same people are coming back again and again to decide what they want to bid on. I think that this is going to be Brannan’s best and biggest auction to date.”

My top five picks for the auction are the following names:

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June Great Domains Auction Starts Today

Elliot Silver
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Sedo’s Great Domains is running its June auction beginning today and ending on Wednesday, June 28. There are over 200 domain names scheduled for auction, and I’ve selected my top picks for the auction below based on the name quality as well as the reserve price. There also seem to be quite a few ccTLD domain names included.

Top 5 picks for June auction with reserve price ranges shown:

  • Lavs.com – $1 – $499
  • Wardrobes.com – $5,000 – $9,999
  • Hairstylists.com – $1,000 – $4,999
  • GameShow.com – $25,000 – $49,999
  • PaternityTests.com – $5,000 – $9,999

Ironically, a couple of months ago, I made an offer to the owner of a domain name in the Sedo auction (not going to mention which one) which is right in the reserve price range. The owner declined, but I never received a follow up email informing me that the name is going to auction. I may bid on the auction, but had I not noticed on my own, I wouldn’t have even known it was up for auction. As I mentioned in the past, you should always contact people who expressed an interest in a domain name if you put it up for sale.

What are your favorites in the auction?

Social.org Sale Falls Through

Elliot Silver
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In March of this year, NameJet held an auction for Social.org, and the domain name sold for $228,600. The sales price wasn’t much of a surprise considering Social.com sold for a reported $2.6 million.

Unfortunately, the Social.org deal has fallen through. I just heard from the owner of the domain name, and he informed me that the winning bidder did not pay for the auction. I would assume the second and third highest bidders (who also bid above $200,000) weren’t interested in going through with the deal at their high bids either.

As you might expect, the owner is disappointed at the outcome, but he is working with NameJet to schedule another auction for later this summer. Here’s what he had to say:

“I’m disappointed that the auction winner defaulted, but perhaps this is an opportunity to put such a powerful name into stronger hands. It combines the enormously popular ‘social’ keyword with the ‘Org’ extension that is commonly used by community/social sites such as Wikipedia.org, Craigslist.org, WordPress.org, and Google’s OpenSocial.org. I’m working with Namejet to schedule a re-auction in July.”

I reached out to NameJet about this and was told the winning bidder’s account has been banned from future bidding, and the company will do everything in its power to ensure that the bidder does not participate in any future NameJet auctions. The company is continuing to work on ways to tighten up the verified bidder process.

While this auction didn’t result in a sale, I do think it will eventually sell for a lot of money.

NameJet Auctioning 47 Three Letter .com Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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For the last year or so, NameJet has been permitting private auctions. They’ve had considerable success with them, primarily because most domain investors use its platform daily. Hundreds of domain names sell daily, and the platform offers liquidity for domain owners, and it’s a good bet that domain names will sell for market value.

I just learned that a private seller has put 47 three letter .com domain names on NameJet.  All of the auctions are “no reserve” and they will sell to the highest bidder at the conclusion of the auction. The auctions will run over 2 weeks starting, from June 15-June 26, and they will be closing June 18-29th.

You can have a look at the auction list here, but I have posted the 47 names below for your convenience.

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5 Good Domain Names on Ebay

Elliot Silver
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I don’t sell on Ebay (or really buy anything) these days, but every few weeks, I check out the domain name section to see if there are any deals. I sort the domain names from high to low and select the 200 auctions per page option. I skip to about page 3 or 4 to avoid the idiots who think pricing their names at $21,000,000 is going to draw attention.

In doing my search last night, I came across 5 pretty solid names at somewhat reasonable buy it now prices. Based on some of the listings, I think you can probably negotiate with the domain owner to get better prices (these are not affiliate links).

I didn’t verify that these listings are legitimate, nor did I check out the owner’s rating/feedback on Ebay, so of course do your own due diligence before doing business with anyone.

Did you see any great auctions on Ebay that I missed?

SportsPicks.com Sells for $25,660 on NameJet

Elliot Silver
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The NameJet auction for SportsPicks.com just ended, and the final price was $25,660. The auction had a total of 207 bids from 163 bidders. SportsPicks.com was created in April of 1995, and it appears to have recently expired, and as such, it was not a private seller auction.

I was involved in the auction and would have been a buyer in the $10,000 range, but I have concerns with respect to US laws involving gambling. In addition, there are regulations about gambling advertising, so generating revenue may have been difficult on this particular domain name.

Currently, sports betting is legal in just a few areas in the United States (like Las Vegas). New Jersey governor Chris Christie has announced that his state is going to defy federal law and permit sports betting.

According to NameBio, FreePicks.com sold for  $91,250 in April of 2006 on SnapNames.

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