Great.com: Why Erik Bergman Spent $900,000 to Buy It

Elliot Silver
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The second largest domain name sale of 2018 (to date) is the $900,000 sale of Great.com. The domain name was bought by a tech entrepreneur named Erik Bergman at this year’s NamesCon live domain name auction on NameJet. Erik reached out to me discuss why he spent nearly seven figures on Great.com and to let me know how Great.com will be used by him.

Erik is an online entrepreneur who built a large business with a focus on affiliate marketing. His specialty has been SEO, conversion optimization, and email marketing, all of which help make someone make money through the affiliate channel. He co-founded a company called Catena Media, and Erik told me he and his partner took the company public in 2015. Erik did very well financially from the public offering, and this is what spurred him to think about charity and helping others. It is with this in mind that Erik acquired Great.com.

According to Erik, Great.com will be a commercial endeavor with the goal of giving away all of the proceeds to charitable causes. Here’s what Erik told me about how Great.com will be used:

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2018 NamesCon Auction “Remix” on NameJet

Elliot Silver
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The other day, I realized that NameJet still had the NamesCon link in its header, and now I know why. NameJet is re-auctioning a large group of domain names that did not sell during the NamesCon live or silent auction.

According to an email I received from NameJet announcing this “NamesCon 2018 Remix,” there is a secondary auction made up of unsold NamesCon auction domain names. Many of the reserve prices have been lowered by their owners to help induce a sale. People who kept their backorders for auctions likely noticed the domain names coming up for sale again, but others may wish to take another look to see if the reduced reserve prices make some of the domain names more interesting.

Some of the better domain names that are coming up for auction again include the following:

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MillionDollar.com: Expiry Domain Name with a $900 Minimum Bid

Elliot Silver
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MillionDollar.com is coming up for auction on NameJet. From what I can see, the minimum bid is listed at $900 rather than the standard $69 minimum bid amount:

Based on the “pendingrenewalordeletion” email address, it looks like this is an expiry domain name rather than a private listing. The NameJet auction page also confirms that this is an expiry channel listing rather than a privately owned “Direct Lister” listing.

The high bid is listed at $69, and there is one bidder for this auction at the time of publication. I believe people can place the $69 minimum bid to observe the auction, but if it ends at below the $900 minimum bid, the domain name will not sell. I am not sure whether the

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Super.com Hits Reserve at NamesCon Auction (Updated)

Elliot Silver
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Super.com is arguably one of the top domain names listed in the NamesCon domain name auction. The domain name did not hit its reserve price of more than $1,000,000 during the live auction, but it looks like it hits its reserve price during the extended auction:

I do not recognize the leading NameJet bidder alias, evstratov. It is possible that the high bidder signed up specifically for the Super.com auction or perhaps the

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njhighbid Bidder Alias at NameJet

Elliot Silver
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Last night, I was looking through a few of the NamesCon extended auction domain names on NameJet and I saw a bidder alias I didn’t recognize. “njhighbid” is in the lead on several high profile auctions. For example, the njhighbid bidder alias has the high bid of $550,000 on the Super.com auction.

When I see a bidder nickname I don’t recognize, it makes me a bit suspicious. This is especially so when I see the same bidder leading several auctions. In this particular case, none of the auctions I saw njhighbid as the high bidder had met the reserve price.

With the “nj” in the bidder handle, I thought this might be a house account related to the auctioneer, so I reached out to NameJet General Manager Jonathan Tenenbaum to ask about the bidder alias. Jonathan confirmed that this bidder handle “represents the high bid in room from the live auction.” I believe this was necessary because the live auction used different software from the NameJet platform, and live auction bidders were not necessarily connected to NameJet bidder accounts.

Even though it might look suspicious that there is a bidder handle in the lead on multiple high value auctions, it is not something concerning.

DropCatch vs. NameJet on Similar Auctions

Elliot Silver
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There were a pair of similar pending delete auctions on NameJet and DropCatch.com that I thought would be interesting to highlight because of the auction results. I was tracking these auctions (and won one of them), and you can see the results on NameBio.

At the end of December, WorkInjuryLawyer.com and WorkInjuryLawyers.com went into pending delete status and were auctioned. At the end of September, TrafficAccident.com and TrafficAccidents.com went into pending delete status and were auctioned. I believe each pair of domain names deleted on the same day and the auctions took place over the same days.

One each of the singular and plural were caught by DropCatch.com and NameJet, and the results were pretty interesting:

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