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Social.org Sale Falls Through

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

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.

SportsPicks.com Sells for $25,660 on NameJet

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.

Pending Deletes: NameJet vs. SnapNames

I had been using the Whois Monitor tool at DomainTools to monitor the status of two similar domain names owned by the same company. The names were geographic Hotel.com and Hotels.com domain names. During the past couple of years, the status on both changed twice, and I received an update each time.

On May 20th, I received an email from DomainTools informing me that the domain names were both in pending delete status. I immediately went to NameJet and backordered both of them. The next day, I received an email from NameJet informing me that I had won the Hotel.com name for $59. I really wanted the pair, and if I had to choose Hotel.com or Hotels.com, I would have chosen the later.

I did a quick Whois search and saw that the Hotels.com name had been caught by another registrar but hadn’t been updated with a registrant yet. I went over to Snapnames and saw that it was available to bid on for $19, and the auction would end in just under two days. While I generally wait for the last minute to bid, I didn’t want to forget, so I placed my backorder.

A day and a half later, I received a confirmation from SnapNames informing me that I won the auction for $19.00.

I was willing to pay more for the names, but in the end, I am pretty happy SnapNames was able to catch this drop for me, saving $40. Now I just have to wait for the 60 day registration period on these pending delete purchases to find a buyer.

Delete Old NameJet Backorders

I frequently place backorders on domain names that already have backorders on NameJet. I do this on names I am mildly interested in owning, knowing that I will have the option to participate in the auction after doing more research on the domain name. Backordering it basically allows me to have the option to bid without the obligation of winning if I am the only bidder.

For whatever reason, some NameJet auctions don’t happen when they are scheduled according to the newsletters that are sent daily. A name may appear in the Pending Delete Names currently available for backorder newsletter, but it may not necessarily go to auction the next day, although they usually do.

If you’ve placed a backorder for a domain name that has other bidders ahead of you, and the name doesn’t go to auction that day, other bidders may drop out or delete their backorder. If that happens, you might be in the leading bidder position when the name does go to auction. If nobody bids more than your bid, you will win the domain name. Had you not been sure about the name but simply placed the back order to follow along, you’re basically stuck with the domain name.

In the past few months, I haven’t gone through my backorder list to delete old backorders. I am now the leading bidder on a domain name I don’t really want to buy, but it’s my own fault for not keeping my backorder list updated. That’s now a priority for me, and it should be something you do as well.

Hotspur.com Auction Contest Winner

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I ran a contest on my blog over the weekened where entrants had to guess the final sales price of Hotspur.com, which was in a NameJet auction that ended yesterday. The winner will receive a $100 Paypal payment from me today.

Sale price guesses ranged from a low of $874 to a high of $32,500. The auction ended at $1,500.The winning guess was Johnnie, whose $1,568 guess was off by just $68… Nice guess and an easy $100 in his Paypal account.

Thanks to everyone for participating in the contest.

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