I want to share a nice example of an end user buyer participating in an expiry auction on NameJet. It is not a super rare occurrence as evidenced by the Gradient.com auction on GoDaddy, but I don’t think it happens all that regularly.
LifeIsAGift.com expired and went to auction at NameJet a little over a week ago, and the domain name sold for $1,018. The domain name appears to have been previously owned by someone who did professional coaching and consulting. There were 63 bids from 53 bidders in the LifeIsAGift.com auction. I was a participant in the auction, but I did not think it would be a good investment for my company at a higher level than my bid.
The winning bidder’s NameJet nickname is “lifeisagift.” Based on that alone, it would appear the winning bidder created a NameJet account specifically to participate in the matching .com auction. My guess is the winning bidder saw the expiry message and link to NameJet on the domain name’s landing page and signed up to bid as a result.
Now that payment has been submitted and the domain name has been transferred, we can see who is using the domain name. LifeIsAGift.com now forwards to LifeIsAGift.Church. I can’t tell if this is a church or church community, but it certainly looks like an end user bought the domain name. Smartly, this end user also owns LifeIsAGiftChurch.com, so anyone who might be confused about the .Church domain name and visits the matching .com will be forwarded correctly.
In my opinion, paying $1,018 for the perfect matching .com domain name is very good deal. I think it was smart for this end user to buy the domain name.
One piece of advice I would have is to not create a bidder nickname that matches the domain name of interest. I think it’s best to not let people think you are after one specific domain name.
Great name! Congrats to the buyer.