Weird expired domain sales (partially) explained: EDR

This stretch’s Expired Domain Note (EDR) explains why some domains sell for what they do, plus a preview of domains you might want to backorder.

Why do people bid on expired domain auctions? The number of bidders and the prices are often surprisingly high; so it’s a fair question.

FingerYoga.com is a case in point. Who bought this 12-year-old domain isn’t yet clear. But there were 83 bids as high as $2,227. Were those bidders looking to create a fresh website? Sell the domain? Take advantage of its backlink profile? Or was the original owner bidding, unaware that he could pay just $80 to recover the domain directly through his registrar? As a developed website, FingerYoga.com remained basically unchanged during its decade-plus lifetime. Yet the owner hasn’t been sitting still. Indeed, he’s been promoting yoga for kids with a program called “Space Stretch” on Youtube. So maybe he repurchased FingerYoga.com for nearly 30 times what he needed to pay

More than 1 story is involved in those 83 bids. Usually we can learn only what motivated the winning bidder — and that only later on. So fresh results from expired auctions can be mystifying.

In case you didn’t by now know how WEIRD these expired domain auctions results are each week, here’s a list of what I saw at GoDaddy. Normally I’d filter much of this stuff out:

$8,101 722.net
$4,650 ShoutWire.com
$4,449 Paci.com
$3,400 VisitTampa.com
$3,293 SurgeDirect.com
$2,950 BIIG.com
$2,710 738888.com
$2,325 Avat.com
$2,227 FingerYoga.com
$2,130 Fresh-Era-Homes.com
$2,102 GenGreenLife.com
$2,026 Nk8.com
$2,001 ICDE12.org
$1,732 i87.com
$1,725 BuyCredits.com
$1,670 YourSexHealth.org
$1,580 Maringo.com
$1,555 Tagine.com
$1,225 ICIP2012.com
$1,225 RaspberryManor.com
$1,003 MinnesotaTechnology.org
$995 Shoomp.com
$980 RoyalPalaceHotel.com
$980 ClevelandGBC.org
$980 ZoningMatters.org
$970 IraqEnergyExpo.com
$960 IE6Update.com
$904 JCDL2012.info
$900 VoteJesseKelly.com
$811 TheBlueState.com
$765 MedicalDevicesToday.com
$760 Niib.com
$726 85338.com
$710 HuntingWorldTop100.com
$690 DublinWriters.org
$660 DomainBuyChat.com
$660 60366.com
$655 RoofingDealer.com
$630 RSSMixer.com
$610 90377.com
$610 95021.com
$610 TashanMovies.com
$610 Kivara.com
$577 DJForum.com
$573 WebWorldToday.com
$541 TheInternetDigest.net
$535 ELPE.com
$511 DDQR.com
$510 Network-Client.com
$505 GoldenFeed.com
$500 Haiau.com
$466 65977.com
$463 CoachEnglish.com
$455 BalancedLivingMag.com
$450 NationalGeographicAssignmentBlog.com
$449 c4o.com
$442 Sheji.cc
$433 Mediaty.com
$430 mgtm.com
$410 OurHouseBlog.com
$409 ArtPod.com
$405 MillbrookNYOnline.com
$405 BlogueursSansFrontieres.org
$400 AFullPlate.com
$400 MonacoBangkok.com
$378 Batoo.com
$356 29269.com
$355 HairSource.com
$355 MexicoPackages.com
$351 23928.com
$335 89516.com
$330 52127.com
$316 3DTshirts.com
$306 ORRU.com
$300 SkaLinks.com
$275 ScotlandCountyHealth.org
$270 CoolFunnyAnimals.com
$205 Political-humor.net
$185 MarchOnBlairMountain.org
$162 FruitMeetsfun.com
$162 Etherean.com
$110 SelfHelpWisdom.com
$105 Gbail.com
$100 ServiceElevator.com

I’m not accustomed to seeing city tourism domains sell for $3,400. Paris or Fresh York could fetch more; but Tampa? All the same, Tampa visitors are worth considerably more than that.

Even if I’m a BIIG fan of BIIG.com, the elongation seems less appropriate for NIIB.com.

Initially, ICDE12.org and JCDL2012.info are pretty perplexing. Why the focus on 2012 during 2014? And nearly $1k for such an awful .INFO? It was, in fact, the Joint Conference of Digital Libraries, hosted by The George Washington University. And CheckPageRank.net gives some clues as to its SEO value.

Page Rank: 5
External Backlinks: 15195
Referring Domains: 104
Backlinks EDU: 50
Backlinks GOV: 29
PR Quality: Moderate

“Domain Buy” is a GoDaddy service many domain owners will be familiar with. So did GoDaddy purchase DomainBuyChat.com by bidding for it on their own auction platform? That sounds unlikely.

No, ELPE.com is not Spanish for “the PE”. It’s the English Language Proficiency Exam — a requirement at many universities for foreign students. Did the same buyer purchase CoachEnglish.com? Both combined would total less than $1k, making them each a bargain.

At 32 characters, NationalGeographicAssignmentBlog.com is one of the longest $450 sales I’ve ever seen. Once again, it may have been bought with SEO in mind. Speaking of geography, what’s up with MonacoBangkok.com? It’s a hotel. I’ll let you guess which country.

North Sound Names — a firm linked to the .LINKS registry, Uniregistry — has registered Ska.link. So I’m curious regarding SkaLinks.com for that reason.

Either Google is getting into the bail bond business, or someone has snagged a typo of their email service in Gbail.com. Sounds like Gmail with a cold.

ServiceElevator.com was a good buy at just $100. What’s one installation client worth? More than a hundred bucks.

Since I’ve gone long, I’m going to show only a short list of the prior week’s NameJet expired domain sales:

$3,100 Niza.com
$1,450 Nilly.com
$460 CarbonCoalition.org
$295 Parsonage.org
$187 PRWriting.com
$102 Florios.com

PotassiumChloride.com received 1 bid of $69, whereas PotassiumSulfate.com slipped by with no takers. Other single-bid NameJet auctions included these:

WholesaleTestosterone.com
Guarniz.com
TheWritersAgency.com
CopyCatz.com
HotelMaui.com
Financially.org

Interestingly, many of these first and sole bids are placed higher than necessary — at $69, $75, $90, or $100 rather than the $59 minimum. Bidders don’t always understand the difference between pending delete and pre-release auctions and may assume they’re entering a proxy bid.

So as not to shortchange NameJet, I’ll compensate with a list of upcoming NameJet expired auctions that might be worth a glance. Obviously, there are many more:

Pre-Release Domains: