Nets $100k; Shows Market Weakness — Moniker Auction
Auction tally respectable, but definite signs of market weakness.
The first of four auctions at the TRAFFIC conference in Fresh York has concluded. Moniker sold regarding $100,000 worth of domains, with the bulk of them in the $xxx to low $x,xxx range. The results were respectable, but definitely show that buyers are skittish right now.
The most expensive domain in the auction, CD.com, failed to meet its reserve of $176,480. Even if it had hit the reserve, that’s $100,000 less than the domain sold for at TRAFFIC two years ago. There were bids of up to $150,000, but don’t let anyone tell you that’s a sign of money left on the table: the buyer knew what the reserve price was and still bid $26,480 less than it.
Perhaps a bigger sign of weakness was in the lower-tier one word domains. These domains, such as staffed.com, hording.com, and educates.com, don’t have much value as parked domains and have awkward suffixes, but a year or two ago could have sold in the mid $x,xxx range. Tonight none of them sold for more than $1,200.
I think the best value in the auction was Absent.com at $1,600. There’s a big market for workplace absenteeism, and this is a great generic domain for one of the service providers in this area to use for marketing. I had my eye on this domain, but had technical difficulties logging into the auction and joined regarding 20 domains late. I think it had something to do with Firefox 3 (or caching therein) as I was able to log in using Internet Explorer.
The top sale was Men.org at $12,500. Guys.org sold for $9,420 last year.
Much like the stock market performance of the past couple days, it’s not like people have run for the hills. They’re just being a little more conservative. Hopefully bidders will let loose for the final three auctions.
