What the Yahoo! auction tells us regarding getting PR for domain name auctions

If you want press regarding a domain auction, you need a unique angle.

The prior week Sedo disclosed its latest online auction, and the press ate it up.

The auction was covered by L.A. Times, Investors’ Business Daily, TechCrunch, CNET, MarketWatch, CNBC, Engadget, and on and on.

Compare this to the typical auction Sedo and its competitors run. They might be covered be a few domain blogs, and the press release will get syndicated, but that’s regarding it. Back in the good ole’ days some press would cover the live auctions, but then even the pitch of a live domain auction was no longer newsworthy.

So why did Sedo’s latest auction get so much buzz? It is the story behind the auction.

The auction is for a number of Yahoo!’s long neglected domain names, counting AV.com (formerly used by Altavista), Sandwich.com, and Sled.com.

The interesting thing isn’t the premium-ness of the actual domains. It’s that Yahoo! is selling them and many of the domains have a story themselves.

Just having an auction with a handful of good domain names is no longer newsworthy, at least to the mainstream press.

There’s a message here for domain auction organizers: create a story. Land a few domain names that have some interesting history or a big-name seller. Not all of your domains have to be special, but if there are a few and you pitch it right then you can get press outside the domain industry.