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Moniker Auction Bulks Up By Slimming Down

By Andrew Allemann

January 25, 2011

Fewer domains, better quality on tap for next live domain auction.

This headline may seem contradictory. But it aptly describes the change Moniker has made with its live auctions of late, and it’s very apparent with February’s DOMAINfest Auction.

What’s the change? Fewer domains. Better quality.

The Premium Live auction on February 3 will have no more than 100 domains and should take less than two hours to complete. (Only 90 minutes is scheduled, but you know how these things go.) Even better, the extended auction will include fewer than 500 domains and last two weeks. A couple years ago the extended auction had over 5,000 domain names, which made it an all day chore to find the winners.

Of course with fewer domains in the premium auction you won’t see as many inexpensive ones, either. Domains under $10,000 will be hard to come by in the premium auction (you’ll find them in the low and no reserve auction on February 1 auction instead).

Here’s a look at some of my favorite (and least favorite) domains from the auction, but live and extended:

Favorites

Row.com $50k-$100k – solid three letter word with many uses, including for rowing

AJY.com and IZT.com – $500-$1000 – not great letters, but a great price.

Candygrams.com $2500-$5000 – you could build an entire candy delivery business around this inexpensive domain

CatholicSchool.com $2500-$5000 – plural would be better but great for an online directory

LTE.com $500k-$750k – probably won’t sell to a domain investor at this price, but LTE.com is one of the top names for 4G wireless.

Worst

These are good names just at the wrong price.

PepperoniPizza.com $100k-$250k – what would you do with this? Have a site that just sells pepperoni pizzas?

Cotton.com $750k-$1M – I recall being surprised when this domain name sold for only $75k back in a 2008 Moniker auction. It seemed cheap. Yet it appears the domain name never transferred hands, so maybe it didn’t sell. It’s worth more than $75k, but I don’t think it’s worth 10x that much.

ComicBook.com $250k-$500k – I only add this to the list because I’ve seen it for sale in a domain newsletter about a dozen times over the past couple years.

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Tags: Domain Sales, live domain auction, Moniker