In particular,

-Thinking you were in the no reserve live auction.
-Not realizing that the auction you were actually in hadn’t even started.

http://www.successclick.com/is-it-time-for-auction-sites-to-market-to-end-users_2010_01_27/

I see you have already starting crossing things out, you probably need to cross out most of the post.

You’re missing the point of my suggestions about auctions in general. Reading your responses is like watching a dog chase its tail.

“I had 13 domains accepted into the auction and posted them at NO RESERVE but received NO BIDS. ”

If you you now state you are talking about the extended auction, that auction hadn’t even started when you made your post claiming you had 13 names that didn’t sell, it started the day after on the 28th and runs until the 4th.

Man, you don’t read anything, do you? First, my name is “Stephen”, not “Stephan”. Second, I’m telling you what I know, which is more than you seem to know nor want to know. You need to pay attention, and then make a cogent response. Right now, you’re babbling. There are over 1500+ domains listed in the Moniker auction, segmented into different auction mediums, including LIVE, EXTENDED, and SILENT. There are over 500 “no reserve” domains listed.

My domains weren’t all presented in the “73 name auction” you’re talking about. SHOW ME I’M WRONG. If you can’t, then I expect an apology. If I don’t get one, then you’re not a gentleman, are you? If you prove me wrong, I will publicly apologize.

This is my last comment to you on this subject. Eagles don’t eat flies.

Stephan, there was 73 names in the auction, 48 sold. If as you claim 13 of the unsold names were your’s the math is pretty simple. 48/(73-13).

What “speaks volumes” is that you didn’t do your homework and posted erroneous data for the fine readers of TheDomains. There’s over 500 “no reserve” domains in the Moniker auction system, and they didn’t sell “80%” of them.

Most telling was you dismissing the point of my article. I’ve always pegged you as a “Negative Nelly”, someone who loves to publicly make non-constructive “assessments” of other people’s domains and domain businesses without any “solutions”.

However, my comments were based on wanting domain auctions to start using a different marketing model by featuring category listings of domains to increase more sales at higher prices, which also enlarges the buying pool.

Funny, you never addressed that. Instead, you posted 10 minutes of your phony “analysis” – specifically to try and make it look like my domains weren’t “worthy” of the auction. Who are you, Glenn Beck?

Looking forward to reading your complete ten paragraph analysis on all the domains that sold at every level of the Moniker auction, maybe include categorizing them by prodservs, by sell price, by auction location, and whether they’re listed as “no reserve”. (This post took 10 minutes, but I wanted to make sure that I bought you at least one tall warm pint of “f*ck you”.)

As I said exluding your names the sale rate was 80%, that speaks volumes for the real reason your names didn’t sell.

I didn’t do the full analysis you did (where do you find the time?) to say that 48 of 73 domains sold in the “no reserve” section.

The domains I submitted were accepted by Moniker’s very qualified domain appraisers for this auction. That’s good enough for me, because I also know what these domains are worth from past offers on them (all over $300-$500), and the fact that most of them earn enough for renewal price and more. After posting my concern about this on my blog, I received several offers on some of the domains, which I forwarded to Moniker to assist the interested parties in bidding on these domains.

My point really isn’t that “gee whiz, why didn’t anyone want my domains – boo hoo”, but more to the core problem – there’s not enough qualified buyers involved with knowing there were domains they could pick up cheap. I could easily shop these domains around individually to end users and sell them at $100, but that takes my valuable time, and I charge a lot for my time. I expect that bulk auction sites would do the smart thing and ORGANIZE their domain submissions into categories, and then contact the industry organizations and publications relevant to those categories. It’s not hard, but it takes a small investment.

The point is, domain auctions need to categorize and promote the domains within those categories to the industry publications and marketing sites relevant to those categories. That way, when someone wants to sell a great domain, like “FleaKiller.com”, they can submit it to the auction, knowing that the auction has dedicated their marketing resources to reach out to ‘pest control’ publications relevant to that category. I could mention one website right now that tells you ALL of the companies that break down the prodservs for any domain auction program to use in order to do this. To use their full services costs thousands of dollars, but the return would be incredible. Which auction service will step up and take advantage of this information? If they needed help in this direction, I am available for hire. I worked for FCB, a top five MAA company, and several smaller advertising companies, and in my own company, promoted my organization to the media for free exposure one advertising exec told me was worth over $5 million worth of advertising. (I wish that this exposure actually returned that payout).

Bottom Line: Categorizing domains for themed auctions, and simply promoting the auction and the domains within the relevant category to the right market would bring in more buyers. Not only would domains sell for more, the promotion of the domains to the relevant business markets would educate a lot of newcomers in the business world to the value of domaining.

Additionally, domain sellers would feel comfortable submitting their domains into an auction that states they are marketing to a certain prodserv category. I know that Moniker has done this before, but usually it’s Monte attending some other conference, instead of their main conference Domainfest, or even providing online “categories” for non-domainers to search for domains relevant only to their category. Where’s the “EDUCATION OF DOMAINING” pages at these sites? It’s not just Moniker, even Rick Latona didn’t categorize the domains he was selling either, at both TRAFFIC conferences in NY and Vegas. This makes the auction a jumbled mess for noobies.

How hard is it for these two main auction houses for domains to simply CATEGORIZE the domains they’re selling, and to spend a little cash on PR and advertising directly to the publications that sell to the individual industries relevant to the domain categories? Not hard at all… at least from my experience.

Overall, my opinion about domain auctions isn’t a lone island. Many domainers agree that categorizing the auctions into themes is an important move to make domain auction sales reach their best prices, based on educating end users and bringing more buyers outside the domain industry.

Now I just got sucked into providing significant advice to auction sites for domains, and I will bet that within a year, this biz model will be implemented at all auctions by 2011. If not, then we get what we deserve — each other. I’ll be living at your house, and having tea with you every afternoon while we rail against “those knuckleheads”. I can’t wait! What’s for breakfast, Snoop?

If you want to argue against this direction, I’d love to hear your reasoning.

I understand that there were 80 names in 90 minutes but that is not my problem. That is poor planning and sends the message they just want to sell namea and make a commission.

The message they should be sending is we do everything we can to help your names sell for top dollar.

Alot of people ask where are the end users. They are not coming. However, if the auction houses do not even maximize the sales potential of the names to domainers then why use them.

There are now auctions every month, even daily. Lots of ways to sell names. They need to re-evaluate their priorities.