A Record Low For A TRAFFIC Auction? RickLatona.com TRAFFIC Auction Results: 12 Domains Sold For A Total Of €86,820
The RickLatona.com domain name auction from the TRAFFIC Dublin show just ended with what I’m pretty sure is an all time low for a TRAFFIC show.
Just 12 domains sold for a total of 86,820 Euro’s or around $110K.
Two domains accounted for 85% of the total sales, ShortFilms.com sold for €58,000 and Italian.net €15,400.
Meaning that the other 10 domains sold accounted for only €13,420 in sales.
Poor
The poll we took on this domain foretold the results.
Not because people correctly picked the domains that would sell, (actually I didn’t even select those as choices for the poll) but it showed a huge lack of interest in the domaining community for the auction.
Only 44 people voted in the poll casting 77 votes (each voter could select up to 3 domains), in which we asked which domain would sell in this auction.
690 votes were cast over the 4 DomainFest polls in which we asked the same question.
Here are the other domains that sold:
Eqi.com €3000
Microphones.net €3,150.00
html.in €770.00
usk.com €3700
skills.us € 100
ShannonTourism.com €125
MobilePhone.bz €25
Talking.net €2000
PDFReader.net € 100
Party-Costumes.com € 450
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Having an auction that starts at 10 am PST, and 7 am PST, for online American bidders (who the hell is up then???), was probably not the wisest choice either.
Results at domainfest NYC was poor as well if you take out the t-shirt domains.
Kevin
Or having a domain auction in Europe at all.
I mean has any one of those produced any meaningful sales?
Europeans can by domains basically on sale and haven’t stepped in a big way.
Not now when they get a 20% discount and not a year ago when they were getting a 40%+ discount
Two reasons for the failure, in my opinion:
(1) reserves set too high
(2) bidding in Euros; let’s face it, the US dollar is the currency of choice for most people; it’s going to add a 2% to 3% extra cost to many buyers, an inconvenience fee (and many of the sellers were from the USA, and would want to receive funds in US dollars too!)
If the reserves were lower, though, #2 is something folks would suffer through, to get the domain.
Wanna
Domainfest resulted in $530K in sales, if you take out the tshirt.com sale but first of all why would you take the sale out?
Those domains sold. They were in the auction and promoted as part of the auction. The seller just got an offer a few times above the reserve and took it.
Even still $530K maybe disappointing but $110K is disastrous
George
Using Euro’s those trading in dollars have an increase cost of 25%
George
Also its fine to ask for end user pricing but the auction house has to then go out and find the end users like the tshirts.com sale
The auction was a joke !
I wanted to, and did in fact bid on numerous domains, however there was absolutely no consistency or logic to the auction process.
One name, I would have paid the top boundary of its reserve price. I typed in a bid, it was the highest bid, auction passed.
One name I was bidding, the next increment was $100. Every other time this increment had been reduced to $50 had there not been a further bid. I waited for this increment change before putting in my bid.. but.. no.. it was sold – on this occasion they decided not to reduce the increment.
These two occurence made me think ‘screw this’ – I closed my browser and didnt bid on any of the other 8 domains in my watch list.
Way to lose 8 potential sales…
Mike: I assume folks bidding in Euros are converting things mentally to US dollars, and bidding the “correct” amount (i.e. if I’m bidding 100,000 Euros, I should know that that’s really 126,500 US dollars (according to XE.com today).
The 2% to 3% represents the exchange rate fees wasted at the bank to convert funds into Euros before sending a wire to Latonas.com for payment.
Why did this auction and DomainFest fail?
The affluent (and everyone) are saving much more.
They are keeping their hands in their pockets, because they are being bombarded, struck by reality, like these headlines…
http://www.cnbc.com/id/38826988/
http://www.cnbc.com/id/38832150
http://www.cnbc.com/id/38831550/
Wealth destruction is spreading like wildfire.
This was sad and I feel for Rick……
Me thinks too that reserves were set very high for the majority of the domains making those prices unrealistic.
taking the tshirt.com sale out of the total is like saying AP only got 50 yards rushing in a game if ya take out his 95-yard TD run
I tried to bid on html.in but with network lag time, the auction was over before I could.
If reserves are set for end users but the only folks who know about the auction are domainers & some developers, what would you expect to happen?
A dozen or two dozen names selling from a catalog of hundreds or even 500+ is really poor no matter what the total is from a few big sales that save the day.
Many of these live big time auctions that happen every few month’s are hit or miss as of late… But once again, the reserves are definitely too high and is the results anything to be surprised about? Nope.
So, who to blame…. Lets see… Who but the auctioneers? They screwed themselves even before the auction started, lol
My 2c worth anyways.
Very sad indeed.
There actually were a few great domains in the mix – but the reserves were pretty high.
The “auctioneer”… and I put auctioneer in quotes intentionally, really didn’t do a good job either.
I wash shocked when I pulled up the auction and heard how it was conducted.
Hopefully, Rick can learn from this disasterous auction and bounce back
(or maybe sell a few of the domains post-auction).
PS: Brian, good job of working Adrian Peterson into the discussion.
Aron
i agree wanna… reserves that are set too high and the quality of the domains are the two biggest factors… all of the other issues just add to the poor outcomes
@Aron… LOL, thanks
How many attendees (minus exhibitors) are attending the Dublin T.R.A.F.F.I.C show ?
Approx. how many bidders were there “Live” in the auction room today ?
Why did be pick Dublin Ireland the population is ony 7 million and you can not buy and sell .ie names, Very stupid decision Rick i seen this comming from a mile away. Your very lucky to have a job like yours make the most out of it.
So many reasons for failure, start times, euro’s, reserves, auctioneer the economy as a whole etc. Its not easy to place blame but the confrence auctions are starting to reflect the real world markets more and more. Losing Moniker was also a huge blow imo, you cannot replace Monte, period.
Very disappointing results, but there’s another European auction coming up (the Domainvermarkterforum, partnered with Moniker) Sept 2-3 that I think will generate more sales. There are only a few semi-premium names (in German), but a great deal of names in the 500-10,000 EUR range that will probably sell.
Latona strikes out again. Seems he has had a number of lame auctions in the recent past that salvaged a small measure of respectability by sellin one or two gooders and including sales in the final results for which the reserves were not met. Time to start selling watches full time Rick. The other losers are Schwartz and Neu because there is no way Latona is going to renew his licensing agreement with them to operate the TRAFFIC conferences, no way in the world. Its so unlikely that the Vegas odds makers have taken that proposition “off the board”
I really like Monte. And, I consider Monte one of the best salesman
in the industry. However, it is a major mistake to think a person or
company can not be replaced.
8-9 yrs ago, everyone thought Yahoo would always be #1.
@Meyer, while most of us are easily replaced, you have to choose someone who can do so. Im sorry but Monte is focused on our industry, he isnt a fly by night. He can be replaced but the question remains by who. We see more and more by whom not.
hi morning Sir MostWantedDomains
>> Using Euro’s those trading in dollars have an increase cost of 25%
could u detail it a little bit ??
cheers , thanks , 2w
It was fairly obvious when Latona spammed every 5 minutes on domaining.com each new domain that would be up for auction, and the various businesses that could be based on the domain, that the auction would be an utter failure.
People aren’t that stupid. If you have to speculate what could be done with a domain than the domain ain’t that great. Good domains speak for themselves and don’t need a carnival barker to hype them.
This should really be a lessoned learned. Hopefully Latona will do some more due dillegence and less spamming.
For the industry, I hate seeing this as well as FOR the TRAFFIC brand!
Several great points are brought up in the comments above, like you do have to go out and find end users. I’m sure Rick L does this but I’m not 100% sure.
I have nothing against Rick L but I stopped paying attention with all the “watches” emails when I signed up for domains.
I truly didn’t even know his auction was today.
They need to decide if the auctions are geared towards domainers or end user sale. Seems they are stuck in the middle, huge difference in valuation. Cars at auction are sold much differently than ones on the lot.
Domain
Its more than that.
End users aren’t going to just show up.
There is a lot of work involved promoting, finding and contacting end users.
Who Does Latona got working for him who does that?
I mean David is Gone, Jody is Gone, Rick Silver is gone and it wasn’t a very large shop to begin with.
Makes the recent .co auctions seem more impressive.
“David is Gone, Jody is Gone, Rick Silver is gone”
and soon, Latona will be gone too. The smart money ain’t shopping at his store, end of story
Regarding taking tshirts.com out wasn’t this sold days before the auction? I think that would be the argument behind not including it in the auction tally.
Snoopy
TShirts.com was sold the night before the auction and was in the catalog
How many attendees (minus exhibitors) are attending the Dublin T.R.A.F.F.I.C domainshow ?
Approximately how many bidders were there “Live” in the auction room today ?
I’m turning my sales mostly to Flippa.com from now on. Seems to be a much more realistic business model that attracts potential end users. Flippa’s alexa ranking is also higher than sedo, afternic and even higher than sitepoint.com. It looks like the domain game is finally up! If you can’t attract end user buyers why bother. I must admit Monte was legend!
Probably a combination of high reserves, auction time, and small European country. There were a lot of nice names on the list. Also, we are in the last two weeks of summer, many people are off on vacation with their families to get some fun time in before school starts. I’d say to do these shows after mid-Sept. I didn’t really know there was even an auction today. As for the overall economy, the indicators seem to go up and down week by week, and this week they’ve been down. Even in a down economy, the internet and e-commerce will do better than most.
I don’t know Latona, never met him. I recall posting something on his site a while back that was not offensive, giving my opinion, and it was promptly removed.
I also recall Latona giving a challenge to the industry that he could sell any domain and to bring it on. So someone stepped up to the plate and gave him domains.com to broker. He arrogantly posted “domains.com, that’s right, domains.com”
Haven’t heard anything since he accepted the challenge. Everything out of Latona seems to be talk talk talk with nothing backing it up.
He might have built a brand within a small group of people, but outside of that group he appears to be a pompous, arrogant failure. At least as far as TRAFFIC and domain brokering goes.
If you put yourself out there like he does, than he has to be man enough to accept the criticism.
Nuff said
Could be a case of “too many chefs spoil the broth”.
The buzz was more exciting a couple of years ago when there were less BIG events to follow, seems like there’s way more auctions going on lately and registers are becoming more like auction houses each day, .me, .co and .everything else thats coming.
I must admit I am getting a dose of auction fatigue myself
The high reserve prices and poor quality of some domains affected the results. Some of the domains would have sold had they been more reasonably priced. The Irish domains were, apart from dublin.net and dublinguide.com, were poor quality. Ireland’s ccTLD is .ie and it is almost expected that any new business in Ireland would have its own .ie domain. The .com is also popular but anything beyond those two is a third choice or worse registration. The .eu is, as in most EU countries, less than 10% of the Irish domain market. Most European countries also have very strong (stronger than .com in their local market) ccTLDs. This means that the price a .com would command at auction in the US are is higher than what the same domain would command in an auction aimed at European bidders. It is 2010. The domain market has moved on but the prices of these domains seemed to be caught in 2007.
“If you can’t attract end user buyers why bother.”
It is not really how the game works. The occasional enduser will go to an auction but it is mainly a domainer event. It is a wholesale market. Auction houses have tried in the past to attract people outside the industry but it has never become sustainable. Probably because the 10% commission from one or two extra sales doesn’t come close to covering the advertising expenditure.
If domainers want prices way above what other domainers will pay they’ll need to do the hard work themselves, it will cost a lot more in time and money than 10%.
An auction event should be about realistic sellers who just want to sell for what the name is worth in the wholesale market – ie a clearance, not an opportunity to get try and get some amazing price. A auction should be seeing 50-60%+ clearance rates, some of the stuff lately where 10% sells is just absurd, needs a major rethink about what they are accepting. The number of good quality but obviously overpriced names probably need to be limited to one or two names, eg taking rankings.com and homeschooling.com with reserves over 100k euro, what were they thinking?
“It is not really how the game works. The occasional enduser will go to an auction but it is mainly a domainer event. ”
The fact is this… the domain auction institution has had several years now to scale up and attract end users, but have failed miserably. I agree Art at auction generally sells to big art dealers who then re-sell through their galleries. However the domain market is an entirely different ball game. this industry really needs to review its entire business plan. There are over 150 million domains registered out there and its very naive to think only a handful of domainers are going to keep this industry going forever, especially when they “wholesale buyers” do not generally re-sell to the end user market place. It’s pure economics! What should have happened is Domain Fest and TRAFFIC should launch conferences specifically marketed to attract end user business managers and marketing executives. That is a long term worthwhile investment. If that had been the focus over the last 3yrs for instance, things could be very different now. You need to educate business managers, seo’s and ad agencies and marketing executives over a period of time as to why domain names are indeed a good investment. In the absence of that, all we have is a highly speculative instrument churling around in the hands of a few buyers who are mainly domainers with no other outlet to re-sell. Some people here have critisized flippa.com, but if you take a closer look, I bet you venture capital would think flippa is by far a more sustainable business model and the media in general will concede. there is no point flogging a dead horse… it’s time to change direction. So I urge Sedo, Afternic and Traffic to take a closer look at Flippa.com’s model and scale up while the sun is still shinning. Perhaps they could all do a merger of sorts, put money together and launch conferences directed at the business end user. It’ll take some time to evolve, but it would be worth it over the long term. Right now, its all domain speculation.
“What should have happened is Domain Fest and TRAFFIC should launch conferences specifically marketed to attract end user business managers and marketing executives. That is a long term worthwhile investment.”
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So are you willing to put up money to stage a conference about domains not aimed at domainers? Personally I wouldn’t invest a dollar in something like that and I doubt any domain conference organizer would either.
Why would you try and reinvent the wheel when the obvious market is in front of you? The people who are interested in domains are primarily domainers. Business owners have a far lower interest level. We’ve seen a taste of this from all the industry focused domain auctions Moniker held at non domain conferences. The idea has been largely a flop from what I can see of i, most of these people wouldn’t pay anywhere near even what domainers would pay and ardly anyone even turned up at the auctions.
When you say “long term worthwhile investment” that sounds to me like something that is going to lose money. Off course the payoff is always some uncertain date down the track and it involves “teaching people” about how much they *should* like domains.
Personally I think domainers need to accept the market for what it is, domain auction venues have little interest in promoting to endusers, they have tried it and it rarely works. If you think differently start your own auction with your own money and see how you go.
Snoopy you made some good points. Where do you see domains as an asset class ?
The other point with all the talk, Why doesn’t somebody start something else. Its not easy but not the hardest business to get up and going. Especially when so many espouse that it should be easy for SEDO.
@Snoopy
You sound like a perpetual optimist! Basically what you have just confirmed is that domain names are simply casino widgets and not investments. You are basically asserting that end users can never pay those prices and only domainers are prepared to buy at those prices. So my question is… who is going to buy from the domainers then?? Or perhaps you’re saying domainers must continue to inflate their own assets forever…hmmm that sounds like a great ponzi scheme!! You are in serious denial!! There’s no point saying oh go an start your own auction, that is a silly statement. Constructive criticism is good for the industry. If brand business users read you’re comment, they will now have no incentive to buy because you have just devalued your own assets! The other point you made about it has been tried at other events is not good enough. Those were periphery events. What needs to happen is a TRAFFIC or DomainFest event for business execs and marketing professionals. It needs to be consistent and will begin to educate and evangelize over time, with media marketing. How do you suppose Apple or Macromedia for instance were able to be so successful over several years? They held large events directed at end business users and converted a lot of PC users as they went along. You have just confirmed this is a ponzi scheme! I certainly hope a lot of people here don’t agree with your assesment otherwise that’s a big problem…DENIAL!!
“The old grey mule she ain’t what she used to be, ain’t what she used to be”…..oh..
Who in there right US minds buys domain in euros?
Nice vacation. But in my years I’ve never seen Europe conferences do that well.
At TRAFFIC Vancouver, noticed that many domains were bid at under reserve. There were dozens at TRAFFIC Dublin that were bid on, but passed. Maybe auctions now are venues where sellers put hopeful reserves, and buyers always bid under, in hopes of getting a more favorable price! So many deals are left on the table, yet to be made.
It’s the economy.
“. You are basically asserting that end users can never pay those prices and only domainers are prepared to buy at those prices. ”
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That is not what I am asserting.
I’m saying when you go to a conference and try to sell to endusers they are very unlikely to even pay what domainers will pay. These aren’t motivated buyers, they don’t particularly want your domain. If you really want those high enduser sales that domainers dream about either wait, potentially for many many years/decades or target people who have a reasonable chance of being interested, eg people in the top positions on adwords, people who have a strong interest in the exact keyword and can make a good ROI from the purchase, people whose business revolves around your term, even then it will be only a small % that will likely sell.
“There’s no point saying oh go an start your own auction, that is a silly statement. Constructive criticism is good for the industry.”
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Saying “get enduser to auctions” isn’t constructive criticism, it is just a comment about something that has already been tried by everyone running live auctions. Domainers keep saying it but the people who actually have to pay for all that promotion aren’t interested, they’ve been there, done that.
“Snoopy you made some good points. Where do you see domains as an asset class ?”
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I don’t quite follow the question, are you talking about risk levels? type of asset it is comparable to?
“The other point with all the talk, Why doesn’t somebody start something else. Its not easy but not the hardest business to get up and going. Especially when so many espouse that it should be easy for SEDO.”
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I think it is incredibility hard, it needs a lot of money, a lot of time spent promoting to the industry, writing software to integrate live bidding with internet bidding, hiring venues, hiring live auctioneers. I personally don’t think it is a particularly good business. I think it was a good business when the sales totals were $5-$8million etc a few years ago. Nowdays you do all that and sell 80k worth of names. That is a big loss maker.