Just a few hours left at Sedo Auctions for my names XXXUpload.com and GirlSpaces.com. Better hurry if you want a bargain on these excellent names!

Dang it! I did it again. I forgot that once you choose to send a name at Sedo, based on an offer received, the description is LOCKED!! The reason to send a name to auction at Sedo is to get more exposure for the name and not creating a great description is a wasted opportunity.

And I just did this with a great name — LearnAjax.com — a subject that is very , very popular among internet developers, but perhaps could use some explanation for a domain name investor who sees the name on auction. Not everyone knows what Ajax is. But, programmers sure do. Wordtracker shows around 50,000 search requests a month and searching Google for Ajax Programming shows 28,000,000 pages!

But, I’ve lost my opportunity to explain it to those who don’t know, so I might not get the price I would like. In case you are interested, the auction ends Jan/07/07 03:05 PM EST.

Always, always check your description before sending a name to Sedo auction.

Technorati Tags: domain, domain name, Sedo, auction, Ajax

Buzzster.com is at auction at Sedo with a starting bid of only $500! It ends Tuesday, Dec/05/06 06:00 PM EST. This is a very hot name with incredible branding potential. Think of the possbilities. Think of the buzz!

BuzzTracker sold for $23,000 this year.
RealBuzz.com solf for $16,260 last year.
MediaBuzz.com sold for $3,000 this year.
MBuzz.com sold for $1900 this year.
Plus, lots of names with the word buzz in them in the mid to high hundreds.

And what about all the great sites that end in “ster?” Blogster.com sold for $100,000 last year!

You can place your bid here.

Technorati Tags: domain, domain names, auction, buzz, trends

I am so sick of Sedo’s review of comments in a bidding thread before we are allowed to read them. Rather than repeat everything I wrote in the Namepros.com thread I started, I’ll just publish it here:

Listen Sedo, I’m a big customer of yours. I have 4,000 names there, I’ve sold about $30,000 of names from your site in the last year. So I think I’ve earned the right to say this for the tenth time publicly,

YOUR REVIEW OF COMMENTS SUCKS!!!

It really does.

I’ve been waiting three days wondering what a bidder is telling me in their comments with the bid. I have no idea. Who knows?

I know last week one evening I placed a comment with a bid that might have been instructive to the other party, but instead of waiting until the comment was reviewed, they canceled the transaction. What if I had said “hey, I’ll give you the .net and ,org and .info for this price too”? I’ve done thatbefore and had the thread canceled. The other party never knew.

This is so stupid, Sedo. I’ve told you over and over to get rid of this. No one likes it. What are you afraid of? Someone might call me poopy pants or something and hurt my feelings? Oh, I know, someone might send off their email to me, to get around the 10% fee. Most people are not like that. And if they wanted to, the contact info is easily found in the Whois record.

I know you only have 35 hours in European work week to think this over. But think! No one likes this. Get rid of it immediately please. We could be losing sales, so you could be losing commissions. In fact, I’m ceratin you are.

Anyone else agree?

What do you think?

My name BlondeMoments.com is at auction at Sedo. It ends tomorrow, Nov/29/06 06:47 AM EST. While I acutally had a higher bid before than the $400 offer with which I sent it to Sedo auction, I was curious to watch one work with a name of mine. Heck, I didn’t pay a whole lot under $400 for the name at a tdnam auction. I think given what I had to pay at tdnam (always underpriced) and the interest I’ve had on it for the short time I’ve owned it, it’s a steal for the bidder at $400.

You can check out the bid here.

But hurry, time is running out!

Technorati Tags: domain, domain names, auction, blonde, blonde jokes

I thought I’d try something different. Since every domainer has different needs, two name owners can execute a trade and both can come out ahead. One doesn’t have to “get a better deal” than the other because one may need one type of name, and the other another type of name.

So, I thought for fun I’d throw out a name and if any of you have something of equivalent value you want to trade for it, let me know. Just post the name in the comments section.

The name I’ll offer up is one I just recently picked up about a month ago and I’ve already had three offers on it. There’s no traffic to speak of. It’s just one of those cool names that is both meaningful and memorable:

Gay this and that is big, as we all know. Travel is huge. And after doing a little searching I see that gay travel and sites catering to that market are pretty popular.

So, maybe you want to develop a site for this name, or maybe you just want to hang on to it. If you do want it and you’ve got something in your opinion of somewhat equal value you’d like to trade, just let me know.

Make sure you put your correct email address in the comment (it’s private) so I can contact you.

I’ve just updated the Domains Sales page with the list of domain names sold through Afternic for the 3rd Quarter of of 2006. Take look.

Technorati Tags: domain name, domain, afternic, auction

I’ve picked up my share of names from drop sites like Snapnames.com, Pool.com and enom.com. I’ve snagged names for as little as $60, and have been in auctions bidding into the tens of thousands of dollars.

There are a handful of well-known bidders that, in my opinion, very often overbid for names. Some of these domain names—a few—are worth the prices paid, but most of them in my judgment are not. It seems the bidding is not based not upon a realistic value for the name, but upon the size of the ego of the bidder or the emotion of the moment.

I’ll hang in on an auction to the point where I hit a predetermined fair value for the name. When I get to that point, I’ll pull out. When I do, I always picture the other bidder smiling that he’s beat the poor slob who he thinks is out of his league. And that makes me smile, because I believe I have won by not overpaying for the risk-reward I’ve calculated. (I have to admit that sometime I continue to bid beyond what I feel the name is worth just to make the other party pay more because I know their ego will not let them be outbid by me.)

I really believe that if many of the same names were for sale by owner, and not at auction, that these bidders would never pay the prices they are paying at auction, where emotion and the ego drives the bids up. That’s not the way to buy names.

Paying such high prices for some of these names is taking the easy way out. While I too have the funds to do the same thing day after day if I desired, it doesn’t require any ingenuity or talent to just outbid people to outbid them. While I certainly do take advantage of buying drop names at auctions myself, I prefer to find available new and just-dropped names, or pay existing name owners a few hundred dollars or less for great names when I can get away with it. In general, much better deals can be had by buying names from the buyer, than by going to drop auctions when the overbidders are involved.

But wait! People say all the good names are gone, right? Isn’t that what the “experts” say? Not true. Sure, all the extremely valuable names are gone, but I constantly pick up valuable names for as low as reg fee to up to a few hundred dollars. And I sell these names for anywhere from $500 to many thousands of dollars. That’s a risk-reward scenario I like. And I do it over and over. For example, the last ten names I sold grossed $8,400. What did I pay for them? A total of $205. It can be done.

How am I able to do this? Well, I read a lot about new trends, science and keep up with the news. And I have a variety of tools I use that I doubt many people avail themselves of. And, I spend time digging. Sure, I’ve wasted my money on many of the names I bought in the first few months of doing this when I started out last year. But, we’re talking about just a few thousand dollars for lessons learned, and my selection ability has vastly improved.

I am primarily an investor of stocks, commodities, real estate and business private placements. Domain investing “feels” like a whole different game, but it’s really not. You must make wise investment decisions, while minimizing risk. And there is risk out there. Aside from unanticipated changes to the way domain names and search engines work, you’ve got natural boom-bust cycles in industry (anyone remember the tech boom/bust? I certainly do), macro economy risk brought upon us by a real estate bust, global recession/depression, or geopolitical events. It could be anything. I know I would not want to be holding millions of dollars of overpriced, speculative domain names if anything goes awry. I cannot protect my domain portfolio against losses like I can with stocks and commodities by purchasing shorts and puts.

The next time you are in an auction against bidders gone wild, remember this: the winners of drop name auctions are not always the highest bidders, but the smartest bidders.

Technorati Tags: domain, domain names, auctions