The MediaWizard’s Blog | mwzd.com

I think all the kudos for organising this and getting it together goes to Ty Maier (bfluid). He put in a LOT of effort and hard work to get it together. I just stepped in to help out an overworked fellow NPer who was handling more than one person should.

And even though we agree the results were not as great as they could have been, it was a great learning experience for all involved and for me too, as it was my first live auction as an auctioneer.

And it was way more effort than most other people are willing to put in - everyone talks about it, here’s someone who went ahead and did it. Getting the permissions, managing submissions, creating lists, updating lists, answering endless pms, rectifying errors, getting the word out, inducing people to blog about it and much much more.

Hats off to you Ty, and congratulations.

Congrats also to NP management and staff, for pro-actively providing their facilities and support.

My analysis -

1. The Easter weekend hurt, a lot of people who could/should have been there were not. Choosing the right date is more important than we thought. So no weekends, holidays and major ‘family’ days for live auctions.

2. The time confusion hurt too, people were there for one hour before the event even started, restless crowds are not the best for auctions.

3. The $5 buyout clause for high value (or even not so high value) domains didn’t work either. I’d think a reserve price as start would work a lot better, NP auctions follow this format. While this might mean less bids, it would ensure that those that did receive bids would be sold. And sellers wouldn’t be out anything (not that $5 makes a difference).

4. There was no paid advertising to support the event, something that seems to be a must for domains that value in at $300k or more. Maybe a payment for each lot would keep out the low value names, bring the list down to a more manageable level (2 hrs).

5. A themed auction might also be desirable - a. High Value names (above $10k) b. Middle value names ($1k-$10) c. Low value names ($100-$1k) would also be better in attracting the right crowd for each event. Someone with $100k to spend might not want to hang around for 2-3 hours.

I’m sure I’ll have many more ideas once my coffee goes in but these are off the top of my head. Thanks to all the sellers, bidders and participants, cheers!

Be there or be square.

Short domains are the hot commodity in 2008. Actually they always have been but there seems to have been a collective awakening of investor demand for short domains since Jan.

I personally prefer short domains, Jhiy.com sounds a lot better than JustHighIncomeYields.tld - even though the latter might actually have better numbers (haven’t checked btw). Its easier for a consumer to remember and say a short domain, part of the reason we’re re-branding our networks, but more on that later

What I would like to share is the upcoming Short Domain Auction at NamePros on the 22nd of Mar 2008, 3PM EST (GMT -5) or 12:30 am 23rd Mar IST.

Here’s the complete list of LLLL.com (4L.com) domains that will be on auction.

Look forward to seeing you there, Ty has put in a lot of effort to make this a reality, kudos to him. I will stand in as an auctioneer too, a first for me (online), should be interesting to say the least