MIAMI, FL - The TRAFFIC East domain auction is this week, and there's a domain I want to buy. Naturally, I won't tell you what it is. But even if I did, you'd have to pay through the nose just to bid against me.
Until today, I had never tried to buy a domain at auction. All of my best domains have been purchased though resellers like Fabulous and BuyDomains. It's expensive, but worth it. Given the nature of my business, I'm not about about to quibble over a few bucks. Better to just pay the price and get the right real estate.
Location, location, location.
But some domains aren't offered at a fixed price though resellers. Sometimes they are auctioned off in electronic environments like Sedo, eBay, and TRAFFIC.
This morning I tried to enter TRAFFIC's silent domain auction through Moniker, and I was informed by Moniker's sales rep that the cost to enter the auction is $500. The $500 fee is nonrefundable and is deducted from the final purchase price of the domain only if I win. If I lose the auction, I also lose my $500. WTF! If just 20 bidders enter the auction, the auctioneers gross $10K before their percentage of the domain's selling price is added.
Can you say "ATM machine?"
According to Moniker, this policy prevents shill bidding -- a practice whereby a domain's owner anonymously bids up the price of his own domain in order to drive a higher price for it. Yeah, right. The rep added that the policy also "separates the serious from the curious."
Whatever. I'm seriously not going to enter an auction where every bidder is trying to win a domain simply to keep from losing 500 bucks. If the domain is still around next week, I'll contact the seller directly.
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