According to DotWeekly, Snapnames is allowing customers who use their Seller Program to auction their names without transferring them to Snapnames’ registrar. They will now allow Moniker-residing domain names to be auctioned on their platform. Previously, if you wanted to auction your names using the private program, you had to transfer them to Snap first. With no guarantee of sale, it was doubling the registration fee, so it wasn’t always optimal.

I am kicking myself a bit right now, having recently sold 45 decent names for $1,000. My names were at Moniker, and I thought they would be great to sell via Snapnames, but I didn’t want to pay the $7+/- transfer fee. Three of the names on the list were similar to a name I sold via Snapnames in October for $750. Tough break, but my buyer got a great deal!

This is a great idea, and I applaud the folks at Oversee.net and Moniker for making this happen. Frequently when companies are acquired, the biggest hassle is when they try to work together. It seems that there is some good synergy between these two companies, and it’s working to benefit their customers.

The best direct marketing tactic for a live domain auction I’ve seen didn’t come from an auction house. Nope - it wasn’t from one of the major companies actually hosting the auction. Today I received an email from someone who has a domain name listed for sale in the upcoming DomainFest Snapnames Live Auction.

“To Whom It May Concern:

Wu.net will attend the Domainfest auction (in person and also online) from Jan. 22, with reserved price of only US$ 10,000.

If you are interested, please visit their website as soon as possible, and make all the necessary preparations:

https://www.snapnames.com/liveAuctions.do

Thank you and good luck!

Meken”

I’ve seen many complaints from people who have names in various live auctions, and many of them are related to the auction house not doing a good enough job of bringing potential buyers to the auction. This seller isn’t going to simply rely on the auction house to bring a buyer for his name. He is going through his past emails, finding people who have inquired about this name in the past, and encouraging them to sign up and bid. I had sent him an email in October of 2006 when I was in the market for a 2 letter .net domain name.

I applaud Meken for not relying on Snapnames to bring potential bidders to the auction for WU.net (although with their fantastic auction inventory, I don’t think it will be a problem). I also happen to think he has a reasonable reserve price of just $10,000 for this nice domain name. I would bet that WU.net will have a new owner in a couple of weeks.

According to a post on DomainNameNews.com and a post on NamePros, Sedo will be repeating the recent .mobi auction. In an email to clients, Sedo and the .mobi MTLD decided that the results of the recent auction would be null and void after some technical glitches occurred. As reported here, the initial auction set a sales record for total value of .mobi names sold ($1.5 million) and for the highest sales price for a .mobi name - $616,000 for Music.mobi.

.mobi MTLD and Sedo announced that they will will conduct a new auction at Sedo.com beginning on January 23rd, 2008. Coincidentally, this falls on the same day as the Snapnames/DomainFest live auction in Hollywood, California.

NameJet, which launched yesterday, is a new company entering the competitive deleting domain acquisition area of the domain business. In a partnership with Network Solutions, NameJet will be responsible for acquiring and auctioning Network Solutions’ deleting domain names. According to TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington,

“NSI, exercising a change in control termination clause, notified Snapnames/Oversee today that they were terminating their agreement and simultaneously launched Namejet with a rival registrar eNom (eNom is owned by Demand Media).” - Source: TechCrunch

This development was reported on Jay Westerdahl’s blog on October 1st. His report included information about a trademark application made by Network Solutions for NameJet.

It looks like starting the Snapnames Seller Program was a smart move for Snapnames, but I hope they don’t lose their active bidder audience, which is the reason I personally listed many names with Snap. So far, I have had success with the program, and I must say their customer service is fantastic.

Even though it can be a lot of work to search through names to order at Snapnames, it is definitely worth the effort. I recently won an auction for VideoCameraWorld.com for about $110. I was only bidding against one other person, so apparently this name either slipped by everyone else and I found a gem, or other people don’t think this name is as valuable as I do. Some recent –Wold.com sales as report by DNSalePrice.com include:

PerfectWorld.com - $30,000
NudeWorld.com - $23,530
DesignerWorld.com - $21,000
WineWorld.com - $20,000

I know VideoCameraWorld.com isn’t worth as much as those gems, but I believe it is worth much more than $110. Keep on looking through Snapnames – its worth the effort! This is one of the most fun aspects of the domain investment industry.

According to this thread on Namepros, Swapnames.com was hit with a trademark infringement lawsuit and will be changing their domain name to Zuho.com. A link to the filing can be found here.

I have put Dumber.com up for auction on Snapnames on Monday, September 17th. The reserve price is only set at $499, so this is a great opportunity to buy a great domain name at a bargain basement price. Back in 2005, the name was appraised by Sedo at a minimum of $10,000 to a maximum value of $30,000.

Place your bids tonight!

I received the following email on Sunday regarding changes in the Snapnames commission plan. While the commission plan is good news for higher value sales, names that only sell for the minimum of $60 will have the commission rate more than doubled. Instead of paying a $12 commission on a $60 sale (20%), we will now pay the new $25 minimum. With this in mind, I am going to have to reevaluate the domain names I submit for Snapnames auctions, as most of my sales were for the minimum.

“Hi Elliot,
I

Up until about a month ago, I was never an active SnapNames user. At most, I may have been involved in five auctions over the course of three years, but I heard (and observed) some great sales that occurred on their platform. When I was made aware of a new beta test allowing ordinary people (like me) to auction names on SN, I was immediately intrigued. I wondered whether they would have more success selling my names than I had listing them in various forums and emailing my contacts. I decided to list a small group of decent names, and I didn’t set a reserve. I also listed one “premium” name, and I set a small reserve of $500. If it sold for the reserve price, I would take a loss, but domain investing is a gamble, so I rolled the dice.

To my surprise, a great number of my names sold! In fact, I had listed a group of them on another forum for $25/each to clear out some inventory less than two months before. My premium name sold for over $4,500 and had a bidding battle at the end. All in all, I have done two rounds of testing at SN, and here are the stats:

1) My sales rate on the domain names I submitted was 63%. Of the 30 names I submitted, 19 of them sold.

2) Of the 19 that sold, 63% of those sold for more than the $60 dollar reserve price.

In my opinion, at the present time, the only downsides to this program are the high rate of commission, currently 20%, and also the length of time it takes to disperse funds, sometimes up to a month. As I understand it, there aren’t any discounts on high value names, but a representative from SN may comment and confirm this or hopefully correct my error! All in all, the higher commission fee is worth it for the amount of names that were sold.

From what I heard, the manual process of reporting the auctions is going to become an automated process at the end of this month, which will allow me to view the names that are in auction and the number of bids. This is much easier than emailing the folks at SN - although to their credit, they always responded to me in a timely manner with the details I needed.

I just authorized a group of 60 names to be auctioned, and I will give an update once the auctions have finished. Based on the first two rounds of testing, I think they have a winning program!