The Bigger Story: Domainers are Offered - and Walk Away From - Over $26M in Bids at Live Moniker Auction

I don’t believe these were all actual bids, unless you saw people hold up paddles for them all. At the beginning of the auction, the auctioneer said he would be “bidding on behalf of the sellers.” This means the auctioneer may continue to bid on behalf of the seller up to the amount of the reserve either by placing consecutive bids or by placing bids in response to other bidders. So, the auctioneer pulls bids out of mid-air that are below the reserve to try to get the action rolling, but never makes up bids above the reserve.

*** Tasha: I would have thought that too, but it seemed quite different from a distance. It would be good to get some clarification. From an online visual, there was always more than one bid, and you could watch the snapnames auction software that showed bidders “Room” then “Room” then “Room” (and their paddle numbers, in the case of internet bidders) as bids were made, and the numbers kept increasing. My impression was that the first bid was auctioneer-originated on some of the larger numbers, but after that, increases came from within the room, with him pointing to different areas in the room. This would be consistent with the fact that so many names were passed, because they never reached reserve. There would be no point in an auctioneer bidding up the prices, if nobody was bidding at lower prices. He stopped when bidding stopped.

Sometimes you could tell if the bidding was just at reserve. For example, a seller might have said ahead of time on the spreadsheet they submitted to Moniker that they want $25K for it, and then you factor in the commission, so it would need $27,500 (or whatever) to be sold… so you’d hear the auctioneer say, “somebody say $27,500; just give me $27,500; that’s all I need” but in a lot of cases the buyer’s purchase limit was set in their own heads at $25K, so because the seller and buyer both had an identical “limit” and because with the Moniker/TRAFFIC commission it put the reserve over the limit, the name could not be sold. There’s a lesson there somewhere. :o)

It would be interesting to hear from Monte if some of the room bids beyond the opening bid, were actually “automated” by the “bidding on behalf of the seller.”

[…] It’s always interesting to watch auctions, their results, their analysis. For the last TRAFFIC Las Vegas show, since friends have done a good job and save me the work (thanks guys!), you can read more about here (Michael Berkens take), here (Adam Strong take), or here (Tasha Kidd’s take). […]

The point is that the auctioneer always pumps up prices - for every single domain. Unless you have legitimate bidders for each domain (especially the big ones like look.com and customerservice.com) … this is 100% hyperbole.

***Tasha: There’s a big difference between hyperbole and misunderstanding. If you’ll notice, I was reporting raw numbers that were reached at the auction. There was no attempt on my part to inflate or exaggerate those numbers. If it is was not transparent about those numbers reached, than that is not my fault. My point was that a lot of bids were made (which they were) and domainers walked away from those bids. Apparently, not all bids “made” were from bidders, and that is troublesome to me, if that goes beyond an opening bid by the auctioneer. I will be making an attempt in the coming days to distinguish from self-bidding by the auctioneer, but it may not be until next auction that we can get a better picture.

Nevertheless, there was a lot of money left on the table by domainers. Hopefully next time it will be much clearer, which is which. No attempt to exaggerate was made on my part. I just reported numbers that were “reached” on each item, as it was represented “closed at $##,###.” I hope that clarifies my perspective.

[…] SevenMile.com The link in question is here. Note that many of the 26 mills unaccepted bids were not real, as the auctioneer were telling the […]

Good objective input. Thanks.

Schill bidding? Complete fraud?

***Tasha: That’s probably a bit severe. Auctioneers (some) do this in other venues, and an annoucement was made at the event that the auctioneer would be bidding on behalf of the seller. I thought it was just the opening bid. I just think with this target audience, there’s a greater need for transparency, and foregoing all non-buyer bids, should make things a lot better in my view, and that of many who have contacted me.

[…] look at how far we have come. Prices for the most premium domains have increased ten-fold over the past few years. And while […]

I was at the auction and there was a lot of “activity” on domains — that is, bidding up of domains by the auctioneer — when nobody in the room was actually bidding, or an insider was just flashing his paddle to bid up a domain. Usually it was just the auctioneer. Of course, the bidding would stop just before the reserve was met, so a domain such as Look.com, which was supposedly bid up to $4.5 million, in fact should have had no bids at all. Such deceptive practice gives the false impression that the domain is worth $4.5 million, and it seems the TRAFFIC organizers are happy enough with that perception. It’s really a short term benefit for a long term loss, because my overall impression of the auction is that it was a scam–specifically because of this practice.

***Tasha: I defaulted to posting “no bids” on domains that weren’t sold, unless I could actually see the bidders, on the post about the subsequent Affiliate Summit Auction.