Domain name auction platform Auctionpus.com has, until recently, been auctioning off eight domain names each day since it broke into the domain name auction scene just over a year ago. When the Auctionpus platform went live I remember a lot of speculation about just ‘another’ auction platform with a funny name. Well, over a year later and Auctionpus is still around and has successfully churned out thousands of dollars in domain sales in 2010 and early 2011.
Last week, I saw a headline on on DomainingTips.com mentioning that Auctionpus had moved to a bi-monthly auction. The Auctionpus format has always been simple as Andrei Polgar, founder of Auctionpus says: “There’s this octopus that’s pointing at 8 domains, that’s it.” I’m sure that Andrei has been working very hard to keep Auctionpus running over the last year and when I saw that it was moving to a bi-monthly format I thought to myself that this is a great idea for several reasons.
1) The marketplace is now established and has forged partnerships with many buyers and sellers after a year of rigorous daily auctions
2) Quality of domains in the auction will be held at a higher standard, improving the sell through rate and overall success of auctionpus
3) More time for domains at auction to be viewed, shared, bid on
4) Less work for Andrei! 🙂
The first auction bi-weekly auction saw eight domains go up for bidding of which three sold for a healthy total of $11,500. The domains that sold: Intentions.com for $8,510, Transistors.net for $2,495, WeddingArbors.com for $495 . Five did not sell N.pe, Forum.im, IIO.net, BusinessWeblog.com and PingPong.mx. The domains at auction right now (which still have approx 10 days left for bidding) is an amazing small portfolio of ‘dating’ niche domain names including DatingWebsite.com which already has a bid of $14,950, MeetingWomen.com, MeetingMen.com and Dating.biz. I expect this auction to close with a bang (no pun intended!).
If you are thinking to submit domains into an upcoming Auctionpus.com auction, Andre has mentioned to me that he encourages domainers to submit domains with a liquid value of at least mid-high 3 figures and be willing to start them at a reasonable price to encourage bidding.
Thanks for the post Mike, the new concept is pretty simple: only two sets of auctions per month (8 auctions/set) through which we will be selling high value domains exclusively and a marketplace through which you can buy cheaper domains at $65 a pop (our marketplace contains ~700 domains at the moment of writing).
As far as the auctions are concerned, we’re basically forced to be extremely selective when it comes to the domains we’re accepting because there are only 16 spots available each month and if we don’t offer kick-ass domains priced to sell, we won’t be moving inventory.