Aftermarket.com got off to a late start early Thursday morning (Australian time) with their TRAFFIC Down Under auction. The start of the auction was delayed 20 minutes with technical problems with the audio and video feeds.

However, once the auction got going, it seemed like the auctioneer really was moving the names well.  We counted around 60 viewers online according to the Ustream video feed.  Very few names seemed to past, given the No reserve prices on many names. The activity really skyrocketed through camera.co.uk, which sold for $35,000 . Around the time lot 38 came up it was clear that their were technical difficulties as these auctions didn’t show as closed on the users side once the hammer fell.  By the time the auction reached lot 48, the Aftermarket.com team decided to pull down the auction and take a 5 minute recess. Word from the team on the ground was that they were having technical difficulties on their network back in Washington.

Aftermarket.com’s Susan Prosser gave us the insight on the delays in an email

We experienced a delayed start time due to hotel AV complications cutting into our available time for the auction.  Then about half way through, the networking delay became out of norm and resulted in creating sync issues with the master servers in Seattle.  When events occurred quickly in the room, it became difficult to communicate in real time to the online community.  The network delay was testing out to be 3x what it was during the beginning of the auction and all other tests.

With the audio, turned way up on the still running video feed, DNN was able to pick up some of the conversation between the Aftermarket.com team members deciding whether to continue the already late auction and what to do with the little time they had left once the online bidding was back up and running.  It sounded like the decision was made, with a major influence and push by TDU host Dan Warner, to continue bidding on .com.au names only.  The Aftermarket.com team opted to continue the auction and sell only the remaining .com.au domains at the live event and passed on selling the rest of the other domains. These names were receiving the most action from the live audience members and given the location it somewhat makes sense to cater to those in attendance. However, cutting off the remaining names surely didn’t win them any love from the sellers. Saws.com and PrivateResort.com were also brought up in the end and both did sell.  Saws.com ended up closing at $52,000, making it the top sale for the day.

DNN was informed by Aftermarket.com staff that the other domains that did not make it before the live audience will be available and open for bidding until November 26th at Aftermarket.com  These problems will likely cause a huge amount of grumbling among the sellers whose names were affected by the problems.  When the auction was restarted the number of participants online via the UStream feed showed 53 viewers. It’s not clear how many people left and didn’t come back once the live auction platform went down since the video did manage to stay up the entire event.  The auctioneer did a great job and this auction looked to be a resounding success until the technical difficulties brought it crumbling down.

Results to date can be seen on our post that covered the event live. Click here for current results.

Auction video by Domainer Income.

Related posts:

• TRAFFIC Down Under Aftermarket.com Live Auction Results
• Aftermarket.com Live Auction Results (Targeted TRAFFIC conference)
• Aftermarket.com Releases TRAFFIC Down Under Auction List – Bidding Open
• Aftermarket.com Releases Preview of TRAFFIC Down Under Auction
• TRAFFIC Down Under Final Auction Lists Released