by Adam Strong

The News of Our Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated - Mark Twain

Rick Schwartz announced in an email a few days ago that the upcoming TRAFFIC show would be auctioning sponsorship positions. My gut reaction to reading this email was that it had a ring of desperation. I posted on a forum to see if I was alone. As you could expect from any good forum post about domains, and especially one involving Rick Schwartz, the topic got sidetracked. I let it rest a day or so. . . . It must have just been me. . . . Continue reading

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In an email sent to customers today, expired domain auction service NameJet.com released a list of domain names that includes average traffic numbers for the last 30 days. The domain names on the list are ones that NameJet says have not been backordered yet but have traffic. (See list after the jump).

Godaddy’s expiring domain service, tdnam.com, has been publishing approximate traffic numbers on domain names for awhile now. I have found Godaddy’s numbers to be over-estimates of what the actual traffic turns out to be, so “buyer beware”.

It remains a mystery why other expiring domain auction services keep the traffic information on domains a big secret. Most in the industry are fully are that these venues  track the traffic before the auctions and have this information readily available. It would be a very simple and extremely effective way to market domains that were coming up for auction.  We look forward to seeing any data like this coming from NameJet and other expiring domain sellers in the future.

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The Search Engine Strategies live domain auction by Moniker/SnapNames came in with a total sales volume of $19,950 on 26 domain names sold.  The top sale of the day was Groceries.us at $4000. Reports from Moniker staff indicated that the audience size at the event was around 100 people. The online audience at the time of Domain Name News viewing was around 35 viewers and 20 bidders.  The auction marks the first time Moniker and Snapnames have teamed up with the Search Engine Strategies conference.

A full list of names sold and their starting reserve prices can be seen on DNN coverage of the event. Any domains not sold will be put in to the SES extended auction. Bidding is now open for that auction and closes Thursday, August 28th.

[Update] The official results of the auction on the Moniker Website do not list the Groceries.us domain as a sold domain, even though it was mentioned as sold during the auction.

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We are live blogging the Domain Auction at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose. Please note that these are not the official results and while we do our best to provide correct results, there may make an occasional mistake. See the live results after the jump, or read our summary here.

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Oversee.net has confirmed that the company has let go of 10% of its staff as of Friday. The company blames the downturn in the economy. A spokesperson told SocalTech “the cuts were in response to the general economic weakness and pressures in the industry.” According to the report cuts were made across all divisions including SnapNames, DomainSponsor and Moniker.

Oversee.net is a privately held company that owns and operates major domain name services DomainSponsor.com, SnapNames.com and Moniker.com. Oversee bought SnapNames in May of 2007 and acquired Moniker in January of 2008. The company received an investment of $150 million from Oak Hill Partners at the beginning of 2008.

The news of Oversee executives being canned* (correction explained) staff being canned comes in the wake of other recent disappointing news this month from domain companies. Dark Blue Sea and Tucows both reported less than stellar earnings. DBS pay-per-click revenues were down nearly 50% and Tucows earnings were lower but President Elliot Noss believes that parking revenue may have bottomed out as the company is seeing increases in their domain portfolio pay-per-click earnings.

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DomainNameNews set out to collect information on domain newsletters out there. The following eight newsletters offer you domains for sale, but also domains available for (re-)registration. Find out about the 8 Domain Newsletters you cannot afford to miss after the jump.

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