After technical difficulties last week, the DomainFest Barcelona auction was re-scheduled to conclude online today. The auction of Social.com had gained some press and I’m sure the cancellation of the live event was a huge disappointment for the owner.   There’s nothing more disappointing than building up buzz and getting people to come to the auction and then having it fall apart.  Just ask the guys at Boxcar.com.

Good news just came in on Social.com though.  The domain name has a bid at $2.5 million (see below). It hasn’t met the reserve but this is a pretty good sign regardless.  You don’t just lay out a $2.5 m bid if you aren’t serious.    Check out the auction action as the names close at SnapNames.com

The auction closes in a little more than 2 hours.  What do you think ?  Will Social.com sell today ?

Much discussion has been made about the recent Aftermarket auction and the so dubbed “new sweet spot” that allowed for a high percentage of sales.

With a good deal of confidence, I can say this epiphany bewildered more than a few domainers – some of which have been feeding the ‘sweet spot’ for years.

For if we look back and try and locate the origins of the ‘sweet spot’, we need look no further than the Gold Coast of Australia.

In late 2008, DomainConsultant.com and Aftermarket put on an auction at TRAFFIC Down Under that is likely still champ in terms of sell-through-rate (STR) – a whopping 81% of the names in the catalog.

And the total offering was not fifty, it was 100 names with an average sale price of…$3,000. Names sold included iUS.com, Up.com.au, Camera.co.uk, Saws.com and SkiEurope.com – almost all in the ‘sweet spot.’

So part of the point is to say that the ‘sweet spot’ has been there for some time yet the other side says you still need a Voodoo.com or Contests.com to really make it profitable.

Because while hitting the sweet spot repeatedly produces high STR, auctioneers must also find a way to yield, minimum, at least $200,000 in sales to break-even.

Making a profit? Depends on expenses but usually somewhere between $250,000 to $300,000 in sales.

And that is the rub, for in some ways you need to focus on the big dollar sale or the sweet spot but not both given time and resources, market and objectives (high STR vs. high figure).

Thus we can magnify the risk involved: too many sweet spot sales and you don’t make enough yet go for the big dollar and miss – and you end up with nothing.

It’s a tricky dance, yes, but by no means is it a new one.

This post is a guest post by Mike Fiol of DomainConsultant and Boxcar.com

With just a little over 12 hours left before the auction closes today, the SnapNames auction currently has 24 bids on 523 domains, 21 of the bids coming in under the $1,000 mark.  All online auctions are know for last minute bidding, so you can expect more bidding later on today as the auction wraps up.  As always our friend Mike Berkens made some of his picks on his blog.   You can find a quick list of the current names that have bids by just venturing over to SnapNames and after the jump we’ve posted the domains with bids as of 2:30 AM CDT.

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The sister companies Moniker & SnapNames have just announced that in addition to their live auctions at events such as DomainFest they are also introducing a Monthly Domain Showcase Auction, featuring selected names with low or no reserve prices. The first auction which starts on July 16th and ends on July  21st (coinciding with Sedo‘s next GreatDomains auction) contains no reserve names such as LongWeekend.com and DegreePrograms.com as well as low reserve names such as WirelessModem.com and MusicArchive.com.

As of August the auctions will begin the second Tuesday of every month and end two days later on the second Thursday. More information on the auction and the form for submission of domains for consideration for uture auctions can be found at Showcase.SnapNames.com.

Find the full press release after the jump.

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In case you missed the live Geo Domain auction, the finale for the auction is today at 12pm Pacific. The Aftermarket.com team introduced 22 No Reserve and Low Reserve domains in the final days as well as some new city domains on the roster.

The DomainConsultant team will also be announcing the winner of their Domain Madness contest during the auction event.  Tune in to see if you won

Bidding is open at the following link.  Currently 15 domains of the 64 have met the reserves and will sell today.  The total sales amount is currently at just over $118,000,  but with names like Reserve.com at No Reserve price that final number should go up.

These domains have bids and will sell today :

AmericanGuide.com $1500
CasperJobs.com $150
eGainesville.com  $50
IndiaTube.com  $2500
Longhorn.com  $35,000
Money.Travel  $300
MyMaryland.com $150
PiratesCove.com  $3500
Ponce.com $21,000
Reserve.com $23,000
SantaClarita.com $30,000
StCroixVirginIslands.com $150
TorranceLoans.com $50
VacationCalifornia.com $150
VacationInVegas.com $150
YorbaLindaCA.com  $400

See the full list at the Aftermarket.com site

Disclaimer : Adam Strong is both a writer for DNN and consultant with Domain Consultant

According to a newsletter sent to its members today, Bido has started accepting auction submissions with a reserve. The person listing the domains for sale pays a fee of 3% of the reserve price, in order to continue to encourage low reserves. If the domain name does sell, the 3% fee is credited towards the 8% comission on the sale.

In a recent letter sent to my inbox, NetworkSolutions.com emailed regarding a domain that will be expiring soon, and they encourage me to place a back-order for the domain name at NameJet.com. The domain name they are emailing about is a .net version of a .com domain name that I own. The title of the email reads “DOMAIN.NET Can Be Yours: Find Out How” ( real domain edited out ) and further along in the email it states: “Since you have registered the same domain name with a different extension, we want to inform you that (DOMAIN.NET) may become available soon through our domain auction provider, NameJet™.”

When the two companies were still working together NSI promoted back-order service provider SnapNames in whois searches and on their site. Since dropping that alliance and forming the Namejet partnership, they have continued their promotions, but previous to now I do not recall an email campaign to domain owners in this manner. NSI seems to be making every effort to squeak more profits from their expiring domain inventory and maintain their market-share.

This tactic by NSI of emailing domain owners when a similar extension domain is expiring seems reminiscent of emails that desperate domainers are often found sending out trying to sell the .com owner the .org, .net or .whatever. The pitch probably works some of the time, especially to an uninformed domain owner who doesn’t know .com from .cm

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The top-tier one word domain name Pizza.com is up for sale on Sedo.com and attracting a lot of attention in early bidding. In just 2 days of bidding, the domain has already attracted bids in excess of $2 million . Twenty bidders have already placed bids on the auction which has 5 more days left. This is a stellar domain but at these price levels, Domain Name News would expect there to be “end user” (rather than speculator) bidding on this domain name.

Typically with online auctions, bids slowly come in over the first few days only to quickly elevate during the last few minutes as bidders wait to “snipe” the auction. If this trend holds true, the Pizza.com auction could push over $3 million becoming one of the top sales ever for Sedo.com and putting the domain in the upper bracket of  highest reported domain sales.  Sedo.com brokered the sale of Vodka.com in late 2006 for $3 million to Russian Standard Vodka.