BankRate.com’s Premium Domain Acquisitions in 2010 and 2011 have been revealed in a recent SEC filing totaling over $80 million USD. Albeit the purchases also included companies, content and software, the filing breaks the value of the domain names out as a separate number.

Bargaineering.com – $2.7 million USD, January 29, 2010
“Approximately $2.8 million was recorded as finite-lived intangible assets consisting of Internet domain name for $2.7 million and non-compete agreement for $140,000.”

InsuranceQuotes.com – $5.9 million USD, March 31, 2010
“Approximately $5.9 million was recorded as intangible assets consisting of Internet domain name for $5.9 million, non-compete agreement for $20,000 and Internet content for $15,000.”

NetQuote.com – $40.9 million USD, July 13, 2010
“Approximately $92.0 million was recorded as intangible assets consisting of Internet domain name for $40.9 million, customer relationships for $46.0 million, and developed technology for $5.1 million.”

CreditCards.com – $67.8 million USD.August 6, 2010
“Approximately $67.8 million was recorded as finite-lived intangible assets consisting of Internet domain name for $26.5 million, customer relationships for $39.4 million, and developed technology for $1.9 million.”

CD.com – $500,000 USD. October 15, 2010
“On October 15, 2010, the Company completed the acquisition of the internet domain name CD.com from Rick Latona Auctions, LLC, a Georgia Limited Liability Company for $500,000.”

CreditCards.ca – $650,000 USD, November 23, 2010
“On November 23, 2010, the Company completed the acquisition of internet domain name CreditCards.ca from an Enterprise Analyticals Modeling and Process, LLC, for $650,000.”

TrouveMedia.com(?) – $230,000 USD, January 1, 2011
It doesn’t clearly state the domain name in the filing. “Approximately $3.9 million was recorded as intangible assets consisting of agent relationships for $2.3 million, developed technologies for $1.4 million, and internet domain name for $230,000.”

CarInsuranceQuotes.com – $7.5 million USD, May 13, 2011
“Approximately $7.5 million was recorded as intangible asset, all of which, was for the domain name.”

As noted by Elliot Silver, “they amortize domain names from anywhere from 5 years to 25 years, depending on the domain name“.

[Hat tip to George Kirikos]

According to a press release sent out today, Latona’s, formerly an auction platform for generic domain names has been relaunched as a brokerage firm for money generating web properties.

Rick Latona defines web properties as, “A digital asset that resides in cyberspace such as a website, domain, Facebook fan page, Twitter account, YouTube channel, email marketing lists, mobile phone and tablet applications”. Latona went on to explain that what makes his new venture stand out is that any “property” that gets listed must generate cash flow and the asking price can’t be more than five years earnings. He continued, “when discussing our new strategy we put as much effort into what not to sell as we put into what to sell.” Latona’s will still sell domains from time to time but only money making domains.

Or in Rick’s words, “It’s difficult to sell speculative premium domains for five or six figures, much less seven figures when the state of the world has people selling homes and businesses at a fraction of their true value. What sells in 2011 is cash flow. Buyers want to the stability and earnings. Occasionally domain owners can get lucky with a good sale but it’s nearly impossible for a brokerage firm to make a business out of selling them. Actual big sales are just too rare”.

Each listing on the site will remain there for six months or until sold. The team at Latona’s has been busy lining up agreements but will be rolling out and announcing the listings on a weekly basis, adding inventory at a rate of five to fifteen properties per week. Their reasoning is that the market can only digest so much at once. Listings will be announced in newsletter format and newsletters will only be sent out once a week to avoid sending too much clutter. Interested parties can subscribe on the website to receive these listings. Submissions will also be reviewed; those who wish to have their properties included and marketed can fill out the submission form on the site .

We were to live blogging the auction results of the Targeted TRAFFIC 2010 Live domain auction held in South Beach Florida today by Latonas.com. As always we do not guarantee the accuracy of these results.

According to our tracking, the auction sold 49 names out of 219 for a total of $495,900 USD. The top sales were Shock.com for $200,000 USD, BVI.com & BVI.co for $110,000 and Idle.com for $20,000.

Thanks to Chris of DomainCocoon for the help.
Please see the full unofficial results after the jump.

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We will be were live blogging the auction results of the auctions at the Targeted TRAFFIC Conference in Dublin, Ireland. As always we do not guarantee the accuracy of these results. Unsold names will be included in the Extended Silent Auction.

The auction sold 12 domains for a total of 86,820 Euro, approximately 110,200 USD.

You can see the live blogged results after the jump.
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The Targeted TRAFFIC .EU Low Reserve Opening Auction by Rick Latona was off to a low start.  Only 10 of the listed 50 .EU domains sold and the majority sold at their reserve bid of 500 €.

The domains that sold were:

• Apples.eu 500 €
• BuyGold.eu 500 €
• EasyLoans.eu 500 €
• GolfResort.eu 500 €
• Interpreters.eu 700 €
• Professional.eu and Professionals.eu 600 €
• Progressive.eu 600 €
• SellGold.eu 500 €
• Teeth.eu 600 €
• Diapers.eu 500 €

Now with a few “daily” auctions under their belts, Latonas seems to have worked out the minor bugs and is progressing forward with more sales.  Today’s most recent auction raised the prices from $1 reserves to $1000 reserves and netted $100,731 on 51 domain sales (according to our unofficial tally).  33 domains on the list went unsold at the $1000 reserve mark.

The last $1 reserve auction that we tracked only brought in $19,474 on 48 domains.  The recent .com.mx auction had pretty pathetic results with  14 of 200 domains selling for a total of $880 (see below) and the Richard Whitney $1 reserve auction brought in roughly $46,000 in sales on 100 domains.

We’ve included the “unofficial” sales results we tallied from the past 3 auctions including today, the .com.mx auction and Richard Witney’s after the jump.  The next auction is slated for tomorrow and includes a collection of 80 domains at $1 reserve from long-time domainer Edwin Hayward.

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Rick Latona’s second “daily” auction also listed domains from the company’s own inventory with the starting bid once more set at $1. The second auction yielded a total result of $19,474 according to our own tally for the 48 domains – the previous auction of 100 domains had brought in a total of over $130,000. The average sales price for the first auction was  $1,320.45 whereas the second auction was only at an average of $405.71 per domain. The top three sales of the auction were opticians.net at $3,601, vintageshop.com at $1,999 and skinnypill for $1,625. Two of the domains listed sold for the minimum bid of $1: mitchellcaverns.com and buriedlinks.com.

[Update] As Chip Meade noted in the comments, Latonas has just kicked off another $1 starting bid auction with 100 domains from Richard Whitney. The auction ends at 1pm EDT tomorrow.

Here are the unofficial results:

Latonas.com announced that the switch from a daily sales newsletter to daily auctions just yesterday and the auction’s are off to a running start.  Reminiscent of the early days of Bido.com, the inaugural auction featured all 117 domains with $1 starting bids.

From our “unofficial” tally (see at bottom of post), the auctions closed today with $132,045 in sales.  Top bids were received on Practicing.com at $25,000 and ePayments.com at $16,500.

The auction seemed to run smooth on Latonas platform, much smoother than the last time. We did experience a few minor hiccups on the site pages not immediately loading and I also noticed that some auctions that actually said CLOSED on the catalog page  still showed time on the clock when I went to that auction’s page.  All fairly minor bugs and it appears all bids are going in and the site is staying live. When we talked to Rick he said that they appreciate any feedback.

As a bidder, one thing to take note of on the auctions.  I noticed while bidding that there were 2 type of bidding options that aren’t typical in other platforms.  There are 2 fields to enter a bid,  a “proxy bid” and a “fixed bid”.  It’s important to take note of which type of bid you are placing especially if your intentions were to use  a proxy bid, be sure to use the correct option. When you don’t use the proxy option at the top, and you enter a “fixed” bid (the lower option) the maximum bid you placed is bid all at once.   Not reading this carefully, I bid $200 on a name and the previous bidder only had a $70 proxy. Fortunately for me it was a small amount and I got outbid quickly anyway.

Most online domain auctions use just the proxy bidding system so that users don’t end up spending all their money on a domain that had no other competition in that range, but sometimes a bidder may just want to plunk down their maximum bid and walk-away.  If you watch a live auction, you’ll see these types of actions often.  A bidder will silently wait as bids climb up and then suddenly the bidder shouts out a number that eclipses the current bids . . . It silences the auctioneer and often times stops the auction at that bid.  It’s a lot more effective in a live environment where bids are slowly elevating but Rick told us that he thought the online auctions were as good a place as any to include this option.

Interestingly the $25,000 bidder on Practicing.com didn’t appear to have a whole lot of competition at that level as they bid an amount that skyrocketed above the last proxy bid of a mere $572.  Latona informed us on the phone that he has already reached out the bidder and the bidder told him that it was no mistake and essentially he didn’t want anyone else bidding on this name.  This user is a perfect example of what a Fixed Bid is intended for, it gets other bidders to back off and quickly jumps an auction forward.   I might suggest that this bidder does this closer to the end of the auction next time.  It’s not effective to “show your hand”  this early.

This is a great showing for a daily auction and it would be great to see the Latonas.com team keep up this pace on a daily basis.  Good luck Rick !

See the list of the results after the jump. (more…)

New offering is started with a 24 hour auction for 120 domains starting at $1

Rick Latona just announced that their Daily Domains Newsletter with 15,000 subscribers is now being modified to a Daily Domain Auction, held on Latonas.com. To kickstart the new auctions, Rick Latona’s offers 120 domains from their own inventory at a $1 starting bid. In order to receive a notification when the 24 hour auction starts, subscribe to the newsletter.

View the full press release and list of domains after the jump.

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Disappointing Results, Despite $370,000 Sale

Even though the interest in the Silent Domain Auction after the Targeted TRAFFIC conference by Rick Latona could not generate much interest, it appears it produced at least one noteworthy sale, with LongIsland.com selling for $370,000 USD. However only 9 out of the 600 listed domains sold according to the results currently posted on Proxibid.

The sales were:

LongIsland.com $370,000
Imply.com $4,000
JusticeDepartment.com $1,800
CuteTops.com $1,100
OCNN.com $1,000
DefensiveBack.com $400
php.mx $300
eTaxReturn.com $300
CoverBet.com $300