If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Jay Westerdal finally reported the official results of DomainTools’ first live domain auction, which took place at the Domain Roundtable conference in Seattle. He says that there were 1,200 people bidding on the Internet and 300 in the room at the live auction, and that $3,519,128 worth of domains were sold. Considering that this was the first live auction organized by DomainTools, I think they did a great job and I’m sure their future auctions will be even more of a success than this one. Jay also says that they learned a lot from this first event. For example, the auction was obviously too long (it lasted about six hours) and there were too many domains listed in the auction. Jay promised to never do an auction that large again.

Here’s the final list of domains sold in the Domain Roundtable auction:

Fine Cars.com $30,000
Good Car.com $3,700
Invention.com $500,000
Rebate.com & Rebates.com $1,000,000
Albinos.com $31,500
Make Money Online.com $95,000
Gastronomy.com $15,000
Ahora.com $31,000
Brokerage Accounts.com $5,400
Phone Smart.com $5,200
Castillo.com $35,500
47150.com $21,250
Messenger.eu & Messenger.us $5,400
Commercial Painter.com $4,000
Voys.com $4,000
Suspects.com $10,500
Az.com $500,000
Car Manufacturers.com $5,000
Funeral Arrangements.com $9,500
P4.com $30,000
Free Health Insurance.com $25,000
Location Map.com $3,000
Music Releases.com $5,000
Luxury Gift.com $10,000
Army.org $99,000
Airbrush Supplies.com $2,000
cMail.com $10,000
Recording Studios.com $25,000
Vaccinated.com $3,000
Convulsion.com $2,500
Career Resource.com $7,500
Lowest Cost.com $25,000
Medical Injury Lawyer.com $2,450
Escrow Fee.com $3,050
Daily Feeds.com $4,600
Bank Locator.com $6,000
Hippie Clothing.com $3,500
Hot Destinations.com $3,400
Wrestling Fans.com $6,300
Pay Rates.com $25,000
Coin Stores.com $6,900
Gay Discos.com $1,000
Locals.org $9,100
Space Designs.com $1,100
Personals Site.com $1,000
Charlotte Housing.com $1,000
Jacksonville Housing.com $1,000
Great Bands.com $3,300
Internet Hub.com $5,000
Defectors.com $2,200
Victorian Paintings.com $3,500
Spanish Gold.com $6,800
Christian Soul.com $1,100
Low Price Flights.com $4,100
Portland Housing.com $2,050
Hollywood Housing.com $1,050
San Jose Housing.com $1,050
Camera Photos.com $1,000
Secure Lending.com $3,900
Company Manager.com $1,000
BC Tours.com $2,778
Medical Claim Billing.com $1,000
Law Records.com $1,800
Vacant House.com $1,050
Fitness Dating.com $4,000
New York Source.com $2,000
Girls Bags.com $1,100
Curly Fries.com $3,250
Store Bargain.com $1,000
University Personals.com $4,300
Seo Hints.com $2,150
Credit Survival.com $1,250
Ultra Disk.com $1,250
Couch Land.com $1,000
Hummer Rentals.com & Jeep Rentals.com $5,100
Celebrity Couple.com $3,300
Cheap Gadgets.com $5,600
Consumers Guide.com $66,750
California Doctor.com $5,000
Field Goals.com $1,550
Bakery Foods.com $1,000
Growers.com $25,000
R11.com $1,000
x Code.com $5,000
Essential Vitamins.com $1,600
Street Truck.com $4,000
Game Rules.com $12,000
Air Ionizer.com $2,050
Carpet Installations.com $5,000
Loudon.com $6,200
Prison Guard.com $8,000
Spa Holiday.com $5,600
Bakery Sale.com $1,000
Dreaming.com $35,750
Drop Catcher.com $14,500
Lets Play Poker.com $2,250
Dine.mobi $5,000
Bridal Registries.com $8,000
Japanese Autos.com $6,100
Southerner.com $6,100
Your Domain Name.com $12,250
Image Builder.com $2,200
Hot.tv $35,000
Anti Piracy.com $10,100
Free-Credit-Report.com $28,250
Army Brat.com $3,500
Web Support.com $20,000
Slightly.com $3,000
Financial Counseling.com $7,550
Fun Date.com $3,600
Secure Proxies.com $3,500
Math Sites.com $1,600
JayD.com $2,050
Directory Search.com $7,000
Customers.eu $1,000
Foreign Currencies.eu $1,000
Stronger.com $25,000
Ipod News.com $1,000
Dr Poker.com $3,000
Figure Skater.com $8,000
Web Geeks.com $20,000
Day Trading School.com $1,500
Kid Crazy.com $1,250
Horse Medication.com $1,100
Cohabitant.com $2,050
Hawaii Doctors.com $3,000
China Ware.com $7,500
Free Name Search.com $2,500
Good Hotels.com $35,000
Paper.info $5,000
Anti Lock.com $1,400
Anti Tobacco.com $2,100
Hiker World.com $1,050
Food Consultant.com $3,000
Forex Calculator.com $2,050
Casino Poker Online.com $1,000
Lady Shaver.com $1,000
Answer.net $15,000
San Francisco Personals.com $1,000
Photography Gear.com $3,300
Secure Voip.com $5,000
Empty Jar.com $1,000
Picture Converter.com $1,050
Latest Polls.com $2,150
Hastily.com $1,000
Poker.in $60,000
eDoll.com $1,350
Blackjack 101.com $1,050
Spokane Housing.com $1,000
Food Contents.com $1,000
Lease Takeovers.com $1,000
Drug Refills.com $5,000
Ski Trainers.com $1,300
Stock Trading Account.com $1,000
Loan Property.com $7,050
Cab.com $110,000
Copies.com $90,000

Source: First DomainTools Live Auction Results

MARINA DEL REY, Calif.: Paris, France will host the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ 32nd International Public Meeting from 22-27 June 2008.

At its 14 August 2007 meeting, the ICANN Board accepted the proposal put forward by Association pour la Gouvernance de l’Internet en France, en Europe, et dans le monde (AGIFEM).

“ICANN is looking forward to working with AGIFEM and welcoming the global Internet community to Paris,” said Paul Levins, ICANN’s Executive Officer and Vice President - Corporate Affairs. “We had two highly competitive proposals to host the meeting slated for ICANN’s European region - a testament to the great local Internet communities in France and Serbia.”

Each year ICANN holds three meetings in different regions around the world. These meetings constitute an essential part of ICANN’s global consensus-building and outreach efforts. The ICANN Meetings Committee sets the regions in which ICANN will hold its meetings. Proposals are then solicited from organizations interested in hosting the ICANN Meeting.

ICANN has received a number of competitive bids to host the 31st Public Meeting, slated to be held 10-15 February 2008 in the Asia-Pacific region. They are being closely evaluated and a decision will be made shortly.

Ron has published a new cover story at DNJournal.com, titled “Lift Off: How New Sales Platforms are Sending the Domain Aftermarket Into Orbit“.

As always, the article is extremely well-written and informative. Ron features some of the recently launched domain sales platforms and he explains why domain aftermarket sales have been skyrocketing in 2007.

The domain aftermarket is soaring. Of course, if you follow our weekly domain sales reports, you already know that but you may not know the reasons why it is happening and more importantly - you may not know how you as a domain owner can best take advantage of this explosion of interest in domain names.

At the New York T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in June I reported that we had seen a major jump in prices and transactions from the first quarter of this year to the second. The total dollar value of sales reported to us in the second quarter was up more than 50% from the dollar value reported in the first quarter and the average price of sales reported to us surged from $6,873 in the first quarter to $10,544 in the second. We track only four-figure and up sales, so averages for the entire market would be a good deal lower than those numbers as many smaller transactions occur. However, the numbers from our sample still show powerful upward momentum in the secondary sales market.

Seattle-based Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) has acquired VoiceStar, a provider of call-based advertising services. The acquisition will further improve the thousands of local search portals Marchex runs on its domain names.

Marchex total anticipated investment to acquire VoiceStar will be $28 million, consisting of approximately $20 million in transaction consideration and $8 million in company investment.
(…)
“With the addition of VoiceStar, Marchex offers one of the most comprehensive online advertising platforms and agency services for local advertisers at scale in the industry. We can now offer local aggregators a private label search- and call-based marketing platform with distribution for their advertisements in search engines, vertical Web sites, and on our network of local Web sites,” said Peter Christothoulou, Marchex Chief Strategy Officer. “Additionally, we can now also add proprietary pay-per-phone-call advertising units to our network of local Web sites, which allows us to increase the direct monetization of our own properties.”

(via Press Release)