Like Pulling Teeth, First Affiliate Summit Live Domain Auction

[NewsMan]

* A quick disclaimer. I had several domains in this auction and apparently sold 1. I was not at the event but listened live on WebmasterRadio.fm
It’s not easy bringing a new product to an untested audience, and that wasn’t more true than tonight during the Moniker Live Domain Auction held at the Affiliate Summit in Florida. Sitting at home and listening to the events unfold on WebmasterRadio.fm , it was painfully obvious that Monte Cahn and auctioneer Joel Langbaum had their work cut out for them more than ever. Bids were very slow to come by and even domains with no reserve had to have bids pried out of the audience members. Langbaum, an amateur comedian, made quips such as “anybody breathing out there?”, “Am I keeping anybody awake?” and “it’s like pulling teeth”.
As a domain investor who has attended all of the previous Moniker auctions at TRAFFIC and was listening live, this audience seemed unethused and extremely apprehensive. Starting bids were hard to come by and even domains listed as no reserve had to have coaxing to get any bid action. Even names that seemed to appeal directly to the audience members, affiliates and affiliate program managers, were uninteresting. “There’s no credit card affiliates here?” a surprised Cahn said as CreditCardAffiliate.com was moved off of the auction block with no bids. Even the premier domain Affiliate.com received no interest. Granted it had a high reserve, but this one would likely have at least received bids at TRAFFIC.
Near the end of the auction, when names were announced by Langbaum, you could hear a few audience members asking for reserve prices. Several names were sold off of the reserve with one bid meeting the reserve. This will be a disappointment to many sellers as they expect the reserve to stimulate action and not to be the price they end up having to accept. In past TRAFFIC auctions, many sellers dropped their reserves in a gamble to stimulate bidding. This could have been a big mistake, as this auction didn’t seem to have any heated bidding. (Thankfully I ignored advice from a veteran auction seller and kept my reserves where I would be happy selling and managed to sell 1).
Why was there no action?
I saw a few problems right from the start. I’m not sure how many attended Affiliate Summit or how many were at the start of the auction, but the auction didn’t seem to be promoted very well to the audience. I think the organizers are partly to blame for this. I barely saw any talk at any forums or blogs about this. In fact besides this site, I think the Affiliate Summit and Affiliate Tips site were the only “bloggers” who mentioned anything about the auction. Abestweb had maybe 1 or 2 posts. For a first time event, it seems like it was an after-thought to the organizers of the Summit.
Another bad move was scheduling. It seems that the auction was scheduled after a ####tail party. Bad idea. No one wants to sit in on an auction for 2 hours+ after having a few drinks with their friends. At 6:30 most people want to go eat dinner or continue the party elsewhere. From what I heard, there were only around 35 people left in the room as the auction winded down to the last 25 or so domains. With some better planning next time, maybe we’d see some better results.
All said and done, the numbers came in decent considering the lack of activity at the event, thanks partially to one $400k sale. Of the 194 domains entered only 39 sold and many of these came from heavily coaxed bids. The total sale amount rang in $641,000. From what I heard prior to the event, the goal was to reach $1.5m . Hopefully, the silent auction gets better results and more activity than the live auction did. I think many deals were had at this event because of the lack of bidders/bidding. If you were a domain investor in attendance or bidding via the phone, you could have had a few domains at bargain basement prices.

Affiliate Programs, affiliate summit, domain auctions, Editorial, Events, monikerOriginal post by Adam Strong


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