DomainWeek.com reported today that Video.us which had been sold for $18,000 within the past year was re-auctioned off today at noon. It closed for $12,000. $6,000 less then it had just less than a year ago.
What does this mean in regards to the .us ccTLD? It doesnt look strong. With the economy still in recession and .com the clear king of the internet, .us has become the poor mans TLD. Its ususally a last resort behind the general TLDs and unless we see some major development, I believe its value will primarily be linked to resellers flipping back and fourth.

Justin

Over the past few months we’ve seen several blogs come online with a primary focus of selling domain names. You sign up, and receive daily spammage of domain names for sale. You even see the occasional sale by regular bloggers looking to liquidate some of their portfolio. Guess what? Instead of hammering you with even more domains for sale, Im looking to buy.

Looking for 4 letter .com’s that end in the letter combination CA. Sorry folks, I only want LLLL.com and it MUST end with CA. Please shoot me over an email via our contact us link with what you have and your asking price. Bare in mind, I’m looking for decent prices not end-user jackpots.

Toxicology.com sold today on NameJet.com for $26,300 after a fierce bidding war that escalated out of control. To me this seems like an excessive buy. How will this be monetized and what end-user could afford to acquire the domain name while still giving the buyer an opportunity to make a return on their investment. Frankly, this domain name sold for substancially more then it should have, especially with huge question marks in the market place. Best of luck to the new owner.

Justin

I have just arrived in Las Vegas, NV. If there is anyone in town that would like to meet up and perhaps play some poker, hit me up at Justin (@) namebio.com

Ive noticed a lot lately that Afternic tends to have some nice deals going. I check it every few days there new listings (which can be done via advanced search. Ive also had a few decent sales so far this year with Afternic’s expanded promotion service. I recommend giving Afternic a try if you Havnt already.

Checkout the latest domains for sale on Afternic here

MKC.com, sold for $11,000 on 5/24 on the NameJet platform. The bidder defaulted on the payment and the domain was again re-auctioned for $11,000 on 6/3. Once more, the bidder has defaulted and this domain has ended up back on NameJet. Currently MKC.com is at $8,100. What does this mean? Well two issues, clearly NameJet’s bidder certification system is clearly not adequate. Secondly, their auction-reruns aren’t done properly.

NameJet re-auctions defaulted domain names by simply starting the auction weeks later, at the losing bidders highest bid. Is this right? Not at all.

Justin

The lucky owner who managed to take advantage of iREIT’s pricing blunders on Afternic earlier this year has opted to post his prizes for sale on Sedo. RLU.com sold for $900 earlier this year on Afternic when iREIT made errors posting their portfolio for sale. RLU.com is now up for auction on Sedo and has already hit $7,000 dollars with nearly 7 days left.

You can revisit the original story here: http://namebio.com/NameBioBlog/2008/04/04/the-rape-of-ireit/ 

I recognize that domain squatting (specifically TM squatting) is a bad thing. Making cash off of someone else’s work really does give our industry a bad stigma. Despite that, I dont really have any ill-will towards squatters, I figure they’re playing a dangerous game, one of which I don’t really want a part of. I do however take exception to the domainer who buys typos of other domainers sites.

For example, we have a partenership with Estibot, where every few months we provide them with sales data. I happened to want to run a domain name through their system but typed in the wrong address. I accidentally directed my browser to Estibo.com (missed the T). This domain, owned by Barney Pedrino (if thats a real name) is parked with Fabulous and even has the title “Estibot.”

Two things made me laugh. The first is, only Domainers are really going to Estibot and we are less likely then anyone else to click on advertisements as we are all too familiar with parked pages. Secondly, I expected the domain to have privacy, as who would really want their name and address publicly accessable when squatting on a domain like this. Nope. His information is clear as day.

I admire the new service Bido.com. I even was happy to offer up my appraisals on a few of their recent domain names. I must comment about something that gave me major distress. I was reviewing my online banking today, to notice a charge on my card for $0.10. Although the amount is not frightening, it was the fact that I didnt recognize the company charging me and that It may very well be a small charge to check if my account is valid, and then hit me up for some major bucks.

It turns out, the company charging me is FuneralHomes.com. I had never heard of the company before and have never spent money with them. I attempted to call my Bank to reach the fraud department. I intended to get my card shut off so now further charges could occur. Unfortunately getting through to my bank proved to me much more complicated on a Sunday then i had expected.

I did one more search online to see if I could find out if this was a known fraud. As it turns out, FuneralHomes.com is owned by Sahar Sarid (One of the creators of Bido). I had signed up for Bido and in order to bid they needed to check my card. Apparently they used their FuneralHomes.com merchant account to charge me. Wouldnt it be a smart idea to tell your bidders thats where the charge would be coming from? Guess not.

Justin

AirplaneModels.com just closed on NameJet for a whopping $15,200 dollars. This fantastic name represents a huge hobby, that even I as a kid participated in. There are tons of advertisers for these keywords and I think the buyer will make out well with this domain name.