For the record, I disagree that “now is the right time”. Of course, I don’t know if there are financial issues/reasons behind the sale. However, if there were no issues, I’d hold onto it given the environment.

For those people who are “strapped for cash” and need to sell, feel free to get in contact and I’ll take those little gems off your hands. In a strange coincidence…. while typing this post I was sent a portfolio of 400+ domains looking for a new home.

What do you think about wealth.com? Should they auction it off?

There are 3 days left in the auction for Kosovo.com and its at EUR 32,500 right now. Considering iran.com sold for $400k and melbourne.com for $700k, Kosovo has a long way to go.

Its a buyers market; if you have the cash its time to pickup some bargains.

—-

Dear Simon,
I am sorry to have to inform you of this, but there was a mistake in the auction for <SNIP>. The registrar informed us that this name was available for us to send to auction; unfortunately, the name was renewed at the last minute and we were not informed in time to stop the auction. We apologize for this inconvenience. It is a rare occurrence but it unavoidably happens from time to time. Of course, a refund has been issued to you for the $<SNIP> that you paid for the name.

If you have any questions, please let us know.

—-

Snapnames – the obvious questions are:

1. Who was the registrar?
2. What process have you and the registrar put in place to prevent this happening to other people?

Has this happened to you at Snapnames or anywhere else? Feel free to post and let me know.

This happened again to me last week. I won an auction for a .us domain name. Now, I wouldn’t normally buy a .us domain. This is in fact my first, however it was a single English word AND was also being used as the name of a product line. How could I not buy it? So what happened?

Date Won:      9/8/2008 12:28:00 PM
Yours On:      *9/16/2008 12:00:00 AM

The domain name I won was parked at Godaddy when I purchased it. I must admit, I was quite irritated by the fact that I have to wait 7 days while the parking revenue, from a domain that I purchased, went to Godaddy. As I type this; 6 days later its still parked at Godaddy.

The 7-day grace period has been discussed in many forums, but without an explanation from Godaddy. As such, I asked Godaddy for an official view on this particular issue. While I’m not going to name specific individuals, Godaddy was both highly professional and very responsive.

Here is their unedited view, in full:

“When a domain name expires, the original registrant has a 42 day grace period to renew or redeem the domain.

If the customer has not renewed the domain name 26 days after expiration, the domain is sent to auction through TDNAM.  The auction for the domain runs from the 26th day to the 36th day of the domain’s expiration.

As the original domain registrant has 42 days to renew or redeem the domain, there is a 7 day grace period from the end of the auction (day 36) to the day the domain is no longer available to the original registrant.  While there is a chance for the domain to be renewed by the original registrant, many auctioned domains bid upon are awarded through TDNAM.

When a TDNAM bidder enters an auction for an expired domain, TDNAM states on the bid page (as part of the terms and conditions) the original registrant still has the opportunity to redeem the domain name.”

There you go. It’s pretty self explanatory. If I was to summarize it, I’d say that buy the time a domain expires, Godaddy has a buyer and cash in the bank from a) parking revenue and b) the auction process.

While it might irritate people having to wait 7 days, when you take the time to understand it, it makes good business sense. That’s Bob Parsons for you – which is why I have his 16 Rules for Success poster on my wall.

Some of the domain names include: lasvegastowers.com, lasvegastower.com, share-holder.com, comision.com, vegasi.com, and reporttv.com.

Escovar explains “In the game Monopoly, the person with the most properties usually wins. In this virtual age, whoever owns a list of highly valued and trafficked domain names owns the internet”.

The auction will go live on eBay on June 3, 2008 with a portion of proceeds going to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Here is a selection that I particularly like:

pay.com, action.com, anger.com, athlete.com, gasprices.com, idol.com, jackpot.com, daycare.org, refinancing.net and ringtone.mobi

I’m dying to see how much pay.com will sell for. It’s going to have to be a record breaker.