The Future Trend Domain Auction™ is officially underway, and although we’ve struggled through putting certain new aspects for promoting the domains in an auction by getting the marketing material ready, it’s looking good for the first event.
NOTE FOR FIRST TIME AUCTION SUBMITTERS: A lot of first time domain investors in a custom Live auctions like this one sometimes get worried if there are no bids on their domains out of the gate. There are strategies most “domainers” use to pick up a domain for a cheap price, and that strategy is: “Don’t bid on the domain right away, if at all. Wait until the auction is over and then bid on it during auction cleanup. The person will be desperate or dismayed that his/her domain didn’t sell, and they’ll take anything for it.”
Obviously that doesn’t work if someone else places a bid that matches the reserve. Then that “hurry up and wait” strategy fails, and they stand a chance to lose a great domain name to someone else. The problem is MOST domainers play the “wait game”, and at the last 30 minutes, start bidding up the domain. Even if someone bids on the domain outside domain investors (an end user), the smart domain auction bidders will wait until the last few minutes of the auction. That’s called “sniping” and people who want a domain name need to be very aware of that tactic. It could be the last five minutes and you have a bid on a domain name, nobody else seemingly bidding, so you fall into a comfort zone thinking the domain is yours. Then five minutes to the end, somebody bids the domain up $100. If you’re not watching, you could lose the domain by not counter-bidding.
Most auction sites, including Snapnames/Moniker will push 5 minutes extra on the domain if a bid comes in within a certain time period close to the end of the auction. That gives the other bidders a chance to splash water in their face and go “yipes! gotta get my bid in there!” Then another five minutes are added, or less minutes, depending on the auction site, and it goes that way until someone gives up.
For those who think this first Future Trend Domain Auction™ is going to be wowing the world, don’t get your hopes up. We’re nowhere near the amount of marketing we want to do, or have done to this point. This is a slow process, but we have time because we’re “future domainers” anyways… and our domains just grow more valuable as each month passes.
Imagine feeling disappointed not selling your domain in this auction, and then four months later, you enter your domain back in the next Future Trend Domain Auction™ with double the price, and someone buys it? It’s a great feeling, and it’s happened to me several times.
We worked very hard in finishing the Directory. However, we didn’t want to put it up until Moniker had reviewed it and synched the domains in the Directory with their catalog. Same thing goes with sending out the Directory to our marketing contacts. We didn’t do “pre-promotion” of this event, because we want everything to be perfect before we approach the serious buyers. I don’t think we reached “perfection” in our first auction preparation, but we learned a lot. That knowledge will help all of us for the next auction
Everyone who has submitted their domains to this auction, and had those domains accepted, have been included in our Future Trend Domain Auction™ DIRECTORY. This is a Powerpoint-style PDF that we are using to send to marketing websites and other New Media contacts. We aren’t bombarding our complete list yet, because we didn’t get the DIRECTORY completely filled out since at least 25% of the domain submitters didn’t provide us with 15o word descriptions and at least two links to news articles backing up their domain name’s value.
Most people who look at these domains will scratch their heads or at least have to go do that research themselves, which slows down the interest in someone buying the domain. Who’s going to buy a domain, or even spend time researching the domain, when that was the job of the seller to provide that information so the potential buyer could see the potential benefits of the domain. Not ever hearing of it before is a slight hindrance to buying the domain!
As each serious FT Domainer continues to learn and filter their FT domains in the coming months, a core group of knowledgeable players in this group will appear. They’re appearing already, and their comments and domain purchases are clearly showing their value.
If you strongly see the logic in buying Future Trend domains, then keep up your research and analysis, and we hope you join our group by signing up for our Successclick.com email newsletter. We’ll be running the newsletter more often to keep everyone updated on the Future Trend Domain Auction™.
This auction could have been a little more advanced, and I blame myself in certain areas of this. I injured my arm badly right in the middle of forming the auction details, which took about 2 months out of my preparation. I’m healthy again, and ready to see this auction through, keep talking with the FT Domainers Group, and I thank everyone who has become a part of this movement that isn’t going away. If it does, I might be able to finally buy at least one more domain name with the word “solar” in it that makes sense!
Good luck everyone! Please do me a favor, and start your thread here for all comments moving forward on the current and next Future Trend Domain Auction™. I can’t keep checking emails for comments on Embee’s blogs. It makes it very hard for me to answer and stay synched with what’s going on here, without having to jump over to “TheDomains” in order to answer people’s questions or complaints.
In Summary: The Future Trend Domain Auction™ DIRECTORY should be available by Friday for download. If not, it will be up on a few sites this weekend.
Thanks again.