Domainer's Gazette-Home

For all of you out there bidding on domain auctions within Snapnames.com, whether you’re a domainer looking to add to your empire, or simply an original domain owner attempting to re-capture a domain you lost, here’s a quick note regarding some bidders you may face up against inside the Snapnames bidding war. These are the guys *I* regularly face up against - and regularly lose to - cause they have very deep pockets. When an auction begins, and I *don’t* see their name on the bidder board, I give a small sigh or relief, cause it means I may be able to acquire the domain at a semi-reasonable amount. Below are their bidding names, along with a short commentary and typical bid range each buyer usually stays within (in case you want to know if ‘X’ bidder might bid to as high as ‘Y’.

vaxis - this bidder does-not-mess-around. In other words, they’ll throw thousand dollar bids around like they’re throwing nickels in slot machines. From the past year, here are a few final purchase prices they’ve spent to acquire domains: $13,711; $7,326; $7,210; $6,868; $6,566

benfranklin - equally as competitive as vaxis, and typically goes after high value domains (dictionary terms, old caput businesses ie.pressplay.com). Vaxis and benfranklin regularly bid against each other, and the amounts zip into the thousand dollar range before you can hit the refresh button on your browser. Here are a few of their actual purchase prices over the past year: $5,088; $4,100; $2,395; $2,102. Note, in reference to all vaxis’ winning bids, typically, it’s benfranklin right behind them losing the auction, so in many cases, benfranklin has bid up to $12K or $13k.

caseytoni - I’m regularly competing with caseytoni on domains that vaxis or benfranklin ignore. They tend to be more of a bulk domain buyer, so you may come across their name more regularly. Their bid range is typically under the $2K mark, with a majority of wins being in the $1K range.

bonkers + bonkerstwo - these are two separate bidders, and I’m grouping them together since they seem to be partners of some sort. Aggressive bidders though. I regularly see auction wins in amounts of $3K to $7K. The highest win I’ve seen of theirs is $25K.

praynxs / appenio / openbid - these bidders represent the mid-tier bidders, typically throwing around bids in the $0 - $1K range. If you’re willing to spend up to $1K for a domain, and are up against one of these three, you should be able to capture it.

Now, even a more interesting question is, WHO are all these bidders? I read somewhere that vaxis was short for a company called ‘Vertical Axis’, and I found one small article regarding a domain they have to give up. The others, I have no idea. Probably are large domain companies like Marchex scooping them up.

The one thing I *can* answer regarding the domains they acquire, is that - I’d say - 98% become parked. They rarely ever get built out. Is parking domains smart - from a revenue generation standpoint? I’ll save that topic for another post.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 30th, 2007 at 11:39 am and is filed under Domaining. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.