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The
first full day of the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New
York conference Wednesday featured two highly
anticipated live domain auction debuts staged by RickLatona.com
and Aftermaket.com. Latona went first at 1:30pm and
his auction crew, led by 2008 world champion livestock
auctioneer Matt Lowery, helped book close to $700,000
in sales.
Spotter
Preston Smith (left) coaxes a bid from an audience
member while
auctioneer Matt Lowery (at the podium) directs the RickLatona.com
live auction.
Latona is sitting to the right of Lowery. |
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Latona's top sales were MCC.com
at $195,000, CountryClubs.com at $85,000
and DayTraders.com at $80,000. Though
concern about the general economy kept prices for many
domains from reaching levels they would have at last
year's New York conference, this was an impressive coming
out party for Latona, who may well have the best marketing
and promotion mind in the business.
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Aftermarket.com
auctioneer Jill Doherty
helps
drum up $150,000 in sales. |
At 5pm Aftermarket.com
(a new domain sales platform from Thought
Convergence (the parent company of
T.R.A.F.F.I.C.'s lead sponsior TrafficZ)
staged their first live domain auction. They took a
different approach, focusing on a short list of 50
domains with lower reserve prices than you usually
see in live auctions. They also brought in Jill
Doherty,
a talented female auctioneer who provided a nice
counterpoint to Latona's entertaining crew of real
life cowboys.
The end result was approximately
$150,000 in sales led by Illinois.org
($31,000), MadisonAve.com ($17,000) and StayAtHome.com
($15,000). I spoke with Thought Convergence exec
Jay Westerdal after the sale and he was
pleased with how smoothly the combined
online/in-house bidding process worked. |
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Soon after the auction
ended it was time for a lavish dinner sponsored by
TrafficZ.com that featured a keynote address from
legendary New York City real estate broker
Barbara Corcoran |
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Barbara
Corcoran delivering her
keynote address at T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
New York Wednesday night. |
that thoroughly
delighted the crowd. Corcoran, who made millions in
NYC real estate, is a frequent contributor to NBC's
Today Show. She is just a delightful
woman; bright, forthright and full of pleasant
surprises. She didn't mind dropping a little salty
language into her talk when she wanted to make a
point. T.R.A.F.F.I.C. co-founder Rick Schwartz
is one of her biggest fans and I can see why - they
have a lot in common when it comes to saying what is
on their mind and pulling no punches when they do
it.
Corcoran, who is very
much a self-made millionaire, expressed a lot of
admiration for domainers whom she viewed as kindred
spirits. They returned the love by crowding around
her for a chance to shake hands long after her talk
ended. I'll have some of the details from Corcoran's
speech in our comprehensive show article that will
pubished around the end of next week. |
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The evening closed with
TrafficZ's official T.R.A.F.F.I.C. party at the Water
Street Lounge on the Brooklyn side of the
East River. The comfortable brick-walled old
pub on a cobblestone street was a popular choice
with attendees and the wall to wall crowd kept the
party going into the wee hours of the morning.
Scene
from TrafficZ's official T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
party last night at the Water Street Lounge. |
The final full
day of T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New York is underway as we write
this. Moniker's main event live domain auction highlights
the daytime schedule with the annual T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Awards dinner and a party hosted by Parked.com
headlining the evening line-up. We'll have some photos and
highlights from the Thursday activities in this column
tomorrow.
One other note
today. Yesterday we noted we had heard reports that GoDaddy
was one of two registrars (Enom being the other)
that caved in to Kentucky's demand that several
registrars turn over a total of 141 gambling related
domains without due process for their clients who owned
the domains - this even though Kentucky has no apparent
legal right to make such a demand. Today GoDaddy
reportedly said those rumors were not true and they did not
turn over any domains. If that is the case they are to be
applauded. Enom on the other hand is going to have some
explaining to do. There were calls from the podium at
several sessions today recommending that domain owners
move their domains elsewhere (with Moniker, who
refused to turn over domains, often cited as a good
choice).
(Posted
Sept.
25,
2008) To
refer others to the post above only you can use
this URL:
http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2008/dailyposts/09-25-08.htm |
