Well, we are certainly excited and pleased by today's results. It was an exciting finish and most of us at DROP were on our feet watching the auction close. I can only imagine how more exciting it must have been for those that were actually bidding! All but two domains went into Extended Auction period.

Congratulations to the Seller, DEVELOP, and thank you for trusting and supporting our Drop auction platform.

And Congratulations to the buyers too! Thank you for participating and we trust you all derive great value from your domain acquisitions.

Here is a summary of our results.
All prices AUD$, exclude 10% GST, and the Change Of Registrant fee.

Domain - Sale Price
Heaters.com.au - $4,319.00
Nutritionist.com.au - $3,451.00
Economist.com.au - $2,888.00
WhiteWine.com.au - $2,501.00
Bouquets.com.au - $1,739.00
Eyewear.com.au - $1,699.00
Sleepwear.com.au - $1,308.00
ZodiacSigns.com.au - $1,201.00
CameraLenses.com.au - $1,157.00
HomeEquityLoans.com.au - $1,123.00
OnlineInsuranceQuotes.com.au - $1,001.00
Interpreter.com.au - $1,000.00
Gardener.com.au - $600.00
Purses.com.au - $556.00
DomainForum.com.au - $501.00
North.com.au - $466.00
Briefcases.com.au - $409.00
Guarantee.com.au - $356.00
Concreting.com.au - $350.00

Total Sales: $26,625

With the Mothers Day auction earlier this month closing at: $14,780

This takes our combined Secondary Market Auction total for May to: $41,405

PS: Too bad TM.com.au did not sell for a clean sweep of the board. Perhaps if there was no reserve it would have got close to $5000? The psychology of auctions is interesting and fascinating to say the least.

Best Regards,
George & all the Drop Team.

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It was fascinating to watch it when I could. Couldn't participate though.

Re; No reserve. From a sellers POV it's might not be the best option, particularly if they paid an aftermarket price for a domain. A better setup would be No Minimum Bid with a (Hidden?) Reserve. Just my 2c.

Hat has to be taken off to the seller for putting the trust in Drop to achieve such awesome results.

Well done to both.

Congrats to buyers as well!

Actually, this functionality has already been built into the Drop Auction platform. We haven't used it yet because we were under the impression it may frustrate buyers.

I suppose this is a great forum to field this very question.

How do Drop members feel about hidden reserves?

Your feed back as always will be highly valued and appreciated.

Best regards,
George

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From someone who has purchased in each aftermarket auction (so far), I have to say this latest auction was for sure the smoothest, from auction, to payment/COR. Well done to Drop for their continued improvements. And of course well done on the great results Steve!

Fair enough. In which case..I'll take a refund on my 2c.

Also, My 'No minimum bid' comment was not so well thought out for .com.au. What was I thinking? Naturally someone who may have hand-registered their domain would want to at least have the chance to recoup the regfee which could be anywhere from $25 - $140 (Melb IT).

My highly valued and appreciated feedback is that hidden reserves give me the tom tits
Waste of your space and my time
I might stop bidding just below the hidden reserve and not revisit the auction
Emailing me the current bids I am interested in, would be nice

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Joes.com.au

good one george

no hidden reserves , wastes time bidding for something not in the desired price range

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Payday Loan
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I take it that relates to the Tigers notching up our first victory! Thanks, very nice coming from a Collingwood supporter.

Well here is the rub.

If there was a $2,000 starting bid openly displayed on a domain. The outcome maybe that there are no bids placed at all, and therefore we also have no expressions of interest. If the Seller decides after the auction that they had miscalculated the value and want to follow up parties that expressed an interest, we cannot help them.

Now from the Buyers perspective, if they place a bid on a domain for $1500 is it fair to assume that they will be happy to pay $1500? Clearly it is worth more than $1500 to them, because we all want to pay less for something we want.

If you placed a bid and missed a domain, only later to be contacted by Drop to enter a direct negotiation, and perhaps through shrewd negotiating even pick the domain up for less than your original $1500 bid, then you would have to agree that Drop provided all parties with a valuable service. Yes? No? Perhaps?

As the auction house, we want to facilitate both buyers and sellers.

So my question: Is it acceptable that we allow hidden reserves, but with a displayed range?

For example Buyer wants $1150 and we display on the site:

DomainXYZ.com.au: Hidden Reserve (Range $1,000 - $1,500)

I am putting it our there for all to comment again. In the interests of openness, at the moment a hidden reserve with a displayed range is what we plan to offer sellers at our next auction.

PS: Our preference is No Reserves and No Starting prices - makes it fun

Best Reagrds,
George

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Well we have a few hidden reserves on our current auction which certainly don't seem to have hurt (most have been passed now)

George makes a good point re the post auction negotiation. Also the $2,000 published reserve feels like a big jump for buyers. To go from $0 to $2,000 is quite a leap of faith, I guess, even if you value the domain at $3K

However if there's been a bit of competition between bidders up until the $2,000, it is perhaps easier for the buyers to make that bid. After all, the theory of an auction is you don't pay more than market value as you're only paying $1 more than someone else so buyers can perhaps have more confidence in their bid.

I think the range idea is good. That's exactly what Rick Latona does (he did this in our sale of wd.de) and it seems to work well.

Balancing buyers and sellers preferences is never easy. Generally they want the opposite!

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