On the 11th of July, 1985 the domain mcc.com was registered. It was only the 4th .com domain ever registered.

Today that name generates around 100 dollars a day in revenue and it will be auctioned off in New York with a reserve of only 5x earnings.The name will fly off the shelf, but for how much? I can’t wait to find out.

Here are a few more names that have been added to the inventory that is hitting the block.

CountryClubs.com
DayTraders.com - Another really old site. It’s number 1 or number 2 on Google for almost anything related.
Audit.com and Audits.com - The singular sold last year in New York. Now someone can buy the pair.

Our list is still coming together but I’m pretty excited about it looks so far.

It seems to me that if you are going to have a site in German, .de domains make sense. If you are going to market to the Japanese, .jp names make sense. However, in the Spanish market, there are so many countries with their own ccTLDs that the decision is a little harder to make.

Clearly you wouldn’t want to go with .com.mx if you are building a global brand but it’s not so clear if .com or .es are better.
I for one, don’t actually own any .es names. That’s not by choice, I just haven’t had a chance to pick them up as of yet. I do, however, own thousands of Spanish language .com names.
Domainers know that .es is Spain’s extension. Do consumers know that? Would someone in Mexico enter carros.com or carros.es? Hell if I know. Please discuss because I think it’s an issue of importance for those that focus on this market.

Recently, I’ve added a global domains section to my newsletter and I am starting to get some sales in this market. Granted, I’m selling single dictionary word .com names in Spanish for only around 400-2000 dollars a pop so it is no surprise that I’m getting the sales but still, it is a sign that the market may finally be ready for more. My best Spanish names have yet to be listed.

Rick Latona Auctions, LLC is now accepting domain name submissions for the upcoming T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Domain Conference and Expo to be held in Brooklyn, New York. 

First off, let me explain.  We have limited space and we won’t be running a silent auction like our competitors do. We only have 75 slots! Please only submit premium names at reasonable reserves.  Currently, our site [www.RickLatona.com] is being redesigned, so until the form is complete, email David Clements at david@davidclements.com with your submissions.

I guarantee you our auction will be loud, energetic, fun, but above all, the place to be to buy domain names for good prices.  Bid first and keep bidding, you are going to be surprised at how low the reserves are going to be.

There are several other things that we are doing, but I am not going to discuss them here, not yet.  I will say this though.  Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu made a controversial decision for this upcoming auction.  They invited more companies to the table.  They knew that it would be good for competition, good for individual domainers like you and me, and good business for our industry. 

In that role, I am happy to play my part.  Rick and Howard invited me to New York and I plan on showing up ready for the action.  It is going to be the event to watch.  Not just our auction, but the entire convention.  By the way, if you have been on the fence about going and you haven’t booked it yet, do it right now.  Go to http://targetedtraffic.com/ny_show.html and set it up.  If you just attend one convention for the rest of the year, come to New York.  I look forward to seeing many old friends once again, and I look forward to making new ones, too.

See you in September!

Like most large domainers I have accounts at all of the major registrars. Fabulous.com is without a doubt my favorite. There are a number of reasons for this.

My favorite thing about them is their permission based login system. I love the fact that I can have employees login to my account and register names but not transfer them out, alter the DNS or see the financial information.

There tools are by far the easiest to use.

Their site is fast.

We never have to contact their support twice. Issues get handled on the first attempt.

They are not in the United States which helps from a liability standpoint of owning so many names.

They have an excellent security. You can choose to executive lock a name which means it can’t be transferred out unless you contact Fabulous and personally ask them to.

And then there is my favorite part. They are all-around good people. Dan and Richard are both class acts.

Kudos to Fabulous.com. You deserve a shout out.

Sometimes it pays to go with the best. I’ve made a commitment to spare no expense on my new auction company. You guys already know about our world champion auctioneer. We have now contracted with the biggest and best online auction company in the business. A copy of our press release is below.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Rick Latona Auctions Chooses Live Online Bidding Company
Atlanta, Georgia USA – August 27, 2008 – Earlier this month, Rick Latona Auctions selected Proxibid as their live internet auction broadcasting company. Proxibid is the world’s largest provider of live auction webcasting services and will provide live online bidding for our much anticipated auction debut at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Domain Conference & Expo. The auction will take place in Brooklyn, New York on Wednesday, September 24 from 1:30 p.m. EDT to 3:00 p.m. EDT at the Marriott Hotel at the Brooklyn Bridge. Live online bidding will be available during that time via www.proxibid.com/ricklatona.

Crossing the auction block will be over 60 domain names, many with developed sites which are earning daily revenue. Earlier today, a few of the domain names that are going to be sold during this upcoming sale were released. Those names are: Sugarless.com, SecurityAlarms.com, Microbrewers.com, Monopolies.com, LotteryNumbers.com, PreOwnedJets.com, HighFidelity.com, GolfClubRepair.com, GayLawyers.com, FrenchPerfumes.com, CustomBoots.com, ComputerBatteries.com, BlackEntrepreneur.com, BlackEntrepreneurs.com, BreastExamination.com, Cyberspace.com, ModelSchools.com, PrinceEdward.com, BabyAnnouncements.com, TruckRims.com, LongStemRoses.com, and Wines.net.

“This is a great opportunity for us to sell domains at the largest domain convention of the year,” said Rick Latona of Rick Latona Auctions. “With live online bidding, savvy executives from Fortune 500 companies and investors from around the world can bid on our domains. It doesn’t matter if you are new to the industry, or have been around it as long as I have; this is going to be fun to watch.”

For more information about our auction, visit www.RickLatona.com

About Rick Latona:
Mr. Latona has been in the internet and domain industry since the mid-90s and Rick Latona Auctions is just one of several companies that Mr. Latona has founded during that time. Other ventures include:

www.RickLatona.com – RickLatona.com stays busy Buying, Hosting, Transferring, and Selling more than 1,000,000 USD worth of domain names per month.

www.DigiPawn.com – DigiPawn is the first company to recognize domain names as assets and loan money on them. Today, it remains one of the largest companies of its kind in the world.

www.aeiou.com – Aeiou.com offers an affordable development solution for domain owners ready to move forward with their internet properties.

About Proxibid:
Since 2002, Proxibid has webcast more than 11,000 auctions – more than any other company in the industry. Proxibid’s proprietary live Internet bidding service and Web site were developed by auctioneers and industry-leading professionals to provide our bidders with the most user-friendly and comprehensive live online auction experience possible.
Proxibid’s customer service and support is unmatched in the industry. The company’s toll-free support center is open before, during and after every live auction, and is staffed with bi-lingual auction specialists who assist both bidders and auctioneers. For more information about Proxibid, please visit them online at www.proxibid.com.

Contact:
David Clements
david@davidclements.com
Rick Latona Auctions, LLC
405 Brentwood Dr. NE
Atlanta, GA 30305
Ph: +1.678.468.9228

Many of you have been asking me what names are so far approved to go into my live auction at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show. Here’s the first 1/3rd of the names that I will be running.

Sugarless.com
SecurityAlarms.com
Microbrewers.com
Monopolies.com
LotteryNumbers.com
PreOwnedJets.com (the singular is in my newsletter)
HighFidelity.com
GolfClubRepair.com
GayLawyers.com
FrenchPerfumes.com
CustomBoots.com
ComputerBatteries.com
BlackEntrepreneur.com
BlackEntrepreneurs.com
BreastExamination.com
Cyberspace.com
ModelSchools.com
PrinceEdward.com
BabyAnnouncements.com
TruckRims.com
LongStemRoses.com
Wines.net

I have many more exciting announcements that will be made between today and D day. That’s what we call September 24th around these parts.

Many of you know I have a two-page spread in Website Magazine. I also just contracted for a two-page spread in Modern Domainer. Today, I took it one leap further. I’ve agreed to a very expensive, 6-digit contract for a two-page centerfold spread in the monthly Internet Retailer magazine.

This magazine is read by the major players in eCommerce. I’m sure Jeff Bezos himself checks it out from time to time. Well, his assistant probably does.

According to their audited demographics 13.4% of their readers are at companies that do greater than 1 billion dollars per year in sales. 17% of them do between 100 million and 1 billion. 31.3% do 10-100 million. The rest, naturally, do less.

Many of us have talked about proactively putting something in place to go after end-users. Is this the golden ticket? Probably not. However, I do think that with this ad, and more to come in the future, I’ll have an even greater chance of reaching them.

I was the one that had sold fixedloans.com at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. in 2006. I remember that date well. Moniker had just started doing auctions and nobody really knew how well it would go over. I had a strategy of putting 10 decent names in all at no reserve that I had nothing into. I figured that there would be more people in the room that could afoard 5-20,000 dollars than there would be bidding on the really big names. I didn’t want them to be left out. I did about 180k in total sales at that show and I thought I had really done great! When I finish an auction at that number now it is a disaster.

Over the last two days I’ve counted more than 20 blog posts out there about this particular name being auctioned at Bido. They are talking about it being an auction that determines how much domains have appreciated in the last few years. After all, I sold it for $10,000 so if it sells for $20,000 than the market doubled, right? Right?

Let’s look at something that hasn’t been pointed out because only two people know it. I bought that name along with 24 other finance related names in 2004 for $25,000. In otherwords, I paid $1000 per name. Does that mean that for the domain business to maintain it’s growth rate it should sell for $100,000?

Who the hell really knows? Personally, I hope it proves that Bob’s Rug Syndrome is a horrible disease and that you should sell your names from time to time. After all, I couldn’t have purchased those 25 names had I not sold names before them and you can bet your bottom dollar that I have made more off that $8500 (after Moniker’s fees) than I ever could have made keeping that name and never having time to do anything with it.

It’s a good name. Personally, I think now it is worth more than $20,000 and I hope for Sahar and others that it does that or much more.

True global brands need a .com extension. Clearly there are obvious exceptions but for the most part, if you want to market to the world, you need a good .com. However, with all the patting on the back old-school domainers like to give themselves, you have to admit, we should have registered more country-code top-level domains and internationalized domain names.

I think this is especially true for those of us that resell our names. While I was in Spain this summer, I couldn’t help but notice that most of the small and medium businesses I saw had .es ccTLDs. Many large companies marketed ccTLDs locally as well. If only I had registered 100,000 of them to sell at 1000-10,000 Euros a piece!

The Domain In Spain Falls Mainly On The .es Extension

Instead I sat there comfortably fooling myself that .com was all that would ever matter.

This does not mean that I’m going to start buying $50,000 ccTLDs and IDNs so please don’t try and sell them to me. I just wish I had had the foresight to have gotten them early.

Time and again I am hearing stories about IDNs’ revenue growing year in and year out while revenue in most other extensions are falling. This of course, is especially true in Asian countries where businesses must adopt and promote an IDN because otherwise the masses wouldn’t understand the meaning of the name.

This almost makes me think .mobi names have a chance. Almost.

Let me repeat that I’m not a buyer on these names at big dollars. I just think hand-registering them makes a lot of sense. As does hand registering other extensions like .mobi, .name, .asia, .info, .me, etc. Hand register the hell out of them and sell them to end-users down the line.

More than anything I like the ccTLD names and I’m kicking myself in the ass for not having more of them.

Fortunately, there are still many opportunities left for everyone.

**Added after post went live** One thing I forgot to mention is that we are noticing it is easier to get a website ranked in Google.ccTLD if you have domain.ccTLD. In other words, Our aeiou.com customers are reporting higher traffic on their ccTLD names from the respective countries.

Can someone tell me if I’m crazy? I’m about to take a very expensive domainer’s approach to the battered housing market.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on Foreclosure.com since reading about that company’s acquistion of Rick Shwartz’s property.com.

I’m fascinated with the Real Estate industry. There is more value in my neighborhood than the total value of all domains ever auctioned off. There is SO very much money out there in land and buildings.

So after looking at the daily email alerts I setup for myself at Foreclosure.com I’m starting to develop a strategy.

The image here in this post is a map of downtown Atlanta.  For those that know the area, they’ll notice the red marker’s proximity to Georgia Tech, Morehouse College, Phillips Arena, The Georgia Dome, downtown and midtown. How much is the asking price for the 3 bedroom 2 bath single family home? $17,900.

Granted, the neighborhood is bad, bad, bad. I have no desire to be a slum lord or to take a machine gun with me to collect rents so I’ll sum up my strategy like this: Basically, it’s to buy one crappy house in each major city in the country, maybe the world. I’ll only buy houses that are very close to downtown areas. Each house I buy I’ll pay cash for them and have them knocked down and fenced off. Then I’ll wait ten years.

Some of those neighborhoods are going to be completely revitalized over the years, don’t you assume?

I’ve always likened the domain business to a mine-field. The more names you own, the more likely some end user is going to step on one. The larger my portfolio gets, the more offers I get on names. Would it be any different with these houses?

Perhaps the cities will have to buy them for improvement projects, new runways, stadiums, and what-nots.
Am I crazy? My goal is 100 of these houses in 100 cities in 12 months.