Record Breaking .AU Domain Sales

23/11/2008 // Australian Domains, Domain Sales // Netfleet

When it came to the two live auctions held at TRAFFIC Down Under on the Gold Coast, the .AU domains certainly stole the show.

By my reckoning (and based on estimated exchange rates at the time) a total of just over $126,000 AUD was spent on .AU domains. The com and net sales appeared to struggle somewhat with many passing in or selling for surprisingly low prices. In fact, they were moving so slowly in comparison to the red hot .AU domains that the organizers took the sensible step to halt the .COM lots and fast track the sought after .AU.

Multiple bidders from ASX listed companies and media giants competed with regular domainers to ensure that all but two of the listed domains sold at auction giving a record breaking clearance rate for this segment of the auction.

The courageous decision by some of the .AU sellers to list their virtual properties for no reserve appears to have paid off handsomely. Whilst I can’t be certain, I would wager that all of the sellers had hand registered the below names between three and 8 years ago. Very rough estimations could suggest that the total holding cost over this period for these names would be around $150 but taking into account the advertising revenue from natural type-in traffic, I expect that most of these would have repaid these registration fees many time over even before they were put up for sale.

To cut a long story short:

What does this mean for the market? I believe this auction will be a watershed for the .AU industry. The sudden and relatively substantial influx of sales data will give buyers and sellers some real benchmarks to base their decisions on and the strength of the results should give all investors confidence in the Australian domain name industry.

And here’s the complete list of .AU domain names sold at TRAFFIC: