Latona’s 1000 Name $1 Auction-April 26 to May 3rd
Latona’s auctions have gotten off to a terrific start and been able to sell a few hundred names in only the first week of their new Domain Auction format. Although we have been an active in quite a few of the auctions, making a 20+ bids on over a dozen different names, we were only able to win in one—CrystalChokers.com…for $1 . Granted we have been on the low end of bidding, only venturing above $250 2-3 times, but this demonstrates the amount of activity Latona’s has been able to generate in such a short time.

Changing Horses Mid Stream
Earlier we wrote about how Rick (Latona) originally intended to use the $1 reserve auctions as a promotional tactic to attract initial attention. They would then revert to their standard $200 minimum fee, guaranteeing that the minimum reserve would go up by a few hundred per name. Rick confirmed this when a few asked about the fate of $1 auction in the future. Well things have changed. The success of the first few $1 auction led to a slew of domainers approaching Latona’s with portfolio of names all at the $1 reserve price. Mr. Latona has confirmed that, in the case of a portfolio sale, they would charge their 15% ($200 min) commission on the revenue generated by entire auction rather than by individual name. As he stated in an email to his base of nearly 15,000 newsletter subscribers, “It’s seems we have discovered an untapped niche with this portfolio format, and we are going to run with it”(sic) This change will be to the benefit of all domainers, and allow for the continued low-reserve auctions. Nice! One thing we have noticed is that these auctions are not confined to 24 hours.

1000 Domains Offered at $1 reserve from a Mystery Domainer
It seems as if Laton’s has gone to a little bit of trouble to keep the identity of the portfolio private for some reason (prob at the owner’s request). One the problems is that it seems as if not all the registrations are behind a shell account or privacy. A quick whois info search of a corrected name, SkirtSuits.info, shows Jody Mishner to be the owner. We cannot confirm that either the name of the portfolio owner is being withheld or if he happens to be the owner. Frankly, it doesn’t even matter other than, if true, to demonstrate the quality of domainer that has Latona’s has been able to attract. The important part is the inventory itself.

The Inventory
This is a huge list of names and very hard to put into any specific category. It includes .com, .net, .info, .org and even a .us. Lots of keyword and geo long tail domains, and less obvious single word .coms. All in all there is plenty in here for anyone interested in keyword and revenue opportunities.

Where’s the Beef?
High Search Volume. Quite a few domains register over 40K exact searches out of this list. As you might expect, most are not .com domains but there are a few. Compare the General List with the Com only.
High Search Volume-All

High Search Volume-COM Only

High Ad Competiton
50 of the names in this auction come in at a full 100% according to Google for Keyword demand. Impressive.

Big Paydays for Clicks
Nearly as impressive as teh high ad demand is the number of domains with $10+ PPC averages. Not bad for affiliate or parking opportunities.

The Rest of the Story!

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to see the entire list with all the stats.