FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.--()--More than 300 descriptive and high-quality generic domain names, including Fanclub.com, Saws.com and AmusementPark.com, will go to auction at the 2012 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Domain Conference, on Monday, October 8, 2012. T.R.A.F.F.I.C. will be held from October 7th through the 10th at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Fort Lauderdale's Beach.
“Over 60% of entries will be at 'No Reserve', like Tumors.com, GamingApps.com and LastLaughs.com. They join high profile domains like Fanclub.com, and AmusementPark.com.”
The list, hand-selected by the "Domain King®" himself, Rick Schwartz, runs a range of domain categories and verticals, and includes opportunities from single-word domains, like Tumors.com and Fibre.com, to domains like 3Dmovie.com and CheapLaptops.com. “With the way the 2012 auction is designed, more domains will be sold, percentage-wise, than any other live domain auction,” Schwartz said. “Over 60% of entries will be at 'No Reserve', like Tumors.com, GamingApps.com and LastLaughs.com. They join high profile domains like Fanclub.com, and AmusementPark.com.”
The T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Domain Conference started the domain auction forum at its first show, held in Delray Beach, Florida, in 2004. Since then, the domain investment conference has been the venue of many high-profile domain sales, including Cowboys.com, which was sold during a T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Live Auction in October 2007, in Hollywood, Florida. Noted economist and former presidential candidate, Steve Forbes, was the keynote speaker at the 2007 show.
Cowboys.com was sold for $370,000 after the Dallas Cowboys football franchise backed away from a deal to buy the name. The team owners put in a bid to purchase the domain, but they thought they were buying the domain for $275.00, not the $275,000 price tag in the auction contract. At the time, observers found the team's faux pas hard to believe!
Cowboys.com went live this week as a dating website geared to the gay community, in what is described among online media and blogs as a “missed opportunity” for the team. “I wonder what song is being sung these days at the heart of the Dallas Cowboys after learning that Cowboys.com, a site the team could once have owned, is now sporting men in very different uniform,” wrote Chris Matyszczyk, of Cnet.com.
The cowboys.com sale is hardly the first to make headlines, and it is not the largest domain sale, by far. “The TRAFFIC domain name auctions have held the record since 2007, when $12.5 Million in domains were auctioned off in just 3 hours,” Schwartz said. That domain auction, held in June 2007, in New York City, was aimed directly at Wall Street investors, whom Schwartz has described as failing to understand the long-term opportunity of domain names.
The domain auction has also been the source of some extraordinary singe-domain sales, including Ad.com for $1.2-million, (which was contested in court by AOL.COM), Cameras.com for $1.5-million and computer.com for $2-million.
Bidding for the 2012 Domain Auction is reserved for those attending the show or qualified telephone bidders. To request telephone bidding, qualified bidders must complete a request form at http://targetedtraffic.com/auction/phone-bids.php. The current auction list may be viewed at http://targetedtraffic.com/program/2012/domain-auction.php. The 2012 Domain Auction list will be finalized as the show opens.
ABOUT T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is the Targeted Redirects and Financial Fulfillment Internet Conference. T.R.A.F.F.I.C.'s mission is to provide a quality networking venue for investors and end-users to conduct business online, using potent, easy-to-remember domain names as a primary sales channel via the type-in traffic they produce.
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. started in 2004, in Delray Beach, Florida, and has become known as “The Gold Standard” domain investment show, hosting both investors and domain developers seeking to expand online business opportunities, via the domain channel. There have been 22 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. shows around the world, including events in New York, Milan, Amsterdam, Dublin, Brisbane, Las Vegas, Vancouver, Orlando, Santa Clara, Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
The conference has included a wide range of keynote speakers, all of whom are well-established business leaders in a variety of business fields and economic disciplines. Some keynote speakers to address the show include Jim McCann, of 1800Flowers.com; Barbara Corcoran, of MSNBC.com and The Corcoran Group; Steve Forbes, of Forbes.com; Tom Gardner, of The Motley Fool and Fool.com; economist and actor Ben Stein; Terry Jones, of Travelocity.com and Kayak.com; and Don King, of Don King Productions.
The show is the brain child of co-founders Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu, who started the show after hosting an informal investors' gathering in Beverly Hills in 2002. The meeting featured 40 of the largest domain portfolio owners in the world, who control about 15% of all traffic on the internet.
ABOUT RICK SCHWARTZ
Rick Schwartz, AKA Domain King®, is the co-founder of the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Conference, and among the first high-powered domain investors on the web. He bought his first names in 1995, calling the acquisition of domains, “A unique opportunity in time.”
Mr. Schwartz quickly accumulated a portfolio of descriptive domains. He made his first million-dollar sale, of men.com, by the end of the 1990's. He has sold names like iReport.com, which he purveyed directly to CNN, as well as Candy.com and Property.com. He maintains an interest in the latter two domains.
Most recently, Mr. Schwartz successfully defended the domain, saveme.com, from a reverse domain hijacking attempt, by an attorney in South America. Márcio Mello Chaves, of São Paulo, Brazil, filed a Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy action, (UDRP), in early 2012, claiming saveme.com had been registered in bad faith. Mr. Chaves also claimed saveme.com violated a pair of trademarks in Brazil.
The World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, ruled Mr. Chaves brought the UDRP in bad faith. WIPO noted that Mr. Schwartz has owned saveme.com since 1997, 13 years before Mr. Chaves filed for any trademark protections in Brazil, and 15 years before the UDRP claim was filed. WIPO panelists further wrote, in their decision, that Mr. Chaves has not been granted any actual trademarks, and that the UDRP was filed only after Mr. Chaves made an unsuccessful bid to buy saveme.com from Mr. Schwartz. WIPO has permanently branded Mr. Chaves as a reverse domain hijacker.
ABOUT HOWARD NEU
Howard Neu is best known as co-founder of T.R.A.F.F.I.C. and as “The Internet Lawyer,” being one of the first attorneys to specialize in the protection domain owners' online property rights. He and Rick Schwartz have been partners in T.R.A.F.F.I.C. since its inception. Their relationship, regarding domain names, dates to 1999.
Neu has been the moderator of T.R.A.F.F.I.C., using his stage-presence and a persuasive oratory to get myriad panelists and guests to share openly about their business experience. Neu's deft skill as an attorney recently came to bear in the saveme.com UDRP case, in which he successfully defended Schwartz against a reverse domain hijacking attempt.
Mr. Neu's varied career includes three terms as mayor of the City of North Miami, Florida, as well as Hollywood acting credits that include playing a professor in Porky's II.
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