Next Big Auction: The .ME First and Last Names Start Closing Monday, Will Buyers Show Up?

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The .ME personal domain auction, starts closing on NameJet.com, tomorrow April 12 and runs every day next week, ending on April 16th.

In all there are 313, popular first and last names in the auction.

As of time of publication some 24 hours before the first group of domain auctions end, there has been very little activity.

The most bidded upon domain is James.me that has 13 bidders.

Actually no other domain has more than 10 bidders.

Also the current high bid prices, well they just aren’t that high.

Adam.Me is currently the domains with the highest bid at just over $500.

So do you think buyers will show up for this auction?

When the auction was first announced back in March, I wrote an extensive post about it and thought the auction would do REALLY well.

However, I think there maybe 2 things that might negatively effect the final results of this auction.

First is timing.

The change of pricing by the .TV registry and the subsequent Sedo. TV auction last week, took millions of dollars out of the system.

The Sedo auction did $800k, and millions more were spent just a couple of weeks ago by investors to buy all those previously premium .TV domains.

That is a lot of cash leaving the pockets of domainers, for lets face it at the end of the day, for what is still a “speculative extension”.

I probably spend $50K on .TV domains myself.

Now I don’t want get into an argument about .TV or .Me.

I believe in both extensions and own some domains in both spaces.

But the economic realities are such as we all only have so much money at any given time to spend and I think the timing of the .TV price change and the Sedo Auction may hurt this one.

The second factor is that these domains by in large are only for resale.

Now don’t get me wrong.

If your name is Adam, I’m sure you would love to own the domain Adam.me

Its great for a blog, a site and e-mail.

But if your name is not Adam, then your going to most likely buy the domain simply as an investment with hopes to re-sell it to an Adam down the line.

Therefore NameJet really needs 313 multiple end users with the matching first or last name to get “fair value” in auction.

An auction is only an auction if you have 2 willing bidders, so you would need at least 626 people to participate in the auction with matching first or last names.

For the record, bids at NameJet start at $150.

About 200 of the 313 domains have an opening bid.

So this might be the perfect opportunity to pick up some good domains.

Filed Under: .ME

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  2. webworker says

    I have my eye on my last name. There is one bid and I’m trying to wait at the last possible moment to put mine in. Fingers crossed.

  3. tv says

    Never been into .me names and won’t be bidding here but this auction is an interesting concept, i wouldn’t mind my name in .tv, but some guy with the initials MHB has regged it ,Bloody domain squatters lol.

  5. Steve M says

    Shhh … don’t anyone tell the .me folks (especially if you’re trying to buy any of their .me slop), but direct mail and e-mail addresses to 1,000’s to 10’s of 1,000’s or more (depending of course on the specific name) such people’s names are readily and inexpensively available within the direct marketing industry.

    But then again; I’m sure they wouldn’t be interested in spending pennies-to-dimes to earn dollars by selling to actual high(er) paying end users anyway, right?

  6. Jim Holleran says

    Good luck to .me and my good friend Bruce Marler is developing a lot of great .me.
    I am not involved personally and won’t be but I am sure there are some winners in there.

    Thanks ,Jim

  7. Brandon says

    I totally agree about buying first and last name domains as an investment. I picked up my first name, brandon.me simply because like you mentioned, I will be putting a blog there. I was a little upset to learn that a couple of competing bidders were also bidding on almost every other “top” name in this round of auctions, but fortunately they gave up at a reasonable price for my domain. One of the bidders runs a domain site that had a category for first and last names, so obviously people feel there’s a market.

    Also, I did notice one name in particular: christian.me appeared to take the cake today for highest price which was $2300. But then again, christian could be used as a first name, last name or even the religion.

    Like yourself, I’m not too sure about this namspace just yet, but I think that once all the other premiums are released, we might start seeing some major growth and attention. Domains that all have tie-ins to the word ME such as network.me and love.me will no doubt have very high potential.

    My only hope is that we actually get some real content out of these domains rather than a bunch of “for sale” pages.

  9. James says

    I was also surprised at the lack of interest in the auction.
    Due to time zone differences, unfortunately I missed the end of each auction, so have no idea what the names ended up selling for. Are the results posted anywhere?
    I’ve owned leo (dot) me for a while now and although its not on the market, I do receive emails of interest for the domain from time to time, so am interested in finding out what other similar names went for, to get an idea of the ‘current’ market.

    Cheers
    James

  10. MHB says

    James

    I don’t think the results are posted anywhere.

    I did post the domains I was following