Canadian Domain Auction Scene
May 27, 2008 · Print This Article
Pool is continuing with their one-at-a-time premium dot ca domain auction format. Their next auction is for Dates.ca, which is obviously a top of the line domain. According to Pool, the site receives 600 uniques per month and earns $300 (Canadian) per month – which shows just how profitable the dating niche is. Browsing through archive.org, it looks to me like it formerly was a “sex search – free adult personals and adult dating online” website, which is where the traffic must be coming from.
What’s most interesting about this auction is that there is no reserve. There has always been a debate in the domainer community as to whether it’s best to set a low reserve to attract attention and active bidding. The risk, of course, is that the domain goes for a much lower price than expected – which is why higher reserves are normally set. At the recent Traffic conference auction, the owner of PostalCodes.com had the balls to set a really low reserve, and as a result probably had the best result of all the auctioned domains. It will be interesting to see if the same thing happens with Dates.ca
The MyID auction is now in progress. With a bit more than two days left, there has already been some heavy bidding. CV.ca is at $20,100, which is obviously very high for a Canadian domain. ZZ.ca has met its reserve and is at $9,200 – anything under 5 figures for a two letter .ca domain is a steal. My domain, 0b.ca is at $652 (reserve is $999). There are still a lot of good bargains available. To get approved as a bidder takes some time, so if you are interested in bidding, make sure to sign up right away.
MyID has also announced their next premium dot ca auction – it will be held from June 5 to June 12. The deadline for submitting domains for consideration is May 28, 2008.