Great Canadian Domains Auction - Wednesday May 26, 2010

**msn** · 02-18-2010, 03:05 PM

The first Great Canadian Domain Auction will be Tuesday, May 25th and Wednesday May 26th. We may shift all of the best ones to Wednesday and then have a week-long run-off auction for less popular domain names rather than running it on Tuesday.

There is no fee to submit, but there will be a fee for reserves, in the form of a higher commission. All domains will have a flat 10% commission, regardless of volume, with no minimum. This is a big advantage over sedo for instance.

We will list ALL domains submitted, with the best domains going on auction, on Wednesday, May 26th, and other domains sold separately.

Let us know what you have to list, as we will close the submissions about a month beforehand. This way we will then have sufficient time to promote the event and build awareness - and interest - in the auctions.

We will promote this event with our mailing list of agencies and investor buyers, so feel free to also have Buy it Now pricing in mind for pre-sales, because we will run these lists for several weeks prior to the sale, on a global basis.

Please PM or e-mail me for any questions or to submit lists, get your copy of the contract and so on.

I will post the submission details in the buy/sell forum for everyone today.

Thanks!

**TheLegendaryJP** · 02-18-2010, 03:16 PM

Can you post the sight they will be auctioned on?

**msn** · 02-18-2010, 03:20 PM

Yes. The site information will be publicized along with the list about three or four weeks before the auction.

**Namefox** · 02-18-2010, 03:23 PM

Good luck MSN. Wish you the best with the auction.

**msn** · 02-18-2010, 03:29 PM

Thank you - we have just over 100 really great domains lined up so far. What will you be offering?

**Namefox** · 02-18-2010, 03:34 PM

Not sure yet. Never really tried the auction format to be honest. Working more on development lately...

**hugegrowth** · 02-18-2010, 04:18 PM

Good luck, it sounds like a good idea. I'm sure I will submit a few domains. If you PM me some info when you have the details, I'll post it on my .ca blog.

**jaydub** · 02-19-2010, 10:22 PM

How will the funds/transactions/transfers be handled?
Who will we pay or be paid by?
How will that process work?

Thanks
j

Originally Posted by msn

The first Great Canadian Domain Auction will be Tuesday, May 25th and Wednesday May 26th. We may shift all of the best ones to Wednesday and then have a week-long run-off auction for less popular domain names rather than running it on Tuesday.

There is no fee to submit, but there will be a fee for reserves, in the form of a higher commission. All domains will have a flat 10% commission, regardless of volume, with no minimum. This is a big advantage over sedo for instance.

We will list ALL domains submitted, with the best domains going on auction, on Wednesday, May 26th, and other domains sold separately.

Let us know what you have to list, as we will close the submissions about a month beforehand. This way we will then have sufficient time to promote the event and build awareness - and interest - in the auctions.

We will promote this event with our mailing list of agencies and investor buyers, so feel free to also have Buy it Now pricing in mind for pre-sales, because we will run these lists for several weeks prior to the sale, on a global basis.

Please PM or e-mail me for any questions or to submit lists, get your copy of the contract and so on.

I will post the submission details in the buy/sell forum for everyone today.

Thanks!

**msn** · 02-22-2010, 04:50 PM

There is an escrow account set up, but if people want to use escrow.com instead or direct payment, this will also be fine, provided we get our share. As soon as someone is accepted into the auction, we will set a flag for the domain, and each bidder or seller will have a unique tag. In order to complete a transfer, the domain flag and the tag will need to match, and until then, you will not know who the buyer is.

Since there has been some questions, we wanted to run this in CAD as the currency, but some buyers have a preference for USD for simplicity - does anyone have a preference? If we run it in USD instead, we will fix a CAD price for each winning bid as of the date of the auction.

Payout is Wire Transfer, Interac, PayPal, MoneyBookers or WireCard.

In the event a buyer wants to do a direct payment or use escrow.com, they will need to make payment - such as certified cheque, wire transfer, Interac and so on - in two parts, to ensure the commission and the bid are both paid. For high value amounts the payment will be held by the lawyer until the transfer is completed.

The details will be provided to accepted sellers along with their contracts.

**Ilze** · 02-22-2010, 11:01 PM

i do not think i would pay u.s. dollars for a dot ca..unless it was par or over...The simplicity for Canadians is the Loonie..

**msn** · 02-23-2010, 04:02 AM

I would agree: it makes sense that a deal in the Canadian name space is done in the currency of Canada.

Even so, there are some sellers here who are demanding USD, so this is why I am looking for input.

We might get into the situation where everyone bids in CAD terms, but some USD-denominated buyers will be paying at par so as to allow for their additional transaction costs. Unless we see many people against this concept, we will most likely run it like this.

If you want to look at it the other way, we could say USD in the auction listings but close for Canadian buyers at par in CAD.

In other words, regardless of the currency noted, USD or CAD, Canadian sellers will be paid the dollar amount shown in CAD.

How does this sound for everyone?

**msn** · 05-05-2010, 09:23 AM

As some of you may have heard, Bido has closed. A few folks also knew that Bido was supplying the auction platform for the sale in May. Obviously this has made things more difficult.

We have decided to pull back and start work on finishing our own platform for auctions and listings, which will take longer than I would prefer, but we want to have time to perfect things, have some people test the platform for a while, and then launch without any risk that someone will go Bido.

If you have not already applied for the Vancouver conference, now is a great time to look at that.

Otherwise, we are now working towards a new auction for September or October. I will create a new post to keep everything neat and tidy.

**Belzibut** · 05-06-2010, 11:39 PM

The price for the conference doesn't seem to make sense plus it will be mostly about .com, I was thinking of going but I rather spend the 1.5k of registration in marketing. I would go if it was about the .ca, I couldn't care less for .com. This extension will die off anyways as cctld takes over, no wonders the big guys are selling them as quickly as they can.

I'm still open to have a get together with the nice .ca folks in Vancouver sometimes. Maybe this summer?

David