dotmobi Premium Domain Auction

Caroline from dotMobi has announced that they are running a premium auction in conjunction with Sedo starting on September 26th.

The auction will include 100 premium .mobi domains, I’ve taken the liberty of listing them below:

AntiSpam.mobi
ask.mobi
busca.mobi
cell.mobi
Cellphone.mobi
chat.mobi
chatrooms.mobi
chats.mobi
Desktop.mobi
domain.mobi
domainname.mobi
domainnames.mobi
domainregistration.mobi
Donwload.mobi
download.mobi
Downloads.mobi
E-mail.mobi
forum.mobi
freedownload.mobi
freedownloads.mobi
freesoftware.mobi
hosting.mobi
image.mobi
images.mobi
index.mobi
Message.mobi
mp3downloads.mobi
searchengine.mobi
telefono.mobi
telephone.mobi
telephones.mobi
traffic.mobi
voip.mobi
Webcam.mobi
webcams.mobi
webdesign.mobi
Wifi.mobi
atm.mobi
atms.mobi
bank.mobi
bills.mobi
credit.mobi
creditcard.mobi
creditcards.mobi
creditdebt.mobi
currency.mobi
debito.mobi
debthelp.mobi
dinero.mobi
exchange.mobi
finanza.mobi
Funds.mobi
loans.mobi
mutualfunds.mobi
payment.mobi
pension.mobi
qoutes.mobi
rent.mobi
salaries.mobi
sales.mobi
sell.mobi
stockmarket.mobi
stockprices.mobi
Taxes.mobi
trade.mobi
peace.mobi
pet.mobi
Pets.mobi
police.mobi
pumps.mobi
push.mobi
surf.mobi
hello.mobi
hotstuff.mobi
marketing.mobi
free.mobi
bed.mobi
beds.mobi
accidents.mobi
advertising.mobi
als.mobi
automobile.mobi
automobiles.mobi
hospitals.mobi
insurance.mobi
interviewtips.mobi
Alerts.mobi
bag.mobi
blue.mobi
book.mobi
books.mobi
calculator.mobi
calendar.mobi
casa.mobi
colleges.mobi
cricket.mobi
dad.mobi
firstaid.mobi
get.mobi
Moto.mobi

There’s some very interesting names on the list, but any content provider would have to ensure that the content was compliant with the dotmobi guidelines.

The auction page on the dotmobi site goes into this in more detail:

In addition, dotMobi has further, minimal, requirements for the buyer:

– Domain to be registered by auction winner within 10 days of receiving authorization code
– Site to initially consist of a dotMobi-compliant parking page
– Best efforts to create, launch and operate a live web site with
relevant content within six months. (For example, acupuncture.mobi
should not display a site for car sales.)
– Fully compliant site with an http://ready.mobi score of at least 4/5. (see the premium auction site for full details)

So if you think you can just grab some nice dotmobi domains and use them for a “normal” website you may want to rethink your plans!

I was talking to Caroline in DotMobi’s Dublin office this afternoon about the upcoming auctions and she was very upbeat about their prospects. Of course with domain auctions prices could go any way – just have a look at the results from some of the more recent auctions held at Domain Rountable or TRAFFIC.

So how much could you pay for a .mobi domain?

The best gauge is past performance, and that is spread from a couple of thousand dollars to a couple of hundred thousand. The past two auctions of dotmobis yielded the following results:

Traffic October 2006

 
Flowers.mobi ($200,000)
Fun.mobi ($100,000)
Hot.mobi ($40,000)
Stockquotes.mobi ($27,000)
Party.mobi ($13,000)
Wow.mobi ($9,000)
Gossip.mobi ($5,000)
Laugh.mobi ($3,000)
Celebs.mobi ($2,250)

Traffic March 2007

 Models.mobi – $7,500
Eat.mobi – $6,700
Singles.mobi – $41,000
Casinos.mobi – $52,000
Cam.mobi – $10,500
Realestate.mobi – $85,000
Directions.mobi – $19,000
Pizza.mobi – $21,000
Loancalculator.mobi – $1,500
Airfare.mobi – $11,000
Areacodes.mobi – $5,890
Pics.mobi – $23,000
Creditscore.mobi – $6,500

You can already start placing bids, but the auction won’t open for a couple of weeks.

I’ll probably be bidding on a couple of the domains listed, as I could see some very interesting using for them