Julianna
New York City was host to the most recent T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference with hundreds of domain investors, service providers and industry professionals in attendance. For those who haven’t heard of T.R.A.F.F.I.C., the conference is devoted to exploring trends in the domain name industry, specifically domain monetization, investment and traffic acquisition. In addition to exhibits, seminars and networking sessions, the conference also features an auction billed as ‘the world’s largest and only live domain auction”.
Two hundred domain names made last week’s auction roster from more than 70,000 submissions. According to DomainTools Blog, 115 domains sold at an average bid of $94,419. The average bid on the 81 domains that were passed over was $669,413.
Here are some results.
Of the 200 domains put to auction, sixteen sold for over $100,000 including:
Free Credit Check.com & Credit Check.com $3,000,000
(These two domains are reported to net $37,000/month from traffic alone)
Seniors.com – $1,800,000
Cardiology.com – $550,000
CarSales.com – $400,000
Bald.com – $400,000
Text.com – $300,000
Spices.com – $220,000
Blogging.com – $135,000
View the complete list of sold domains.
More staggering, a whopping $54,222,500 was bid on 81 domains that did not sell, reportedly because of high reserves. Examples from this group include: 
View the complete list of domains that did not sell.
While many of above domains are directly relevant to profitable industries (CarSales.com), areas of online research (Menopause.com) or activities of significant portal and/or traffic potential (Blogging.com), I suppose I don’t really understand what makes a seller hold out for more than $600k on a domain like MartialArts.com. What do you think?
For a more comprehensive look at the auction, including commentary about specific domain sales and prices, see Jay Westerdal’s great coverage on DomainTools Blog.