.ca Dot CA Discussion, Sales, and Showcase

[whitebark]

Domains For Next MyID .ca Auction

These are the upcoming domains and reserve range for the next/current myid.ca auction:

666.ca ($1751 - $2500)
Acrobats.ca ($251 - $500)
affordabletrips.ca ($251 - $500)
AirportRentals.ca ($1001 - $1750)
albertabyowner.ca ($251 - $500)
BridalOnline.ca ($1001 - $1750)
Broke.ca ($5001 - $7500)
CanadianDrugStores.ca ($501 - $750)
CanadianTennis.ca ($1001 - $1750)
CarStore.ca ($1001 - $1750)
CheaperFlights.ca ($101 - $250)
CraftSales.ca ($501 - $750)
DiscountTours.ca ($1001 - $1750)
DivorceTips.ca ($501 - $750)
DownloadFreeRingtone(s).ca ($2 - $100)
DUILawyers.ca ($1001 - $1750)
EasyIncome.ca ($751 - $1000)
EcoVoyage.ca ($251 - $500)
EngineeringCareer.ca ($751 - $1000)
Enlargement(s).ca ($751 - $1000)
ExoticHolidays.ca ($1001 - $1750)
FashionOnline.ca ($2501 - $3750)
Fertiliser.ca ($1001 - $1750)
FitnessJob.ca ($751 - $1000)
FlightSearch.ca ($1001 - $1750)
Freebies.ca ($7501 - $10000)
FreelancingJobs.ca ($2501 - $3750)
FurnitureLiquidation.ca ($751 - $1000)
GayBlog.ca ($251 - $500)
GayCanada.ca ($3751 - $5000)
HealthGuide.ca ($1001 - $1750)
HearingAids.ca ($7501 - $10000)
Hired.ca ($7501 - $10000)
HockeyGame.ca ($1001 - $1750)
homegardens.ca ($251 - $500)
HowToDance.ca ($501 - $750)
iBlogs.ca ($751 - $1000)
InternetHelp.ca ($251 - $500)
InternetPhones.ca ($1751 - $2500)
JFK.ca ($1001 - $1750)
JointVenture.ca ($2501 - $3750)
KitchenWare.ca ($1001 - $1750)
Lake-Ontario.ca ($1001 - $1750)
LogosOnline.ca ($501 - $750)
Mask.ca ($3751 - $5000)
MontrealLaser.ca ($251 - $500)
MontrealTravel.ca ($1001 - $1750)
MusicJob.ca ($751 - $1000)
NutritionJob.ca ($751 - $1000)
OakvilleFlowers.ca ($501 - $750)
OnlineCoupons.ca ($1001 - $1750)
OnlineDates.ca ($2501 - $3750)
OnlineGaming.ca ($2501 - $3750)
OnlineStock.ca ($751 - $1000)
OnlineStocks.ca ($751 - $1000)
OrganicStore.ca ($1751 - $2500)
PharmaceuticalCareer.ca ($751 - $1000)
PizzaRestaurant(s).ca ($101 - $250)
PrivatePilots.ca ($501 - $750)
ProFootball.ca ($251 - $500)
QuebecHoneymoons.ca ($1001 - $1750)
RollerBlading.ca ($5001 - $7500)
SaskatoonRealtors.ca ($101 - $250)
SelfImprovement.ca ($1751 - $2500)
Sensual.ca ($10001 - $15000)
Shareware.ca ($15001 - $25000)
SingleChristian.ca ($251 - $500)
SmallJob.ca ($1001 - $1750)
SNN.ca ($251 - $500)
Snores.ca ($1751 - $2500)
SportsStore.ca ($501 - $750)
TechJobs.ca ($2501 - $3750)
TeddyBear.ca ($1001 - $1750)
Theme.ca ($2501 - $3750)
TNN.ca ($251 - $500)
TorontoComputer.ca ($251 - $500)
TorontoComputers.ca ($251 - $500)
TorontoDentists.ca ($2501 - $3750)
TravelAuction.ca ($2501 - $3750)
UniqueGifts.ca ($2501 - $3750)
UsedHouses.ca ($251 - $500)
UsedLaptops.ca ($1751 - $2500)
Valuable.ca ($501 - $750)
VancouverHomeForSale.ca ($101 - $250)
War.ca ($1751 - $2500)
Women.ca ($50000)


I can see a number of these getting picked up - there a few others I'm surprised they accepted the high reserve and can't see selling because of it. What do you think?

 

[Spex]

baremetal a new name (for me), do love the name

They were pretty popular back in the day (5-10 years). Never used them but saw their name a lot

 

[MapleDots]

They were pretty popular back in the day (5-10 years). Never used them but saw their name a lot

They have a nice portfolio, I have looked at it a few times.

 

[NameSellingcom]

$1, Bob

You mean, $1 Drew.

 

[briguy]

You mean, $1 Drew.

Old school, still prefer the original, hard act to top, in my opinion!
Welcome to the thread, any .ca's you want to showcase?

 

[dtagr]

If you really,really want to go down the conspiracy path - MYID claims by email that I did not backorder star.ca before the deadline. Therefore I can not participate in the auction.

This is of course patently ridiculous and as of 06:30 Pacific they are not answering the tollfree number on their contact page.

Tick tock.

Well... I phoned their toll-free number 4 times - they never answered. I left 2 polite and respectful messages which they didn't return.

I had driven overnight to Calgary and I was bagged, I finally went to sleep around 09:00 Pacific. Upon awaking at 14:00, naturally I checked my email and there was an email response from MYID. They concede that I had logged into my account before the deadline but they don't concede that I backordered the name. Nevertheless they agreed to add me to the auction!!

The auction that ended 3 hours before I woke up. Didn't even get to wave at it.

Another frustrating MYID experience. If they weren't catching 50% of the best names I wouldn't go near them.

 

[wwwweb]

Well... I phoned their toll-free number 4 times - they never answered. I left 2 polite and respectful messages which they didn't return.

I had driven overnight to Calgary and I was bagged, I finally went to sleep around 09:00 Pacific. Upon awaking at 14:00, naturally I checked my email and there was an email response from MYID. They concede that I had logged into my account before the deadline but they don't concede that I backordered the name. Nevertheless they agreed to add me to the auction!!

The auction that ended 3 hours before I woke up. Didn't even get to wave at it.

Another frustrating MYID experience. If they weren't catching 50% of the best names I wouldn't go near them.

Why the friction, more bidders, higher price, better for the auction house?

 

[rlm]

Why the friction, more bidders, higher price, better for the auction house?

Good question, I've wondered myself. It seems counter-intuitive that they wouldn't be willing to do that. But if they say the rules are that you must pre-order to be eligible for the auction, then you can't really go adding people after the fact because it looks very shady breaking your own rules. The question is, is that an actual CIRA rule, or no? Otherwise a registrar could just make up their own rule that says bidders can be added to an auction on request. Sure, people that pre-ordered would be pissed, if they knew. But with the lack of transparency, who's gonna know? And what can you do about it if they do?

 

[wwwweb]

Good question, I've wondered myself. It seems counter-intuitive that they wouldn't be willing to do that. But if they say the rules are that you must pre-order to be eligible for the auction, then you can't really go adding people after the fact because it looks very shady breaking your own rules. The question is, is that an actual CIRA rule, or no? Otherwise a registrar could just make up their own rule that says bidders can be added to an auction on request. Sure, people that pre-ordered would be pissed, if they knew. But with the lack of transparency, who's gonna know? And what can you do about it if they do?

Agreed, well in that case, can you really change the day the auction closes after the fact, or maybe even show bidder handles? Does any of the auctions show who your bidding against?

star is a great name from equipment rentals, to limo service, anyone who brands under that for a localized service is going to be an all star. I think a few years ago it would have garnered a higher price, I was actually disappointed for what it sold for.

 

[rlm]

Agreed, well in that case, can you really change the day the auction closes after the fact, or maybe even show bidder handles? Does any of the auctions show who your bidding against?

There is very little transparency in TBR auctions. The two biggest, MyID & Sibername basically have zero transparency.

 

[MapleDots]

I think cira ( or a single appointed entity) should run the auction and anyone that registers as an auction member should be able to bid at any time. If the winner defaults the domain should be readded the next week. And yes I think it should be done weekly.

All this locked system, who hits who's data base the fastest is just crap. Open and transparent from a- z would be the best.

To keep foreign people out only cira registered members could bid. Any Canadian can become a cira registered member by uploading credentials.

 

[jaydub]

I remember going back a few years that the Sibername TBR auctions used to be kind of like that Frank,
If you bid on a name with them, then on the auction Thursday you would be involved in ALL of the names that they had won that TBR that had more than one bid.
It could get crazy on weeks when they had snagged 20+ .
They got so much blowback from the domainers back then that they discontinued it and you could only bid on auction names that you had initially put in a bid on.

I kind of understood why people got so pissed. It opened up a domain you wanted to many other bidders and many time raised the price it went for. I get that, but at the same time it opened up many other names that you could be involved in.

I guess in my mind if you are trying to establish value the more interested buyers offering real money the better the opportunity to see a truer value.

 

[nafti]

I love that idea @MapleDots. CIRA would then be worth millions more because of all of the extra income it’s generating yearly from these auctions. The extra income they would be generating could then be reinvested into .ca’s as in advertising the .ca brand more which would make our names that much more valuable.

But I believe your idea makes too much sense. CIRA is not always about that.

 

[wwwweb]

I love that idea @MapleDots. CIRA would then be worth millions more because of all of the extra income it’s generating yearly from these auctions. The extra income they would be generating could then be reinvested into .ca’s as in advertising the .ca brand more which would make our names that much more valuable.

But I believe your idea makes too much sense. CIRA is not always about that.

I agree also a lot could be done to provide small businesses with development grants for using .ca, helping students, and established businesses, setting up family pages etc... a lot of good could be done with those funds to help grow .ca organically.

If we see what .co has done with their registry, they are reassigning premium pricing on their drops, so I mean whose to say if you wouldn’t be opening up a new can of worms. I looked over the resumes of those board members, and some of them have been involved in some really big companies, but it seems more of a resume play, as they are not bringing anything new here.

 

[NameSellingcom]

I think cira ( or a single appointed entity) should run the auction and anyone that registers as an auction member should be able to bid at any time. If the winner defaults the domain should be readded the next week. And yes I think it should be done weekly.

All this locked system, who hits who's data base the fastest is just crap. Open and transparent from a- z would be the best.

To keep foreign people out only cira registered members could bid. Any Canadian can become a cira registered member by uploading credentials.

I agree with everything you said.

 

[DomainRecap]

But I believe your idea makes too much sense. CIRA is not always about that.

The CIRA's job is to administer the .CA space, and it is not in their mandate to be a de facto Registrar, which incidentally would be a huge conflict of interest and potentially bring up monopoly/antitrust concerns. Imagine the hoopla if Verisign tried to auction off every single expired .COM and .NET domain?

The CIRA is like a stock exchange - their entire job is to make sure the exchange functions, not to sell properties to individual investors. That "buffer zone" is taken up by member firms, which are banks and investment companies who buy a seat at the stock exchange and perform the function of facilitating transactions between the NYSE or TSX and the individual or group investors.

So instead of TD Securities, Barclays, and Scotia Capital, we have MyID, Sibername, and POOL, and this buffer zone between the exchange or administrator and the individual consumers is absolutely required, not only by law, but also to function in a way that even resembles an equitable market.

 

[NameSellingcom]

Old school, still prefer the original, hard act to top, in my opinion!
Welcome to the thread, any .ca's you want to showcase?

I only own a few .Ca domains, BuyCannabis.ca and Fracking.ca.
I mostly own .Com domains.

 

[dtagr]

I'll say one final thing about star.ca and then I'm moving on.

I've been doing this for 11 years. I know I backordered it - at MYID and 5 other registrars. I have been throwing shade at MYID since evil.ca last year. It's pretty obvious they monitor this thread. I'm a big boy I can take some shade back.

Star.ca is a legit $100k US dollar name. Some of you forget that American companies can have a Canadian presence- through a dealership, distributorship, trademark, franchise, or even a UPS box(that's all you need to be a .ca registrar). The Fortune 500,000 are all here. It's highest and best use is to be sold to an American company, I wouldn't waste my time contacting a single Canadian business. At $7900, that's the steal of the decade.

MYID and their auction rules (guidelines perhaps) are a pretty significant issue because they catch 5 of the 10 best names every week. If it's true that I didn't backorder that name (not), then I shouldn't have been allowed into the auction. Moot since I was asleep. But is categorically unfair to those who participated. Two weeks ago they extended the auction at first by a day and then again by an hour. Changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game is categorically unfair to those who are participating.

Recap is right about CIRA's role in this, but they are also responsible for oversight vis-a-vis the registrars and they are failing in that regard.

For business reasons I will say no more about MYID in this or any other thread.

 

[DomainRecap]

Recap is right about CIRA's role in this, but they are also responsible for oversight vis-a-vis the registrars and they are failing in that regard.

I totally agree with this, and I'm wondering if Fury is a step towards that?

I follow valuable .CA expiring domains (as do others on here) and in the past, whenever these $$$$$ domains would expire, *certain* registrars would place them in limbo (instead of releasing them to the TBR, as required) and then miraculously these would be reregistered a month later and suddenly show up on their marketplace.

*cough*OIL.CA*cough*

Post-Fury implementation, I have noticed that several of the top expiring domains, which always go the above 'limbo-reregister-marketplace" route, have actually been immediately released to TBR. I was truly amazed at this happening, and it can't be a coincidence this occurred exactly when Fury was released.

Then again, the top dogs tend to get those names back anyway...

 

[MapleDots]

I love that idea @MapleDots. CIRA would then be worth millions more because of all of the extra income it’s generating yearly from these auctions. The extra income they would be generating could then be reinvested into .ca’s as in advertising the .ca brand more which would make our names that much more valuable.

But I believe your idea makes too much sense. CIRA is not always about that.

Exactly, you hit it bang on, why let companies like myid and such make the money, let cira keep the winnings and reinvest it into Canada's internet structure. Maybe fight to get us all good internet plans or something.

But alas it's probably much too forward thinking for them.

 

[MapleDots]

The CIRA's job is to administer the .CA space, and it is not in their mandate to be a de facto Registrar, which incidentally would be a huge conflict of interest and potentially bring up monopoly/antitrust concerns. Imagine the hoopla if Verisign tried to auction off every single expired .COM and .NET domain?

The CIRA is like a stock exchange - their entire job is to make sure the exchange functions, not to sell properties to individual investors. That "buffer zone" is taken up by member firms, which are banks and investment companies who buy a seat at the stock exchange and perform the function of facilitating transactions between the NYSE or TSX and the individual or group investors.

So instead of TD Securities, Barclays, and Scotia Capital, we have MyID, Sibername, and POOL, and this buffer zone between the exchange or administrator and the individual consumers is absolutely required, not only by law, but also to function in a way that even resembles an equitable market.

Appoint an entity to make it open and transparent, that would avoid any conflict of interest yet still accomplish the task.

 

[MapleDots]

For business reasons I will say no more about MYID in this or any other thread.

That would be a shame, we have to keep on top of it and hope cira monitors this topic one day. It is absolutely wrong for one company to steal all the top domains and I do mena steal!! I will use the strong words here, they obviously have an advantage nobody else does and it is about time we call for a change.

I've been thinking of opening up an online petition to get cira to review how myid gets so many domains compared to everyone else. I would not be surprised if someone there does not have a inside trick or connection somewhere.

It is wrong, it always will be.

It is time we end this monopoly and a petition or something similar needs to be started to draw attention to this matter.

 

[Kate]

I think cira ( or a single appointed entity) should run the auction and anyone that registers as an auction member should be able to bid at any time.

Like WLS ?

All this locked system, who hits who's data base the fastest is just crap. Open and transparent from a- z would be the best.

But the system won't become 'transparent' simply because Cira or another entity gets to run the show. Unless they submit to audits to begin with.
An insider or a hacker can still game the system. Or it can be run like Nelson-era Snapnames or Namejet - transparent in the sense that bidders aliases are shown, but riddled with irregularities.

One thing is certain: registrars will lose, and bidders will pay a lot more too, because by concentrating the action you concentrate the competition that is currently scattered.
I think the free for all is fair when done right. But transparent it isn't.

The TBR process is quite old, I don't know if there is discussion about it within CIRA sometimes. It's something that members can certainly put on the agenda.

 

[DomainRecap]

Appoint an entity to make it open and transparent, that would avoid any conflict of interest yet still accomplish the task.

But then it would have to be more than one entity with the ability to auction off expired .CAs, to make it equitable competition, which is back to what we have now.

We may actually see this question occur in the near future, as GoDaddy controls the majority of dropped .COMS, with Web.com a distant second, so if GD were to ever get the Web contracts (or buy them) then I would imagine they would run into some serious antitrust problems, and may well anyway.

What we really need is for the CIRA to grow some teeth (and balls) and actually go after some of these TBR Registrars for their extremely-obvious transgressions. If someone actually got punished for pulling a fast one, it would go a long way towards solving the problems.

 

[rlm]

I think cira ( or a single appointed entity) should run the auction and anyone that registers as an auction member should be able to bid at any time. If the winner defaults the domain should be readded the next week. And yes I think it should be done weekly.

All this locked system, who hits who's data base the fastest is just crap. Open and transparent from a- z would be the best.

To keep foreign people out only cira registered members could bid. Any Canadian can become a cira registered member by uploading credentials.

I agree a single TBR system would certainly simplify things (and remove the shady characters tied to registries from collecting premium domains essentially for free). But that's never going to happen. CIRA doesn't sell domains except at wholesale, so for everything other than TBR, that system works well.

But the whole concept of dropping domains and auctioning them off has always been questionable to me. I've wondered who first started that, and who said it was OK? I guess enterprising registrars realized they could do that, and the registry couldn't figure out a way to stop them legally, so it became the defacto model.

Since registrars set their own pricing, the free-market system works well. But drops are the opposite, there is no mechanism for one registrar to say, I'll sell it cheaper than the next guy. So once a domain has been grabbed, its a monopoly, and the auction system is one way to maximize revenues. The other way is, just keep the domain for yourself and sell it to an end user later for 10x the price. That seems to be MyID's model. They seem to lose auctions (i.e. sell) just enough to make operating cash, then they seem to outbid (& thus keep) the rest of the premium domains for themselves for later resale on the open market at a much higher price. That is what I personally THINK is happening, of course I can't prove that. It would be really interesting to know, for all those TBR auction sales that seem to stay inhouse at myid, are they receiving and declaring that income - or do those domains end up being off the books as far as MyID is concerned and magically end up in someone's private portfolio....

However, at least Canada didn't go the route of .COM, licensing off the rights to be the registry, then allowing the registry to start increasing prices when there's no way they can justify doing so since the profits are already enormous. Also, in the .com world, registrars no longer even let domains go to drop, they auction expired domains off BEFORE the drop. I hate that about .com too. So .CA isn't perfect, but I suppose it could be worse.

 

[NameSellingcom]

But then it would have to be more than one entity with the ability to auction off expired .CAs, to make it equitable competition, which is back to what we have now.

We may actually see this question occur in the near future, as GoDaddy controls the majority of dropped .COMS, with Web.com a distant second, so if GD were to ever get the Web contracts (or buy them) then I would imagine they would run into some serious antitrust problems, and may well anyway.

What we really need is for the CIRA to grow some teeth (and balls) and actually go after some of these TBR Registrars for their extremely-obvious transgressions. If someone actually got punished for pulling a fast one, it would go a long way towards solving the problems.

GoDaddy Auctions controls most of the expired .Com domains inventory now, while DropCatch.com catches most of the dropped .Com domain inventory.
But, parent company of DropCatch.com (HugeDomains.com/TurnCommerce) also actively bids on domains at GoDaddy Auctions.