Finally Here - Well Almost - The Dutch Auction Site For My Domains

I’ve been talking about this for almost 10 years, boring friends to sleep by insisting that Dutch Auctions are the best way to sell premium domain names. Now, I’ve finally built something.

A Dutch Auction is an auction where the price drops until someone places a bid. The first bid wins, the auction ends, and the buyer pays that price.

Wouldn’t it make sense for a potential buyer to wait until the price hits zero? In theory, yes, but the risk is that another buyer could jump in first. Once that happens, there’s nothing they can do - the domain is gone.

I finally got around to building this for two main reasons.

First, I was developing a platform for HGV.co.uk and HGV.uk (which will launch on the .uk domain). This platform allows transporters to list loads and hauliers to bid on them. Unlike a traditional reverse auction, where bidders compete by offering lower prices, in this system, the price increases, and the first bidder wins. Once I built that, it hit me: with a simple code adjustment, the price could go down instead—exactly the Dutch Auction system I’ve been advocating for years.

Second, I want to offload some of my higher-end domains, particularly my .co.uk names. As many of you know, I strongly believe in .uk domains and think .co.uk isn’t necessary for new projects, which is why I’m listing them for sale. Some of the names I'll be listing are Genesis.co.uk, Success.co.uk, Reality.co.uk, Guard.co.uk and many more.

This project isn’t driven by the recent spike in SEO domain prices—I actually started building it in November, which, for me, means three months is pretty quick! I’m unsure how SEO domains will fare in a Dutch-style auction. If two serious buyers are involved, it might be better to sell them on Domainlore. I’d be curious to see if someone picks up one of my older SEO domains here and flips it on Domainlore for a higher price.

There are several reasons why I believe Dutch auctions are the way to go. I've listed my top three, but there are many more—ranging from buyers not wanting to wait seven days for an auction to end to the potential for both great bargains and the risk of overpaying. Ultimately, no one will truly know who got the better deal.

Here are my top three reasons why these auctions work well for domains.

I believe Dutch Auctions work well for domain sales because I saw them succeed over 15 years ago on Acorn Domains - more than likely even before Domainlore launched in 2009.

Someone (a few others followed their lead) set up a manually run system where the price dropped every hour on the hour. At the time, there was no alternative auction site for .uk domains, but my memory is that it worked remarkably well. Domains often sold for higher prices than expected.

The platform is built on Joomla, which I’ve worked with for nearly 20 years. Unfortunately, there was no off-the-shelf solution for this, so a lot of the system had to be custom-built. I won’t lie - putting this together so it runs mostly automatically was mind-boggling at times and really took its toll.

Absolutely. But I’ve always wanted to try this, and even if it doesn’t work out, it won’t be a waste. The platform was initially built for the HGV project, and adapting it to domain sales has been a valuable learning experience.

I’ll still list some domains on Domainlore, particularly those tied to joint ventures. If you see some of my domains there, don’t assume I’ve given up on this project - it’s simply part of an agreement to sell them via Domainlore.

The auction site will be located on That.uk and should be live in the next few days.

Everyone is welcome to bid.