A week or so ago, a reader raised a valid point and mentioned that a domain isn’t considered sold until the actual payment takes place. That’s definitely true but it does beg the question: should bloggers refrain from sharing the grand totals of events such as the ROTD NamesCon auction?

I think people started becoming more suspicious when it comes to auctions in general after some of the live events which took place in Asia.

Some of you might remember that those auctions generated HUGE grand totals but only a fraction of the transactions ended up actually being finalized. Therefore, a headline that sounded awesome initially ended up becoming completely irrelevant once the actual transaction data became available.

I think this happened for two main reasons:

1) there were a LOT of beginners at those events, who got involved in bidding frenzies and lost their heads

2) there weren’t any “scary” repercussions associated with not paying; no naming and shaming, none of that

As such, a lot of people probably only placed bids to seem/feel important and that’s it.

I’d say that for the NamesCon auction in particular, the likelihood of only a fraction of the domains selling is low. I mean I’ve followed the live event and know a lot of the auction winners, they’re definitely good for the money. Sure, things can happen and some transactions may not close but my best guess is that even if that happens, we’d be talking about a very small percentage.

So, what should bloggers do in your opinion?

We could refrain from publishing results and wait until we have the actual transaction data but the thing is, by the time we’d receive that info, the auction event in question would be “old news.” Or perhaps we could simply publish a disclaimer, something along the lines of “These results can only be considered final once the auction organizers confirm the transactions have indeed been closed.”

My best guess is that the second option (disclaimer) would be a reasonable compromise but of course, only for “proven” live auction venues such as NamesCon. For more “questionable” live events, I think option #1 would be more appropriate 🙂