Darren Rowse of Problogger.net has bought Problogger.com for a price higher than $4050 and lower than the $7000 USD.

Here are the 3 steps that made it possible for Problogger.net to own Problogger.com:

Auction 1 - As part of the expiration process at GoDaddy (where the domain had been hosted) they then put domains up for auction - two weeks before the current owners can actually renew it for the last time (why they do it before their last chance for renew is a mystery to me).

So the GoDaddy auction took a week and ended a couple of weeks back. The price got too high for my liking (it was over $7000 USD) and someone else got the right to buy it if the renewal didn’t happen.

Luckily for me the previous owners did renew it (this was a real roller coaster for me) and then decided to sell the domain on ebay. My heart sank and leaped all at once - another auction to endure, but also another opportunity to buy the domain I’d been looking to secure for years.

Auction 2 - The ebay auction was nowhere near as active as the previous one and remained at the starting bid for a week. It was only in the last day or two that bids were placed. It was a reserve price auction and while the auction took place I talked to the representative of the owner.

The last few minutes of the auction were hot but at its end it hadn’t reached the reserve price. I had the highest $4050 and immediately contacted the owner’s rep to see if we could come to a mutually agreeable figure.

Negotiations - Of course this all happened just a few hours before our flight left Melbourne for the USA so it wasn’t an easy negotiation in terms of time zones - but I’m happy to announce that in the last day the final price was negotiated and payments and transfers have been made.