I have to give it to the team at .club, they just seem to be going from strength to strength. I just received an email from Jeff Sass, their Chief Marketing Officer, and they are now releasing a list of super premium domains for auction. Please see the press release below....it's a pretty impressive list of 2 letter and a 1 letter .club domain.

PRESS RELEASE

High Value Domain Names Such As C.club, DK.club, PC.club and PJ.club

Have Strong Appeal in Asia and the West

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL --- October 7, 2015 ---C.Club and twenty-four 2-character .CLUB domain names are set to hit the auction block on October 29, 2015 in a series of five fast-moving auctions with each auction lasting three days. The popularity and value of one and two-character domains is well documented as witnessed through their global sales and usage by major corporations across verticals such as YP.com (Yellow Pages), HP.com (Hewlett Packard), SI.com (Sports Illustrated), EA.com (Electronic Arts), QQ.com (Tencent QQ), W.org (WordPress) and more. In fact, many companies’ brand identity has naturally morphed to be more prevalent in their two-character abbreviated form rather than full name.

This auction, to be held on the Chinese EachNic.com platform, marks the first time .CLUB Domains, the Registry behind one of the world’s most popular new domain extensions, is offering this set of domains in a public auction format. The domain inventory included in this auction has been hand-selected by the EachNic.com team to specifically appeal to Eastern and Western businesses and investors alike. Auction bidding starts as low as $5,000USD for the majority of two-character domains, making them accessible for businesses of all sizes and budgets.

.CLUB Domains has already sold reserved domains at considerable auction prices, including the sale of Wine.club for $140,000 in 2015 at the NamesCon Auction, which set the worldwide auction record for all new domain extension sales to date. This was their first and only auction, showing the demand for .CLUB domain sales. Likewise, interest in the first Eastern and Western auction of .CLUB names is expected to attract strong participation, especially with .CLUB’s active focus on buyers worldwide.

The auction platform will be available in both Chinese and English, and .CLUB will be offering a Concierge Service to assist Western buyers, thus allowing two ways to bid:

• Bid online from the EachNic.com auction platform. Once the auction begins, create an account and bid as frequently as you like.  You can also enter a proxy bid for each auction for automated bidding.
• Use the free Concierge Service and work with a professionalbi-lingual domain specialist to guide you through EachNic.com’s registration and bidding process on your behalf and under your directions. This provides you the freedom to set your limits anonymously before the auction ends. To learn more, contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Payments will be made through the familiar website Escrow.com for non-Chinese investors and through Union Pay for Chinese investors.  To accommodate investors everywhere, teams of bilingual speakers will be available throughout the auction in U.S. and China time zones.

Be sure to frequently check http://nic.club/auction/for the latest news and bidding links for this coveted set of  25 valuable domains. Auction inventory, reserves and dates can be found below.  Each auction will end promptly at 10:30 pm Eastern (7:30 pm Pacific) on the indicated End date.

Colin Campbell, CEO of .club, asked if I would post this guest blog and after reading it I immediately agreed. Two great things about Colin is his insightfulness about the domain industry but also his willingness to admit it when he gets things wrong. This combination makes him one of the people in the domain industry that I would highly recommend that you pay attention to.

Guest Blog
Why I was Wrong about Domain Investors!

by Colin Campbell

Wow. What a ride.

Started a new company in 1993 called Internet Direct, eventually launched Tucows, Domain Direct, EasyHosting, Hostopia, GeeksForLess and then finally .CLUB.

Here is my confession: I am a product of the 90’s. Yes a dinosaur. A short period of time when we all thought we were coasting on the Star Ship Enterprise….where it all made sense. Money did not matter but coming together was the greater purpose. We were reinventing the world and starting a revolution of collectivism. Some entrepreneurs, my brother and myself included saw making money as a second purpose. It was a rare moment. The internet was, is, and will always be owned by the people of this small little speck of a planet called earth. It was the greatest innovation of our time, and maybe of all time. The 90’s was in fact, a small window in to humanity at its greatest moment. So many geeks, entrepreneurs, journalists, students, and entrepreneurs coming together to make the planet smaller.

Today as CEO  of .CLUB a new domain extension, competing with .COM, I reflect back on my years but also recognize it is a different time. Capitalism has taken hold. It’s become survival of the fittest. Do whatever it takes to survive. I do yearn for the days of the past.

I did a press conference in the late 90’s revealing the identity of Mafia Boy which hit every news channel including CNN calling all spammers internet terrorists. I had the same opinion of domain speculators, domain squatters, domain kidnappers at that time. I grouped them all into the same bucket. I even restricted all employees from domain investing. Here is where I went wrong and thankfully the Rick Swartz, Micheal Berkins, and later the infamous Frank Shilling created a market between those who wanted names for specific reasons and those who sold those names. Today domain investors really play a pivotal role from China to America. They connect with a confused and for good reason out of touch end user. They are thebackbone of the internet, the true brokers and entrepreneurs who work tirelessly to simplify the internet world we live in today. I was wrong. Maybe not so about spammers, phishers, DDOS’ers and the rest. But I was wrong about domain investors.

We recently announced a somewhat controversial decision to offer all expired names on SnapNames dropping auction. Internally, we had a great debate as to why we should not just reclaim the names and resell them through our registrar channel. Why would we let great names go for as low as $69. See I have come full circle now. Today domain investors are the glue that brings it all together for a new domain extensions. We will leave money on the table, but those domain extensions that have an army of domain investors working to get the names in right hands will be successful. It’s time the media, the industry and users recognize what domainers really do. They help connect people and make the internet a simpler place.

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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He was the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. He has also recently published his first science fiction book, Battleframe.

Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face. Due to demands on his time, Michael may be contacted by clicking here for limited consulting assignments.

OK, I've seen this posted around the different forums that .club is going to make it really, really big but I personally believe that 1 million registrations by the end of the first years is a big stretch. What's crazy is that they could have said 200,000 and everyone would have thought that was a lot of domains. If they pass the 200,000 mark they will look like heroes but now they've set a bar so high that it's going to be tough to reach.

Don't get me wrong....I wish them all the best. I wear their polo shirt all the time....it's really comfortable. :-) The problem that I see with many of these new extensions is that many of them have had to get investors to "drink the kool-aid" and this has set them up to fail. I personally think that about 98% of them will go down and be snapped up by some of the more successful ones....by hey, it's a gamble and people with a lot of money seem to like doing it.

As for me, I'm going to stick with .com and some of the ccTLDs as I know for sure that they're not going to vanish in a hurry.