I figured I’d post a little history behind the decision to sell the farts.com domain via a low unique bid auction, since lots of people are asking me about it.

Back in the late ’90’s and early 2000’s, we were getting 10-15K unique visitors daily on the site, checking out cool content like “The Fart Of the Day”, “The Squeek of the Week”, and the popular “Ask Dr. Rex” fart advice column. We were maintaining the site regularly, generating revenue from ads displayed on the site, and also from selling merchandise. It was a nice, solid side business.

When I got involved with another business venture that started taking up most of my time, farts.com got less and less attention from me. What followed were less frequent updates, the decision to stop selling merchandise, and me leaving the site to be run by the members of the farts.com community (the forums in those days had tens of thousands of members).

We were offered $65K for the site back in 2003. We didn’t take it…it wasn’t enough. Our target was $100K. So, the domain sat for a few more years. In 2007, we decided to auction it off on E-bay. The high bid was $36K (or maybe $38K, can’t remember exactly…). It was from a well-known company that collects and manages premium domains. But, again, didn’t take it. Still had the $100K reserve.

For years I had thought about a way to sell the domain, with many people paying for the opportunity, and one person winning. I researched lottery laws, but found out that we couldn’t just collect money for raffle entries and give the domain away to one lucky person.

So, when a friend told me about this kind of low unique bid auction, it just made perfect sense. We’re going to ramp this thing up between now and Father’s Day (previously known around here, of course, as “Farter’s Day”). And, by the end of June, 2010, the new owner should have posession of the domain, to do with it as they wish.

Best of luck in your bidding. My goal is to have the auction ready to start by January 1st so people can start making your bids.