[Update: Contest ended 3/23 at 11:59PM.  Winner to be announced today at conclusion of no-reserve auction]

Hi all. I’m testing a new way to sell domains using Twitter and am offering 10% of the proceeds as a prize. Here’s the contest…

I’ll post a domain and ask people to guess how much it will sell for by sending me a tweet. The next day I’ll auction off the name in a no reserve auction on Snapnames and will paypal 10% of the sales price to the person who came closest.

I’ll be concentrating on minisite quality exact-match domains – ones with good search volume and high CPC rates. Today’s domain is: ImageBackupSoftware.com

In case you are new to domaining, the following metrics are commonly used to determine value. If you are in a rush or already know this stuff, you can click here to jump to the contest entry.

About today’s domain

ImageBackupSoftware.com is an exact category match for ‘image backup software’ a popular type of software used to backup complete hard drive images. Google’s sktool estimates this term receives 1,200 searches per month with a $3.31 CPC (cost per click) and a $2,700 Estibot appraisal. Google show 7,740,000 results and Google Shopping shows 5,564 products listed.

Because of the high demand and CPC, this domain is ideal for parking or minisite development. Its also an excellent candidate for end user resale. Existing advertisers for the key phrase include Symantec, Barracuda Networks, DoubleTake, Paragon Software, Carbonite and Acronis.

Contest details: To enter, please click here to tweet your entry. Then follow me @DomainTweeter so that we can communicate by direct message (DM). I’ll sell the domain Tuesday, March 24th via a no reserve auction on SnapNames.com. If you’re the winner, I’ll direct message you to get your paypal details and paypal 10% of the sales price to you when SnapNames credits my account. If more than one person guesses the exact price, I’ll split the 10% prize between them. All tweets must be received by Monday, March 23nd at 11:59PM EST to be count.

I don’t normally list good names with no reserve, but I’m hoping that using Twitter will bring enough publicity to this auction to justify the risk. I’d really appreciate any help retweeting this contest to help spread the word.Thanks and best of luck!

Update: Here are the entries received…

• $280 @Dluzional
• $325 @Dnauso
  
• $600 @AndrewWright
• $762 @LovelyLeighAnn
  
• $855 @DanSanchez
  
• $950 @JamesSun
• $1733 @TrampArt
• $1175 @DomainJuggler
• $2199 @PhoneRated
  
• $3200 @Anthonys_Book
• $3921  @AceFerdnand
• $4994 @CallerBrian
• $5375 @IowaDawg
  
• $12,000 @EricWard