Ten Big Sales Help Domain Business End January With a Bang 

by Ron Jackson
  

The new chart is strong from top to bottom and a number of different sales venues are represented showing the current market rally is broad as well as deep. CervicalCancer.com holds down the #2 position after a $50,750 sale at Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com.  A pair of beauties at $30,000 tied for the 3rd spot; Grants.com and RodeoDrive.com. InnovationHQ.com acquired Grants.com from the Yakima Brewing Company in a private transaction. Dan Miller purchased RodeoDrive.com (the world famous shopping boulevard in Beverly Hills) from BuyDomains.com. #5 went to Namewinner.com where OnlinePokerRoom.com changed hands for $27,510. 

Sedo.com ruled the second half of the chart taking 3 of the final 5 positions with Amistades.com ("friendship" in Spanish) serving as their headliner after selling for $18,263. Before we take a look at the full list let me ask you to bear with me for a moment while I conduct a little test. It has come to our attention that a group of blatant intellectual property thieves who operate a WildWest Domains reseller site at DynoNames.com have been stealing this and other columns from DNJournal.com for the past few months. They go so far as to remove my name (and the names of other authors like Sedo.com CEO Matthew Bentley) from our articles before posting them verbatim on their site. As if that weren't enough, they then insert their own advertisements inside our copyrighted material to illegally profit from our work. Here is a link to just one such example on their site (our sales column from last week which they copied just hours after it appeared here). I will be curious to see how carefully they read this column to see if they take out this passage before stealing it. They have ripped off so much of our copyrighted material I'm not sure they take time to actually read it. If they do discover they have been caught redhanded they may take down the page linked to above (however we have saved all stolen pages on their site for our legal team). 

It won't surprise you to know that the thieves at DynoNames.com are hiding their identity using WildWest's WhoIs proxy service. Of course we have complained repeatedly to WildWest who told us last Thursday that they would expose DynoNames' contact information if they failed to take down the stolen material within 72 hours. That has not happened and since the phone numbers and all contact forms on the DynoNames site go directly to WildWest we are holding them equally responsible for the damage we are suffering from the theft of material written exclusively for this site. On their site DynoNames claims to be located in Denver but their nameservers lead to a hosting company in India. They may rest assured that we will run them down sooner, rather than later and they (as well as the service companies enabling them to carry out the theft) will be held accountable. 

I am sorry to sidetrack you with this issue but people who operate in this manner must be exposed. When other sites steal our exclusive content, they drain traffic from us which leads to a loss of sponsors, which could then lead to the loss of the resource we provide at no charge to the internet community. We thank you for your understanding and support in dealing with pirate operations like DynoNames.com. Now back to the business at hand. Let's take a look at the complete Top Ten, then we'll continue our rundown of the week's best sales: 

Sedo's hit trio was rounded out with #7 BMX.de (the only non .com on this week's chart) at $13,045 and #10 Ruehl.com at an even $10,000. Those served as bookends to #8 FestivalOfLights.com, sold for $11,600 at SnapNames and #9 HeavyTrucks.com which changed hands at Pool.com. 

As always there was plenty of action just off the chart as well. At SnapNames, CanadaVacations.com returned a refreshing $9,600. Those looking for work so they can earn some vacation time may soon be visiting SFJobs.com which went for $8,960. Other big winners included Tarvel.com at $8,400, SalesForecast.com at $6,700 and WebEscrow.com at $6,050. SnapNames also sold a couple of nice .orgs; DataRecovery.org went for $2,051 and Mohammed.org attracted $1,200. 

Sedo complemented their three Top Ten entries with a long list of solid sales. MathIsFun.com added up to $8,500, Snog.com logged �4,500 ($8,473) and Triflex.com contributed �6,000 ($7,827). AutoCard.de was just a step behind at �5,000 ($6,521) with another country code domain, ProfessionalIndemnity.co.uk next at �3,000 ($5,649). Back on the .com front, Sedo collected �4,000 ($5,217) for Timetable.com and $5,000 each for RussianWives.com, PowerEditor.com and TenSquare.com. The hit parade continued with Coma.de at �3,500 ($4,565), Teletrainer.com at $4,250 and Local-News.net $4,000 (quite nice for a hyphenated .net). HQ.org also went for $4,000 while ScriptSearch.de found �3,000 ($3,913), BombAmp3.com contributed $3,750 and eMail411.com sent another $3,500. 

Just when we were about to send out a search party for Pool.com, a raft of sales there sailed in this week including Prepay.com at $8,200, EmpireHotel.com at $7,100 and PopUnders.com at $6,151. SecondMortgageRates.com added $5,000 and LADiet.com fattened up the books with another $3,500. RealEstateDevelopers.com built a $3,111 foundation while FreeAdultDating.com provided a $2,850 match. Aypal.com went for $2,600 with four others, SanBernadino.com, BuilderShow.com, EasyMoms.com and StorageServer.com kicking in $2,500 each. Pool's other winners included LavasoftUS.com at $2,350, JLab.com at $2,200 and FloridaFurniture.com at $2,000. Pool also had a couple of .net sales, Tents.net at $1,222 and WeekendGetaway.net at $1,150. 

It was a good week at Afternic.com as well where GayCard.com led the way at $8,000. DirectRequest.com received $4,600, OMN.org brought $4,450 (very nice for a 3-letter .org) and TravelRes.com booked $4,088. Also, ElectroMagnets.com attracted $3,888, CruisePoker.com raked in $3,001 and Vixia.com sold for $2,900.

Enom's Club Drop also shared in the industry's big week winning $6,007 for catching eWagers.com and $4,307 for snatching AmaturePics.com. Enom added $2,607 for ScienceQuestions.com, $2,207 for RockStation.com and $2,110 for Optimedia.com.  Elsewhere, Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com supplemented their #2 chart domain with WildCollegeParties.com at $6,000. BlogDomainsForSale.com hit the daily double with WirelessBlog.com at $3,500 and BlogShop.com at $2,000. Owner Rob Sequin said he has also received a non-refundable down payment on MobileBlog.com from a start-up company in Norway. The final installment toward the $10,000 total price is due in March. This week's best reported minor country code sale was HotSex.tv which went for $810 on Ebay. 

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Our 2005 Year-To-Date Top Sellers chart gets a load of new entries this week, upping the number of sales above $10,000 to 37 one month into the New Year (50% higher than the monthly average for sales at this level in 2004). Here is how they stack up now:

New TLD Section

.Info has apparently gotten tired of watching .biz steal its thunder in the early going in '05. Coming into this week, .biz had racked up half of all sales above $1,000 leaving last year's unquestioned leader in the dust. Well, .info came back in a big way this week, racking up 7 of 8 positions on our New TLD chart. Only .US prevented a clean sweep while .biz went home empty handed. As usual, Sedo.com was the leading new extension sales venue. They placed five domains on this week's list including #1 Nostrum.info at $3,261 and #2 Farming.info at $2,500. 

Pool.com slipped in with another .info at #3, MyBike.info at $1,000, then Sedo returned with a pair of German terms at #4 and #5, KonzertKarte.info ($881) and Stadtfuehrer.info ($783). The only domain to go against the .info flow was #7 Paragliding.us which sold for $500 at Afternic. Here's a look at the complete New TLD Great 8 for the week ending Jan. 30:

#6 NaturalHazards.info went for $700 in a private transaction while the longest chart entry we have seen to date, StructuredSettlementAnnuity.info anchored the list at $326. Though .biz missed the chart there were a lot of smaller sales in that extension. Sedo sold Whitehead.biz for $240 while Pool moved five domains in a similar range; Transplantation.biz ($311), Schlaganfall.biz ($300), Moniker.biz ($300), HDDVD.biz ($250) and DVDDuplication.biz ($200). 

Our Year-To-Date New TLD list gets three new entries this week, all .infos. That pushed the extension back ahead of .biz, 10-9 in the race for most four figure sales. Here is how they stand after the opening month of 2005:

As always, we welcome all verifiable sales reports from companies, private sellers or individuals with knowledge of an important sale made through any channel. To contribute information and help make this column better,  just drop a note to [email protected].

We truly appreciate the industry leading companies represented on our charts who share their sales information with us to help everyone in the business get a handle on current domain values. Individuals like Richard Meyer of the American Marketing Corporation also provide invaluable help by sending us data for these sales reports each week.

Every Tuesday we publish the highest reported domain name sales for the previous week. On Monday our contributors send us their sales data for the previous 7 days. We then compile that information and write this report for Tuesday publication to give you the freshest sales report in the industry. 

We will close with this standard caution. These are not average selling prices - these are top selling domains. One of the biggest impediments to making sales is pricing domains at unrealistic levels. For most of us, pricing domains at the levels achieved on the Top Ten chart will leave us waiting a long time to make a sale! We hope you will use the information presented here as a measuring stick that will help you price your domains at levels that will put more money in your pocket more often!

Editor's Note: If you wish to review previous Domain Sales columns, they are available in our Archive.

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