Sales Explosion Hits Domain Industry With Over 20 Five-Figure Deals This Week  

by Ron Jackson
  

The sales boom would have allowed us to easily fill two Top Ten charts with impressive sales and still have one left over! A single venue, Sedo.com, accounted for seven sales that topped the 10K mark, including the top two on this week's Big Board, CashFlow.com at $56,500 and HotDate.com at $55,000. Sedo scored another Top Ten entry with #6 Covers.co.uk (the only non .com domain on the chart) which sold for �10,000 ($19,178). Sedo CEO Matthew Bentley told us this was the largest number of five figure sales he can recall for a single week at his company. 

GreatDomains hit the Daily Double this week, cashing in with #3 Damn.com at $30,000 and #5 Exploited.com at $20,000. GreatDomains had another five figure sale in the logjam of high dollar deals that flowed just below the Top Ten. We'll be running all of those down for you of course. The action was hot in just about every corner of the industry, with five other venues each making an appearance on our Top Ten list.  Rob Sequin's AllNetServices.com led that group with #4 VideoBlog.com at $21,000. Sequin also sold MobileBlog.com for $10,120 this week.

The new extensions got in on the action too, with a pair of .info sales landing among the ten highest New TLD sales reported this year. We'll tell you about that in our new extension section a bit later on, but right now let's take a look at the complete mainstream Top Ten for the week ending April 17:

Only $500 separated the four domains that close out this week's Big Board.  Pool.com claimed the lucky #7 position with Infra.com at $15,500, #8 went to SnapNames.com where AskAQuestion.com received a $15,261 answer and Enom's Club Drop sold #9 IMGDirect.com for $15,100. The latter domain is a traffic magnet that scores 3,911 in Overture with the extension. Delray.com completes the Top Ten after changing hands at DNForum.com for $15,000. Buyer Rick Schwartz lives next door to Delray Beach, Florida and staged the landmark T.R.A.F.F.I.C. 2004 domain conference in Delray last October.

Now at this point, we could start all over again and rank a second Top Ten, but in the interest of consistency, we'll stick with our usual format and give you a venue by venue wrap-up of key industry sales this week. We'll start with Sedo since they had the highest sale under the Big Board with Gratuit.net ("free" in French) at �10,650 ($13,910). Sedo cracked the five-figure barrier with three more domains including Ehescheidung.de ("divorce" in German) at �10,400 ($13,584), SexPass.com at $13,500 and TechGuy.com at $12,000. 

Sedo continued to pile up sales with DreamCar.com at �5,000 ($6,531), MaxTool.co.uk at $6,500 and Usability.de at �4,700 ($6,139). OnlineRewards.com added another $5,700 while Pesticides.net sprayed �4,250 ($5,552) and OneSearch.com added an even $5,000. Sedo's other winners included a pair of hyphenated .coms, Direct-Marketing.com at �2,488 ($3,250) and Viral-Marketing.com at �1,688 ($2,205), as well as the bargain priced Ambience.com at �2,400 ($3,135). TextSingles.com added another �2,100 ($2,743) and in one of the highest subdomain sales ever at the venue, Medicine.us.com sold for �1,300 ($1,698).

SnapNames had a deep roster of big sales as well, including two more in the five figure club; Agate.com at $10,016 and LabelStore.com at $10,000. TravelAfrica.com contributed another $8,800, followed by DotNow.com at $6,999 and ZTC.com at $6,301. The hits just kept on coming with Elefanten.com at $6,100, ArabChat.com at $5,393 and Holm.com at $5,350. PureSilk.com slipped in with a comfortable $5,100 while AdverseCredit.com added $5,000. BusinessTrip.com produced another $4,200, Outpatient.com recovered $2,877 and PrivateChat.com talked up $2,051.

The other five figure sales we haven't already covered came from three different venues. GreatDomains sold HotMama.com for $12,000, Jew.net changed hands for $10,000 at DNForum.com and Afternic.com moved MyMedicalRecords.com for $10,000. Also at Afternic, ZebAtlas.com found $5,000 while DreamPlay.com and ReadyGolf.com each tapped in $3,200. TrueForm.com and WealthFlow.com each banked $2,500 while eDoors.com added $2,488.

Pool.com supplemented their Top Ten entry with BoardFlicks.com at $2,375, Mail2000.com at $1,450 and HornyBlondes.com at $1,400. HBH.net contributed another $1,000 and a Canadian country code domain, Predators.ca, kicked in $485. Indian country code sales this week included Banking.co.in at $1,200 and Credit.co.in at $650 (both in private transactions). 

In another notable sale, DotcomAgency.com, sold StoragePod.com for $7,000. A sale from late February also came to our attention this week. Claudio & Dario Paone sold Vanessa.com for $20,000 in a private transaction. Our weekly Top Ten lists are for the prior week's reported sales, but we have added Vanessa.com to our Year to Date best sellers chart.

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Speaking of that YTD list, we welcome 7 new members this week while letting three scroll off as we raise our minimum entry price one notch to $17,000 (to keep the list at a manageable length). Here are the biggest winners to so far in 2005:

New TLD Section

After a major lull last week, the new extensions bounced back with a quartet of four figure sales this week, including a pair of .infos that rank among the year's ten best New TLD sales. Maschinenbau.info (a German term for "engineering" or more specifically "building engines") topped our new chart at �5,950 ($7,772). Sedo made that sale and swept the first 7 positions on this week's list. They also scored big with Geschichte.info ("stories" in German) at �2,500 ($3,266).

Just as Sedo was the dominant venue, .info was the dominant extension this time out, taking the top 5 slots. That run included #3 Pizzeria.info at $1,700 and Dating-24.info rang up a surprising �1,000 ($1,306). The latter domain breaks all of the rules, using a hyphen, mixing letters and numbers and ending with a less familiar extension, yet still made it to victory lane. F2F.info rounded out .info's winning team, taking the fifth slot at $653. Here's a look at the complete New TLD leader's list this week: 

Some of the air went out of the balloon in the latter half of the chart, but that meant some nice buys for buyers. Laura.biz attracted �350 ($457) at Sedo while Columbia.biz contributed �300 ($392). I think the New TLD deal of the week went to the person who picked up Laboratory.us for just $195 at Afternic. 

Our New TLD Year-To-Date leaders list gets four new members this week even though we are upping the minimum entry level to $1,300. The newcomers are all .infos as that extension continues to come on after a bit of a slow start in 2005 (compared to its dominating performance throughout 2004). Here are the leading new extension sales through April 17:

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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