A1 Week for Domain Sales As Bills.com Banks Nearly A Million Dollars

by Ron Jackson
  

PDS will keep all of their existing customers (and revenue) and will move them to a new site at BillX.com. FFN gets the domain name and related trademarks only, but as part of the deal, PDS will build and run a new private label bill payment site for FFN at Bills.com. 

In addition to that monster deal, we saw a new expired domain auction price record set at SnapNames.com where A1.com went for a whopping $260,250! The winning bidder was Anything.com, a company that already owns an astounding assortment of prime generic domains (including MD.com, Medicine.com and Marketing.com to name just a few). The A1.com sale helped SnapNames sweep half of the positions on our new Top Ten chart, including #3 ActionSports.com at $50,750 and #4 HindiMovie.com at $35,250. 

Sedo.com also had a big week with three entries on the Big Board, led by #5 Jews.us at $25,000. That domain, sold by Arizona's Tariq Ghafoor, ties VOIP.us for the highest .us sale reported this year. The rapidly growing American ccTLD has now claimed 5 of the 6 biggest new extension sales in 2005 and 10 of the top 20 (with .biz and .info sharing the rest). Sedo also accounted for the only other non .com domain on this week's list, #9 Humour.net at �15,000 ($17,726).

13 sales hit at least five figures this week and nine new extension sales racked up four figures or more. There is obviously a lot of action to tell you about, but first let's take a look at the complete leader board for the week ending December 11:

SnapNames rounded out their fabulous five with a pair of tasty wine domains; #7 WineList.com ($21,255) and #8 CabernetSauvignon.com ($20,000). #6 Tribu.com completed Sedo's power trio at �18,000 ($21,271) and Pool.com anchored our new chart with #10 FranchiseBusiness.com at $15,500.

There were three more five-figure sales just off the chart. Enom's Club Drop accounted for the largest of those, booking $13,900 for Edition.com. Afternic.com was next with NetViajes.com at $13,166 and SnapNames got a $12,750 charge from ACAdapters.com. Club Drop's other winners included CheapTravelTickets.com at $9,000, GovLiquidations.com at $5,500 and CregsList.com at $4,300. 

Meanwhile at Afternic, Minimal.com maxed out at $8,395, BillBennett.com bagged $5,556 and PZUSA.com commanded $4,450. AllInEntertainment.com added $4,200, GenericBrands.com brought $3,388 and DemandPooling.com drew $2,779. Afternic also had a trio at $2,000 each; Reviewz.com, Datin.com and BidZone.com. 

Back at Sedo, ArrowECS.com hit an $8,500 bullseye, AGame.com scored �6,250 ($7,386) and Bike-Discount.com braked at �3,950 ($4,668). Natsons.com netted �2,500 ($4,388) while Mercon.com and Geffroy.net contributed �3,500 ($4,132) each. 318.com and StartGames.com kicked in �3,300 ($3,900) apiece, CampusLiving.com provided $3,800 and OpenHouseDirectory.com unlocked $3,500. 

Also at Sedo, Cibi.com collected $3,230, Technic.net tallied $3,100, WesternAustralia.org landed $3,000 and DCQ.com caught �2,500 ($2,954). Their country code sales included CreditScore.co.uk at �4,500 ($7,899), Ladi.de at �4,000 ($4,727) and RBS.be (Belgium's country code) at  �2,500 ($4,388). AngelForum.de delivered another �2,900 ($3,427) and Jew.cc secured an even $1,000.

SnapNames supplemented their five Top Ten entries with a boat load of solid four figure sales. Memory4All.com fetched $7,600, JobsAmerica.com paid $7,100 and MusicalEquipment.com drummed up $7,087. FreedomWireless.com untied $6,462, Tonxx.com totaled $6,100 and HighTechCareers.com earned $6,000. ThemeMusic.com struck a $5,888 chord, XGX.com exited with $5,600 and UsedTruckPrices.com settled at $4,899. 

The SnapNames roster also included a quartet at $4,600 each that included VirtualArt.com, Negotiation.net, iCompany.com and BarbaraBush.com. PlayDoctor.com prescribed $4,311, ZPS.com zipped up $4,300 and OSCA.com added $4,200. PetCat.com lapped up $4,188 and SatelliteImage.com captured $4,186. SnapNames had 32 more sales ranging from $2,000 to over $3,600. Here's a look at that list:

In another bit of news from SnapNames they've announced that two prime domains that were inadvertently left off the drop list will be auctioned on their site starting Thursday (Dec. 15). Those are CanadianGirls.com and LTD.net. If you want to be in the auctions you need to log in to your account and place backorders for the domains prior to the auction.

*****

Our Year To Date Top 60 Chart gets two new members this week and both are heavyweights. People usually hate to see bills, but we are happy to welcome Bills.com to the #2 position on our elite list after that near million dollar sale. A1.com also assumes a high perch at #12 after attracting more than a quarter of a million dollars at SnapNames. Our entry level rose to more than $61,000 this week as less expensive domains scrolled off the bottom of the chart. Here is a look at the complete 2005 YTD leader board through Dec. 11: 

New TLD Section

.US strengthened its hold on high dollar new extension sales this week with Tariq Ghafoor's $25,000 sale of Jews.us at Sedo. That tied VOIP.us for the highest sale reported in 2005 and gave the American country code 5 of the year's top 6 new TLD sales. All of the new extensions drew interest though, prompting us to expand our New TLD chart to ten positions for the second week in row so we can include all of the four and five figure sales. 

While .us has dominated the upper end of the market, .Info still has the largest number of sales. The four-letter extension continued that trend by taking 6 of the 10 positions on our new list, including a sweep of the next three slots after Jews.us. #2 Juego.info ("game" in Spanish) went for a healthy �5,000 ($5,909) at Sedo, #3 HTML.info sold for $4,300 at the NamePros.com forum (this sale was announced last month but was just completed this week) and #4 Roofing.info nailed down $2,500 at Sedo.

.Biz got into the act with #5 Annuities.biz selling for $2,000 at DNForum.com. Rob Freeman of LeadingNames.com made the sale. .US and .info shared the second half of the chart. Andrew Allemann of DomainNameWire.com bought both #6 FAX.info ($1,850) and #7 Wifi.us ($1,750) at Afternic.com. Here is a look at the complete New TLD leader board for the week ending Dec. 11:

A pair of 3-letter domains accounted for two more four-figure sales on this week's chart. Howard Hoffman of PPCIncome.com sold #8 FON.us for $1,500 and I sold FSG.info for $1,300 through Sedo. Leihen.info ("borrow" in German) anchored our new list after going for $886, also at Sedo. 

Dale Porter made still another 3-letter .info sale at TheNameStore.com, letting AIW.info go for $800. In other sales at Sedo, Warm.biz went for �675 ($798) and Blank.info booked �550 ($650) while Hidalgo.info and Maths.biz added �400 ($473) each. DUILawyers.us billed $460 at Afternic and Berry.info squeezed $443 at SnapNames.

*****

Our Year-To-Date New TLD Top 50 chart gets two new members this week, including a new Top Dog in Jews.us at $25,000. .US continues to control the upper reaches of the chart with 10 of the first 20 entries. .Info takes another chair with HTML.info settling in at #41. The entry level for this chart currently sits at $3,500. Here are 2005's highest reported new extension sales through Dec. 11:

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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