However, in
this case, there are good reasons to include Casino.com.
First, there is no doubt that even without a business attached, this
domain name would have been the highest priced domain sold last
week. Casino is one of the premier keywords on the internet and
some casino advertisers pay close to $20 per click to get casino
traffic. Second, there is a good deal of speculation that the buyer
might junk the existing portal anyhow. If the purchaser is a major
casino, they might prefer to build a new site and keep all of the traffic for their own
business rather than serve as a portal that takes a cut for
directing traffic to others. If you would like to read more about this landmark sale, here is
a link to Boss Media's press
release about the sale. The highest valued sale for a
pure domain name last week was a solid one-word dictionary domain - enhance.com
which went for $20,000 at Afternic.
The #3 slot was also worth five figures, as charts.com earned
$18,000 for the seller through Sedo.
Here is the complete Top Ten list. Keep in mind that these are
the highest value sales that have been reported in the past
week.
This column is meant to be an educational tool, not a complete list
documenting ALL high value domain sales. Such a list is
impossible to produce because many sales are kept
private at the insistence of buyers, sellers or both. These are the highest
sales from
key players in the domain aftermarket that have reported sales to us.
Domain
Name Journal's Top Ten
Reported Domain
Sales - Mon. Oct. 20 through Sun. Oct. 26, 2003
Euro to Dollar Conversion (� to $) is Based on Rates in
Effect Mon. Oct. 26 |
|
Domain |
Sold For
|
Where
Sold |
1. |
Casino.com |
$5,500,000 |
Private
Sale |
2. |
Enhance.com |
$20,000 |
Afternic |
3. |
Charts.com |
$18,000 |
Sedo |
4. |
Evangelist.com |
$9,000 |
Afternic |
5. |
Vertrieb.de
("Sales" or "Marketing" in German) |
�6,500
= $7,618 |
Sedo |
6. |
Freund.de
("Friend" in German) |
�4,900
= $5,742 |
Sedo |
7. |
CampingShop.com |
$5,000 |
Sedo |
8. |
Shirts.de
|
�4,060
= $4,758 |
Sedo |
9. |
Webpanto.com
|
�3,333
= $3,907 |
Sedo |
10. |
Solarium.ch |
�3,300
= $3,866 |
Sedo |
You might recall that the #4 entry, evangelist.com was
included in our first
Domain Sales column the week before last. At that time a
buyer had agreed to purchase the domain at Afternic, but it
had not gone through Escrow. Since some sales fall through before
the escrow process is completed, we decided that
all reported sales should be transactions that have completed the
escrow process as evangelist.com did last week.
Germany's country code .de (the second most popular
extension in the world, behind only .com) continues to show great
strength, taking half of the remaining 6 spots in the Top Ten. CampingShop.com,
the Spanish language Webpanto.com and a Swiss country
code domain (the first to make out chart) Solarium.ch
complete the list. Sedo racked up all of those sales and had
three other strong ones: Filesharing.net and Donkey-Tools.de,
each of which went for �3,000 ($3,514) and FrenchLiving.com
which fetched $2,500.
If you are wondering what's the deal with the hyphenated .de
going for over $3,500, eDonkey is an extremely popular file
sharing program in Germany. Strong enough to make a related term
like Donkey Tools (even with the hyphen) attract a nice bid.
Another sale that has to be mentioned is the $1,000 paid for Lyrics.ws
at Afternic. .ws is the country code for Samoa that
has been marketed by private companies in the U.S. as meaning
"web site". Resale values are usually very low, so a
four-figure sale, even for a strong keyword like lyrics, is an eye
opener. Afternic reported another $1,000 sale for moise.com.
There was a sale at Pool.com Oct. 24 that would have made
the Top Ten but the WhoIs information has not changed and until it
does (signaling that the domain has been paid for and transferred)
we will not report the sale. That one will likely appear next week
along with another Pool sale in the same price range Oct. 27 that is awaiting transfer.
DomainSystems.com
would have placed one or more domains on the Top Ten but had to keep
specific prices confidential at the request of their clients. They
did give us the names of 5 domains that totaled $32,740 in sales (an average of
over $6,500 per domain): AboveQuota.com, GoToBrazil.com,
Maharani.com, TL8.com and ZJ2.com.
I have to admit that I
continue to be surprised by the appearance of 3-character .coms
(combining letters and numbers) on DomainSystems' best seller lists.
These combinations (many of which remain unregistered) generally are
given very low valuations among resellers. However, these sales
demonstrate that if you happen to have a combination that a buyer
needs it can be an entirely different ballgame. DomainSystems CEO Monte
Cahn says both of those 3-character sales were to large
corporations, one purchased to identify a product and the other as a
brand name for a subsidiary.
In addition to our Top Ten list we are keeping track of new
extension sales (.info, .biz and .us) with a separate New
TLD Top Five chart each week (both the Top Ten and New TLD Top
Five are likely to be expanded to include more domains as more
sellers provide data in the weeks and months ahead).
It was a slow week for the new extensions though, with no
reported sales above three figures. In a reverse of last week's
chart, .biz took the top spots with .info trailing.
Domain
Name Journal's New TLD Top Five
Reported .info, .biz & .us Domain Sales Oct.
20 - Oct. 26, 2003
Euro to Dollar Conversion (� to $) is Based on Rates in
Effect Mon. Oct. 26 |
|
Domain |
Sold For
|
Where
Sold |
1. |
Kontaktanzeigen.biz
("Personal Ads" in German) |
�600
= $703 |
Sedo |
2. |
Offshore.biz
|
$700 |
DomainState |
3. |
FAQ.biz
|
�300
= $351 |
Sedo |
4. |
Brandschutz.info
("Fire Protection" in German) |
�230
= $269 |
Sedo |
5. |
Gay-Australia.info
Gay-Europe.info
|
$250
$250 |
Afternic
Afternic |
I have to believe that there were other higher value sales
in the new extensions last week that were not reported to us. If you are
involved in a significant sale that we can verify (as was the case
with offshore.biz, sold by England's LeadingNames.com
through a post in the DomainState.com forum), let us know -
you just might see your domain on the charts!
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 for this column,
just drop a note to [email protected].
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. 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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