The Beat Goes On!  25K Sale of Beat.com Heads Another Week of Solid Domain Sales 

by Ron Jackson    Archived 2-3-04

The seller of GIF.org,  Germany's Markus Schnermann turned right around and reinvested all of the his proceeds (and then some!) to buy Apotheker.com for $8,000 from BuyDomains and KUR.com from Pool.com for $6,506. The Apotheker.com sale tied for 5th on our new chart and KUR.com was 10th. That gave Schnermann the distinction of being the first person to be both a buyer AND a seller of multiple Top Ten ranked domains in the same week! Apotheker means "pharmacist" in English, a keyword that could be just what the doctor ordered to replenish Schnermann's bank account down the line. Incidentally, there is a live site on GIF.org, but the German buyer based his purchase on the domain name alone as he intends to replace the content.

Just after GIF.org at #4 was Explores.com, a domain that went to high bidder Thunayan K. AL-Ghanim for $8,600 at Pool.com. AL-Ghanim (known to everyone in the domain business as Elequa) already owned the singular version of that domain, so now he has a nice set of bookends (except these will collect PPC revenue instead of dust)! Elequa was an extremely busy buyer last week. He also won the #7 domain, Execution.com, for $7,300 at Pool and took several others at the auction venue as well. 

What would a Top Ten chart be without a .info these days? It happens so often now that it's almost not news anymore! The domain itself might be a surprise though - it's a four-letter acronym, BDSM.info, that fetched $6,947 at Sedo to land in the 8th position. .Info had another strong week overall, but we will save that news for the New TLD section of this article coming up a little later. First let's give you a look at the complete Top Ten for the week just ended.

Pool had an extremely strong sales week. Their four entries in the Top Ten were just the start. They should send Elequa something extra special for Christmas this year because he contributed mightily to keeping the Pool temperature just right! In addition to the #4 and #7 domains on our chart, AL-Ghanim used the auction venue to acquire Primitives.com for $5,200 and Simulate.com for $4,090. The Pool also proved inviting to other buyers as we saw UsedPianos.com for $5,000 and UsedHeavyEquipment.com for $4,001. Other sales included KidsTV.com ($3,350), MyCards.com ($2,900), UsedPiano.com ($2,700) and OnlineCreditCheck.com ($2,590). Want more? OK, how about WholesaleGames.com ($2,300), BridalCreations.com ($2,285) and ElectricBoat.com ($2,001). We know you don't have all day, so we won't go below 2K, other than to note the sale of AMO.org for $1,050, a nice price for a 3-letter .org. 

If you think Pool must have run the table and left little for anyone else, think again! Sedo  hitting the Top Ten bulls eye twice (with e-Mails.com at $8,000 and the aforementioned BDSM.info). Sedo also bagged a trio of 3K plus sales. Two of those were .de (German country code) domains: Waermeplus.de ("warmth plus" in English) for $3,284 and Intranets.de for $3,158. Avira.com was at the same level, going for $3,143. Sedo also dominated the new extension chart as you will see a bit later.

That 10K sale of GIF.org wasn't the only big .org sale of the week. DomainSystems had a pair of very nice sales in that extension as well, collecting $5,450 for HomeHealth.org and $2,754 for V2.org. In addition, Monte Cahn and company were able to laugh all the way to the bank thanks to kackle.com going for $2,150. 

Afternic was back in a big way with that 20K sale of Password.net. Another striking sale at the Nic was Franchise.ru going for $2,780. That's the first significant Russian country code domain sale we have had to report. OrlandoMarketing.com went for $2,000 at the same venue and for those who see value in hyphenated domains, Afternic provided some validation after S-Hotels.com went for $1,250.

Another interesting sale we heard about was Henry Alvarido's $1,500 sale of Caidas.com at his GoBuyDomains.com venue. That's the Spanish word for "falls" and it went to a buyer in Barcelona, Spain. Just goes to show that it pays to brush up on those old high school foreign language skills. Today I truly regret goofing off so much in my Spanish and German classes!

In The Pipeline: If you think Pool has a big week this past week, it may seem like peanuts next week. On Monday (the start of our next reporting period) they had two auctions close above 25K! MikesAppartment.com ended at $26,166 and KOD.com finished even higher at $36,000! If the high bidders make good on payment those will both be headed to a Top Ten chart near you soon! Incidently, if you are thinking MikesAppartment.com looks like a misspelling - it is. But even this misspell scores 1,991 in Overture with the extension! Also take note that if you are offended by adult material you don't want to go to the site with the correct spelling! Now you know why there is so much errant traffic for that domain. 

Rewind: We received a tip that GreatDomains.com is now listing two notable domains on their front page as being sold. The company hasn't confirmed selling prices so we can't report anything official, but UFO.org had been listed at $40,000 and Vegas.TV at $35,000. Anything close to those prices would be landmark sales for both .org and .TV (the country code for Tuvalu).

Before we move along to this week's New TLD story, let's take a look at the Top Ten Year-To-Date Chart. Here is how the all-extension records stand as we wrap up the opening month of 2004.

New TLD Section

Who would have thought that after four weeks of selling domains worldwide a .info would be leading the main chart Year-To-Date! Week in and week out the new extension is starting to prove it has staying power. This week is no different, with a quartet of four-figure .info sales leading our New TLD Chart. 

Sedo had all of those sales, as well as the final one on the chart, a .biz, that gave them a clean sweep of the new extension list after an uncharacteristic absence last week. Leading the way of course is BDSM.info, the $6900 domain that bulled its way on to the main Top Ten. Next was Billigflieger.info (German for "discount airlines") at $1,465. Checks.info was right behind at $1,137 followed by another German term in the 4th slot. See for yourself:

I have to tell you that #5 domain blows me away. Yes, it is a still-wet-behind-the-ears .biz, but as a movie fan, I LOVE that keyword (and the fact that theater returns over 200,000 in Overture doesn't hurt either)! I think someone got a steal there and a few years down the line people are never going to believe the buyer got it for under 1K (just refer them to our Archive for proof)! Sedo reported another .biz that just missed the chart, BrautModen.biz which went for $758. The term is German for "bridal fashion".

Our friend Paul Tattersfield of GPM in England posted some fascinating statistics about .info and .biz at the DomainState forum today. He compiled a list of the newly indexed web pages at Google and compared them to a similar list from one year ago to determine which extensions were showing the most growth in terms of pages on the web (as a point of reference, .com pages grew by 11.2% in the past year).

His data showed .info leading the way among all extensions with 59.31% more pages than the new TLD had one year ago. .biz was was right behind and almost in a statistical tie with a growth rate of 57.32%! The other new extension we track, .us, showed a 33.54% growth rate, so all three appear to be making headway by this measure (.info & biz appeared on the market 5-7 months before .us and that head start probably accounts for some of their higher growth rate).  Paul provides data on 30 different extensions, so if you are interested in the others, click this DomainState link and it will take you directly to the thread where he posted (under his User ID gpmgroup).

Another interesting development this week was news of the State of California's selection of a .info (even though the .com was available) for an anti-pollution billboard campaign. Drivers in the Golden State are seeing the URL DontTrashCalifornia.info splashed across freeway billboards. Things like that go a long way toward achieving public recognition for the new extension.

Now let's take a look at where we are at with the New TLD's (Top Level Domains) Year-To-Date. You will note that all entries top the 5K mark (with the leader topping 25K)!

Not bad at all...and certainly several steps above the "worthless" label that the diminishing corps of skeptics likes to use when discussing new extensions!  

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]. I would again like to extend a special "Thank You"  to Richard Meyer whose help is invaluable in bringing you these reports. Thanks as well to Page Howe and a host of others who sent us sales information!

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.