Six-Figure Sales of Truck.com and Woman.com at DomainSystems and Sedo Signal Continuing Market Surge 

by Ron Jackson    Archived 2-17-04

The stars of the show are Truck.com and Woman.com, a pair of blockbusters that put their sales venues, DomainSystems.com and Sedo, in the spotlight alongside Alex Lerman of Dollars4Domains.com. Mr. Lerman, a buyer of quality generic domains, paid $101,000 to acquire Truck.com through DomainSystems. The buyer of Woman.com chose to remain anonymous and also requested that the exact sales price remain confidential. However he authorized the auction venue, Sedo, to let us know that the domain changed hands for a "low six-figure sum".  

Sedo also handled another stunning sale, overseeing an $88,853 deal for Kreuzfahrten.de (the word for "cruises" in German). This is the highest sale we have ever reported for a German country code domain. Another .de also made our new Top Ten with .com claiming all of the other slots. There has been some exciting news among the new extensions (.info, .biz and .us) in recent weeks, but when buyers start rolling out the heavy artillery the world's two most popular extensions (.com and .de) are usually the targets.

The top eight domains ALL went for five figures or more, which is a first, and the cost of admission just to make the chart was also the highest ever at more than $7,000! You will note that Woman.com doesn't appear on the chart itself. Without a specific number there is no way to rank a domain numerically among other sales. However, we have set up a new section on our Year-To-Date chart so that sales of this magnitude will remain visible throughout the year.

We'll come to that a bit later, but first let's dive into the new Top Ten where DomainSystems, Sedo, Afternic.com and Pool.com all had multiple entries to further cement their positions among the world's leading sales venues. 

One nice byproduct of doing this column is getting to brush up on my foreign language skills. They were previously non-existent, but with all of the European terms I am exposed to on our Top Ten each week, I would say my level of expertise has now been elevated to "pathetic" and  "laughable" may even be within reach! This is no small feat, especially when something like Neuf.com, the French word for "nine", comes in at number three. How is anyone supposed to keep that straight! One thing I have no trouble appreciating is the $19,040 price the domain commanded at Sedo.

Sedo also sold the German domain meaning "cheaper telephoning" that completed our chart and had another .de just a few dollars behind. AutoVermietungen.de ("auto insurance" in English) went for $7,236. That would have placed firmly in the middle of the Top Ten in an average week, but this was no average week (though there are increasing signs that sales like these will become the new norm in 2004). A couple of other notables from Sedo were Tageszeitung.de ("daily newspaper" in English) going for $3,808 and SecuredLoan.co.uk which sold for �2,000 ($3,733). As strong as their week was, Sedo told us it looks like they will have some even bigger deals to announce before the month is out.

Business also continues to accelerate for DomainSystems. In addition to driving a lot of competition off the road with that Truck.com sale, Monte Cahn's crew brokered the $16,800 sale of #4 domain BeachHouseRentals.com. They even netted $4,425 for a hyphenated domain, Cancer-Center.com. Cahn also told us the company had many other strong sales that confidentiality agreements keep him from revealing. 

It is worth noting again that what you see in this column is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the overall sales market is concerned. I have been told privately about a number of very large sales that would easily make our charts if the buyer, seller or both had not requested confidentiality. They have perfectly sound reasons for doing so, especially those who are buying with the idea of reselling down the line. Fortunately, enough participants in key transactions are willing to share information to give us a good sampling of what is going on in the overall market (and it continues to look better every week).

Sales at Pool reflect that view as well. In addition to those three five-figure deals they have on the Top Ten (BodyWrap.com at $15,500, AOM.com at $14,502 and Sketches.com at $10,099), Pool has others in the pipeline (coming up below) and continues to pile up four-figure sales at a healthy clip. This week those included Tweenies.com at $5,600 and Gamewiners.com for $5,100 (spelling is correct as shown and this typo-domain attracts 2300 in Overture with the extension)! In addition, NVV.com commanded $3,800, ShortStay.com went for $3,750 and one that would seem destined for trademark trouble - ToysRS.com - went for $3,100. 

Even a long domain like AmericanCreditCard.com went for $1,450 at Pool and a three-letter .net, KUL.net (this is a word in some languages) went for $1,250. There are those who think Pool auctions always end up at abnormally high prices but Jeweler.net (over 100,000 for the term without extension in Overture) looked like a good deal to me at $875 and Resumes.org at $640 appears to be a nice buy too (over 400,000 for the term in Overture).

Afternic is always a great source for good buys as well, but with the market rising prices are moving up there just as they are elsewhere. They hit the daily double on our Top Ten with NewHouses.com at $10,000 and GenePharm.com at $7,624. Another Afternic winner was MegaBalls.com at $5,450 and from a buyer's standpoint I like Undiscovered.com which went for $1,500. Afternic also seems to have better luck than most with .ws (Samoan country code marketed by some registrars to mean "website"). Hydrogen.ws went for $350 there this week.

Theo Develegas of Orlando, Florida (known to domain forum regulars as TimeChange.com) was floating on air this week after saying goodbye to Gravity.org for $2,200 in a private transaction. The .orgs are enjoying increasing demand along with the other major extensions and there is more evidence of that in the section below.

In The Pipeline: A frequent buyer/seller who is well-known to us tells us his $15,000 purchase of SuperNova.org is now in escrow and Pool had an auction for VoiceOverIP.com end at $15,200 on Saturday (Feb. 7). That one hasn't changed hands yet and as a rule of thumb we don't officially report such high value sales until they have been finalized. If paid for, this one could wind up on our Top Ten next week. 

You'll recall we mentioned Each.com in this section last week after it went for $23,500 in a Pool auction that ended Feb. 2. That one has not changed hands yet either. Another one the jury is still out on comes from Ebay where FreeWebPages.com ended with a high bid of $14,600 on Feb. 2. We are always suspicious of high dollar auctions on Ebay (due to a long history of bogus sales there) and this one is no exception. The seller has a Feedback rating of 1 (and he was the buyer in that single transaction). The bidder who pushed the eventual winner up to the final price has zero feedback. That is not proof of a fraudulent sale, but those are some of the earmarks of bad deals from the past so we'll wait and see how it plays out.

Before we move on to this week's New TLD section, let's take a look at the Year-To-Date Sales Chart. It has been shaken up a good bit this week thanks to those high dollar sales noted above. In addition 2004's dazzling dozen, we have added an Unforgettable Footnotes section at the bottom of the chart to keep track of landmark sales like Woman.com that are among the YTD leaders but can't be placed on the chart numerically.