|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Does anybody have a copy of the German National Anthem handy? I feel like I should be playing it while I write this week's report! Germany's .de country code (the second most popular extension in the world, behind only .com) completely dominated this week's sales action and gave Sedo (the world's leading venue for .de sales) the top 4 slots on our new Top Ten chart. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
As it happens that 141K sale was just the start of an incredible .de onslaught from Sedo. Next comes Boxen.de ("boxing" in English) at $72,509 and a pair at $51,333 each: Busen.de ("bosom" in English) and FKK.de. Over 50K for a 3-letter .de! 3-letter .coms rarely scale heights like that anymore. Sedo wound up claiming half of the new chart for themselves with those four domains at the top and Hostessen.de ("hostesses" in English) at #8 after going for $12,833. Five different venues accounted for the other five slots and in a repeat of last week's performance , the top eight domains ALL went for five figures or more.
Other chart highlights this week included NameWinner's first appearance on our Top Ten. DiscountDrugs.com filled a $30,010 prescription to put that venue among the industry elite. The water was fine at Pool as well with VoiceOverIP.com changing hands for $15,200. Even Ebay made a rare appearance on the big board as that $14,600 sale of FreeWebPages.com (talked about in our Pipeline section last week) proved to be a legitimate deal. The seller of the domain had picked it up with a $69 backorder at SnapNames.com! Afternic.com secured their latest Top Ten appearance with Tenfold.com going for $5,000 and DomainSystems.com anchored the big board with their $4,500 sale of 80K.com. That one shows how a seller can benefit from having a large domain inventory. We see 3-character .coms going for a song each week in the domain forums and on Afternic's Bazaar. However, if you happen to have the one that matches the needs of a specific buyer, you can easily pay for your entire inventory many times over. DomainSystems has had more success than anyone we have seen with this class of domains and the reason is largely due to the massive inventory that they have to offer buyers. DomainSystems' other winners this week included LendingAgent.com at $4,250, A1Nutrition.com at $3,750 and Escorts-International.com at $3,200. Pool had a nice .org sale with Prep.org going for $3,400. The auction venue also attracted $3,100 for Constantinople.com, $3,000 for NetGroup.com, $2,875 for VirusScanners.com, $1,974 for WirelessHome.com and $1,650 for Pharmacy247.com. Pool also had a couple of notable .net sales: Powder.net at $1,938 and Handbags.net at $1,580. Those monster .de sales weren't the end of the story at Sedo this past week. They also racked up $3,852 (�3,000) for an Austrian country code domain, Bikinis.at. Still another .de, LiveMeeting.de, added $2,568 (�2,000) to the pot and 1Plus1.com chipped in another $2,500. Sedo also scored another sweep of our New TLD chart which we will be getting to a little later. Afternic showed that long isn't always wrong as they collected $1,900 for DaytonaBeachRentals.com. The buyer got that domain just in time to cash in on Spring Break next month! In The Pipeline: Our reporting period for this weekly column ends each Sunday, but we already know of a Monday sale that will qualify for next week's Top Ten. An auction for Messaging.com ended at Pool.com for $27,600. Thunyan K. AL-Ghanim was the winning bidder so there is no doubt that transaction will be completed. A $20,000 sale of 38.com has just about completed escrow at Afternic (only the domain transfer remains to be done) so that one is also headed for a Top Ten near you soon. It looks like Pool will have another winner with FAQ.net as well. That auction ended Feb. 17 at $14,500 and should change hands in time to qualify for the big board next week. We are expanding our Year-To-Date Sales Chart from 12 to 15 positions this week. As the year progresses we are periodically adding more positions to the chart so we can show you the best of the big sales in one place. Without a doubt, that biggest surprise to me is .de's standing a little over 6 weeks into the New Year. Who could have guessed that at this point in time, the German country code would be holding 5 of the year's top 6 sales (and that all of those would be over $50,000)!
Those spectacular .de sales have to give a great deal of hope to investors in America's new country code .us. If .us can gain even a fraction of the acceptance .de enjoys in Germany, it will pay off in a big way for early investors. As it stands today though, it is .info and .biz that are doing best in the new extension battles. Those two new global TLD's got a 7-9 month head start on .us and they appear to be benefitting from the increased recognition that comes with more time in the marketplace. For several months it has looked like .info might leave its traveling companions in the dust, but then .biz will pop back up with a chart topping sale as it did this week with Meningitis.biz at $1,925. That sale was part of still another Sedo sweep of our New TLD Top Five. Sedo seems to have sold Meningitis in every extension on earth! .biz doesn't look like a good match for the medical term so we thought it might be the exception but the buyer is apparently going for a complete collection. Here's how the new extensions stack up this week.
Not a lot of big noise this week aside from Meningitis.biz but there are some good ones in the New TLD pipeline. Your humble servant has a four-figure .info sale currently going through Escrow.com. I don't know who the buyer is yet as they are remaining anonymous while being represented by a major European law firm. I am confident the deal will be completed as I had previous dealings with the same attorneys last month when they represented another buyer in a similar four-figure new extension sale. That buyer turned out to be the global conglomerate Deutsche Telekom. There is also a five-figure .info in escrow at Sedo that we referred to last week. We understand that the domain (a three-letter acronym) has been paid for and only the transfer remains to be done. Odds are it will be our chart topper next week. With no blockbusters this week our New TLD (Top Level Domain) Year-To-Date chart is unchanged from last week.
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 like to extend special "Thank You" to Richard Meyer whose help is invaluable in bringing you 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. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Copyright 2003
Domain Name Journal
A Division of
Internet Edge, Inc.