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Caution: Don't just glance at our Top Ten chart and leave thinking you know what happened in the domain business this week! Our new list makes it look like it was an off week for the industry but that was not the case at all. You'll see Actor.com at the top of the big board after it did $30,000 at the Sedo.com box office. But after that, no other five-figure sales. |
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With those factored into the mix it was clearly another week to remember. Consider that in addition to the chart topper they were allowed to report, Sedo racked up four major sales they could not release. Those were valued at �35,000 ($42,906), �21,500 ($26,356), �16,820 ($20,619) and �11,600 ($14,220) respectively. CEO Matthew Bentley told us Sedo might be allowed to reveal the name of the �35,000 domain after a deal is closed on a similar domain. If that happens we will include it in our Rewind section when the name is made public. In another large confidential sale, Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com handled a $42,000 transaction. Even with some of the biggest sales unreported there are some fascinating sales to look at this week. We even had a Swedish country code domain hit our Top Ten for the first time with CreditCard.se landing in the #2 position after going for $7,479 at Sedo. The1.net was right behind after attracting $7,200 at Afternic.com. Then you have the big news for .biz fans who finally see one of their favorites on the big board. Book.biz came in fourth after a British buyer paid $7,000 to acquire it in an auction at Galcomm.com. That was just one of several impressive new extension sales as you will see in our New TLD section coming up later. .US joined .biz in the spotlight there this week, breaking the stranglehold .info has had on the new extension chart. Even if all of those unreported sales had been released this week, Book.biz still would have made the Top Ten, so the new global TLD deserves this chance to take a bow. Pool.com swept the next five positions with Sedo nailing down the final slot to give them bookends on the big board. That #10 domain was one of Centralnic's new subdomain products. Those usually don't sell for much but in this case a powerful keyword, Sex, overcame the seldom used .eu.com extension. Here's a look at all of the top reported sales for the week ending June 6:
Pool.com (the subject of our June cover story) never fails to ring up a basket-full of mid four figure sales. The five you see on the new Top Ten are typical examples of what Pool customers hunt for on the site. #5 FunBrian.com comes with some terrific traffic numbers (5,510 in Overture with the extension). The misspelled domain Horseraceing.com sold for almost as much, though it had a much smaller Overture score (86 with the extension). AmericaDrugs.com and AffiliateSoftware.com appear to have been bought for their branding potential, but #8 Salarys.com (another misspell) has a nice 213 Overture number. Pool had a load of additional four figure sales, including ProgressiveAuto.com at $4,100, PrinceHotel.com at $3,776 and SouthAsia.com at $3,600. Also, EroticPersonals.com scored a steamy $3,350, with MyFirstSex.com and BrazilianBooty.com right behind at $3,100 each. Manolo.com was worth $3,033, SkyJobs.com $3,000 and DSSAuctions.com $2,750. Other notables included ManufactureHomes.com at $2,656, DuneBuggys.com at $2,600 and Vastu.com at $2,482. Another DSS domain, DSSForums.com went for $2,306, followed by RestaurantFinder.com at $2,280 and MortgageAdvisors.com at $2,050. Sedo's list was spiced with variety. In addition to Antig.com at $3,000, there was Buying.org at �2,500 ($3,066) and ReplacementKitchenDoors.co.uk (I bet I could replace a kitchen door before you could say the entire name!) at �1,500 ($2,760). ImmoFinanz.com went for �2,000 ($2,453) while BreakersYard.com attracted �1,299 ($2,391) and InvestingInProperty.com returned �1,000 ($1,840). Sedo and Pool will both reappear with some strong sales in our New TLD section. Continuing around the horn, Afternic added $3,000 sale from the sale of Prose.com while Moniker/DomainSystems chalked up $2,378 for FakeOrReal.com and $2,500 for MobileWash.com. Monker/DomainSystems also sold a package of 11 domains that each followed the form (CountryName)Tourism.com, for example JapanTourism.com, FinlandTourism.com, etc. That deal was worth a total of $10,000 and is especially interesting in light of the story in our Rewind section below about the Australian government paying an absurd $201,000 for TourismAustralia.com. Over at Enom's Club Drop, the top sale was Newgronds.com at $3,700, followed by CardAccount.com at $2,000 and Newfoundlands.com at $1,900. In another interesting auction SexPistols.com hit the bullseye for $1,500. Rewind: A story just broke this week about the government of Australia paying an astounding $201,000 for the mediocre domain TourismAustralia.com back in April (the domain score zero in Overture). When the purchase came to like it sparked a government hearing though it doesn't look like anyone will be held accountable. The lucky seller was one Graeme Haycraft who is now pictured in the dictionary next to the definition of the phrase "laughing all the way to the bank!" That mammoth boondoggle did have one positive outcome - it landed the Aussie domain in the #4 position on our Year-To-Date chart, Our Top Ten above only includes sales from the past seven days so TourismAustralian.com was not eligible for that chart (and we didn't want to chance having any of our readers die from laughter.) Actor.com also makes the YTD list, tying for the 30th position and expanding our chart to an even 40 domains this week. Here are the big winners so far in 2004:
The new extensions, .biz, .info and .us continue to come of age. The first of those to roll out, .info, has been hogging the New TLD chart for months now, but this week .biz and .us finally got to take a turn in the spotlight. As you already know from our mainstream Top Ten, Book.biz was the week's big winner. .US almost stole the show though, taking five of the seven slots on our chart after a series of big auctions at Pool.com. Anime.us led the way at $2,607 which was good for the #2 position on our Super 7. We spoke with the buyer of that domain, Stu Smith, who told us he spent almost $10,000 to claim about 40 .US domains in Pool auctions. His other catches included Traffic.us at $725 and Key.us at a bargain $388. Four more Pool sales followed the #3 domain, Prostitute.info that went for $1,888 at Sedo. Those included #4 Show.us at $1,625 and #5 Cellphone.us at $1,050. Another auction for Images.us ended at $1,550 but the domain hasn't been transferred yet. It will likely appear on next week's chart. There were other four figure New TLD sales that can't be included due to confidentiality requests. A close friend sold a German city name in .info for $1,200 and also a 3-letter .info for $1,000. He was also allowed to release the name from another sale, Furnace.info at $900. Here is a look at the complete Super 7 for the week ending June 6:
Automobile.us and Postcards.us, each at $940 were among several buys we think will be long term bargains. We think the best deal of all was Tires.us, taken at Pool for just $915. The German word for tires (Reifen) sold in .biz for $6,894 earlier this year. The size of that market is so large it is staggering. To own the definitive word for that industry in any major extension has to be a wonderful thing. Some other excellent buys at Pool included Hire.us at $576, Cellphones.us at $466 and Fetish.us for $420. LAN.us cost just $400 and KeyWest.us $370. We predict that anyone looking back on these prices just one year from now will be amazed at how little they cost. Book.biz was strong enough to power its way onto our Year-To-Date New TLD chart, taking over the #9 position. Here is a look at 2004's top sellers through June 6.
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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Copyright 2004
Domain Name Journal
A Division of
Internet Edge, Inc.