Harmony.com Hits A $50,000 High Note in Sale at GreatDomains 

by Ron Jackson  

That is an appropriate domain to lead the new DNJournal.com Top Ten because everything remained harmonious in the industry this week. Five other five-figure sales were reported and it is now obvious that the summer slowdown anticipated by some will be a no show this year. 

Those of us in the industry aren't the only ones taking notice. A week rarely goes by without a mainstream national or regional press organization calling us to ask what's going on. Today it was the Boston Herald who is working on a story about the new domain boom. The question is always the same - is this more late 90's style speculation or is there some real substance this time around? 

The answer also remains the same. This time it's different. Buyers have real revenue numbers (from pay per click income) to make purchase decisions that make sense. What's more it looks like many of them are acquiring assets that will be considerably more valuable in the months and years ahead. With more and more advertisers chasing highly targeted traffic, revenue streams are likely to see continued steady growth for some time to come (barring any unexpected dislocation to the general economy). 

Those who are always looking for a cloud in the silver lining might point to our #2 domain, Headstones.com, as being a bad omen! However, when they catch the $28,000 price tag chiseled into the granite at Pool.com, even the doom and gloomers will have to admit things are going to be a bit slow around the sales graveyard for awhile! Pool had a virtual reservoir of big buys to report this week, including HooverDam.com which generated $25,500 to finish third. The auctioneers from Ottawa wound up claiming 4 of the 10 positions on the Big Board.

Afternic.com also got into the act, hitting the Daily Double with DebtCollection.com at $11,000 and RKK.com at exactly half that amount. Those domains placed #4 and #10 respectively. Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com weighed in with one of the year's best .org sales, dialing up $10,250 for 888.org. Those numbers are immediately recognizable to Americans as a key toll-free phone number prefix. 888 adds up to a #5 ranking on our new Top Ten. Moniker CEO Monte Cahn told us they had three other sales in the same range that were subject to non-disclosure agreements.

The final reported five-figure sale came from Namewinner.com where a buyer saw his fat wallet quickly drop $10,250 thanks to HollywoodDiet.com. There are many more sizeable sales to talk about, but first lets take a look at the complete Top Ten for the week ending Sunday, August 1: 

As you survey the second half of the chart, you might think Pool's #7 Mysence.com doesn't appear to make much sense at $7,550. However when you get a gander at the Overture number; 6,377 with the extension, it all adds up! Pool also claimed the 8th spot with 800Number.com at $6,388. Seller David Brucker was next after letting MovieStop.com go for $6,000 in a private sale. Sedo.com and Afternic closed out the leaderboard in a tie for the 10th position. Sedo's share came from the $5,500 sale of Visos.com. Afternic's 3-letter entry, RKK.com, just edged out another nice sale at the same venue, Educations.com, which went for $5,200. 

Before moving on to the action beyond the Big Board, we want to note a new experiment being undertaken by GreatDomains, the seller of this week's #1 domain. There are domainers who have spent years accumulating names in a specific genre. They are often loathe to break those collections up, even if they've decided it is time to let them go. GreatDomains has decided to test the waters for those interested in selling a large block of domains at once. The trial balloon is a group of 50 government-related domains currently listed on their site for $100,000. If the response is good, GreatDomains will likely make that sales option permanent for sellers seeking an all or none solution.  

Now let's get back in the trenches. Germany's .de didn't hit the Top Ten this week, but as usual, they were all over the sales sheet at Sedo.  Ethics.de earned �4,000 ($4,819) to lead the way. Hard-Rock.de tore through a �3,000 ($3,617) riff while Haushaltsroboter.de ("household robots") was a step behind at �2,000 ($2,411). The others were Skills.de at �1,550 ($1,869) and ReiseForum.de ("travel forum") at �1,500 ($1,808). Sedo also banked $4,000 each for OBI.net and Ododo.com. In another interesting transaction, a German buyer laid out �1,300 ($1,567) for a reversed version of America's current Democratic presidential ticket, EdwardsKerry.com. 

You'll recall that Sedo also has the exclusive listing for the proper form of that political pairing, KerryEdwards.com. A highly publicized auction for the domain ended without a sale Saturday night (July 31). A $150,000 bid had reportedly been made when the auction opened, but Sedo CEO Matthew Bentley said that bid was withdrawn shortly before the auction ended. In a press release issued today (August 3), Bentley said �We are currently in discussions with several interested parties, and hope to have a sale completed within the next few days."  Although terms of the discussions are not being disclosed, Bentley indicated that it was likely that the domain would change hands �at a significant discount� to the previous high bid of $150,000.

Pool's four domains on our Top Ten was just the tip of the iceberg for the Canadian auction house. They also collected $3,900 for XXXModel.com and $3,700 for WeddingGames.com. Nuvision.com added another $2,550, followed by MobileDate.com at $2,383, WindhamHotels.com at $2,300, Discontinue.com at $2,283 and InfoPass.com at $2,052. Pool also had a nice trio of .net sales headed by Invite.net at $3,388. Corkscrew.net wound up at $1,494 with Donor.net contributing another $1,263.

Major improvements at Enom's Club Drop continue to bear fruit. They caught a pair of three-letter .coms on the same day and wound up selling ARV.com for $3,500 and EBZ.com for $2,900. Some far bigger fish are currently swimming through the Pipeline as you will see in that section below. Club Drop has beefed up their registrar roster and fine-tuned their software to a degree that is starting to pay handsome dividends. 

In some other notable sales, DotcomAgency.com sold Jebs.com for $3,500 and ChristianMortgage.com for $2,800. Arvind Reddy has a sales site called 100DollarDomains.com but budget domains aren't the only thing on his bill of fare. He just moved FantasyFootballLeagues.com in a $2,000 sale to the owners of KFFL.com. Dolls.net sold for the same amount in a deal at DNForum.com. 

In the Pipeline: To underscore what we said about Club Drop above, the drop catching department at Enom has just about taken over the pipeline this week. A public auction for B2B.net has ended at $10,200. In Club Drop's system, caught domains go to a private auction involving those who placed an advance bid. If the winner of that auction defaults, as was the case with B2B.net, a new auction is held that is open to the general public. This time, the deadbeat bidder actually ended up doing Enom a favor as the domain wound up going for almost $2,000 more in the public auction than it did in the private sale. 

Also at Club Drop, an auction for EVZ.com still had six days to go (ending Aug. 9) but is already at $7,000. CD also has an auction underway for Kinko.com (1,255 in Overture with the extension) which was just caught today (August 3). In auctions that have ended and are awaiting payment, Dynamo.com went for $6,500, EquityPlus.com for $4,600 and Vulture.com for $3,600. 

At Pool, Thunyan K. AL-Ghanim (Elequa) won an auction for FootballClub.com with a $5,488 bid. He also picked up Junior.net for $4,880 and WIL.net for $3,388. We don't consider sales to be official until the domains have been paid for and transferred, but with Elequa involved nothing is likely to derail these buys.

*****

Our Year-To-Date chart welcomes two new members this week. Harmony.com high steps onto the list at #21 and Headstones.com now marks the 41st position. Here is the complete rundown of big winners so far in 2004: