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

by Ron Jackson  

Harmony.com - no matter what style of music you prefer a name like that will always sound sweet! DomainDeluxe.com certainly thought so, as they drew $50,000 from their bank account to lay claim to this classic at GreatDomains. That's a lot of money but it's hardly an extravagant purchase. With an Overture rating of 8,074 with the extension, they'll eventually get their money back and more from traffic conversion (or a future buyer with even deeper pockets).


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: 

Domain Name Journal's Top Ten 
Reported Domain Sales - Mon. July 26, 2004 - Sun. Aug. 1, 2004
Euro to Dollar Conversion (� to $) is Based on Rates in Effect Tue. Aug. 3

  Domain

Sold For

Where Sold
1.  Harmony.com $50,000 GreatDomains
2.  Headstones.com    $28,000 Pool
3.  HooverDam.com  $25,500 Pool
4.  DebtCollection.com $11,000 Afternic
5. 888.org $10,250 Moniker/
DomainSystems
6. HollywoodDiet.com $10,070 Namewinner
7.  Mysence.com  $7,550 Pool
8. 800Number.com  $6,388 Pool
9. MovieStop.com   $6,000 Pvt Sale
10.
(tie)
Visos.com  $5,500 Sedo
10.
(tie)
RKK.com $5,500 Afternic

Keep in mind that these are the highest value sales that have been reported in the past week. This column is meant to be an educational tool, not a complete list documenting ALL high value domain sales. Such a list is impossible to produce because many sales are kept private at the insistence of buyers, sellers or both.

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:

Domain Name Journal's Year-To-Date Fab 45
Highest Reported 2004 Domain Sales through Sun. Aug. 1, 2004  
Euro to Dollar Conversion (� to $) 
Based on Rates in Effect When Sales Were Originally Reported by DNJ

 - Domains entering the chart this week are highlighted in green -

  Domain

Sold For

Where Sold
1. CreditCards.com $2.75 Million Private Sale
2. Mercury.com $700,000
(700K cash + $400,000 in goods & services)
Private Sale
3. ME.com $460,000 Moniker / DomainSystems
4. Smoking.com $325,000 GreatDomains
5.  Commerce.com $180,000 Sedo
6. Beef.com $150,000 GreatDomains
7.  IQTest.de     �123,625 = $147,635 Sedo
8. TourismAustralia.com AUD $201,000 = US$146,200 Pvt Sale
9.  Sexkontakte.de
"Sex contacts" in German
 �110,000 = $141,175 Sedo
10.  MR.com $125,000 GreatDomains
11.  Truck.com  $101,000 Moniker / DomainSystems
12.  Kreuzfahrten.de
"Cruises" in German
�70,000 = $88,853 Sedo
13.  Kazalite.com $83,500 Pool
14. Sedo.com $80,000 Private Sale
15.  BackCountry.com $75,000 Private Sale
16.  Boxen.de
"Boxing" in German
�56,500 = $72,509 Sedo
17.  Stop.com  $62,500 Moniker/
DomainSystems
18. ClearDay.com $60,000 Moniker / DomainSystems
19.
tie 
FKK.de  �40,000 = $51,333 Sedo
19.
tie 
Busen.de
"Bosom" in German
 �40,000 = $51,333 Sedo
21.
tie 
Harmony.com $50,000 GreatDomains
21.
tie
Mirror.com $50,000 Moniker / DomainSystems
23. CarFinancing.com $46,000 Pool
24. Hardcore.co.uk �25,000 = $45,951 Sedo
25. Meningitis.com $45,000 Private Sale
26.  Mister.com    $38,800 Pvt Sale
27. Faces.com $38,700 Moniker / DomainSystems
28. Metropol.com �30,500 = $38,230 Sedo

29. 

Nackt.de
"Nude or Naked" in German
�30,000 = $38,081 Sedo
30.  Fotos.com �30,000 = $35,793 Private Sale
31.  Cairo.com $35,001 Sedo
32. 
tie
Miss.com $35,000 Afternic
32.
tie
Spamzilla.com $35,000 MarketEvolver
34. CleanEnergy.com $31,950 Moniker / DomainSystems
35. Humor.de �25,520 = $30,449 Sedo
36.  Single.co.uk  �24,600 = $30,341 Sedo
37.  DiscountDrugs.com $30,010 Namewinner
38.
tie 
AntiDepressants.com $30,000 Private Sale
38.
tie
Actor.com $30,000 Sedo
40.  NewYork.info �22,000 = $28,086 Sedo
41.  Headstones.com    $28,000 Pool

42.

XPart.com $27,981 Moniker / DomainSystem

43.

Messaging.com   $27,600 Pool

44.

HotelReservation.com $27,500 Sedo
45.
tie
LH.com    $27,000 GreatDomains

45.
tie

NQ.com $27,000 Afternic
45. 
tie
Computadoras.com
(Spanish for "computers")
$27,000 Pvt Sale
Unforgettable Footnotes:
Below are landmark sales where the price level (denoted by X characters) was released but not the exact price paid. This will allow us to note significant sales that are among the Year-To-Date leaders but cannot be ranked numerically due  to a confidentiality agreement that kept the exact price private. Date shown indicates when the sale was first reported in Domain Name Journal. High - Mid - Low indicates the range within the price category shown by multiple X's.
Juegos.com (June 29, 2004) High $XXX,XXX Pvt Sale
Woman.com (Feb. 10, 2004) Low $XXX,XXX Sedo
CellularPhones.com (May. 11, 2004) Low $XXX,XXX Pvt Sale
IS.com (May 4, 2004)  (No range) $XXX,XXX Pvt Sale
B�cher.de (Mar. 16, 2004)
{"books" in German)
High $XX,XXX Sedo


New TLD Section

After seeing some other venues (and private sales) horn in on their territory, Sedo is back in charge of the new extension chart this week, sweeping the top four positions and racking up a trio of four-figure sales. Catfish.info swims to the top of our Super 7 after going for $1,808. Looks like a nice catch considering that catfish farming is a very substantial business. What better way to tell people about the product than this nice .info?

Two more excellent keyword domains tied for #2, one a .biz and one a .info. Intranet.biz and Statistik.info ("statistic" in German) each commanded $1,447. .Biz completed Sedo's winning quartet with Romantik.biz ("romantic" in German) attracting a $687 love letter.  Here are all of the reported New TLD top sellers  for the past week:

Domain Name Journal's New TLD Super 7 
  Reported .info, .biz & .us Domain Sales  July 26, 2004 - Aug. 1, 2004
Euro to Dollar Conversion (� to $) is Based on Rates in Effect Tue. Aug. 3

  Domain

Sold For

Where Sold
1. Catfish.info  �1,500 = $1,808 Sedo
2.
tie 
Intranet.biz    �1,200 = $1,447 Sedo
2.
tie
Statistik.info
(German for "statistic")
   �1,200 = $1,447 Sedo
4.  Romantik.biz
(German for "romantic")
 �570 = $687 Sedo
5.  Carey.biz    $300 Pvt Sale
6. Kruger.us $200 Pvt Sale
7. Jinx.info $199 Pvt Sale

Aside from Sedo, other new extension sources were quiet this week so we filled out the chart with three of our sales company's own low three-figure sales, one in each TLD; Carey.biz, Kruger.us and Jinx.info. We sell several of these in that range every week without fail. Most of them go to small business operations but we have some reason to believe that Carey.biz may have been bought by someone representing a certain well-known singer. The domain isn't resolving yet but the buyer's address in New York City has a familiar look!

None of this week's top sellers was high enough to cross the entry threshold for our Year-To-Date New TLD chart (it currently takes $4,000 to get in). So the list of top new extension sales through August 1 remains unchanged from last week: 

Domain Name Journal's Year-To-Date New TLD "Top 27" 
Highest Reported 2004 .info, .biz & .us Domain Sales through Aug. 1 
Euro to Dollar Conversion (� to $) 
Based on Rates in Effect When Sales Were Originally Reported by DNJ

 - Domains entering the chart this week are highlighted in green -

  Domain

Sold For

Where Sold
1.  NewYork.info   �22,000 = $28,086 Sedo
2. Casino.info �17,500 = $20,899 Sedo
3.  HMS.info �9,280 = $10,492 Sedo
4.
tie
Tampa.info $10,000 Pvt Transaction

4.
tie

Moscow.info $10,000 Sedo
6. Vitamins.info $9,500 Afternic
7. RioDeJaneiro.info $9,000 Pvt Sale
8. Stocks.us $8,062 Sedo
9.  Party.info   �6,000 = $7,166 Sedo
10. Book.biz $7,000 Galcomm
11. BDSM.info �5,500 = $6,947 Sedo
12. Reifen.biz
"tires" in German
 �5,500 = $6,894 Sedo
13. Vancouver.info �5,000 = $6,378 Sedo
14. Party.us $6,000 Pvt Sale
15. Beach.info     �5,000 = $5,972 Sedo
16.
tie
Finanzen.info
("Finances" in German)
�4,900 = $5,888 Sedo
16. 
tie
Steuer.info
("Tax" in German)
  �4,900 = $5,888 Sedo
18. InvestmentFonds.info
("investment funds" in German)
  �4,750 = $5,673 Sedo
19. Vacations.info $5,500 Pvt Sale
20.
tie
Woman.info $5,000 Sedo
20.
tie
Minnesota.info  $5,000 Pvt Sale
22. Erotica.info �4,000 = $4,913 Sedo
23. CityGuide.info 4,000 = $4,773 Sedo
24.
tie
Meningite.biz
("Meningitis in French & Italian)
$4,250 Sedo
24.
tie
Meningite.info
("Meningitis in French & Italian)
$4,250 Sedo
26.  Grafik.info   �3,500 = $4,249 Sedo
27.
tie
Houston.info $4,000 Pvt Sale
27.
tie
Washington.info $4,000 Pvt Sale
Unforgettable Footnotes:
Below are key sales where the price level (denoted by X characters) was released but not the exact price paid. This will allow us to note significant sales that are among the Year-To-Date leaders but cannot be ranked numerically due  to a confidentiality agreement that kept the exact price private. Date shown indicates when the sale was first reported in Domain Name Journal
Fashion.us (May 25, 2004)  $XX,XXX Private Sale

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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Domain Name Journal
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