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| Three industry heavyweights threw punches this week that almost knocked domain sales into a new dimension! Check out these price tags; $300,000, $145,000 and $100,000. Whew, time to break out the smelling salts! Paraguay's Chris Chena accounted for the biggest buy, laying out 300K at Sedo.com to add Viajes.com (Spanish for "travel") to his burgeoning portfolio of prime Spanish keyword domains. |
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The #2 domain also hit a high water mark. SSM.com went for $145,000, the biggest 3-letter .com sale reported since we began keeping records a year ago. The seller is well-known in domain circles but preferred to remain anonymous. The buyer in this private transaction was Silver State Mortgage, a company based in Henderson, Nevada that will obviously be able to make good use of the SSM acronym. The next long ball hitter stepping up to the plate was Rick Schwartz, who knocked the cover off the ball by sending eCruise.com to New York City travel company I-Cruise.com for $100,000 in cash (plus a 10-year option to buy the company's stock at a preset price). For most people that would be the deal of a lifetime but for Schwartz it wasn't even the deal of the year. 10 months ago he made global headlines by selling Men.com for more than $1 million. While Chena, Schwartz and the seller of SSM.com were the biggest individual winners this week, Sedo.com easily claimed the corporate crown. Half of our new Top Ten chart belongs to them as they complemented the Viajes.com sale with a trio of five-figure deals and a .info sale that ranks among the year's biggest in that extension. Sedo took #4 with Cursor.com at $30,000 and had two of the three domains tied for the 5th slot at an even $10,000 thanks to StopLoss.com and 1P.com. Pool.com also had a log in that jam after collecting 10K for WebService.com. As usual the Big Board was dominated by .com, with that one .info preventing a clean sweep. Let's take a look at the chart then we'll continue our rundown of the big winners for the week ending September 12:
Enom's Club Drop hit the Daily Double for the second week in a row with two Top Ten entries; UniversityOfMiami.com at $9,907 and Lovelace.com at $8,607. They also had ChristmasToys.com just a half step behind at $8,507. Sedo's SolarStrom.info ("solar energy" in German) was sandwiched in between the two Enom entries, finishing #9 at �8,000 ($9,802). That domain is also #1 on our New TLD chart and ranks among the six biggest new extension sales this year. The new TLD's had a lot to celebrate this week as every entry on that chart hit four figures for the first time (more on that a bit later). Sedo's impressive sales list was rounded out with the kind of country code variety that has become their trademark. They tuned in �6,400 ($7,846) for Privat.tv and added �3,500 ($4,290) for Silent-PC.de. Another German country code domain, Vorlage.de ("presentation" in German) attracted �3,100 ($3,800). Britain was heard from too with LondonAtlas.co.uk selling for �1,000 ($1,798). In another case, UK money bought a .com domain with Quit123.com going for �2,500 ($4,494). Sedo also sold BennyBlue.com for $6,500 in long green. After a quiet week last week, a lot of people were back in the Pool this week. The Canadian auction house watched GrilsGoneWild.com (a very high traffic misspell) ring up $8,000 while CDZLimited.com (over 6,000 in Overture with the extension) went for $5,600. LottoPlus.com added a $5,000 jackpot and RWC.com put another $4,250 in the till. PrivateMail.com produced a $2,778 check while Bundle.com and TexasWorkersComp.com went for $2,500 each. MauiBeach.com provided a $2,410 diversion with QHI.com kicking in another $2,360. Other .coms above 2K were Ceaderpoint.com (a misspell at $2,272), Trimworks.com ($2,160) and AutomobileDealership.com at $2,010. In other extensions, Pool picked up $1,545 for SKL.net and $1,500 for Child.org. At Afternic.com, a nice two-letter .net led the way. NH.net went for $7,500. Afternic also closed CIODecisions.com at $4,000 while MemoriesDirect.com and USRealEstate.net went for $3,000 each. They also toweled off AquaGroup.com for $2,688. Things seemed to be quiet at SnapNames.com last week with DeckOfCards.com the only four figure sale coming to our attention ($1,005). However they do have a big one in the Pipeline as you'll see in the next section. Pipeline: It already looks like anther big week is shaping up. Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com tells us they have wrapped up a $55,750 deal for GolfCourses.com. Only the transfer remains to be done to send that one on its way to the Top Ten next week. CEO Monte Cahn told us an even bigger sale is also expected to go through; Axiom.com at $69,525. They also have a big .org deal reportedly nearing completion; Erickson.org at $10,500. At SnapNames an auction for eGreeting.com ended at $16,000 today (Sept. 14). If no problems crop up with the payment that will be the biggest reported sale there since they switched to their new auction format. In last week's Pipeline we mentioned that Ocelot Ventures of Brooklyn, New York had reported buying Bodyguards.com and SecurityGuards.com for a total of $80,000. The domains were both transferred but we haven't been able to chart those as we haven't seen price confirmation documents. Even so, we don't doubt that the report is accurate as the price looks reasonable given the quality of those domains. ***** That trio of six figure sales took up residence in the upper third of our Year-To-Date chart this week. Viajes.com is one of the five biggest sales reported this year. SSM.com was strong enough to crack the top 10 and eCruise.com easily sailed into the top 20. Cursor.com gets in too, joining a huge logjam in the 51st position. Here is the complete rundown of big winners so far in 2004:
It was a banner week on the mainstream chart but the new extensions made a lot of noise as well. For the first time every domain on our New TLD Super 7 hit four figures and that actually applied to 8 domains as we had a tie for the final position. Of course, SolarStrom.info led the way. That $9,802 deal at Sedo was the 6th biggest new extension sale this year but it wasn't alone in the spotlight. Michigan.info nailed down the #2 slot after changing hands for $5,000 in a private transaction. It was purchased by Florida's Eric Taylor, who also bought #7 domain Asian.info from the same seller. In another private deal, Stuart Smith of Dajimbo.com picked up MP3.biz for $3,500 and again the money went to the same seller! Quite a week for that new TLD investor and his broker, Daniel Sitar of GT Web, who found the buyers for all three of those domains. Namewinner.com accounted for another nice sale with SearchEngines.info going for $2,960 there. That ranked 4th on our new chart followed by another entry from Sedo, IPX.info at $1,279. Sedo had half of the names on the top sellers list, duplicating their performance on the mainstream chart. Here is a look at all of the top reported new extension sales for the week ending Sept. 12:
Sedo's quartet of big winners was rounded out with Profinet.info ($1,103) and HBW.info ($1,000). It has been amazing to watch the run-up in 3-letter .info prices. In another one this week that fell just short of the chart, Sedo sold IIP.info for �795 = $973. We now routinely see .info 3's selling for prices close to comparable 3-letter .nets (and higher than 3-letter .orgs). At press time, a series of 3-letter .info auctions was underway at Namewinner that at last report had SAY.info at $1,130, POT.info at $1,230 and WEG.info at $680. Of course, say and pot are also words which makes them more valuable than the usual acronym. Weg is also a word in German, but none the less, those are considerably higher prices than we were seeing a few months ago. Even random 3-letter combinations are doing well - in another NW auction in progress, HNE.info was at $340. In other sales, Sanjeev Goyal purchased Stationary.info for $500 in a private transaction and Sedo sold a couple of German terms in .info; Hagelschaden.info ("damage by hail") at �350 ($428) and Veranstaltungen.info ("events") at �300 ($367). Our Year-To-Date New TLD chart gets 2 new members this week with SolarStrom.info moving in at #6 and Michigan.info tying for 21st. Here all of top reported new extension sales through Sept. 12:
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.