Pair of Six-Figure Sales at Sedo Shows Bull Market Continuing For the Domain Business!

by Ron Jackson  

Sedo's #2 sale was nothing to sneeze at either. GED.com changed hands for $150,000. Of course GED is the widely recognized acronym for General Equivalency Diploma and is a blockbuster term in the education market. Traffic to this domain will be huge (it's Overture score with extension is 7,485). Sedo wound up claiming 6 of 11 positions on our Big Board this week (there's an extra spot due to a tie at #10). Others showed plenty of strength as well with every domain in the Top Ten cracking the 5-figure mark. In addition to the ones you will see, Sedo told us they had 3 more in that range, including a .co.uk, but could not release those due to non-disclosure agreements.

GreatDomains took the #3 position with the healthy $25,000 sale of Herbal.com. The #4 entry comes from Ebay where Spearfishing.com changed hands for $18,350. We don't see a lot of legitimate sales in this price range at Ebay but everything looks kosher with this one. Both the buyer and seller (who has been on Ebay since 1999) have perfect 100% feedback records and the WhoIs record showed the expected ownership update today (Jan. 18). Nothing at all wrong with the domain either (237 with the extension in Overture)! Sedo appears again at #5 with the $15,000 sale of PayOne.com. 

#6 goes to Addidas.com, selling (for the second time) at Enom's Club Drop for $13,009. A couple of weeks back the domain was sold in a private auction for over $35,000, but after reporting that they had received the money, Enom reversed the payment and took the domain back (this after the WhoIs record had showed an ownership change). They then re-auctioned the domain in a public auction that ended this past week at the lower figure. The oddest thing about this domain is that the Adidas Corp. once went to the trouble of taking it away in a WIPO case, then let the domain drop this month!

SnapNames.com continued their resurgence by taking lucky #8 with HumanHair.com at $11,001.  Let's take a look at the complete Top Ten, then we'll continue our rundown of the week's best sales: 

Sedo continued their hot streak with 3 of the final 5 chart entries. They scored with #7 StockPilot.com at �10,000 ($12,888) and a big .org, #9 Babehunt.org at �8,000 ($10,413).  They also shared the #10 position with Dedupe.com matching  E1 Internet's $10,000 sale of PSO.com to Webquest.com Inc.  In action just off the chart, Sedo added �5,556 ($7,234) for HotelsEurope.com, $5,500 for 800Florist.com and $5,350 for FindCheapComputers.com. They also got �4,000 ($5,208) for eHealth.net and $4,000 for FreeSweepstakes.com. 

SnapNames turned in a very impressive performance this week as well. UsedTractors.com plowed up $9,433 , 3Arab.com added $8,312 and OldComputers.com processed $6,700. There were many more where those came from. BikerSluts.com roared off with $5,300, NoDownloadCasino.com cashed in at $4,989 and MedicalBiller.com provided a $4,600 cure. Other goodies included DesktopDollars.com ($3,550), EuropeanFlights.com ($3,450) and LegalForms.net ($3,301). PokerParlor.com threw another $3,300 in the pot and GatewayFinancial.com added $3,254. .Org got into the act with WBA.org going for $2,700. Another nice 3-letter domain, IVA.net contributed $1,151. 

At Enom's Club Drop, Cabeleas.com led the way at $5,808 with GratisSex.com close behind at $5,307. A high traffic misspell, DisneyChanell.com added $4,408. Sorry we can't provide you as much Overture data as usual. As most of you know, the Overture Suggestion Tool (useful in gauging potential traffic to a domain) has been broken for most of the past week, making any attempt to retrieve search information an exercise in frustration.  No headaches at Club Drop however as the Hit Parade continued with Prescriptions4Sale.com ($3,809), DogAccessories.com ($3,309), MemoryChip.com ($3,307) and BackupDrive.com ($3,207). 

Elsewhere, the UK's Simon D'Arcy picked up a nice pair of names at BuyDomains.com; MensClothes.com at $9,000 and LadiesClothes.com at $2,888. D'Arcy told us he plans to develop MensClothes.com and have it online this year. Meanwhile over at DotcomAgency.com, Ian Andrew played a $4,000 tune on BambooFlutes.com, then polished the bottom line with WoodFloorCare.com at $3,600 before sealing a deal for MetricSeal.com at $2,600.

In a deal at the DomainState.com forum, WebsiteBuild.com changed hands for $5,000 and in a private transaction Austin's Don Putnam got the same amount for NPLaw.com . Mike Gillman of GlobalBillboards.com sold DallasCondo.com to Turtle Creek/Cresta Bella Condominiums of Dallas for $2,000. 

In the Pipeline: It looks like SnapNames has a head start on another good showing next week. An auction for BroadbandPhones.com ended there at $12,100 and another for ProstateSurgery.com just closed at $9,100. 

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Our 2005 Year-To-Date Top Sellers chart gets 10 new entries this week, pushing the number of sales above $10,000 to 23 just 3 weeks into the New Year. Chat.de becomes the new headliner and at more than $390,000 it could reign for awhile. Of course, they way this market is roaring, who really knows!? Here's how they stack up at this early stage of the 2005 game:

New TLD Section

We had some communications problems with Sedo CEO Matthew Bentley today and weren't able to get that venue's new extension sales for the past week (another top Sedo exec, Daniel Law, working from home in Germany with midnight rapidly approaching there, stayed up late to get us the mainstream sales we reported earlier in this column). We'll include their new extension sales in next week's report. Sedo always shows up strong on the New TLD list, so you might expect their absence to leave the cupboard pretty bare, but that wasn't the case. We still have a quartet of four figure sales to report headed by Physician.info at $4,150. 

Bob Connor sent that domain to HealthStatus.com, Inc. in a private transaction. Greg White of HealthStatus.com told us "we will will use the domain to work with some of our health assessment clients and to put their directories of physicians online at Physician.info. Our goal is building a large directory where part of the listing would include what HMO, PPO and Insurance networks the physicians participate in. Referencing the site would be free, listings on the site will be both free and monetized. This is something that I don't see in the marketplace at this time. We will use our existing network of sites and advertising to drive traffic to Physician.info."

That's just the kind of use the .info space needs to continue growing and gaining recognition. Professor Connor, a .info pioneer, thought he parted with the domain at a low price, but he had already realized several thousand dollars in revenue from the domain through use of an ad network. Having more than recouped his investment he wanted to hand the domain off to a company like HealthStatus that could fully develop the domain's potential and further recognition of the .info extension (which will benefit the rest of Connor's portfolio).

.Biz, which has made a much stronger showing in the opening weeks of 2005 than it did in 2004 took the #2 position with Nutrition.biz at $2,000. That domain was purchased at Pool.com and was the only significant sale we heard about at Pool this week. The venue has performed an astonishing vanishing act since last summer when it was the unquestioned leader in the expiring domains business. 

.Biz also tied .info for the #3 position, though an asterisk should probably go on that record. Nebraska.info and Nebraska.biz were sold as a set on Ebay for $3,050 (both the buyer and seller are reputable domainers, so the usual suspicions about Ebay domain sales don't apply here). For charting purposes we accorded half of the sales price to each domain. Normally, geographic domains like this command more money in the .info extension than .biz so if they had been sold separately, odds are the .info would have been valued higher. The tables would be turned for many business terms of course. Here's a look at the complete New TLD Great 8 for the week ending Jan. 16:

One of my domains, AllStars.biz, heads the second half of the chart at $800. I sold the domain to a well-known German band of the same name (they are the house band on Germany's network TV version of Saturday Night Live). Movers.us was next at #6 after selling for $580 at Afternic.com. A pair of .infos closed out the list; MissionHills.info, sold by Dale Porter in a private transaction for $499 and Classroom.info, sold at SnapNames for $460. 

Our Year-To-Date New TLD list expands to 12 with four new entries this week. The entire dozen is in four figures and .biz leads the numbers race with 5 of the 12 available slots. Here is how they stack up after this third report of the New Year:

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.