A Dozen 5-Figure Domain Sales Highlight Another Busy Week For the Industry

by Ron Jackson
  

GreatDomains sits at the summit this week after selling MusicShop.com to Chad Wright of WebQuest.com Inc. for an even $50,000. As someone who once owned a small chain of record stores you can imagine how much I like that one. Even with downloads starting to replace hard goods in the music industry, this is still a definitive domain for music (in any form) on the web. It comes with some built-in traffic as well (139 with the extension in Overture).

Sedo.com had another bang up week as well. For the second week in a row, the aftermarket powerhouse claimed 5 of the 10 spots on our Big Board, including three of the top five. Sedo touched just about all the bases too, scoring with a pair of .coms, a pair of .de's (German country code) and a .se (Swedish country code). #2 Moma.com was their headliner at $40,000, followed closely by #3 Stempel.de ("rubber stamp" in German) at �28,000 ($37,103). Inkasso.se ("collection agency" in Swedish) netted another �18,400 ($24,382) to finish 5th. 

Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com hit the Daily Double this week with two domains on the Top Ten. AdultMart.com went for $26,000 to land at #4 while DanceSchools.com waltzed into the #9 slot at $11,300. SnapNames.com continues to be a fixture on the Big Board. This week they scored with #6 UMass.com at $16,100. 

Those sales were all just the tip of the iceberg in another solid sales week. We'll run them all down for you, but first let's take a look at the complete Top Ten for the week ending Sunday, Feb. 20:

California's Dan Miller purchased the #8 domain MonteCarlo.net at GreatDomains for $12,000 giving that venue a 2nd entry on the Big Board. Miller also bought SanDiego.net in a private transaction last week for $8,000. 

Sedo, completed their quintet of Top Ten domains with #7 CKX.com at $15,000 and #10 Weltzeituhr.de ("world time clock" in German) at �8,500 ($11,262). Sedo also sold those two $10,000 domains that fell just short of the chart; Billiger.com ("cheaper" in German) and SmartQuote.com. That gave them a remarkable seven 5-figure sales in a single week and there were more where those came from. Their other .com sales included SpeedDemon.com at �4,000 ($5,302), DailyRelax.com at $4,000 and Emotes.com at $3,900. They also kicked butt on the country code side of the ledger. Download24.de went for �4,200 ($5,567), MusicMakers.co.uk chimed in with �4,000 ( $5,302), OneTV.co.uk tuned in �1,750 ($3,345) and Alpes.fr (French country code) added another �4,000 ( $5,302). You'll also be hearing from Sedo in our New TLD section where they dominated the chart, taking 7 of 8 entries including a trio of four-figure sales.

SnapNames.com supplemented their Top Ten entry with HealthLawyers.com at $5,655, BlackStripper.com at $4,500 and PatioHeaters.com at $4,401. RedCell.com contributed another $4,250, followed by DataSystems.com at $3,750, ShowMeTheMoney.com at $3,600 and AmericanEducation.com at $2,318. 

At Afternic.com, Kule.com rang up a cool $5,500, Aquaplane.com sailed in at $3,488, WesternInsurance.com paid $3,288 and 0z.com (number zero and letter Z) added $2,500. Enom's Club Drop had a nice group in the same range, including FloridaMortgageBroker.com at $4,700, ForSaleByMe.com at $4,300 and TopPorn.com at $4,100. Club Drop added $1,700 each for KidsBikes.com and Localized.com. 

Pool.com showed up with TrophyWife.com on their arm ($2,645). PassionUps.com brought them another $2,001 while PopShop.com kicked in $1,759 and CaughtOnFilm.com revealed $1,752. The matching set of IdahoLawyer.com and IdahoAttorney.com sold for $1,111 each. Pool, a company located in Canada, has been moving a lot of that nation's country code domains (.ca) lately. AdultSexToys.ca went for $600, Router.ca and Correo.ca added $500 each, Square.ca rounded up $400 and Week.ca ticked off another $360.

In other significant sales, Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com added to their pair of Top Ten domains with LowCarbon.com at $4,100 and BenKirshner of CoffeeForLess.com stayed on his caffeine high by purchasing CoffeeServices.com from BuyDomains.com for $2,688. Kirshner picked up CoffeeServices.net and CofficeService.net from BD while he was at it, pushing his total buy to just over $4,000. 

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Our 2005 Year-To-Date Top Sellers chart (currently listing all reported sales from $10,000 up) gets a dozen new entries this week. Here is how they rank 7 weeks into the new year:

New TLD Section

Much of the new extension story this year has been the emergence of .biz as a regular on our top sellers chart, but this week .info turned in the kind of performance it was known for in 2004, dominating our new extension list. .Info took 6 of the 8 positions, with .us claiming the other 2 leaving .biz empty handed this time around. Speaking of dominance, Sedo.com owned the chart, accounting for the top 7 sales, including #1 Lyrics.info at $3,000. That was one of three four-figure new TLD sales this week. #2 SportTicket.info went for �1,600 ($2,123) and #3 FashionNet.us completed the trio at $1,500.

German terms tend to do well in .info thanks to widening acceptance of the extension in northern Europe. #4 Domainregistrierung.info ("domain registration" in German) is a good example. It went for $772, just ahead of #5 Toni.info at $750 (sold at Sedo by Dale Porter of TheNameStore.com). Here's a look at the complete New TLD leader's list for the week ending Feb. 20:

Sedo's hot streak continued with Rentawreck.info at $670 and GayEscort.info at $663. A nice 3-letter .us, PTI.us anchored the chart after going for $600 at Afternic.

Our Year-To-Date New TLD best sellers list gets three new entries this week, a pair of .infos and a .us. Our YTD chart currently lists all 2005 sales of $1,000 and up.  Here is how they stack up through Feb. 20:

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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