Afternic Bags One of Year's Biggest Sales With PetSupplies.com   

by Ron Jackson
  

Those were the only sales to hit five figures this week (the lowest number at that level so far in 2005). The Easter holiday and the fact that some important players took time off for this week's ICANN meeting in Argentina probably contributed to the slowdown in high dollar sales reported. It certainly isn't an indicator of lack of interest in acquiring quality domains though. The worst kept secret in the domain industry appears to be the sale of a majority interest in industry giant BuyDomains.com to a venture capital company. No official announcement has been made yet but sources for the reports are very reliable. BuyDomains is believed to own more than 400,000 domains. 

Marchex, who started the corporate stampede into the domain business a few months ago, is also still actively adding to their assets. They have reportedly acquired the best properties held by another well-known individual domainer who wishes to remain private. Experts estimate those domains could have been worth $3-$5 million dollars.

While PetSupplies.com may have been the only individual blockbuster reported this week, there were dozens of solid four figure sales and those came in a variety of flavors, including .us. Sedo.com sold Connect.us for $7,500 giving the American country code extension three of the top five New TLD sales so far this year. That deal ranks #7 on the mainstream Top Ten and #1 on our new extension chart this week. Germany's .de and .org also joined the dominant .coms on the Big Board. Sedo sold #5 Staedte-reisen.de ("city travel" in German) for $8,621 while Afternic moved #8 JTO.org for $7,450 for their third chart entry (the most of any venue this week).

.Com controlled the rest of the board with SnapNames.com posting two wins for that extension, #4 SickSh*t.com at $8,920 and #9 Signings.com at $7,310. In case you were wondering, no, SickSh*t.com is not one of those new IDN domains.
The asterisk is for family readers but we know you can figure out. Here's a look at the complete Top Ten for the week ending April 3:

Enom's Club Drop revisited the Top Ten with #6 CouponNetwork.com going for $7,800 there. Moniker/DomainSystems anchored the new list with their second entry, CricketTicket.com at $6,425. Moniker's other winners this week included FleetAgent.com at $6,250, AddCash.com at $4,390 and RevolutionTV.com at $3,100. By the way, if you haven't heard Moniker CEO Monte Cahn's weekly domain radio show at WebmasterRadio.fm, make a point to check it out Wednesday nights at 7pm (U.S. Eastern time). It is always time well spent. 

Back at SnapNames.com, AmericanQuilts.com attracted a comforting $5,150 and Celebrities.net went for the exact same price. PokerI.com chipped in another $4,101 while DomainsForLease.com returned an even $4,000. Other winners included Keynotes.com at $2,250 and 413.com at $1,650.

Afternic's trifecta on the Big Board wasn't the end of the story there. They poured it on with VCard.com commanding $5,556 and MusicDownload.net drumming up $4,500. Another .net, Aeromobile.net soared to $3,000 while ColorPlay.com attracted $2,488. WashingtonAuto.com rolled in with another $2,000. 

Sedo complemented their pair of Top Ten domains with MP3Download.de at �3,700 ($4,761), CashPassport.com at $4,500 and LocalMatters.com at $4,000. As you'll see a bit later, Sedo also continued their domination of our New TLD chart, taking 6 of the 8 positions there. In another sale of note, Enom's Club Drop got $3,900 for Meteroloji.com (52 with the extension in Overture).

Jeff Williams continues to churn out sales with .co.in (Indian country code) keyword domains. This week's group included Cameras.co.in at $550 and a trio at $350 each; Trucks.co.in, HipHop.co.in and FAQ.co.in.

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Our Year-To-Date chart gets only one new member this week. PetSupplies.com joins the club at #6 after that big sale at Afternic. We have now completed the first quarter of 2005, so we have set up a special chart showing every sale from $10,000 and up in the opening 3 months of this year. We will post an updated version of that expanded sales list every quarter for those who like to track all five figure and up sales. 

To keep the Year To Date chart in our weekly column (seen below) at a manageable length, we periodically raise the minimum price shown as the year progresses. We are currently listing all sales of $15,000 and up on this list. Here are the biggest winners to so far in 2005:

New TLD Section

While .info continues to win the overall numbers game, .us seems to be making progress at the high end of the new extension market. This week, Sedo's $7,000 sale of Connect.us gave the American country code 3 of the top 5 reported New TLD sales in 2005. .Info still claimed half of the slots on our new weekly chart though, including #2 Sense.info at $2,573 and #3 Alumni.info at $1,250. .Biz is also in the game this year and that extension posted a pair of four figure sales of its own this week; #4 ClubHotels.biz at $1,119 and FAQ.biz at $1,000. 

Sedo accounted for the top four sales and six of eight on our new list. The only exceptions were FAQ.biz which changed hands at DNForum.com (where the owner of Hardworking.com sold it to DotStorm.com) and #6 Hemingway.biz, sold by PPCIncome.com for $800 in a private transaction. Here's a look at the complete New TLD list for the week ending April 3:

Sedo anchored the chart with HotelReservation.info and Hotel-Reservation.info at $643 each. In other new TLD sales, FamilyName.biz went for $350 in a private sale, LimoHire.com brought $299 at TheNameStore.com and a nice 3-letter word domain, Old.us went for $299 at the DomainState.com forum. 

Our Year-To-Date New TLD chart gets three new members this week, a .us and two .infos. We are now listing sales of $1,250 and higher on our weekly chart. .Info is starting to pull away from .biz in sales that level, now leading 26-15 after one quarter in 2005. As we did with mainstream sales, we have prepared a special expanded chart of new extension sales on a separate page. It shows all new extension sales from $1,000 up in the first three months of 2005. We will update that expanded chart every quarter so you can track lower level sales that scroll off our weekly chart as the year progresses and we raise the entry point on that list. Here are the leading new extension sales through April 3:

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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