Designs.com Leads the Weekly Domain Sales Hit Parade  

by Ron Jackson
  

Sedo.com claimed top honors among the sale venues by racking up six Top Ten entries this week, including four of the top five. A pair of three-letter domains, VTG.com and SMS.tv led the way for them. VTG.com went for �15,000 ($19,466) while SMS.tv produced one of the highest .tv sales we've ever seen, selling for $18,000. Sedo continued to pour it on with #4 FashionWalker.com commanding a stylish $17,000 and #5 DiamondVision.com clearing $16,000.

SnapNames.com turned in a powerful performance as well, sweeping the three remaining slots available on the Big Board. Their sales leader was #6 DegreesOnline.com at $11,250. There were 7 five-figure sales reported this week, a considerable dropoff from the record 21 reported last week, but the numbers were still nothing to sneeze at. Just about every venue we canvassed had another good week and there were several nice private transactions we'll be telling you about as well. 

In another good sign for the industry, mainstream attention to what is happening in the domain world continues to heat up. Newsweek Magazine plans to publish an article on the booming domain market in the business section at Newsweek.com next week. I was interviewed for the piece by author Kathryn Williams as was Sedo CEO Matthew Bentley and domain pioneer Rick Schwartz. Meanwhile, the new issue of BusinessWeek is out with a very prominent cover story on blogs. The cover on the print edition also features a prominent sidebar pointing to additional blogging stories available exclusively at BusinessWeek.com. It seems like everywhere you look, domains and internet activity is the main focus of attention. With major domain conferences coming up in Las Vegas and Seattle next month, our industry should remain front and center in the weeks ahead. It's a great time to be a domainer!

But let's not get ahead of ourselves - there are still a lot of important sales to talk about this week, including a pair of 3-letter new extension sales that will knock your socks off (more on that in the New TLD section a bit later on). Right now let's take a look at the complete Top Ten for the week ending April 24:

Sedo and SnapNames anchored our new list with CuteGreeting.com ($10,000) and PL.org ($8,800) at Sedo serving as bookends for BollywoodXXX.com ($9,500) and CarDeal.com ($9,100) at Snapnames. Those 2-letter .orgs like PL.org continue to draw nice prices because they are a vanishing species. The .org registry now retires all 2-letter domains that are allowed to expire.

Sedo's hot streak on the Big Board was just part of a big week there. You can always count on them to turn in some impressive country code sales and this week was no exception. Hotel-Check.de (German ccTLD) commanded a Presidential Suite price; �5,950 ($7,723), while Vitra.co.uk (United Kingdom ccTLD) was right behind at �4,000 ($7,621). Their other .com winners included CentralPoint.com at $5,500, Kramski.com at $5,000 and CasinoSherpa.com at $4,200. Tardis.com contributed another $4,000. You'll also find Sedo all over over New TLD chart, coming up a bit later in this report. One of their sales in that category soared past $7,000.

SnapNames could be seen kicking sales butt this week as well. They run the most transparent drop auction in the business (you can see who is bidding against you and exactly how much they are bidding) and buyers love that. This time out winners bid BusinessResources.com up to $8,600 and 24Hrs.com to $7,100. SnapNames had a big week with 3-letter domains, attracting $6,300 for EGN.com, $6,100 for RZV.com and $5,600 for YOL.com. They also scored with TravelReservation.com at $6,200 and NorwegianCruiseLine.com at $6,100. SouthCarolinaGolf.com tapped in another $5,500 while GlobalCast.com commanded $5,400 and TVTuners.com dialed in $4,700. 

At Afternic.com, .nets ruled the day thanks to BlingTones.net selling for $5,500 and TPC.net attracting $4,500. On the .com side, SustainableForestry.com sprouted $3,088 and DirtyGirls.com took a $2,500 sponge bath. Afternic also sold a 3-letter New TLD domain for $5,000 that we will be telling you about in the new extension report below. 

Enom's Club Drop had one of the best weeks we've seen at that venue this year. They also posted the longest significant domain sale we've seen since beginning this column. Weighing in at a whopping six words, TheSevenWondersOfTheWorld.com went for $4,300! We think that sale should be regarded as the 8th Wonder of the World .  Club Drop also harvested $4,000 from CabbagePatch.com, got a $3,300 injection from TreatmentFacility.com and settled for $3,100 to split with Blonde.net. USMints.com delivered a tasty $2,400, Alahali.com hailed $1,900, InsiderTrades.com added $1,800 and CapitalInvestors.com returned $1,500. A high traffic misspelling, MySapace.com (640 with the extension in Overture), also went for $1,500. 

Elsewhere, Anunt Patel picked up FreeSwingers.com at BuyDomains for $5,000 to add to his growing roster of dating domains. After selling VideoBlog.com for $21,000 last week, AllNetServices.com followed up by flipping VideoBlog.net for $2,500 this week. At DotComAgency.com, UsedMedicalLasers.com brought $2,200. In a couple of private transactions, Josh Shapiro acquired Josh.net for $3,000 and Radistar from DNForum.com sold MGC.net to the Monaco Gold Casino for $2,300. 

In the Pipeline: It looks like SnapNames.com has gotten a head start on another good week next week. An auction for Tenn.com closed at $18,850 today (April 26) and the bidder is a reliable buyer that so that deal is almost certain to be a chart entry next week.

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Our Year-To-Date chart gets three new members this week even though we are bumping our minimum entry price up a notch to $18,000. Here are the biggest winners  so far in 2005:

New TLD Section

You may have noticed the 3-letter domains all over our mainstream report above. Demand for those popular acronyms spilled over to the new extension chart in a big way this week as well. Our New TLD chart leader, BES.biz went for a stunning �5,500 ($7,139) at Sedo. That is the highest 3-letter sale in any of the new extensions (.biz, .info and .us) in 2005. If that isn't enough to turn your head, maybe the #2 domain will. Another 3-letter beauty, AMA.us went for $5,000 at Afternic. I've always felt 3-letter domains with good letter combinations were the safest bet in the new extensions and numbers like these, as well as the way the category performs in my own business, reinforces that belief.

.Biz wound up taking 4 of the 8 slots on this week's chart as that extension continues to perform much better than it did in 2004. .Info and .us each claimed two chart entries this time around. .Info nailed down #3 with Bruderschaft.info ("brotherhood" in German) going for �1,750 ($2,271) at Sedo. That venue racked up five chart entries this week. .Biz posted another four-figure sale at Sedo, with Snow.biz piling up �1,250 ($1,622). Here's a look at the complete New TLD leader's list for the week ending April 24: 

My sale of Allegiance.info in a private transaction for $600 landed at #5. Dot.us bought Terrorism.us for $300 to account for the 6th position. In proof that you just never know what someone is going to buy, a three word double hyphenated .biz, Cash-Advance-Express.biz, took the 7th slot while CraftShows.biz anchored our new list. The latter two both went at Sedo. Rob Sequin sold VideoBlog.info for $1,000 this week but it can't be charted until the domain has been transferred to the new owner. Sequin has been paid but the buyer is waiting for a transfer out to another registrar. Sequin owns the company that made the VideoBlog.com and VideoBlog.net sales we reported earlier in this column.

BES.biz and AMA.us both move into the Top Ten on New TLD Year-To-Date chart this week. The list gets four new members even though we are upping the minimum entry level to $1,350. Here are the leading new extension sales through April 24:

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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