Classified Information: French .Com Sells For Over $65,000 To Top This Week's Domain Sales Chart

by Ron Jackson
  

This week's headliner is Annonces.com ("classifieds" in French), a domain that Virtual Network SA paid �55,000 ($65,554) to acquire at Sedo.com.  Virtual Network CEO Stephane Pictet told us the company has spent $1.2 million over the past five years to build a stable of French generic terms in .com. Pictet said, "today we own 400 generic domain names, among them Jeux.com ("game" in French), Assurances.com ("insurances"), Humour.com ("humor"), Musique.com ("music"), Tourisme.com ("tourism"), Mariage.com ("wedding") and Gastronimie.com ("gastronomy"). 

Virtual Network's latest shopping excursion at Sedo helped that venue rack up four Top Ten entries, including all three of the ccTLD's I mentioned above. Those included #5 Restaurants.de (German country code) at �20,000 ($23,837), #6 Foods.us at $20,000 (American country code) and #10 Car.at (Austrian country code) at �9,000 ($10,726). That Foods.us sale is the second highest new extension transaction reported this year and it comes right on the heels of last week's sale of Business.us which, though the exact price was not disclosed, we have reason to believe was well over $50,000. .US now has five of the year's nine highest New TLD sales, giving the American domain more sales at the top end of that segment than .info and .biz combined (.info has three and .biz one). We'll have more on the Foods.us sale in the new extension section later in this report.

Though the market is broadening, .com's dominance will not be ending any time soon. The reigning heavyweight champ swept the first four spots on the leader board with #2 YO.com hailing $60,000, #3 Rod.com reeling in $30,250 and #4 ContactCenter.com commanding $27,000. DigiPawn.com let YO.com go in a private sale. Rod.com changed hands in an auction at SnapNames.com and iWebmasters.com LLC bought ContactCenter.com through Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com. 

.Net got into the action at Afternic.com where SY.net found a new home after going for $15,000. Let's take a look at the complete leader board for the week ending Oct. 2, then we'll continue our rundown of another big week in the domain business:

#7 Creature.com scared up $16,000 in a private sale and SnapNames added a second Top Ten trophy with #9 BarcodeScanners.com ringing up $13,861. Another five-figure domain fell just short of the Big Board. That was SEI.com which went for a very reasonable $10,000 at Sedo (in fact, in view of the current strength in the 3-letter .com market, this exceptionally strong letter combination looks like one of the best values in that category this year). 

Sedo's other winners included Ahmadinejad.com at �7,000 ($8,342), the hyphenated Curriculum-Vitae.com at �5,490 ($6,543) and WebmasterProgramm.de at �4,500 ($5,363). Sedo also had the week's best .org, MegaCable.org at $5,000. Their roster was rounded out with e-Booking.com at $4,767 and a pair at $4,000 each; LevelNet.com and eLocal.com.

SnapNames enjoyed a banner week as well with HouseSeekers.com bringing home $8,600, Workaholics.com burning $7,088 worth of midnight oil and NorthCarolinaRealty.com rolling up $6,600. ColonialHomes.com welcomed $5,766, HouseSeeker.com found $5,600 and ZipRealEstate.com zapped $5,501. TeenBible.com and Clickthrough.com attracted $5,400 each while CanisterVacuum.com swept up $5,200. Warburg.com wound up at $5,113, WebStyles.com went for $4,600 and CanadaGuide.com landed $4,555. Just a step behind were Stylesheet.com ($4,500), TravelerInformation.com ($4,301) and Vroom.net ($4,250). 

SnapNames had so many sales between 2-4K the best way to view those would be in this table:

SnapNames also had a couple of other nice one-word .nets worth noting; Treasures.net at $1,861 and Employee.net at $1,810.

At Pool.com a buyer paid $7,522 to get into ParkingGarage.com. Musie.com made $4,100 and CyberCafe.net gathered $3,706. NYCOfficeSpace.com went for $2,175 while NewYorkLotteries.com and CaliforniaLotteries.com cashed out at $1,550 each. 

Back at Afternic, Takaoka.com tacked on $7,222, RentalSystems.com racked up $3,000 and CommerceGate.com closed at $2,450. SecurityCity.com locked up $2,288, ComputerLoad.com handled $2,250 and Brabo.com brought $2,250. ZRat.com chewed up $2,001 and two others; QualityPC.com and GuideToHealth.com banked $2,000 each. Afternic also found buyers for a pair of unlisted domains owned by SearchDomainsForSale.com. PoliceBlog.com booked $2,600 and SmartphoneCentral.com called in $1,500. 

At Enom's Club Drop, SalesRecruiting.com and Canciones.net ("songs" in Spanish) each sold for $2,600. SeniorPics.com snapped $2,300 and another pair; VOIPTelcom.com and Paranormal.net went for $1,600 each. In a 3-letter .com sale at Ebay, ULY.com traded for $1,699. 

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Our Year To Date Top 60 chart gets two new members this week with Annonces.com and YO.com each coming on board. They pushed two others off the list and raised the entry level to $48,000. We have now completed three quarters in 2005. We will put together a complete list of all sales of $10,000 or more through Sept. 30 and post a link to that list at the end of this chart next week. Here is a look at your YTD leader board through Oct. 2: 

New TLD Section

For the second week in a row, a blockbuster .US sale headlines the New TLD news. As we told you earlier, Foods.us changed hands for $20,000 at Sedo, making it the 2nd biggest new extension sale reported this year. The biggest was also a .US, VOIP.us, which sold for $25,000 in May...and then there was the undisclosed sale of Business.us last week, believed to be over $50,000. Foods.us was bought by Natural Foods Inc., a company based in Toledo, Ohio. The seller was Chris Zouzas who holds one of the better .US portfolios in the world and has long predicted the kind of prices we are starting to see.

The American country code claimed half of the top six spots on our latest New TLD sales chart, with all of those hitting at least four figures. #3 EasyCar.us  (bought by a British company apparently looking  to expand its brand to the States) went for �2,050 ($2,443) at Sedo and I sold #6 Nuts.us for $1,650, also at Sedo. 

.Info rang up two four-figure sales this week. #2 ChurchOfChrist.info went for $3,750 in a private transaction and #5 Monkey.info cried uncle after hitting $1,653 at SnapNames where .info bidding has gotten very competitive the past couple of weeks. .Biz also got into the act with #4 Glamour.biz attracting �1,500 ($1,788) at Sedo. Here is a look at the complete New TLD leader board for the week ending Oct. 2:

A pair of .infos anchored this week's chart. I sent TTO.info to a company in Denmark for $950 and a bidder at SnapNames spent $905 to take home a new Wife.info. In other new TLD sales, ECD.us went for $600 at Afternic and Two.info collected $525 at SnapNames. 

Our New TLD Year-To-Date chart gets two new members this week with Foods.us settling into penthouse suite #2 and ChurchOfChrist.info welcoming worshippers at #25. While .US has been coming on strong and has an headlock on the upper reaches of our YTD list, .info still holds the most chart positions by a comfortable margin. The 4-letter extension (which had gained a solid following in Europe) has 28 of the Top 50 entries while .US and .biz have had to settle for 11 each.  Here are 2005's highest reported new TLD sales through Oct. 2:

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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