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As we detailed in
one of our most popular stories of the year (released
last Friday), domain industry pioneer Michael Castello
closed a $1.5
million sale of Room.com when the buyer paid off a
five-year installment plan early. Michael and a friend,
radio legend Walt "Baby" Love, co-owned the
domain after Michael hand registered it for their partnership 26
years ago! In addition to nicely padding their bank
accounts that also put Room.com atop on our latest bi-weekly
all extension Top 20 Sales Chart. It also ranks as the
second biggest publicly reported sale so
far this year. Room.com trails only the $3 million sale
of Help.com in January (coincidentally, Michael has a $3
million sale on his resume as well, having sold
Whisky.com for $3.1 million in 2014).
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This
week's #2 sale is anything but what its names suggests. Fiasco.com
provided a $203,500 payday for another industry icon, Braden
Pollock at LegalBrandMarketing.com
(if you don't already know about Braden you should and our 2011 Cover
Story profile about him would be a good place to
start).
The
next two spots on the Big Board went to a pair of nice ccTLD
sales at Sedo.
They sold Magnet.de for $54,570 and moved
Pics.ai for $50,000. The biggest non .com gTLD
sale, BitcoinETF.org at $49,999, also sold via Sedo,
rounded out the first five.
As
usual, the .coms took the majority of the chart entries (12
of 20 overall). One of those was a $49,997 acquisition
of #6 TravelAI.com by John Lyotier in a private
transaction. John has a rich history in the industry too,
having co-founded LeftOfTheDot.com back in 2010 (it now points
to TravelAI.com). John told me, "There is so much happening
in the AI space, and after being a data company
masquerading as a travel company for more than a decade, we
felt the time was right for us to build out on a new brand
that can be our flagship and help define our new story."
We wish John and his team the best of luck as they start this
new chapter.
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SnapNames
also helped the .com cause by putting three names on the honor
roll, led by #10 Kaffee.com at $19,100.
The
ccTLDs also had their usual strong outing, taking six spots,
including #8 Chess.ru at $28,234. Chess, of
course, is an obsession in Russia. This name was purchased
by an investment company that plans to take full
advantage of that. Now that they have acquired the definitive
domain from
the owner who has held it since 1999, the new owners
said they are creating an online chess platform for the
Russian-speaking audience that will also include the largest web
apps available for mobile operating systems, including iOS and
Android.
The non .com gTLDs
nailed down two spots this week - both with .orgs that
were both sold through Sedo. In addition to the BitcoinETF.org
sale, #12 Fitness.org changed hands for $16,050.
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By Ron Jackson
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Last
but not least, a big historical sale has come to light. As
Elliot Silver reported at DomainInvesting.com,
Yolo.com was sold for $3 million in 2021.
The price was confirmed by two well-known brokers who were
involved in the transaction, Andy Booth at Booth.com
and Andrew
Rosener at MediaOptions.com.
As a result, we have added Yolo.com to the 2021
Top 100 Chart in our Domain Sales Archive where it now
ranks as the #5 sale for that year.
Here is how all of the
leaders stacked up for the two weeks ending Sunday, September
10, 2023:
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