Back in April  I told you about Name Ninja Bill Sweetman putting together a $600,000 dealt to sell Carrot.com to an SaaS firm named Carrot that wanted to upgrade from the domain they had been using, OnCarrot.com. Since then, the buyer has been making full use of the Carrot.com while making payments on a schedule that was to continue for several more years. 

The new domain apparently had an even more positive impact on their business than the buyer anticipated because they decided to pay off the entire balance due immediately in exchange for a reduction in price to $565,000. The final payment was made last week which will allow us to add Carrot.com to our official charts when our next weekly domain sales report comes out Wednesday evening (October 2, 2019). Carrot.com will rank among the ten biggest sales reported so far this year, coming in at #8 on our Year to Date Top 100 Chart (assuming no larger sales are reported over the next 48 hours).

The sale also gives Bill another feather in a cap that is already well decorated from his past high end sales. In fact, Sweetman just closed an even bigger sale - $1 million for a short one-word .com but that one is subject to a non-disclosure agreement as most high end sales are.

Name Ninja Bill Sweetman

Our friends at the Domainer Show (based at Domainer.com.au) - Co-Hosts Rob Kaay (DBR.com.au) and Ed Keay-Smith (OnlineImpact.com.au) - have just posted their latest video podcast featuring yet another domain industry pioneer. For Episode 19 they landed The Domain King himself - Rick Schwartz, who spent a rollicking 72 minutes sharing his unvarnished thoughts and insights into a field he has been excelling in since the 1990s.

Clockwise from top left: Domainer Show Co-Hosts Rob Kaay and Ed Keay-Smith with Domain King Rick Schwartz.

A few months ago  I told you about an  unprecedented portfolio of more than 20 big city .com geodomains that has been put on the market by Geocentric Media. Today we learned the portfolio, that already includes LosAngeles.com, SanFrancisco.com, Houston.com, Philadelphia.com and Denver.com among others, has grown to nearly two dozen domains with the addition of Seattle.com (you can see the entire list of domains here).

Today's news came from Geocentric Media CEO & Founder Fred Mercaldo who also told us the firm has more than a dozen discussions underway with major media companies interested in the portfolio. With the level of interest ramping up Geocentric Media decided to secure the services of Kalil & Company, a widely known media brokerage company with 40 years of experience in the field. Mercaldo said, "the  main brokers in charge are Frank Higney ([email protected]) and Jason Anderson ([email protected]). Kalil has high level contacts in all of the top major media firms, private equity companies and more. They love the portfolio, believe in it, and this is their initial venture into the digital world."

Seattle image from Bigstock

While Geocentric Media's is focused on selling the portfolio intact to a buyer interested in acquiring an instant high visibility coast-to-coast footprint on the web, Mercaldo said they have not completely ruled out the possibility of selling an individual domain, or group of domains, for the right price.

The venerable .ORG extension  has gotten a major makeover that went public today when a new website and visual identity was launched worldwide. The Public Interest Registry's refreshment of the .ORG brand centers around the new site at TheNew.org. Previously, the popular TLD was based at the PIR website,  PIR.org, a domain that now redirects to TheNew.org).

A fact sheet announcing the changes noted, "The rebrand builds upon .ORG’s long-time support of the organizations, associations, clubs, businesses and individuals using the domain, but takes the commitment a step

New .ORG logo unveiled today

further by actively uniting .ORG communities around shared interests and passions." The sheet highlighted these points:

• The new logo - with “ORG” encircled in a vibrant royal blue sphere - reflects the brand’s impact worldwide, with more than 10 million domains under management.

• The open “ORG” lettering on either side of the sphere signals that .ORG is an open domain for anyone; it serves as a powerful and inclusive global connector.

• The logo uses a deep royal blue, evoking feelings of trust, security, and reliability that reflect .ORG’s long-standing reputation.

• The design also allows the color to be exchanged for photography and video, so .ORG can tell visual stories through the lens of the logo.

Domain brokerage & consulting firm GGRG.com has released their latest quarterly report on aftermarket sales of liquid domains, covering the 2nd quarter of 2019. GGRG defines liquid domains  as being very short .com domains consisting of all letters (L) or all numbers (N), as well as 2 and 3-character (C) .coms that have a  combination of letters and numbers (they use the acronym LXDO as a shorthand description for the liquid domains category). GGRG calls these "liquid" domains because they are relatively easy to sell at prevailing market rates.

Prior to this latest report - LXDO Q2 2019 -

GGRG had released the information in a downloadable .PDF file. In a major upgrade they have now made the report much more easy to access and navigate by posting it on into a clean new interface located on the web at LXDO.com. 

A navigation tip - when you go to the report page, scroll down and click the Explore button. On the next page, across the top, are links to any section of the report you want to immediately access - for example 3-letter .coms or 4 number domains, as well as an "At a Glance" summary page, Historical information and Archives. GGRG has just made a good thing even better, further cementing the quarterly LXDO report's position as an invaluable reference document for all who are interested in buying and selling in this popular sector of the domain market.

Verisign has released their latest quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief (.pdf file) covering the 2nd quarter of 2019. While Verisign is best known as the administrator of .com and .net domains, their quarterly briefs provide statistics   covering the entire universe of domain names. According to the latest brief, 2Q-2019 closed with approximately 354.7 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of approximately 14.9 million domains (representing a 4.4% jump) over the past year. 

The world's most popular extension, .com, continues to outperform the overall market. The number of registered .coms jumped 

approximately 6.9 million from the same point a year ago, an increase of 5.1% year over year. Verisign's .net also continue its trend of slow decline. The number of registered .nets slipped to about 13.6 million at the end of 2Q-2019, a drop of around a half million domains (representing a 3.5% decline).

In percentage terms, the category with the highest growth rate was the ccTLDs (country code domains). They ended 2Q-2019 with approximately158.7 million registrations, 8.9 million more than a year ago for a healthy 6% increase.

There hasn't been a lot of good news for new gTLDs lately but they posted a year over year upturn, gaining about 1.3 million registration (a 5.9% increase) that put their total registrations at approximately 23 million at the end of 2Q-2019. 

There is much more data in the complete Domain Name Industry Brief that you can access here.