There Are Five Zeros in the Mid 6-Figure Price ZeroCarbon.com Just Sold For in the 2nd Sale at That Level in the Past Week

Another big DNJournal domain sales report is shaping up for release Wednesday evening (Oct. 27). Last Tuesday I told you about a $450,000 sale of NIF.com and now I've learned about another mid six-figure sale that we will be officially adding to our next bi-weekly all extension Top 20 Sales Chart Wednesday night. That is a $600,000 deal for ZeroCarbon.com that broker Edward Smeu closed in a private transaction. At the same time we learned the price Edward realized in another sale he brokered last year. That was Monetary.com at $277,447 - a figure that wil put it in the top ten on the 2020 Top 100 Chart in our Domain Sales Archive that will also be updated Wednesday evening.

Image from Bigstock

(Posted October 25, 2021) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2021/dailyposts/20211025.htm

*****

Have an Idea for an Online Store? Cash and Expert Advice From New .Store Contest Could Make it Happen

The current global pandemic has prompted millions of consumers around the world to start shopping more online. At the same time, entrepreneurs have created a boom in the domain market in a scramble to build online stores to meet the surging demand. Many of those would be store owners are people who lost or left their jobs in the brick and mortar world due to Covid concerns. They are ready to be their own boss and have a good idea in mind, but aren't sure how to go about making their dream come true. 

That makes a new contest from Radix's .store domain registry, sponsored by Shopify, an especially timely one. Dubbed #Idea to .Store, the contest is offering a $30,000 cash prize pool, plus mentoring from judges who are leading experts in ecommerce, including Seth Godin, Entrepreneur, Best-selling Author, & Speaker; Natalie Ellis, CEO & Co-founder, BossBabe; Danielle Canty, President & Co-founder, BossBabe; John Lee Dumas (JLD), Founder & Host, Entrepreneurs on Fire podcast; and Neha Naik, Sr Director of Channel Partnerships at Radix...and that's not all. The $20,000 Grand Prize winner will have a chance to chance to be on David Meltzer’s 2 Minute Drill aired on Bloomberg TV and Amazon Prime.

Seth Godin said, “The #IdeaToStore Contest gives folks who have been dreaming of getting online a push to actually turn their dreams into reality. The move to online commerce has created a wide-open space for people to do work that matters for people who care.”

Suman Das, Sr Brand Director, .Store Domains, added "Through this contest, .Store Domains is furthering its commitment to making it easier for to-be entrepreneurs to take the first step towards turning their idea into an online store. We created the #IdeaToStore Contest because we realized that there are so many incredible ideas that never come to fore because of lack of validation, mentorship, seed money, and even motivation. We have included all of those components into this contest in a way that’s exciting and fun.”  

To submit an entry, participants just need to sign up on the #IdeaToStore contest website and subsequently post their ideas on Instagram. The entries will be judged on the basis of their creativity and engagement on the Instagram post before moving to the next round where select finalists will present their ideas live to the judges.

The contest will accept entries until November 14, 2021 and winners will be announced on November 23rd on .Store Domains’ Instagram handle, @getdotstore. 

(Posted October 22, 2021) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2021/dailyposts/20211022.htm

*****

With Newly Revealed Sale of NIF.com the 6 Biggest 3-Letter .Com Sales Reported YTD Have Averaged Over $1 Million Apiece

Today we learned that NIF.com has been sold for $450,000 in a private transaction. We don't yet know who the buyer is due to WhoIs privacy and the domain still resolving to a generic landing page at the current registrar and the seller prefers to remain anonymous. 

We will officially add the sale to our Year-to-Date Top 100 Sales Chart  when our next bi-weekly domain sales report comes out Wednesday evening, October 27.  As things stand today, NIF.com is tied for the 4th biggest 3-letter .com sale reported thus far in 2021. The biggest have been AFS.com (the #1 sale in our latest domain sales report) and NFT.com at $2 million each and AVA.com at $792,000. NIF.com now joins EGT.com and ZAG.com in a three-way tie at  $450,000 apiece.

Image from Bigstock

 Taken together, the six sales have averaged $1,023,666 each. 3-letter .coms have always been a very popular category but even so, we have never seen numbers like that for the top 3-letter acronym sales. In ALL of 2020, the top six 3-letter .com sales fell well short of $1 million TOTAL for all six. The top 2020 sale was AOA.com at $200,000 and the top six totaled $788,100).

This, of course, is yet another indicator of what an incredible boom year the domain aftermarket has been having in 2021. Most of the attention has been focused on one-word dictionary domains but as these 3-letter .com results show, the short acronyms are also reaching stratospheric heights few would have predicted just a year or two ago.

(Posted October 19, 2021) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2021/dailyposts/20211019.htm

*****

Latest Quarterly Reports from Guta.com and GGRG.com Reflect Unabated Boom in the Domain Aftermarket

With the 3rd quarter of the 2021 domain sales season now in the books, we have gotten new quarterly reports from two of the industry's leading international domain brokerages, Guta.com and GGRG.com. 

Guta's latest Premium Domain Sales Observation Report (.pdf file) showed the continuation of a trend we've been following all year - high demand for  one-word .com dictionary domain names. Guta reported 90 one-word English .com domain sales in Q3-2021 with 39 of those going to end users (25 of whom are companies based in the United States).

Percentage-wise, the 43.3% of one-word buyers who were end users was down a bit from the first two quarters of this year (which could indicate more domain investor activity in this popular category). However the same 43.3% is considerably higher than the average quarterly end user buy rate from 2018 through 2020 which was a little under 38%. 

There is much more data on all of the premium domain sales categories in Guta's free report, so you will want to check out the details on those here.

(Posted October 15, 2021) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2021/dailyposts/20211015.htm

*****

Fast Growing Registrar SAV.com Reaches 1 Million Domains Under Management Just 2 Years After Launch

Only 43 of the nearly 3,000 domain registrars in business worldwide have passed the 1 million mark in domains under management.  Today Anthos Chrysanthou, the Founder & CEO of registrar and domain marketplace SAV.com, announced that his company has just done it and it took them only two years since they launched to do it - a time frame few have been able to match.

Chrysanthou attributed Sav.com’s exponential growth to offering features and benefits that have resonated with entrepreneurs, small businesses, and domain investors.  He noted, "From the beginning Sav.com’s mission was to remove as much friction as possible related to the buying and selling of domain names.  For entrepreneurs and small businesses, that meant providing them with a marketplace containing a wide selection of quality domain names capable of helping them quickly launch or expand their online presence.  We also knew that competing with established domain marketplaces for quality inventory would not be easy, so broke away from traditional 20% marketplace commission pricing practices by charging domain sellers only a 4% commission, with no hidden fees. This innovative pricing model, combined with a “For Sale” landing page that is highly optimized for conversions, quickly attracted more and more sellers of quality domain name inventory to the Sav.com marketplace and registrar."

Anthos Chrysanthou
Founder & CEO, Sav.com

Anthos added, "It didn’t take long for the snowball effect to kick in.  New inventory of quality domain names attracted more retail buyers, which then attracted more domain sellers, which then attracted more retail buyers, and so on.  Exponential growth and 1 million domains under management was the result, with no signs of slowing."   

To further support growth, Sav.com also removed cost-related friction for entrepreneurs, SMBs and domain investors by offering extremely low domain registration and renewal rates. This is something I can personally attest to. For simplicity's sake, I like to keep my domains spread across as few registrars as possible and have for years now have been using no more than 2 or 3 well established companies. However, after watching SAV's growth I finally decided to add one more and opened an account there in July. Less than 3 months later I've already registered over 100 domains at SAV and have found their clean, simple interface for managing domains to be very easy to use. On the few occasions I've needed to contact customer service, my experience in that area has also been good. I haven't tried the company's other services yet but do know they offer free WhoIs privacy, free SSL certificates and have also eliminated domain backorder placement and fulfillment fees. When you take all of that into consideration it is no wonder SAV has become a very popular choice.

(Posted October 12, 2021) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2021/dailyposts/20211012.htm

*****

New Partnership Between Domain Aftermarket Innovators Dan.com and MediaOptions Brings Brokerage Services to Booming Marketplace 

Two of the top names in the domain sales business, booming marketplace Dan.com and perennial brokerage powerhouse MediaOptions, announced a new partnership today. The agreement will give sellers on Dan.com’s innovative marketplace direct access to  MediaOptions’ enterprise-level domain brokerage services, a move both partners are confident will boost sales for participating portfolio owners.

With 13 million domain names listed on its platform, Dan.com’s sellers regularly field thousands of sales leads per month. Under the new partnership agreement, sellers can turn 

negotiations for their qualifying domains over to the experts at MediaOptions. When a sales agreement is reached, Dan.com takes care of the domain ownership transfer process, providing both buyers and sellers with an easy-to-use platform complete with enterprise-grade brokerage capabilities.

In a related noted, OnlineDomain.com reported today that Dan.com plans to begin offering its customers complete domain registration services before the end of the year, with Transfer-ins, renewals & new registrations at cost price. 

(Posted October 11, 2021) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2021/dailyposts/20211011.htm

*****

How an Event That Happened in India Four Years Ago Led to One of NamesCon's Best Sessions This Year

In our coverage of the NamesCon Online conference that ran Sept. 22-24, 2021, I mentioned a session hosted by DN School Co-Founder Jay Paudyal that just blew me away. The unusual thing about it is that the session covered something that happened four years ago - but that did not make it any less fascinating or any less relevant to us today. Jay gave us an inside look at a remarkable extended event that got a lot of media coverage in India, including TV, newspapers, blogs, etc. but most of us on this side of the globe heard little if anything about it. I want to help rectify that because it was a brilliant idea and incredibly ambitious undertaking that changed the lives of countless Internet entrepreneurs in that country. If you registered for NamesCon but missed Jay's session you can still watch the replay on the NamesCon platform through October 29 (the session, titled Domain Name Trading on a Crazy Road Trip, is on the opening day Stage 2 agenda).

Jay Paudyal
DN School Co-Founder

For those who won't be able to see the session, the 2017 event it covered was called the All India Digital Skill Mission and it had scope than went far beyond domain trading alone. It involved seven intrepid Internet gurus, Jay being one of them, spending two months in one van traveling some 20,000 kilometers all the way around the vast nation to accomplish seven things:

1. Let more people in India know the benefits of Digitalization and Cashless Economy
2. Help young minds learn about blogging and digital marketing
3. How and why to pick blogging and digital marketing as a career
4. Entrepreneur, Freelancer, and other exciting Internet-based
career options.
5. To explore 50+ major cities in our Incredible Country.
6. To explore 100+ villages and towns to reach each and every corner to enlighten the lamp of Digital India.
7. To meet thousands of bloggers who are already part of this big community.

Above: The mission and its website was launched by Honourable Shri M Venkaiah Naidu, Union Minister of Urban Development, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation and Information & Broadcasting (in white shirt) and the trip was presented by the IIPDS Genlish HighwayMonks.

The seven traveling Team Members (most of whom did not know each other personally beforehand) put the mission on their shoulders and made it a success. All are well-known bloggers, digital marketing trainers and consultants who have one thing in common - a passion to reach as many people as they can to impart and share what they have learned about the various ways to earn money through internet. One of them, Sai Ramesh, a professional blogger and digital marketer, was credited with masterminding the mission.

Above:  A newspaper clipping showing Jay Paudyal (center) 
and his teammates on the All India Digital Skill Mission 2017.

The team started their journey in Kashmir on January 15, 2017 and finished it when the arrived in the nation's capital, New Delhi in the middle of March. The map below shows the route they took and the primary stops made along the way:

During the trip the team visited hundreds of village schools, ITIs, IITs, IIMs, and other educational institutes, delivering presentations that were completely free to all attendees.

Above: A common scene on stops during the All India Digital Skills Mission - a room packed with local men and women who wanted to learn how the Internet can be used as the gateway to a brighter future. This particular one was a Workshop at the Surajmal Institute of Technology in Janakpuri, New Delhi.

In the course of their two-month journey the Mission team spoke to countless thousands of people and undoubtedly created many new digital entrepreneurs who will follow in their footsteps and, in turn, share what they have learned with their countrymen. The mission team was presented with many well deserved awards when they finally returned home, but nothing beat the personal gratification they got from making so many new friends and helping so many people along the way. I would love to see the model they established adopted in other countries around the world. The Internet has been with us for decades now but, as the current pandemic showed us, it is more important than ever now and it is still very much the future that millions more can benefit from if they are shown the way.

Jay shared a lot of his personal photos from the trip in his NamesCon session and this post barely scratches the surface of what the mission team accomplished. For that, you will want to visit the official All India Digital Skills Mission website for the details on how it all came about, who all of the players were and the remarkable road they followed into history!

(Posted October 6, 2021) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2021/dailyposts/20211006.htm

*****