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"Sun is shinin' in the sky There ain't a cloud in sight It's stopped rainin' ev'rybody's in a play And don't you know It's a beautiful new day hey,hey" - From Electric Light Orchestra's "Mr. Blue Sky". |
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Though web pages with sound always seem to annoy me, I have been toying with the idea of using a music clip to set the theme for our weekly sales column. However, not wanting to frighten anyone without fair warning, I decided to settle for some printed lyrics this week. Of course when he wrote the line "There ain't a cloud in sight,", Jeff Lynne couldn't have known about the possible arrival of WLS! But this is no time to rain on the parade, especially after watching ClearDay.com fetch $60,000 at Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com to lead our Top Ten sales chart for the week completed Sunday (March 21). That sale was also good enough to make the Top Ten on our Year-To-Date chart. That wasn't the only big winner either. We had a total of five 5-figure sales reported, 3 of them .coms, one a .de and one a .info. The 2nd and 3rd ranked domains were both misspellings! Cheatplant.com went for $20,000 at Namewinner.com and the most comical misspelling of the decade, Dicionary.com went for $13,500 at Pool.com. When you look at the traffic numbers for those domains, you can understand why the buyers dug deep to get them, despite the missing letters. Cheatplant.com has a huge 9,094 return with the extension at Overture. Those are undoubtedly folks looking for the popular cheat code site CheatPlanet.com. Dicionary.com also draws big traffic from people who are spelling-challenged to a degree that is almost incomprehensible (how they manage to turn on their computer to get to dicionary.com in the first place remains a bit of mystery as well). The Overture number on this one with the extension is currently 2,445. I would really like to know what kind of links these folks will be clicking on the PPC page that the new owner quickly installed to take advantage of the traffic. I would have to think this might be the world's best portal for the publishers of those books "For Dummies!" Sedo.com accounted for the other two 5-figure sales this week. They attracted $11,455 for a German country code domain, Foren.de ("Forums" in English) and brought .info back to the Big Board with the $10,492 sale of HMS.info. We told you about this one several weeks ago when it started through the escrow process. It's now officially completed and it's the highest 3-letter .info sale we have ever heard of. It will almost certainly add fuel to the rising prices we have seen in that category for the past several weeks (much of that run-up was started by Elequa's buyout of all previously unregistered .info threes). In addition to ranking #5 on this week's Big Board, the domain takes over the #2 slot on our Year-To-Date New TLD chart, trailing only NewYork.info. We'll have more on that later but now let's take a look at our complete new Top Ten:
As you can see .de took two more slots in the second half of the Top Ten with the sales of Taucher.de and Euro2004.de both coming at Sedo. They also had another one of the six .coms on the chart with Joepa.com. American college football fans will recognize the term as the nickname for Penn State coach Joe Paterno, but the most likely buyer is the owner of Joepa.de, a German firm that comes up #1 in Google when you search for the term. Sedo's other sales included Zeig.de ("to show" in English) at �3,300 ($4,074), HitModel.net at �2,999 ($3,702) and Gl�ckwunsch.de (one of the new "international character" domains that means "congratulations" in English) at �2,800 ($3,456). Sedo also rang up $2,888 for Weinservice.com and �2,300 ($2,839) for an Austrian country code domain, Absinth.at. Three more .coms rounded out their weekly top sales list: ProvisionX.com at �2,320 ($2,864), CorporatePresents.com at $2,688 and SalesEvent.com at $2,500. In addition to their chart-topper and the 6th ranked sale, Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com tacked on another $4,550 for CashRebate.net. They also had a pair of sales totalling $19,400 that they couldn't report due to a confidentiality request from the parties involved. Over at Afternic.com, we saw still another example of renewed interest in 3-character .coms. This time it was DC2.com going for $1,700. AgeRX.com was right behind at $1,675, while LiquidDragon.com soaked up $1,220 and ThirdParty.net netted an even $1,000. In addition to their two Top Ten sales, Pool.com picked up $4,010 for iPets.com and $1,272 for BilliardSupply.com. In the Pipeline: Pool also has a nice head start on the week ahead. An auction for LuxuryVacation.com ended Monday (March 22, the day after our reporting period ended) at $5,310. The biggest reported sale currently in the works involves ExpiredDomains.com. It is going through the escrow process in a private transaction after the two parties settled on a $6,500 selling price. That $60,000 sale of ClearDay.com required us to make way on our Year-To-Date Sales Chart. We added a position rather than bump Beat.com off the chart. The $25,000 that domain went for makes a nice even entry point for chart admission. So here you have the Top 21 reported sales Year-To-Date:
Well there is certainly no doubt about this week's new extension headliner! At $10,492 the stunning sale of HMS.info left everything else in the dust. The seller told us he is seeing some solid interest in the other prime .info domains in his portfolio as well. He also said an advisor he usually relies on had told him not to bother with new extensions. Sometimes it pays to look beyond the herd mentality and follow your own instincts! I have noticed that most of those dispensing advice to avoid new extensions have never owned a New TLD domain and have never participated in this corner of the marketplace. I am curious as to just how they came by their expertise on the subject since it is usually difficult to get a degree without going to class. Those who are involved in the market will tell you it is becoming an increasingly expensive place to play as new competitors have caught wind of what is happening with sales and have joined the chase for the better names. .Info continues to be the dominant force in this market, though a .biz slipped into the #2 slot this week with Mangas.biz going for $741 at Sedo. Mangas is an oriental art form usually coupled with Anime. As they have done many times since this column began, Sedo swept all five spots on our chart. Here is the full list of the Top Five reported sales for the week ending March 21:
Sedo may reign unchallenged on the New TLD chart so often because many of those involved in private sales are reluctant to make their transactions public. Several have told me that doing so would only make future acquisitions more expensive for them and they are hoping to add to their portfolio before the window of opportunity closes. I believe the biggest window already has closed. That window opened when the .info and .biz extensions hit the two-year anniversary of their rollouts and some excellent names that had been registered on opening day or in sunrise were let go by the original registrants (all initial registrations were for two-year periods). That led to some some remarkable drops in the fourth quarter of 2003 and early 2004 that have almost completely dried up now. Sales like the one for HMS.info will continue to alter the new extension landscape. It forced us to make a change on our Year-To-Date New TLD chart, expanding it another notch to make way for our new #2 domain:
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]. People like Richard Meyer 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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Copyright 2003
Domain Name Journal
A Division of
Internet Edge, Inc.