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ME.
com Commands $460,000 in Monster Sale at Moniker/DomainSystems! 

by Ron Jackson     
Archived April 20, 2004


OK, hold on here for just a second.
I'm busy picking my jaw back up off the floor! If the late great Chicago Cubs baseball announcer Harry Caray was still around, you can bet he would let one of his famous "Holy Cow!"  exclamations fly over this news. $460,000 just changed hands at Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com for one fine domain - ME.com.  


That sale obviously sailed to the top of our new weekly Top Ten chart and also took over the #2 position on our Year-To-Date sales list, trailing only Mercury.com. With someone coughing up close to half a million dollars for one domain, you might think it is all about ME this week, but you would be wrong. Though that domain was in a class by itself, it let its little brother from Moniker/DomainSystems, Mirror.com, tag along and take the #2 slot on the weekly chart with a highly respectable $50,000 sale of its own.

Sales like that have a way of putting the entire industry in a good humor. Sedo.com underscored that point with the #3 sale which, appropriately enough, was Humor.de at $30,449! .Info even got into the act, notching still another five-figure sale, with Tampa.info going for $10,000 in a private transaction. The buyer, Wyvern LLC, is the same group that scooped up NewYork.info for more than $28,000 earlier this year (the highest reported New TLD sale to date). 

Wyvern's Josh Metnick (who also heads a corporation that owns Chicago.com) told us the company has opened a new metropolitan network at AssociatedCities.com. They are certainly assembling the right parts for that new portal. Wyvern also added Houston.info to their portfolio this week. That $4,000 sale also made our new Top Ten, tying for the final position and giving .info an unprecedented 3 slots on the mainstream chart. Here's a look at the big board for the week ending Sunday, April 11: 

Domain Name Journal's Top Ten 
Reported Domain Sales - Mon. April 5, 2004 - Sun. April 11, 2004
Euro to Dollar Conversion (� to $) is Based on Rates in Effect Tue. Apr. 13

  Domain

Sold For

Where Sold
1.  ME.com $460,000 Moniker / DomainSystems
2.  Mirror.com $50,000 Moniker / DomainSystems
3.  Humor.de �25,520 = $30,449 Sedo
4.  Tampa.info $10,000 Pvt Transaction
5.  FloridaLawyer.com $8,500 Pvt Transaction
6. 113.com $6,000 GreatDomains
7. ProCricket.com  $5,900 Moniker / DomainSystems
8. CityGuide.info 4,000 = $4,773 Sedo
9. DebtFree.co.uk �2,400 = $4,362 Sedo
10. CarpetOutlet.com   $4,000 Pool
10. Houston.info  $4,000 Pvt Transaction

Keep in mind that these are the highest value sales that have been reported in the past week. This column is meant to be an educational tool, not a complete list documenting ALL high value domain sales. Such a list is impossible to produce because many sales are kept private at the insistence of buyers, sellers or both.

Miami's Paul Levine was the seller of FloridaLawyer.com, the #5 domain at $8,500. GreatDomains attracted a nice $6,000 price for a pure 3-number domain,113.com to dial up the 6th position.  Moniker/Domain Systems took the next slot with ProCricket.com at $5,900 giving them three of the top seven positions - great news for CEO Monte Cahn who just returned from vacation Monday.

Sedo also landed three domains on the big board, including CityGuide.info in 8th place at $4,773. Though the public is just starting to hear about .info, this continually rising end user interest in the extension promises good things to come in the development arena as well. When you see a ccTLD on our chart, Sedo is usually the seller as they were in the case of #9 domain DebtFree.co.uk at $4,544. Sedo's Easter basket was filled with several other sweet sales, especially in Germany's .de country code. WellnessWelt.de ("Wellness World") sent for �3,200 ($3,814), L�sungen.de ("Solutions") commanded �3,000 ($3,576) and GarantieFonds.de ("Guarantee Funds") sold for �2,950 ($3,516). Sedo also collected $1,600 for InfinityUniversity.com and notched the first significant five-word sale we have seen, CareerAndJobSearchEngine.com, at $1,499! We know that looks impressive but it only works out to about 50� a letter!

Pool.com had a relatively quiet week. CarpetOutlet.com gave them their only Top Ten entry, tying Houston.info for the final positions at $4,000. Their other reported sales that topped the $2,000 mark hit the CNO (.com, .net, .org) trifecta. TravelGuide.org arrived home with $2,279 in the trunk, CRA.net netted $2,200 and AdSmart.com (or AdsMart.com, depending on where the buyer wants to place the emphasis) went for $2,050.

Over at Afternic.com, they were busy salting away $3,995 for PistachioNuts.com (missing our Top Ten by just $5). That comes after they had just sold MacadamiaNuts.com ($3,688) and CashewNuts.com ($2,888) last week. You know how it is with nuts, it's hard to eat just one! Afternic washed them down with several other nice sales this week: R6.net at $2,500, AztecAmerica.com at $2,000 and GotJenna.com at $1,800. They also attracted nice money for a couple of normally hard to move multiple word domains. CorporateGiftIdea.com fetched $1,540 and FillInTheBlanks.com drew $1,500.

Just to show you how far the domain market has rebounded in recent months, we also got word of the highest .WS sale we have ever heard of. An anonymous buyer from the Middle East laid out $2,100 to purchase Steroids.ws from NameReach.com. .WS is the Western Samoan country code that has been marketed in other parts of the world as meaning "web site". In the case of this sale, to us it means "we're shocked!"

We don't hear much from users of Enom's Club Drop (a drop catching auction service available only to the registrar's resellers), so it is worth noting a decent sale there. An auction for EasyBusiness.com closed at $1,900 this week.

In the Pipeline: Looking ahead, Afternic has one of the biggest deals currently moving through the pipeline. An auction for Preview.com ended there at $18,500 on April 9. It is currently in escrow....It look like the good news will continue for .info too. An auction for Voice.info, also at Afternic, closed at $2,888 (also on April 9)....Over at Pool, BlogHosting.com remains stuck in the pipeline. It had closed above $20,000 but still hasn't changed hands there. There were some problems with that auction. The original high bidder (at $26,000) wound up getting booted out. Perhaps the runner-up is balking at paying a price that was run up by a pretender.

Our Year-To-Date chart expands from 24 to 27 positions this week to make room for that 460K ME.com blockbuster and the two other sales from the past week (Mirror.com and Humor.de) that easily surpassed our $25,000 chart entry point. Here are all of the biggest reported sales so far in 2004:

Domain Name Journal's Year-To-Date "Titanic 27"
Highest Reported 2004 Domain Sales through Sun. April 11, 2004  
Euro to Dollar Conversion (� to $) 
Based on Rates in Effect When Sales Were Originally Reported by DNJ

  Domain

Sold For

Where Sold
1. Mercury.com $700,000
(700K cash + $400,000 in goods & services)
Pvt Transaction
2. ME.com $460,000 Moniker / DomainSystems
3. Smoking.com $325,000 GreatDomains
4. Beef.com $150,000 GreatDomains
5.  Sexkontakte.de
"Sex contacts" in German
 �110,000 = $141,175 Sedo
6.  Truck.com  $101,000 Moniker / DomainSystems
7.  Kreuzfahrten.de
"Cruises" in German
�70,000 = $88,853 Sedo
8. Sedo.com $80,000 Pvt Transaction
9.  Boxen.de
"Boxing" in German
�56,500 = $72,509 Sedo
10. ClearDay.com $60,000 Moniker / DomainSystems
11.  FKK.de  �40,000 = $51,333 Sedo
11.  Busen.de
"Bosom" in German
 �40,000 = $51,333 Sedo
13. Mirror.com $50,000 Moniker / DomainSystems
14. CarFinancing.com $46,000 Pool
15. Hardcore.co.uk �25,000 = $45,951 Sedo
16. Faces.com $38,700 Moniker / DomainSystems
17. Metropol.com �30,500 = $38,230 Sedo

18. 

Nackt.de
"Nude or Naked" in German
�30,000 = $38,081 Sedo
19. Spamzilla.com $35,000 MarketEvolver
20. CleanEnergy.com $31,950 Moniker / DomainSystems
21. Humor.de �25,520 = $30,449 Sedo
22.  DiscountDrugs.com $30,010 Namewinner
23.  NewYork.info �22,000 = $28,086 Sedo

24.

XPart.com $27,981 Moniker / DomainSystems
25.  Messaging.com   $27,600 Pool

26.

NQ.com $27,000 Afternic
27. Beat.com $25,000 Moniker / DomainSystems
Unforgettable Footnotes:
Below are landmark sales where the price level (denoted by X characters) was released but not the exact price paid. This will allow us to note significant sales that are among the Year-To-Date leaders but cannot be ranked numerically due  to a confidentiality agreement that kept the exact price private. Date shown indicates when the sale was first reported in Domain Name Journal. High - Mid - Low indicates the range within the price category shown by multiple X's.
Woman.com (Feb. 10, 2004) Low $XXX,XXX Sedo
B�cher.de (Mar. 16, 2004)
{"books" in German)
High $XX,XXX Sedo


New TLD Section

.Info stormed the industry castle again this week, racking up a five-figure sale and a trio of four-figure transactions to take the top four positions on our New TLD Top Five chart. Of course you already know about the first three because they attracted enough money to land on the mainstream chart (which is becoming a common occurrence for .info). We believe values will only increase as public awareness in the extension continues to rise. Information is what most people are looking for on the net, so you couldn't have a more natural or immediately understandable extension for a domain. The fact that info means the same thing in most major languages around the world doesn't hurt either. Here is the full chart for the week ending Easter Sunday:

Domain Name Journal's New TLD Top Five 
  Reported .info, .biz & .us Domain Sales  April 5, 2004 - April 11, 2004
Euro to Dollar Conversion (� to $) is Based on Rates in Effect Tue. Apr. 13

  Domain

Sold For

Where Sold
1.  Tampa.info   $10,000 Pvt Transaction
2. CityGuide.info   4,000 = $4,773 Sedo
3.  Houston.info $4,000 Pvt Transaction
4.  Ferienimmobilien.info
(German for "holiday real estate")
1,100 = $1,312 Sedo
5.  Cashback.us  $600 Sedo

.US fans will be happy to see their favorite extension on the board - though .biz might dispute the results!  Here is what happened. Cashback.us went for $600 at Sedo while Sumo.biz sold at the same venue for an almost identical �500. In fact on the day the domain was sold, those 500 Euros converted to $603, a hair above the .US domain. However, for uniformity, we do all currency conversions on the day our weekly column is published. Today (April 13) those 500 Euros had fallen to $597, allowing Cashback.us to nudge ahead of the .biz domain. 

Sedo won't really care either way since they sold both domains that have a claim on the #5 slot! They also sold Puberty.us for $225. Meanwhile at Afternic, an auction for Machinist.us ended at $425 and the transaction is now in escrow. So, we are starting to hear a little noise from the American country code though it is still a long way from the roar coming from .info. 

We believe that over time, good keywords and terms in .info, .biz and .us will all find interested buyers, but with .info's fast break out of the gate, .biz and .us may have to wait for their turn in the spotlight. The question is how long that wait will be. With .info over 1 million registrations now and an average of 5,000 net new regs being added every week so far in 2004, it may not be long before buyers (especially small business buyers) will have to turn to .biz and .us in search of available and affordable keywords and terms. 

With three big new extension sales this week our Year-To-Date New TLD chart expands form 8 to 11 entries, with $4,000 now the price of admission for this list. Tampa.info, Houston.info and CityGuide.info all join the circle of honor:

Domain Name Journal's Year-To-Date New TLD "Elite 11" 
Highest Reported 2004 .info, .biz & .us Domain Sales through April 11 
Euro to Dollar Conversion (� to $) 
Based on Rates in Effect When Sales Were Originally Reported by DNJ

  Domain

Sold For

Where Sold
1.  NewYork.info   �22,000 = $28,086 Sedo
2.  HMS.info �9,280 = $10,492 Sedo
3. Tampa.info $10,000 Pvt Transaction

3.

Moscow.info $10,000 Sedo
5. RioDeJaneiro.info $9,000 Pvt Transaction
6. BDSM.info �5,500 = $6,947 Sedo
7. Reifen.biz
"tires" in German
 �5,500 = $6,894 Sedo
8. Vancouver.info �5,000 = $6,378 Sedo
9. Vacations.info $5,500 Pvt Transaction
10. CityGuide.info 4,000 = $4,773 Sedo
11. Houston.info $4,000 Pvt Transaction

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 of the American Marketing Corporation 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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Domain Name Journal
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