NetPoker.com Rakes in An $80,000 Pot to Lead This Week's Top Ten

by Ron Jackson
  

In fact, this week's numbers will look pretty darn good to us by any yardstick. NetPoker.com certainly dealt a winning hand, raking in $80,000 for seller BP Holdings Group, Inc. BP Managing Partner Michael Bahlitzanakis helped complete the transaction with a private company based in Los Angeles. That domain heads our new Top Ten chart, finishing ahead of a pair of powerhouses sold at Sedo.com in two transactions totaling close to $100,000. #2 FreeCellPhone.com dialed up �50,000 ($61,419) and #3 TextMessage.com arrived with a $35,000 attachment. Sedo wound up taking 5 of 10 spots on the Big Board and 3 of the top 5 thanks to #5 TrueHD.com displaying a brilliant $25,000. 

The other slot on the top half of our chart went to #4 Searching.ca, picked up by John Gotts (owner of Searching.com) in a private deal for $31,500. This is one of the top .ca (Canadian country code) sales we have seen and is just the latest in a long string of high profile buys by Mr. Gotts. We didn't mention it last week, but he was the buyer  of Top Ten entry Spyware.de at $13,539. The week before that he paid $25,000 for VOIP.us (the highest .us sale reported to date). Gotts told us he has several more major purchases in escrow. He plans to use Searching.ca as a French language sister site to the English Searching.com so that Canadians will be served in both of the languages commonly used in their country.

8 of the 10 domains on our new leader board cracked five figures this week, including #6 Downing.com which went for $18,000 at Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com. We have a truckload of additional top dollar sales to tell you about, but first let's take a look at the complete Top Ten for the week ending June 5:

Sedo and SnapNames.com took turns in the final four positions on this week's list. Sedo completed their quintet of big winners with #7 QualityNet.org at $15,000 and #9 PenpalsAndDating.com at �5,000 ($9,175). The latter name has some nice existing traffic (186 with the extension in Overture). SnapNames cashed another daily double ticket with #8 LoanRefinancing.com at $14,750 and #10 Bedhead.com at $9,000. Bedhead.com is another nice traffic domain scoring 599 with the extension in Overture.

SnapNames had an impressive sales list that included PurePerformance.com at $8,800, WarAndPeace.com at $7,466 and EasyLet.com at $5,443. They also sold a trio of 3-letter .coms including CJD.com ($5,200), SLV.com ($5,100) and PPZ.com ($3,128). Lads.com kicked in $5,320, FreeSkins.com added a spiffy $5,100 and LowDownPayment.com secured $5,000. 

The hits just kept on coming at SnapNames with Bridezilla.com scaring up $4,900, e-Jobs.com paying $4,559 and CharterPlane.com landing with $4,306. The meter on ChicagoTaxi.com finally stopped at $3,600, IndianHistory.com contributed $3,188 and a pair at $2,900 included eAccounting.com and MountainRentals.com. LookYoung.com looked good at $2,766, NewBrighton.com brought in $2,045 and With.net snagged $1,550. 

The Sedo sales sheet looked awfully good too. In addition to taking half of this week's Top Ten they added $6,300 for FoodVision.com, $6,250 for Cash360.com and $5,700 for OMU.com. The seller of Cash360.com, Clark Siegelin, said this is the highest "360" themed domain sale he has heard of and it is also a very nice price for an alphanumeric domain combining a keyword with numbers. Also at Sedo, Crosstrainer.com worked up a �4,500 ($5,528) sweat and Pferderennen.de ("horse racing" in German) crossed the line with $4,000. Sedo even scored with some exotic extensions. Flirt.us.com attracted �1,400 ($1,720) and Flirt.de.com added �820 ($1,007). Both of these are CentralNic subdomains. Shihna.name posted another $800 and Properties.la landed �300 ($369).

3-letter .coms have been commanding high prices this year but there are still some bargains to be found. Rico Dekker let a nice trio go for $22,000 ($7,333 each) in a private transaction. Those included IAF.com, SMF.com and KHK.com. The best 3-letter bargain was found at Afternic.com where GNE.com went for $5,000. I'm sure a lot of people wish they had seen that one. Also at Afternic, InfusionBrand.com sold for $3,750, GraphicImage.com added $3,488 and BullOptions.com commanded $2,000.

At Pool.com, ChicagoHomeEquity.com banked $5,300, CasinoSportsBooks.com won $5,155 and TeenybobberClub.com fetched $5,100. 1BookStreet.com went for $4,100, MobileForum.com called in $3,990 and SaladBar.com filled up with $3,666. TrafficNetwork.com clicked for $3,400, CheapGolfVacation.com tapped in $3,150 and FirstStar.com lit up $3,100. Also adding to the good news from Poolside were AddressValidation.com ($2,877), BestNotebooks.com ($2,100), CaliforniaPlumber.com ($1,565) and DetroitPhotos.com ($1,400).

At Enom's Club Drop, Thunayan K. AL-Ghanim (Elequa) picked up Woop.com for $3,807 and a pair of porn celebrity misspellings, SavanaSamson.com and SavannahSamson.com went for $1,800 and $1,400 respectively.

There were several private transactions worth noting including NameDelivery.com's sale of PointJudith.com (a Rhode Island vacation area) for $5,000 and NameYourself.com's $3,000 sale of StonyRidge.com. DNMan.com sold In-Car.com for $1,675.

Back at Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com, Cheap-Loan.com drew $5,400, ProcessMaster.com corralled $5,300 and FunnyGift.com brought a $4,800 smile. Just as we were wrapping up this week's column we had to run back to this paragraph to add late word from Moniker CEO Monte Cahn that they had just closed a $60,800 sale for GolfResorts.com! Our reporting period runs Monday through Sunday each week, so this one will be eligible for next week's chart (covering sales completed June 6-12). We know the buyer (who is building himself quite a nice golf empire), so we'll get some comments from him to add to this story when the domain takes its place on our Top Ten next Tuesday night.

In the Pipeline: A couple of other nice deals are nearing completion. An auction for America.org ended at Afternic for $20,000. The domain hasn't been transferred yet, but the buyer is well-known so we wouldn't expect any problems to develop there. Also, a Pool.com auction for WhatsGoingOn.com has ended at $11,000 and that sale should also be finalized by next week.

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Our Year-To-Date chart gets 5 new members this week led by NetPoker.com which cracked the YTD Top Ten at $80,000. We bumped our entry level up to $23,000 this week to make way for the richer newcomers. Here are the biggest winners reported so far this year:

New TLD Section

It was a fairly quiet week for new TLD sales, but .biz did generate some noise by taking five of the six sales reported to us. A pair of those tied for #1 after attracting $1,044 each at Sedo. Those were Stupid.biz and Sportwetten.biz ("sports betting" in German). Sedo also accounted for the #3 sale of Phone-Book.biz at $921. 

Elsewhere, #4 Cyber.biz went for $620 at Pool and iVoice.us prevented a .biz sweep after being sold by MoveNames.com for $500 in a private transaction. For the first time I can remember since starting the New TLD chart, .info was a complete no show this week.

A few weeks back I said that rising .biz sales had been the biggest surprise of the year to me and that remains the case. I just had another 3-letter .biz sale go into escrow at Sedo for $1,350). Here's a look at the complete new extension leader board for the week ending June 5: 

A company in Spain picked up GPF.biz for a nice price, $450, to anchor this week's new extension list. Slots 7 and 8 were left vacant. 

There were no new members on our New TLD Year-To-Date list this week so .us continues to reign with 3 of the top 5 entries. .Biz and .info have one each at the top but .info has the most entries overall. Here are 2005's new TLD leaders through June 5:

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].

We truly appreciate the industry leading companies represented on our charts who share their sales information with us to help everyone in the business get a handle on current domain values. Individuals like Richard Meyer of the American Marketing Corporation also 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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