Distributor.com Fights Off Outlaws.com to Lead Our Weekly Top Ten 

by Ron Jackson
  

Afternic.com and SnapNames.com were especially popular domain "fishing holes" this week. SnapNames wound up catching half of the entries on our new Top Ten chart while Afternic landed the #1 domains on both the mainstream and new extension lists. Distributor.com gave Afternic the top spot on the Big Board after going for $35,000. A pair from SnapNames were close behind with #2 Outlaws.com riding off with $33,583 and #3 Gustavia.com banking $30,250. Seven of the ten charted domains hit the five-figure mark and .com would have scored a clean sweep if it weren't for Sedo.com's $19,644 sale of #4 Autos.org.

SnapNames' $18,138 sale of OffshoreCompany.com completed the top half of our leader board. SnapNames and Afternic accounted for the remaining 5-figure sales with Afternic adding $11,600 for Bleed.com and SnapNames collecting $10,300 for BudgetVacations.com.

Afternic also had a nice mid 4-figure .biz sale to give that extension the top spot on our New TLD chart for the fifth week in a row. We'll tell you more about that and some other good new extension news a bit later, but right now let's take a look at the complete leader board for the week ending July 3:

Sedo added a second Top Ten trophy to their bulging showcase with #9 X8.com at �7,753 ($9,240). SnapNames and Afternic anchored the list with JewelrySale.com going for $8,661 at SnapNames and ATVOverstock.com changing hands for $8,000 at Afternic. SnapNames had an exceptionally busy week, selling a boatload of domains in addition to the five they placed on the Big Board.

Their sales list included HealthSavingsPlan.com at $6,463, DOF.com at $6,388 and VoiceMail.net at $6,100. Bute.com added an even $6,000,  AbWorkouts.com crunched $5,222 and Entre.com exited with $4,988. TourismMalaysia.com attracted $4,900, OnlineShoppingCart.com contained $4,667 and SurfMonkey.com wiped out $4,548. ThePublicEye.com spotted $4,431, ApartmentSolutions.com contributed $4,288 and PaintballStores.com spattered the ledger with $3,655.

Also at SnapNames, Lumber.net sawed off $3,231, EZTV.com tuned in $3,203 and Voyant.com tacked on $3,200. Modocs.com commanded $3,000, TruckDecal.com peeled off $2,776 and AmericanHousing.com found a home for $2,601. RobertFrost.org iced $2,600, Door2Door.com rang up $2,438 and ExtremeHome.com extracted $2,401. DGIdea.com and JuiceDiet.com swallowed $2,350 each while Transfantasies.com turned $2,300. Other notables included Acron.com ($2,276), WantAdds.com ($2,272) and KidsComputerGames.com ($2,043). Oprea.com ("opera" misspelling) and SOTA.org also pitched in $2,000 each.

Country code domains helped add a lot of new black ink to Sedo's bottom line. The biggest in that category was a $15,000 .at (Austrian ccTLD) name that the buyer asked to keep confidential. Busunternehmen.de ("bus company" in Germany) rolled in with �5,800 ($6,912), BigFishGames.de hooked �5,000 ($5,958) and Biobauer.de delivered �4,000 ($4,767). Versandcenter.de ("shipping center" in German) received �3,480 ($4,148), ThinClient.co.uk fattened up on �2,000 ($3,513) and Notebooks.in notched �1,050 ($1,251). Sedo also scored with .com and .org. GoldenBridge.org brought $5,000, TeenCenter.com kicked in $4,500 and SafeMe.com joined MNQ.com at �3,000 ($3,576) each. Meanwhile, BestOfChristmas.com and WhatsOpen.com each closed at $3,500. 

At Afternic, MyWebspace.com stored $5,000 and Kissables.com collected $4,500. FlowersByDesign.com sold for $3,200 and TongkatAli.com added $2,000. Pool.com's sale list included Photoblogger.com at $4,753 and Amniocentesis.com at $3,601. Photozero.com snapped another $2,151, Poda.com picked up $1,850 and MexicanBrides.com ran off with $1,801.

It looked like a quiet week at Enom's Club Drop where only NudeWallpapers.com seemed to draw significant attention at $2,800. Andrew Miller had a nice $10,000 sale at ZestyDomains.com but couldn't release the name due to a non-disclosure agreement. We know the name and can tell you it was a 3-letter .com with a strong letter combination. 10K is a nice price for such domains in the current hot market for that category.

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Our Year-To-Date Sales Chart gets three new members this week. With the entry level currently set at $30,000, Distributor.com, Outlaws.com and Gustavia.com all qualified for the elite suite. We are now halfway through 2005. Next week we will be posting a link to an expanded YTD sales list that will give you every sale of $10,000 or more in the first half of this year. Here are the biggest winners reported so far in 2005: 

New TLD Section

.Biz just keeps burning up the track. That extension takes the top spot on our New TLD weekly sales chart for the 5th week in a row thanks to the $4,995 sale of WhitePages.biz at Afternic. Five 4-figure sales were reported this week, but Sedo alone had four others at that level they could not report due to confidentiality agreements. Sedo did tell us that all four of those unreported sales were .infos.

.Info also took positions 2, 3 and 4 on this week's list, with all of those sales coming at Sedo. #2 GEP.info went for �3,000 ($3,576) to help 3-letter domains claim half of the new extension leader board. Scholarships.info was a strong third at $2,750 and Unwetterzentrale.info ("storm center" in German) completed the top half of the chart at �1,050 ($1,251).

.US got into the act with #5 CBA.us selling for $1,250 at Afternic. Another 3-letter .us, UCC.us, tied AutoInsurance.biz for 6th place at $500 each. In our opinion, AutoInsurance.biz at that price was one of the steals of the year in new extension namespace. Here's a look at the complete new extension leader board for the week ending July 3: 

Still another 3-letter domain, OSV.info, anchored this week's chart after going for $477 at Sedo. In another sale at Afternic, Casinos-Online.biz went for $250.

Our New TLD Year-To-Date chart gets three new members this week, all of which easily cleared the current $2,000 entry level for this list. The top newcomer, WhitePages.biz, settles in at #12 on the 2005 leader board. Here are the highest New TLD sales through July 3 (next week we'll bring you a list of every four-figure new extension sale in the first half of 2005):

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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