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Mingle.com Meets Banker.com In the 40K Club Atop This Week's
Sales Chart
With many of the domain industry's movers and shakers busy at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
2004 conference this past week, I was curious to see if sales over the past
7 days would dip a bit. As it turns out, there was no reason to worry. We still
had 7 five-figure deals reported, with one of the highest completed at the Delray
Beach, Florida trade show. That was Banker.com, purchased by Rick Schwartz for
$41,000 in an auction conducted at the conference.
While domainers mingled in Delray, GreatDomains was busy selling Mingle.com for $45,000 to claim the #1 spot on our new Top Ten. Enom's Club Drop swept all of the remaining positions in the first five with an impressive run including Boaters.com at $17,607, Mathgame.com at $11,107 and HometownRealty.com at $10,807. Club Drop software architect Chris Ambler obviously had his program tuned to perfection this past week.
For the second straight week we saw a .org go for five figures. Last week it was Erickson.org at $10,500. This time around it is Medicine.org which went for $10,503 in an auction at Pool.com. Incidentally, for those interested in chasing drops through the upcoming Open Listing Service (OLS) announced by Pool, I'll have full details on that program in an article we will be publishing later this week. I interviewed Pool President Taryn Naidu at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference to get a complete rundown on how it will work.
There is one other bit of information I wanted to pass along from the trade show. After starting our sales reports a year ago at this time we received occasional complaints that the high numbers reflected on our charts gave too many people the impression that their domains were worth more than they really are. Some went on to say that the charts gave an unrealistically high view of the overall market. Then we started hearing from major players in the business who had just the opposite complaint - that the reported numbers made the overall market look weaker than it really is!
Obviously both sides can't be right. We have always pointed out that the sales reported to us are just a fraction of those that occur. The prices from many sales are never released because of non-disclosure agreements (NDA). In most cases, NDA's are used for sales at the high end of the market, so we have tended to agree with the faction that says real market activity is considerably stronger than what our reports reflect. That view was reinforced at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. when someone who works in brokerage with a major company told me he was aware of three unreported transactions in recent weeks that all went over $1 million! We have been chronicling a booming market all year and the evidence indicates it is even stronger than many realize.
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Now back to this week's reported sales. The Medicine.org deal ranked #6 on this week's list and was the only non .com domain on our new chart. Pool captured a second entry on the big board, while Sedo.com also claimed two positions and Afternic.com accounted for the other slot. It was a nice week for the New TLD's too, with 4 four-figure sales including a big one at Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com that was among the 10 highest new extension sales this year. We'll have more on that in our New TLD section a little later, but right now let's take a look at the complete Top Ten for the week ending Sunday, Oct. 24:
As you can see Sedo.com rang up the week's final five-figure sale, Dial7.com at $10,204 and also anchored the chart with 118888.com at (£4,100) $7,526. That's the first time I've seen a six-number domain in that range (or perhaps in any range)!. Of course, when you see something like that you know it has to have a special meaning. In this case the number is related to directory assistance in the UK. It was purchased by a company that already operates TheNumber118118.com. Pool's second chart entry was #8 Seitensprung.com at $9,054 and Afternic scored with LiveSupport.com at $8,500.
As always there was a lot of action below the Top Ten as well. At SnapNames.com, Arin.com commanded $7,201 while WhaleTail.com (920 with the extension in Overture) went for $6,600. SpyMedia.com was close behind at $6,101. In a very strong 3-letter .org sale, SnapNames got $5,608 for ICM.org. They also sold a pair of 3-letter .coms, GDF.com at $4,100 and PJB.com at $3,600. In other deals World1000.com went for $3,552 and eMailing.com sold for $3,144.
Enom Club Drop's success was not limited to their three entries on the big board. They added $7,010 for Useful.com, $5,807 for DieselShoes.com and $5,007 for AllTravel.com. Elastic.com and OficeMax.com (high traffic misspelling that scores 590 with the extension in Overture) each attracted $3,709. They also had the week's highest reported .net sale, Scour.net at $2,909. Other winners from Club Drop included GoldKey.com at $2,730, FreeCreditRatings.com at $2,437 and Fukk.com at $2,330. Phernermine.com (a misspelling) went for $2,230, while Temo.com brought in $2,107 and PlayFreeSlots.com added $2,015.
At Pool.com MoneyManagers.com banked $5,100, followed by Phetermine.com at $4,750 and Sapporo.com at $4,500. Subscribers.com brought in $4,100 with another $3,600 going into the collection plate for FirstBaptistChurch.com. DKShopping.com sold for $3,250, TravelRates.com attracted $3,100 and LastMinuteFare.com added $3,042. BoxingClub.com also landed a solid punch at $3,001 a buck ahead of BordersBookStore.com at $3,000. Other sales included Siamese.com ($2,360), MilitaryDating ($2,100) and MovieScreensaver.com ($1,960). In other extensions, Finance.net returned $1,700, Seafood.org was a $1,579 catch and another $1,330 bubbled up from Aquarium.net.
Sedo's selection of sales is usually salted with a wide variety of country code extensions but this week .coms ruled the roost. TradeFairs.com led the way at $7,000. Catmate.com lapped up €2,888 ($3,684) and Infojour.com added €2,790 ($3,559). Others included LinkGain.com at $3,090 and Archiver.com at $2,500. There also was one solid British country code sale, LondonDirectory.co.uk at £2,750 ($5,048).
At other stops, DotcomAgency.com checked in with $3,600 from SlovakiaHotels.com, BackingMusic.com drummed up $2,325 and NoisyNeighbours.com raised a $2,206 ruckus. Back at Afternic, DuneCapital.com and LDSI.com commanded $2,500 each. Elsewhere the owner of UltimateMagazines.com parted with one of his many magazine properties, ActionMagazine.com for $1,200.
Our Year To Date chart gets two new members this week with Mingle.com entering at #35 and Banker.com at #37. Here is the complete rundown of big winners so far in 2004:
There's more good news on the new extension front this week. Moniker.com/DomainSystems.com made one of the 10 biggest New TLD sales of the year, collecting $7,500 for Erickson.info. That is also the largest sale of a surname in a new extension to date. That deal helped .info complete another big week, taking 7 of the 8 positions on our Great 8 chart. Only my sale of SCW.biz for $650 prevented a .info sweep.
There were 4 four-figure sales this week including SkinCancer.info which sold for $3,000 at Sedo. The others were ChamberOfCommerce.info at $1,500 and Westfalia.info at $1,200 (both of those going in private sales). Pool headed the second half of the chart with Content.info at $785. Here is a look at the complete New TLD list for the week ending Oct. 24:
Sedo anchored the chart with a pair of German terms in .info, including PC-Spiele.info which commanded $638 despite the hyphen. Just off the chart, Sedo sold Tablet.info for €380 ($485). 3-letter domains continue to do well especially when you consider these prices are being paid predominantly by resellers. The latest we saw was OEB.info at Pool for $250.
Erickson.info takes a place in our Year-To-Date New TLD Top 33 this week, settling in at #10, nudging Party.info out of that slot. Here are all of the top reported 2004 new extension sales through Oct. 24:
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!
Source: http://www.dnjournal.com/
