The domain after-market is nearly as old as the internet itself. From domain and typo squatting through to legitimate ownership, the market for domain names has risen and fallen in line with the overall market.
1999 was regarded by many to be the peak of Web 1.0 and likewise 1999-2000 was the previous peak of domain sales. News June 21 that Business.com is on the market for $400million shone the spotlight on the domain sales marketplace again. For domain sellers it’s a party again like 1999.
Last week some $10million changed hands at auction for domain sales, with 16 domains being sold for 6 figures. Free Credit Check.com & Credit Check.com sold together for $3million, although as the DomainTools Blog points out this was at a relatively low multiple of around 7x yearly earnings. Seniors.com sold for $1.8 million and even Blogging.com raised $135,000. The exuberance in the market even extends to the spam infested .info domain, with Houston.info selling for $17,000.
Ultimately it’s up to the market to decide the value of anything; however the domain sales market appears to be outperforming the established site marketplace. Buyers of domain names seem willing to pay much higher multiples for a domain name than the buyers in the established sites marketplace are. A good domain name may have a wealth of untapped potential yet many of these domains are used by buyers as nothing more than spammy CPC advertising front ends powered by Google Domain Parking, Sedo and other similar providers.
It would be easy to suggest that the buoyancy in the domain market is indicative of an overall market boom that may inevitably lead to a bust, however the signs in the rest of the market would not suggest that this is the case. The money flooding into domains today is sustained by advertising that wasn’t as prevalent in 1999; the same advertising that sustains much of Web 2.0. Given that internet advertising still only makes up only around 7.0% of the overall advertising spend there’s still a lot of room for growth.. Whether domain name sales rates can stay at this high level though is yet to be seen. I’d think that they are getting close to a peak; the question is will prices plateau or decline once the peak is reached? Certainly if any readers are sitting on some great domain names, there has never been a better time to sell.
(photo credit: Emilia Pochie)
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The only real customers for these domain names are ambitious start ups that want to make an immediate impact.
Thankfully, as more root domains are being added - Website owners will have even more choices when selecting appropriate domains, and will not be compelled to pay those exorbitant prices.
re, SearchEngines Web comment: “Thankfully, as more root domains are being added - Website owners will have even more choices when selecting appropriate domains, and will not be compelled to pay those exorbitant prices.”
One can argue that additional root domains will only add to the value of the “.com” version. Have you seen the “.com” button on the new iPhone that automatically adds a “.com” to the end of a URL? Would you rather have 1-800-whatever, or one of the other toll-free numbers: You know, the ones you have to say, “Don’t call 1-800, call …”
These domain names are beach front property — no more of them are going to be created. However, there is no use debating this as Duncan is very correct: Despite the free opinions that will form a parade on this post, the only place this debate will be settled is the marketplace. And the money being spent is not fool-hearty. These people know what they’re buying.
Domains are like land, there’s only so much of it.
Mike,
There’s a real story behind the TRAFFIC event. There’s much more to it.
Look into the .mobi extension.
To #1, that’s not true at all - that the only people buying valuable domains are new startups. The people buying valuable domains are business people, who realize the business of domains/keywors/cpc, etc etc
#2 and 3 are correct in their logic.
i’m for sale, btw - $5K. lol
“The only place this debate will be settled is the marketplace.”
Thankfully, yes, so far. But just the term ’squatter’, and the irrational anger at the fact that someone else had an idea before you, or the arbitrary criteria people think determine the legitimate uses of a domain name, before long the crybabies will have another piece of legislation tailor-made for their woes.
I don’t speculate in the market, but I have bought a number of domains in the $500-$1500 range, none of them in my opinion exorbitant. It’s just irritating hearing people complain about people investing in and taking chances on names, and using terms like ‘exorbitant’ and ’squatter’. It was a land rush, sorry you missed it.
The whole 3 or 5 day free trial thing seems pretty bogus to me, but for the most part, if you can’t find or buy a decent domain name for yourself, you might reconsider whether you’re creative enough to run the business associated with it.
Where are some places to sell domains that you might own?
Kevin
Sedo for general sales, Moniker.com for big ticket items, Moniker is the company running the recent big ticket auctions of late.
Where is John Gotts when you need him…..still crying over wiki.com purchase?
There may be some truth in this. Gonna Bust soon?!
Btw, I was born out of the iPhone craziness - just a few days ago.
Right now is a good time to sell a domain name?
You might regret that comment in 10 or 20 years.
My web estate is hot and I’m for sale; MAKE AN OFFER!!!
OrList.com
Recent report released by NameBio suggests that the average market price of “threeletter.com” domain names is about $4,000.
I don’t think that investing so much money in domain names will yield a serious profit. Maybe the buyers of these domain names want to make a profit by selling the domain names to others.
Yohay,
http://things.co.il
web2reads
I’ve seen some of the figures professional domainers are doing, you’d be surprised what a decent type in domain can do.
Right on the money. Registered domain subscription.com some time ago. The level of interest from providers music, video, magazine or other subscription based products/services has definitely risen.
While people continue to speculate about the values of domain names, others continue to build up their virtual real estate empire…
The vast majority of domain name speculators are just throwing their money away. Sitting on a domain name nobody wants or cares about. Buying domain names is like throwing your money down the toilet.
Researching and purchasing a domain name are absolutaly critical for starting a business today. Who in their right mind wouldn’t register the name of their business and/or product immediately? This is how people look into your business and now more often than not, evaluate and purchase your products.
Yes, the real estate / domain name analogy is the one that fits.
I own over many domains and revenue has been trending up for years and that should continue as long as:
1) population is growing
2) the % of the population using the Internet is growing
3) the economy (and advertising) is growing
4) the % of ad $ spent on the Internet is growing.
That a perfect storm and people have been blind to it or poo-pooing it for years and many still do. Probably the same people who sat on the stock market sidelines until March of 2000, when they leveraged the house to buy momentum stocks. And probably the same ones who were renting all through the 1990s and early 2000s and then finally decided to buy that condo in Miami in 2005.
Not saying there won’t be a speculative peak and a “top tick” sale to ring the bell at the peak of this cycle, there will be, but the trend should continue up over time. Wash, rinse, repeat. Same as always.
A big question is the domain name registrars and what they will do with prices, regulations, etc. All it will take is some greed from the registrars and/or some sour grapes from connected people who want to take names they failed to buy when they had the chance.
Cheers,
Chrisco
http://www.buzzpal.com
Good News worth reading thanks !
http://www.crawlingthenet.com
Duncan, your reporting the sale of Business.com in this context is misleading. Whoever is buying Business.com is buying an entire business — one with an EBITDA of about $15 million. They’re not merely buying a domain name.
You should correct your post to reflect that.
Fullalbums.com up for sale! hit the contact page for contact info.
–starving college student
Look at swers.us ready for sale and have 1 bidder at this time.
To second Paul’s comments, this talk about Business.com is driving me mad. The domain has value, but it’s a business for sale…not just a domain:
http://domainnamewire.com/2007.....cross-web/
Y’know… If they auctioned the names in the first place, this wouldn’t be an issue, then they could charge the same fee as the auction every year for the name.
The only reason domain parking is profitable is that the “squatters” get the names at rock bottom prices from the registrars.
I think many fresh start-ups proved that the domain name itself is irrelevant. Sure it’s cool to have a “meaningful” domain name, but with names like quizbi, flankshr and gwalalata, I don’t think anyone will find a problem getting themselves a domain.
I think single-word domain names are somehow overrated (Pets.com for example?). Domains that are, or derive from, verbs or proper nouns offer very little help in branding. In fact, they can drag a business down to being confusing and forgettable.
But anyhow, buying domains and trying to foretell if they will sell is sort of like gambling, it’s simply unpredictable.
It’s a good piece of news! I have lanuit.com which I try to sell since 2001! No success so far.
Admit that such a domain name is worth more than the $ 20 I give away every year to the parking company, huh!
Nice post. I feel better now Duncan.
Have a nice day.
Having spent the majority of the last 5 years in the domain aftermarket, I have to say that one of the best kept secrets has really opened up and it’s great to see the larger market start to take notice.
One thing about the “right” domains (I.E. Good Generic Search Terms .com) is that the traffic that goes to those pages is highly monetizable and targeted. Why do you think Google and Yahoo provide the ads for the CPC pages that go on the majority of these domains when in fact it’s competing search traffic? The traffic converts much better than their own organic search results is why.
This is also why even though we consider ourselves a “Web 2.0 Startup”, we balked at going for one of the trendy voweless domains that most others are choosing and went straight for a good two word generic that means exactly what we do.
Keep your eyes on .TV
Demand Media is making a huge push on it and I rescently sold more the 16k worth of .tv names in the last 6 weeks. I also have been getting a lot more offers on some of my better names like Laptops.tv & Opportunity.tv, but at Qoof we have huge development plans for them.
Anything that can be converted into a commodity has a value, whether it’s unique or not… domains have finally matured as such.
Jon
honestly .COM is the only worth having - besides .ORG or .EDU
I bet .gov is Not bad - but I never had one :?( heh
To those who (still) doubt the vibrancy and legitimacy of the secondary domain marketplace, I invite you to visit the sales page of DNJournal.com…carefully noting the many different weekly buyers of these reported 2k+ priced domains…keeping in mind that these reported sales represent purhaps only some 10-30% of all such domain sales taking place each and every week.
I reluctantly am putting http://www.stinkyninja.com plus 9 years of internet-changing content, up for sale. I will accept bids starting at $20,000.
Remember, StinkyNinja.com has the world’s first Andy Lawrence fan site, plus one of the first 5 JTT fan sites. Serious bids only.
Interesting post
To get my feet on the ground ……….. in the last week I have had unsolicited offers for a common word name (www.sternum.com)
$25
$10
$135
So I think there are few trolling purchasers out there hoping to get a bargain!
Cheers Simon
Does anyone think companies like; Ebay / MSFT / GOOGLE / Yahoo / Amazon will ever look at companies like; DemandMedia / NameMedia / DomainSponsor to acquire?
I have been seeing more and more context about this domain industry.
I cannot believe that some people are getting this much money for domains!!
I’ve got about half a dozen domains lying around that could be worth a small fortune. Any suggestions on where is the best place to either sell or lease them?
Cheers
Graham
Graham (#37):
Please contact us at ImpressiveDomains.com. We would be happy to assist you in the sale of your domains. We specialize in premium domains, and have a large network of professional buyers that we deal with.
We’ve been a major player in the market for a number of years, with many sales in the six figure range (wallpapers.com, aos.com, everybody.com, cairo.com, blueberry.com, and MANY more). Most of our premium domains never get listed on our site, and most of our sales are never reported. Why? Because the investors we deal with don’t like the publicity - they like to do their thing without drawing attention to themselves. So if you want top notch service and guaranteed results, give us a shot.
To the readers of this forum: Here’s the deal with valuations: Traffic = Money. Professional buyers aren’t concerned about the price as much as the ROI - and with an average of 22% return, you can understand why there is such a frenzy.
Ashley Saddul
President
ImpressiveDomains.com
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! kklffogzebjkb
Rather than buying domains with good names, you may try buying aged domains from aftermarket.They bring in good search results ! And If you are lucky then you may get hold of a 9-12 yrs old domain too (like I did! )