Which domains have sold more than once, and what returns did the owners get?
DnPric.es, a site that compiles domain name sales data, has a cool section that shows domain names that have sold more than once. It’s a great dataset to see how people have done owning domains as well as looking for trends over time.
The “frequent movers” list shows domains that have changed hands (with publicly disclosed sales) at least twice. There are 82,000 domains with at least two public sales recorded, 11,000 with three sales and 2,700 with four sales. There are even a handful with seven, eight or nine transactions.
It also shows the annualized yield from the first sale to the last.
I was looking through the list of domains that have sold four times and came across one that I owned: Cathleen.com. Here’s what it shows:
I was the buyer in December 2009 for $1,800 and sold it in January 2016 for $3,800 on NameJet. After commission that’s $3,230, or about a 10% annualized return. That’s not so great. I probably would have done just as well in the stock market.
The person who bought it on NameJet did well, however, It looks like he sold it a couple months later for $10,000.
Looking through the data on some of these frequent sellers is very enlightening. You’ll see a lot of sales with negative returns.
Joe Alagna - Afilias says
Andrew, so the guy who you bought it from paid $17,250 before selling it to you? Just want to make sure I read that right. Did he let it expire or just sell it at a loss?
Andrew Allemann says
Someone paid $17,250 for it. I’d have to look at whois history to see if it was the same person who sold it to me. Fair to say that a lot of people were selling domains below what they paid around then.
John says
Seems like you hardly ever see the “C” version but almost always see the “K” version. Then again, maybe that’s just me.
Andrew Allemann says
I believe you are correct that the ‘k’ version is more popular, but there are still lots of people who spell it with a ‘c’.
Jesse says
Have you ever had a domain name appraise on one of these auction sites but, sold for a lot more than it was appraised.
Deepak Daftari says
Andrew, I bought the name at Namejet, did some outbound and sold for $10K
We have met a couple of times at NamesCon too.
Andrew Allemann says
Congrats!