Are new TLDs changing the way you approach domain investing?

Tucows filed its 10-Q yesterday. In the report, Tucows suggested that domain name investors may be proceeding cautiously with aftermarket domain purchases this year as they wait for new top level domain names:

We have two primary buyers for our domain names – domain investors and businesses. While businesses domain sales continue to grow, we have begun to see evidence of domain investors interest slowing as they attempt to assess the impact the introduction of new gTLD’s may have on their businesses. Accordingly, until the impact of new gTLD’s can be appropriately assessed, we will be shifting our efforts towards appealing more to businesses while continuing to work with domain investors.

There are many reasons domain investors may proceed cautiously this year with the knowledge that new TLDs are coming soon.

Many domain investors are applying for new TLDs themselves, and may be reserving cash to support those ventures. Others may be putting cash on the sideline to register new TLDs when they come out. Some may be worried about what effect new TLDs will have on their existing portfolio, and are therefore treading carefully.

On the other hand, I know some investors who are spending more this year than usual as they try to buy the .com equivalent of strings that will be released as top level domains.

What about you? Is the imminent release of new TLDs changing how you approach your domain business right now?

We’ll find out in an auction that ends today.

.Cm, the country code for Cameroon, has been on an interesting ride.

It previously struck a deal with Kevin Ham to wildcard the DNS and monetize the traffic. Then it sold .cm domains to all comers, brazenly marketing the domain as a typo of .com.

That “relaunch”, if you will, was an unmitigated disaster. Bidders on domains that appeared to sell for a lot backed out, and the registry lost a bunch of billing files.

I was a bit confused why Ham didn’t participate in the relaunch auctions, but perhaps it was because he had all the data.

Fast forward to 2013, and Sedo is holding an auction for .cm domain names with good keywords such as toys.cm, songs.cm, and phones.cm.

How much are these domains worth? We’re about to find out, as the auction ends in a couple hours. (The auction pages say the auction ends in 2 hours, but also says 11 EDT. As I write this 2 hours would be 12 EDT, so just check in on the site to make sure you can bid before the actual closing. I suspect closing times didn’t adjust to daylight savings time.)

As of right now 10 of the 265 domains have $99 bids. If you have good data around how much traffic these domains get, it might be worth getting in on the action. $99 isn’t much of a risk.

Update: these domains sold. All were $99 except Phones.cm, which was $150:

soccer.cm
fit.cm
patent.cm
band.cm
audio.cm
vet.cm
songs.cm
toy.cm
phones.cm
test.cm
nutrition.cm

NameMedia refreshes end user sales web site.

BuyDomains, the end user domain name sales site owned by NameMedia, relaunched with a completely new look and feel today.

The site places a greater focus than the previous one on explaining why a business should spend money on a domain name. It also emphasizes the ease and safety of buying a domain through BuyDomains and includes a number of testimonials.

Domain searching and filtering has also been improved. You may recall that the old site required you to select multiple filters and then add them to a filter list. The refreshed site has simple dropdown boxes to filter by price, exclude hyphens, and select categories.

Domain name owners can list their domains on BuyDomains by adding them to their Afternic account

P&G in France, Univision, and a Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliate among big name buyers at Afternic last week.

Afternic sold just over $1 million in domains last week. The highest sale was FreeBackup.com, which was purchased by a direct response company.

Direct response company Fiorentino Media bought FreeBackup.com for $45,000.

California grocery store Los Olivos Grocery bought LosOlivosGrocery.com for $1,477.

Bio Herbal Tech, seller of pills that it says help you lose weight, bought SkinnyHabits.com for $1,000.

New Jersey company Healthcare Referral Networks bought PracticeAcquisition.com for $1,888.

DMR Partners, which stands for Digital Media Roundtable Partners, bought DigitalMediaReview.com for $1,195.

Animal Imaging Partners in Wexford, Pennsylvania paid $2,000 for VeterinaryMRI.com.

Financial company Market Shield Capital bought HomeEquityExchange.com for $3,788.

Breitling Energy bought EnergyProperty.com for $1,036.

ErgoSeat, a Swedish company that designs seats for buses, trucks, etc., bought ErgoSeat.com for $4,188 to go along with its Ergoseat.se domain.

This is interesting: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota bought JustSkipIt.com for $2,488.

Lab equipment company Nova-Tech International, Inc. bought NTIUSA.com for $5,088.

Irish company Paramount Packaging Ltd paid $1,200 for ParamountPackaging.com.

Celebrate Your Faith, seller of religious products, bought CircleofFaith.com for $1,388.

Safety Canada Limited bought SafetyCanada.com for $1,495.

Knoxville, Tennessee dentist Stephen Malone paid $1,900 for KnoxvilleDentist.com. Seems like a good deal.

Univision bought EuphoriaMusic.com for $2,996.

Patent law firm Da Vinci Partners in Switzerland bought Patent24.com for $2,500.

Berry Fresh Produce LLC in Long Beach picked up BerryFresh.net for $2,000. It already owns the .com.

Thrifty Nickel Ads, LLC recently bought AmericanClassifieds.net for $1,846. Last week it bought ThriftyNickel.org for $1,750.

Talk about a necessary domain upgrade: Face the Future, a group dedicated forest projects to combat climate change, upgraded from Face-TheFuture.com to FaceTheFuture.com for $1,725.

There’s an industry group for everything. The Society for Protective Coatings bought Coatings.org for $16,000.

IT company Network Guidance 2.0 bought NG2.com for $2,000. Nice buy.

A Coldwell Banker real estate agent bought LakeTahoeReal-Estate.com for $1,700. Wow.

I like this one. Radisson Hacienda Cancun bought MargaritasCancun.com for $1,477.

iPark.com leads list of Sedo’s end user domain name sales last week.

Sedo sold $1.15 million worth of domain names last week, including some good end user sales.

There’s a lot of money in NYC parking. Imperial Parking Systems, which bills itself as one of New York City’s largest and oldest parking garage operators, bought iPark.com for $23,000. Perhaps it has something to do with this?

PCloud LTD in Bulgaria paid 12,000 EUR for pcloud.com.

Norway company Advantec bought AdvantecGroup.com for $11,500.

A UK company called Assura Management Services bought Assura.co.uk for 895 GBP.

Thomson Reuters paid 810 EUR for the German ccTLD ThomsonReuters.de.

Procter & Gamble bought lecoindesfilles.fr for 1,000 EUR. I can’t quite figure this one out, other than that it seems to translate to “Girl Corner”. I’ll let one of my French readers help out here.

A CSC client bought PurpleClover.com for $8,000.

Wine Racks America bought WineCellars.co for $3,299.

Technology company Admira, which uses Admira.co, bought Admira.com for $7,200.

Insurance leads seller The Lead Company, Inc. bought InsureIt.org for $850.

Mindjuice, which owns the Denmark ccTLD Mindjuice.dk, paid $5,100 for Mindjuice.com.

Video game site network Curse.com bought MadPro.com for $1,000.

Clothing company Next Plc bought NextDirect.co.in for $1,500. It’s shoring up its domain strategy and recently bought Next-uk.com for $1,599.

Penn Hotels, which owns hotels in the British Virgin Islands including one called Hodges Creek Hotel & Marina, bought HodgesCreek.com for $1,277.

TRADERS media GmbH, publisher of financial magazine TRADERs, bought Trader.info for 3,400 EUR.