Just ask the company that handles a good portion of the private transactions.

Afternic and Sedo release weekly sales reports that are reported by a number of domain blogs. DNJournal aggregates reports from these sources and others.

But at the end of the day, public sales figures probably account for about 10% of the domain sales market.

A lot of private sales take place with the help of Escrow.com. The majority of domain transactions the company handles are with end users, and that means most of the transactions it handles are never made public. Its results are a good barometer for what’s going on in the market.

So I reached out to Escrow.com President Brandon Abbey to find out what he’s seeing so far in 2012. He told me the year is off to an incredible start.

Escrow.com’s year-to-date domain transactions are up 29% compared to the same period in 2011. Dollar volume is up a staggering 45% with the average transaction size up 13%.

I don’t think this is a case of Escrow.com winning more of the market share. It’s already the runaway leader for pureplay domain escrow transactions.

Although .com still dominates, Abbey says that ccTLD transactions are up significantly this year compared to last.

This is all good news for domain name investors.

Email promotion puts your AfternicDLS domains in the spotlight.

If you have domains on AfternicDLS at the Premium level, your domains might be getting a bit more attention in a promotion right now.

Just minutes ago I received an email pitch from Network Solutions for a premium domain similar to an existing domain I have registered at Network Solutions:

The domain name offered for sale is the .org equivalent of a .com I own.

The email advertisement tells me I can buy the .org premium domain either online through Network Solutions or by calling them. The sale would, of course, be handled through the AfternicDLS system.

Although buying a .org when I own a .com isn’t the easiest pitch, many of these emails will pitch the inverse. That’s great news for people who have listed domains for sale on Afternic. Say you have a .com domain and someone registered the .net at Network Solutions. The .net owner is probably getting a similar email promoting your domain available for sale.

(As a side note, they might actually be getting five of those email pitches. That’s how many consecutive ones have just landed in my inbox for the same domain. Network Solutions must have some sort of glitch.)

A bunch of signs point to “yes”.

Last week I spotted a change in the whois record for work.com that makes me think Work.com has sold and changed hands. Now there may be a clue about the buyer.

On March 9, I discovered that the whois for Work.com changed from Business.com (the old? owner) to a whois privacy service.

Normally no big deal, except that the domain name had been listed in Moniker’s last live domain auction.

Today it surfaces that Salesforce.com bought Site.com a few weeks ago.

Here’s where things get interesting. First, look at the whois for Site.com:

Now the whois for Work.com:

Look similar?

There are more reasons to think Salesforce.com is the buyer. Remember, Salesforce bought Data.com through Moniker. It also apparently ended up the buyer of Social.com, which was also auctioned by Moniker. So there’s a deep relationship there.

And the TechCrunch article about the Salesforce.com debut of Site.com discusses how the company is getting in to human capital management. Work.com is a great domain for that.

A bunch of coincidences? I don’t think so.

3x sales? Yes, please. But make it easy on me.

Domain sales sites suggest that you categorize the domain names you list on their web sites.

Categorizing your domains helps them sell. According to Afternic, the sales velocity of categorized domains is 3x that of uncategorized domain names.

It makes sense. Although many domain buyers search based on keyword, others sift through categories.

Let’s face it. Categorizing can be a pain. Sedo offers an auto-categorization tool that works well. But what about for other sites?

One solution I hadn’t thought of before is Estibot. As part of Estibot’s appraisal system they automatically categorize your domains. I hadn’t used the tool in a while, but gave it a shot today. The categorization was remarkably accurate.

DrivewayLeads.com – Home — Maintenance
SkiResortLeads.com – Sports — Winter
PeoriaDermatologist.com – Health — Skin

Granted, not all of them were this accurate. But it’s a good nitial sort.

Of course, then you need to map these to the appropriate category at the sales venue.

It’s not perfect, but I think Estibot’s categorization is a tool worth trying.

19 end user domain sales from the past week.

From beer to shopping to politics, here are 19 domain sales to end users from the past week. All sales took place at Afternic unless otherwise noted.

Heineken bought Sol.com for its Sol beer brand for 98,000 EUR at Sedo.

ECPI University bought AcceleratedNursingDegree.com for $1,088.

Another educational institution — Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, paid $2,880 for LiveGreater.com.

Event registration and survey company Cvent bought EventMobile.com for $2,500.

The owner of RaceSuit.com expanded is reach with KartingSuits.com for $1,300.

Shopping comparison site Shopzilla bought Besitos.com for $1,000 at Sedo. Besitos means “little kisses” in Spanish. Will this be used for a new brand?

I don’t know much about Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker, but I know his campaign is smart when it comes to domain names. He owns ScottWalker.org but just bought ScottWalker.com for $7,500. That’s something Rick Perry never grasped.

The Private Mortgage Group of Nebraska bought DenverRates.com for $1,788.

Universal Forest Products will build something at BuildLikeaPro.com, a domain it picked up for $995 at Sedo.

Here’s an interesting one. It appears that Facebook VP Naomi Gleit used some of her pre-IPO money to buy Naomi.com for $8,000.

PatientLink, which uses MyPatientLink.com, bought MyLink.org for $3,288.

Tom Cammack, who has the creatively named InflationFighter.com web site, hedged against inflation by buying TexasSilver.com for $1,600 — about the price of 50 ounces of silver.

New Mexico solar company The Solar Biz started life at TheSolar.biz, moved to TheSolarBiz.com, and now has SunElectronic.com at a cost of $5,000.

1st Security Bank of Washington wants you to Bank Different. It deposited $1,595 for BankDifferent.com.

Conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation bought ConstitutionOnline.com for $1,488.

New York Presbyterian Hospital paid $1,500 for NYP.info at Sedo. It already owns NYP.org.

Merchant services company TrxServices LLC charged $X for TransactionServices.com for $3,000 at Sedo.

Rapid Filing Services LLC, the company behind RapidTax.com, bought BackTax.net for $2,300.

Colt Atlantic Services, Inc. bought eColt.com for $2,550. Its web site is ColtOnline.com.