End users close deals before the new year.
A lot of small businesses buy domain names toward the end of the year. One reason is they want to get the purchase on this year’s books. That’s what one buyer told me the last week of December — “I’ll do it for this price if you can complete the sale by the end of the year for tax reasons”.
That’s great for domainers but bad for my fingers. They’re about to fall off after doing this end user sales report for Afternic’s last two weeks of the year.
There are some good sales in this list. The first one is a biggie, but there are more five figure sales buried within. Have fun.
Paramount Pictures bought WeWatch.com for $65,000. The current whois shows Mark Monitor’s “privacy service”, but historical whois records show Paramount bought it.
A Georgia remodeling company bought the domain matching its name, AllStarRemodeling.com, for $1,000.
Menara Travel, a UK tour operator focused on Morocco, bought DiscoverMorocco.com for $1,000.
On the other side of the pond, Sacramento Convention & Visitors Bureau bought VisitSacramento.com for $3,300.
Aggreko, which rents cooling towers, paid $1,477 for RentalCoolingTowers.com.
An SEO company bought SleepNumberBeds.com for $2,600. I sure hope its for a client that owns the trademark on that.
A Tokyo company changed its name to Money Forward and bought MoneyForward.com for $1,795.
Shoplio, a company that was sued over its iBoatCovers.com domain, bought RugsNow.com for $1,600.
Used auto parts store Pull-A-Part bought UPullIt.net for a whopping $10,400. It owns the matching .com.
The Illinois law firm Byrdie Brownridge-Tucker bought DWIli.com for $1,495. I’m not sure what the initials stand for $. I don’t think it’s Illinois abbreviation (IL) backwards since it doesn’t own DWIIL.com.
Convenience store chain High’s Dairy Stores paid $1,795 for MyHighs.com.
EnerSciences, a holding group for a number of “energy science” companies, bought PracticalEnergy.com for $3,200.
Self storage company CubeSmart paid $3,500 for AffordableMovers.com.
Pacific Pillows is at it again, buying iWeddingDresses.com for $1,000 and Tweens.net for $1,500. It previously bought tweens.com at a BuyDomains auction on SnapNames [Update: the buyer says he actually bought the domain after the auction.]. Tween.com (singular) sold for $40,000 in 2008.
French company DIOT, which owns DIOT.fr, went global with DIOT.com for $3,250.
Video company Highline Studios, which owns HighlineStudioS.com, bought the singular HighlineStudio.com for $1,000.
Financial services company Platinum Group owns PlatinumGroup.org, but I guess it decided it needed a .com. It bought PlatinumGrp.com for $1,313. It probably wants PlatinumGroup.com, but that domain resolves to a page offering it for sale (non-negotiable) for $27,500.
Cloud company Cooperative Computing upgraded from .net to .com with CooperativeComputing.com for $1,600. $1,000 to get the .com of your .net is a great deal.
Ditto with Major Security GmbH, which paid $1,000 to upgrade from MajorSecurity.net to MajorSecurity.com. Not owning the .com of your domain can be a security issue, so this was a good buy.
DayUse Hotels, not to be confused with HourlyUse hotels (but could be used for the same thing), bought DayUse.com for $3,000.
A 1-800-Got-Junk franchisee in Pennsylvania bought NiceMove.com for $5,000. Moves and junk removal go together.
Edrive Autos LLC, seller of pre-auction vehicles, bought AutoSaver.com for $2,500.
BanksGrocery Company in Kentucky paid $1,650 for BanksMarket.com.
Business training/education company Business Educators, LLC bought ExecutiveMentors.com for $1,800.
Batteries Plus bought RepairPlus.net for $1,300. It does not own the .com version.
A company that owns numerous Bitcoin sites shelled out BitCoin.us for $17,500. I sure hope it has U.S. operations despite a New Zealand whois record.
Education technology provider Parent Connect, Inc. paid $2,388 for ParentConnect.net. It owns ParentConnectWeb.com, but not ParentConnect.com (which is owned by Frank Schilling).
Even after reviewing its web site for a couple minutes, I’m still at a loss for what The Seek Company does. But I do know it sought its corporate name as a domain name in addition to SeekResearch.com, and landed SeekCompany.com for $1,000.
Wet wipes manufacturer Nice-Pak Products, Inc. bought WetNap.com for $2,000. Mike Mann was the seller.
ClassCreator.com helps people create a web site for their high school graduating class. It bought ClassConnection.com for $1,877.
Democracy Prep Public Schools, a charter school company, bought CitizenshipFirst.com for $1,000.
Tennessee Valley Authority bought OnForAll.com for $2,500.
Procurement company HCM Works paid $2,400 for HCMSolutions.com.
South East Bank in Knoxville, Tennessee bought SouthEastBank.com for a solid $25,000.
The owner of Glip.com bought Glip.net for $1,150
Metropolitan West, an interior design and window film company in Los Angeles, bought MetropolitanWest.com for $1,500. It uses MetWest.com as its web site.
Fieldstone Financial in Mansfield, Massachusetts bought LifelingIncome.com for $1,688.
Straden-Schaden, Inc., which appears to be a pharma company, bought ScriptsRX.com for $1,617 and ScriptsPharmacy.com for $1,095.
Tucows sold WhiteCastle.net to White Castle restaurants for $3,477. That sale makes me hungry. Or want to throw up.
Lifetime Fitness bought LifeTimeWeightloss.com for a rich $14,200.
Lab equipment company NuAire bought Nuaire.net for $2,488 to complement its .com.
WorldBankLoan.com sold for $1,595. The whois is protected by Network Solutions Privacy, which lists The World Bank as the buyer. It’s too early to tell if the actual “The World Bank” bought the domain.
London clothing company Charli bought Charli.com for $2,888 to complement its Charli.co.uk domain.
C & S Executive Transportation paid $1,000 for MyCNS.com.
The owner of FXCash.ru bought FXCash.net for $1,255.
The Ally Foundation, a non-profit working to stop sexual violence, paid $1,032 for ThanksgivingClick.com.
ORGAPLAN Logisik GmbH upgraded from .net to Orgaplan.com for $1,300.
Real estate firm Epicity bought EpicCommunity.com for $1,395.
Goya Foods bought RecetasGoya.com for $1,795 and SazonLatino.com for $1,895.
Israeli telecom company Geek Media bought GeekTime.com for $2,000
“”On the other side of the pond, Sacramento Convention & Visitors Bureau bought VisitSacremento.com for $3,300″”
Andrew, was this a misprint, or did they pony up 3k+ for a typo?
@ Kevin M – misprint corrected, thanks
Great buy considering VisitSanFrancisco.com sold this week for $50k
The number of overall sales is down by half for the holidays — and the number of end-user purchases is up?
Is such a large portion of Afternic’s sales to domainers? Afternic’s prices seem pointed towards end-users.
@ accent – Afternic’s sales weren’t down that much over the holidays.
One should not come to any conclusions based on this weeks sales. There are a number of factors that affect the completion of transactions.
Namemedia was closed a number of days in the past 2 weeks. Many buyers and sellers were out of the office which probably delayed transactions.
Some endusers might have been reluctant to buy anything in the past month because of the possible financial crisis in the U.S.
And, the other side of the coin.
There are some enduser businesses that had money in their budgets (they haven’t spent) and might have bought some domains.
January purchases will be a better indicator of the domain sales market.
Craig here from Pacific Pillows. You should know that on the Tweens.com purchase … I purchased that after the auction, but I got interested in it because of your blog. So, thanks! I read your blog quit often. Cheers. Craig.
Thanks Craig — I’ve updated to reflect that.
Is it fair to call your purchases such as Tweens.com as “end user”? I can’t tell if they’re for your business or an investment.
Thanks
Thanks Andrew for taking the time to post such valuable and in-depth research. It gives a great insight into the actions and motivations of real users, whether they are simply upgrading their main domain name — or expanding their business with multiple domain names, which could be an interesting future trend.
I see several others commented on VisitSacramento.com. That is a pretty outstanding domain purchase since the “Visit” version of large .com cities/states have historically sold for much greater prices.
Sales prices are most definitely up (strongly) for brandable domains over the past 12-18 months.