Joseph Peterson takes a look at some of last month’s notable domain name sales at NameJet.
If I were to tell you that, by selling 66 domains at or above the $2,000 mark during October, NameJet recorded one of its lowest monthly domain counts ever, that would be quite misleading. True, only 5 out of the past 41 months have fared worse in terms of the quantity of domains clearing $2k. But during all the previous months in which NameJet sold 66 or fewer domains (mostly during 2011), the mean sale amount ranged between $3,299 and $4,451. Last month averaged $7,592. In any case, October wasn’t far off the median domain count of 79.
As with August and September, I’ll be pairing off NameJet sales by price paid … in the maybe misguided hope that comparing apples to oranges can be fruitful. Some couples get along better than others. And, as is often the case, it’s lonely at the top:
LOV.com ($91,800) – Ironically, I can find no partner for LOV.com.
Even though the next highest sale at NameJet was another domain of the same type, OAI.com has less in common with LOV.com than its letter count might suggest; and it sold for slightly less than half as much ($40k). LOV.com is meaningful (+ “E”), and that meaning is universally important. It’s also pronounced as a single syllable, whereas OAI.com requires 3. In all, 264 suitors got down on bended knee 397 times during this auction. Back in June of 2013, two prominent domain brokers advertised LOV.com for sale within 3 days of each other in overlapping newsletters. When someone finally fell in LOV.com, he proposed remarkably near their respective asking prices of $110k and $99k.
Short domain sales are a dime a dozen – as talking points if not in value. Round up the usual suspects! LLL.com’s: OAI.com ($40k), YSU.com ($23k), QEE.com ($20.5k), UPV.com ($16.2k). NNNN.com’s: 9135.com ($16k) and 1934.com ($7.1k). A CVCV.com and a CC.com: PIGO.com ($7.5k) and 0H.com ($23k). Only a couple of NLL.com’s are a bit unusual: 1SO.com ($9.1k) and 3MP.com ($2.8k).
Entertain.com ($19,900) and/or CMBank.com ($16,805) – Last week, I pointed out a recent spike of interest in expired banking domains, which may be merely a coincidence, since CMBank.com is laser-targeted on China Merchants Bank. Meanwhile, Entertain.com exemplifies the sort of domain that targets nobody but is versatile enough to be valued by anybody. Gaming, television, show biz, or entertaining guests at home – the list goes on and on.
iWealth.com ($11,900) and/or Kemer.com ($11,400) – Since I’ve already discussed this mediterranean resort region of Turkey and the rich nephew of Apple’s iPod branding, I won’t repeat myself here. Nevertheless, these sales are worth pointing out again.
RealityShow.com ($9,298) and/or Policemen.com ($7,500) – I can’t help wondering if reality TV isn’t by now so widespread a phenomenon that it wouldn’t stand out even if named explicitly. Fish have no concept of water, and viewers are swimming in reality shows. RealityShow.com remains a good domain, but what might it have sold for 10 years ago? Reality TV was a trend that stuck. I prefer permanence. Policemen are certainly that. As a community, they have unique concerns and enough cumulative bargaining power to buy and make use of this domain.
CatScan.com ($9,000) and/or Pink.net ($8,690) – These could not be more different. One perfectly encapsulates a very limited but very lucrative, very significant product / service; and in tone it is somewhat dull and matter-of-fact, which is precisely what patients expect of doctors. The other applies to nothing in particular, but it’s a brand bursting with vivid color. With the first, a domain reseller could instantly pull together a short list of prospective buyers and call them up instantly with a convincing sales pitch. If they all say no, then the domain will simply wait until someone in that finite group of people rethinks their valuation. Pink.net, on the other hand, has a much larger pool of potential uses; but they’re harder to identify, and typically such domains sell to buyers who are actively seeking a brand name rather than to companies passively contacted. Incidentally, 2014 has also seen the rather lackluster rollout of .PINK as a new TLD.
BeSeen.com ($5,600) and/or Ameria.com ($5,600) – I suppose we’re looking at a typo of “America”, but it can also be read as a neologism with New World overtones. And yet it turns out to belong in the oldest of the Old World: Armenia. And it’s yet another banking domain! I took a look at BeSeen.com once before, but it deserves to be seen here too. Ideally it will be used as a brand for SEO, SEM, or something else advertising-related.
T-V.com ($4,900) and/or TUI.cc ($2,838) – These I’ve conjoined because they each represent a class of domains seldom found among Namejet’s top sales. .CC has some popularity in China, for whatever reason. And T-V.com must provide some sort of high-water mark for the wholesale valuation of hyphenated 2-letter .COMs. After all, what abbreviation is as widely recognized as “TV”?
Gunsmithing.com ($3,888) and/or Negatives.com ($3,200) – Here we have 2 category killers. As categories go, neither gunsmithing nor photo negatives is as immense as Property.com or Candy.com; but even small niches are big enough to contain multiple companies. AdWords is full of schools and tools for gun smithing. And my grandfather has 2 large closets full of negatives in need of digitization. Anybody older than 25 took photos on film, and just because we have digital cameras today doesn’t mean we want to leave photos from our past … in the past.
DecisionMaking.com ($3,085) and/or Litely.com ($2,600) – Perhaps the phrase “decision making” seems a bit mundane and its rhythm a bit plodding compared to Litely.com. At first, this purchase was a bit of a head scratcher for me, to be honest. We’re confronted by a bewildering number of choices, and an app to help us sort out pros and cons might be a big hit; but such a decision-making app might prefer a more agile brand name like Litely.com with some spring in its step compared to a humdrum descriptive phrase. But after some thought, I now see that DecisionMaking.com defines a crucial interdisciplinary field of psychology.
Marketing often involves consumer studies; so does politics. What makes someone choose to buy one car over another? Why does a long-term customer transfer domains away or stay with Moniker.com? Why do couples choose to divorce? Why do voters vote one way or the other while other citizens abstain altogether? Why do government leaders choose to invade foreign countries? Why do suicide bombers kill rather than campaign for change?
When all is said and done, human beings have whatever predispositions their biology and experiences supply them with. Yet we can better influence outcomes if we understand what goes into a given kind of decision-making process. So the study of decision making is nothing more nor less than the study of everything we can change in human behavior. Important stuff. A topic worthy of research grants, marketing hires, think tanks, academic journals, courses, and conferences.
Larry says
oh.com price must be a typo. Or it’s not oh.com
Joseph Peterson says
It’s a zero, not an O.
Mike says
0h.com was a good deal, even with zero