A strong auction with a headline-grabbing .club sale but dominated by .com.
By now you’ve probably read a bit about yesterday’s Right of the Dot domain name auction at NamesCon. Here are my takeaways:
1. The auction sold just shy of $1 million worth of domain names. It’s not the glory years of 7 or 8 years ago, but that’s a total I don’t think we’ve seen in a while at a domainer conference auction.
2. The sell-through rate of about 65% is excellent. ROTD was able to seed the auction with domains guaranteed to sell by doing pre-bidding on the SnapNames platform.
3. You might say the headline sale was Homecare.com/net at $350,000. I’d argue it was Wine.club at $140,000. That’s a headline-grabbing number for a new TLD. This is certainly one of .Club’s best domain names, and it’s a record setting price for a new TLD (at least that is public information). This is an all cash, upfront purchase, unlike coffee.club and vegas.club (both of which sold in deals valued at $100,000).
4. A lot of good keywords in new TLDs sold for about $1,000-$3,000, which seems reasonable to me: Celebrity.wiki, RealEstate.wiki, Hollywood.press, Red.ink, for example
5. With the exception of a few new TLDs, the auction results were dominated by .com.
Domainer Extraordinaire says
“and it’s a record setting price for a new TLD”
.mobi was once a new tld and .mobi put that to shame.
https://domainnamewire.com/2007/12/05/musicmobi-sells-for-record-616000/
Domenclature.com says
Congratulations to all involved in what appears to be a successful conference.
Until an ordinary guy can achieve similar results, as far as these new gTLDs are concerned, it is not empirical.
Many ordinary Domainers are armed with extra-ordinary high quality new gTLDs, including .CLUBs. If only the Registry, and their consultants and promoters, such as ROTD, are selling these things, tell me what does it mean?
This time, there’s no excuse; all the new 2nd level names are aged the same, so similar qualities should produce silmilar results in the marketplace.
Again, congrats to all.
BTW, how come in the last 10 years we never saw clubdotcom names sell exorbitantly, or high demand? All of a sudden clubs are hot as hell? Perhaps all ICANN needed was the one string (.CLUB) to compliment .COM? Think about it. And you will conclude that it is not.
JZ says
regarding your last paragraph, .club is finding buyers and convincing them what a great investment it will, free pr, etc. I am pretty sure the buyer of wine.club was brought to namescon by .club.
Robbie says
Who is this buyer, paddle # 34?
Andrew Allemann says
@ JZ – not in this case, apparently. Word is a broker was buying on behalf of someone else, or perhaps another company. We’ll have to wait to find out.
David Walker says
The new TLD’s sure took me by storm. I thought I could pick up some decent ones in the mid-high hundred range, but they just kept going to mid 4 figures. I’d rather have a few decent .com’s than speculate on those prices.
Robbie says
I don’t get this many have quality GTLD portfolios yet get $500 offers from end users all day long, how the heck were these GTLD’s coming into the 4-6 figures, and churning thru, parked with a sales lander page, many cannot achieve this with their premium gtlds to date, amazing feat shown yesterday.
Patrick says
@Walker = I’d much rather have just one decent .com then all of the gtlds in that auction combined. I think most would agree. If the gtlds didn’t appeal to the very gtld friendly crowd at the DomainsCON, then who ever will want them?
Anticareer.com says
Who bought Fans.club for something like $1,400? Really? The term is “fan club”.
Piotr says
.xyz sold for $150, so I guess their blog post about how it’s the most valuable extension ever is coming out soon.
Robbie says
The auction was very GTLD friendly, they would slow the auction down to try, and coax bids, I have never seen an auction this slow. Bidders don’t like to be pawned around like this.
Andrea Paladini says
As regards “Wine.club at $140,000” let me tell you that there are many ways to “manufacture” sales …
At that price they could have purchased WineClub.com …
If it’s a legit sale, IMHO is really a bad investment …
Rocko says
Agree that these numbers just don’t add up. As my friends Bill and Ted would say, “Something is amiss at the Circle K.”