Joseph Peterson runs down the latest expired domain name sales at NameJet.
If you’re as un-with-it as uncool me, then you’ll look at the $29.1k high bid for SelfieSticks.com and say, “Huh?” Apparently, selfie sticks are rods that attach to a camera phone so that you can hold it far enough away to take a picture of yourself and the grinning people next to you. Asking a stranger to snap a photo please wasn’t that onerous, was it? Trends move fast. Already the market for these devices generated a domain bidding war, while WordPress continues to identify “selfie” as a typo!
That wasn’t the only high-priced auction at NameJet during the past week; 3 other domains expired and surpassed $10k. TurkCell.net – yes, .NET – went for $10.1k, and it seems to be purely a case of brand protection / cybersquatting with reference to the 96th biggest website in Turkey (according to Alexa).
As if that’s not depressing enough, another $10.1k sale was MaxHardcore.com, which the feds seized back in 2005 as part of a child pornography case that led to jail time for the domain’s former owner (according to TheDomains.com). Apparently inbound traffic remains high a decade later, and some web masters aren’t fussy about making money from those old customers. If there’s a less cynical explanation for those bids, I’m all ears.
A third $10k sale, OPIA.com, could be for a NYC restaurant – provided it’s worth $10k for a local restaurant to drop the word “restaurant” from its .COM address … which I doubt. There’s an Optical Imaging Association at the .ORG too. But with acronyms, buyers often come out of left field.
| Domain Name | End $ | Domain Name | End $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| SelfieSticks.com | 29100 | TurkCell.net | 10100 |
| MaxHardcore.com | 10100 | OPIA.com | 10000 |
| Micom.com | 7200 | Matinee.com | 6500 |
| GameShare.com | 5201 | SSNN.com | 4309 |
| Bureaux.com | 4200 | Mandarin Chinese.com |
4005 |
| ACSA.com | 3000 | GameBit.com | 2950 |
| DaCash.com | 2950 | ZFitness.com | 2655 |
| WineStopper.com | 2425 | StudentChat.com | 2322 |
| HappyWeekend.com | 2322 | ENSE.com | 2210 |
| Voluntario.com | 2166 | Solaron.com | 2157 |
| Darwin.net | 2101 | SB1.com | 2100 |
| Shyne.com | 2010 | Renault.net | 2000 |
| Lampes.com | 1655 | AirCraft Detailing.com |
1409 |
| Marketing Survey.com |
1322 | Marketing Course.com |
1201 |
| UDRY.com | 1100 | Artism.com | 1010 |
| GlobalLive.com | 1001 | Vitamin Products.com |
959 |
| ESDI.com | 850 | PDHC.com | 845 |
| FDI.net | 810 | GeekWatch.com | 806 |
| CABP.com | 800 | WineCoupons.com | 790 |
| FeatureInc.com | 736 | Benefon.com | 711 |
| CupSize.com | 709 | UNDPLao.org | 654 |
| TorNet.com | 625 | LYBB.com | 514 |
| 3669.net | 510 | CHMD.com | 505 |
| NewMedia TrendWatch.com |
460 | BOLP.com | 453 |
| UMCH.com | 451 | TiempoCyber Climate.org |
430 |
| TribunaLatina.com | 425 | HorseBetting Tips.com |
421 |
| EatAtJoes.com | 421 | Rangler.com | 415 |
| NIWAF.org | 360 | VOIG.com | 355 |
| NIPC.net | 338 | 65597.com | 320 |
| PeaceDividend Trust.org |
310 | Photography- Guide.com |
298 |
| MaineRealEstate Broker.com |
291 | SCIM-IM.org | 290 |
| DiskJockeys.com | 268 | MintRubbing.org | 260 |
| LowRateHome Mortgage.com |
259 | WebMaster Cafe.com |
250 |
| Hadobs.org | 230 | 17205.com | 210 |
| TomeRaider.com | 199 | BGone.com | 195 |
| Schulhefte.com | 193 | SignatureVillas.com | 190 |
| SerenityVirtual.com | 190 | Radio-Pais.com | 190 |
| 360Z.com | 189 | ISGP.org | 171 |
| KBBG.com | 170 | WhatNoToWear.com | 141 |
| GNWR.com | 129 | CAPI.net | 126 |
| Sexodus.com | 119 | BayAreaAlliance.org | 111 |
| AussieGrill.com | 109 | ElegantWine.com | 106 |
| YurtWorks.com | 89 | HowToGetRid OfWarts.com |
80 |
| TreeRemoval.net | 80 | Simpable.com | 79 |
| TopRetirement Plan.com |
79 | OvumDonors.com | 69 |
This NameJet list is longer than usual to compensate for GoDaddy’s absence. I haven’t decided yet whether to resume reporting GoDaddy sales, although I have been collecting data. The expired domain market is so active that even results from just one venue among many are too many to discuss in full.
MandarinChinese.com ($4k) is a notable item. After all, that is the world’s #1 language with nearly 3 times as many native speakers as English; and it’s the dominant language of the world’s biggest economy. Nothing to sneeze at! Bureaux.com ($4.2k) would be French for “offices”, “desks”, or perhaps “agencies”. Lampes.com ($1.7k) are French lamps. Voluntario.com ($2.2k) is Spanish and Portuguese for both the adjective “voluntary” and the noun “volunteer”.
Micom.com ($7.2k) is a typical case of multiple longer domains intersecting in a single brand name. I catalogued half a dozen such cases last week more explicitly. And it’s safe to assume that several auctions charted above are due to similar circumstances (i.e. shared brand names). Several websites ought to upgrade to ACSA.com ($3k) – for instance, the woefully cumbersome acsa-arch.org.
TorNet.com ($625) may literally be about nets. A global company doing business from the matching .IS makes trawls. The fact that a singular WineStopper.com sold for $2.4k shows how much value there is in exact-match e-commerce terms. Undervalued domains might include OvumDonors.com ($69) and DiscJockeys.com ($268).
Finally, I’m heartened to learn that somebody will now be keeping tabs on all the nefarious nerds out there with GeekWatch.com ($806)!
The first time I saw a selfie stick was on the streets of Las Vegas at NamesCon this month. I don’t think not knowing about these makes you uncool, Joseph 🙂
OPIA.com is not for the restaurant nor the OPIA.org folks, although the medial angle seems to be on the right track. It’s the same contact info as RxDevelopment.com. The “OP” might stand for “Oviedo Pharmaceutical …” or something like that.
Interesting. Thanks.
My research into domain ownership for these articles is pretty half-hearted, since it comes as the last optional step in a longer process; and there are so many domains to cover. In general, I’m trying to explain value and competitive bidding, which can be based on many interested parties who nevertheless don’t end up owning a domain. Whether or not the end users are themselves bidding, resellers tend to ratchet up the price when they see more buyer candidates. I seldom look into a particular domain owner, but I appreciate it when someone else does.
P.S. “Opia” might mean opiate in some languages. The word certainly implies it; so pharmaceuticals are probably right. (Spanish for opiate would be “opio”; so if a brand name is called for, they might shift to a feminine ending.)
Yeah, I figured you’d be spending time researching the domains across the board rather than drilling down into the specific ones in detail. I just happened to see the auction for OPIA.com on NameJet. Looks like it had a minimum bid of $1,066 for some reason and only “biaoit” was bidding against “mkrules” for some reason (they don’t show all intermediate bids).
Bidder Amount Date
mkrules $10,000 1/12/2015 4:07 AM
biaoit $1,100 1/11/2015 7:50 PM
rashedx $1,066 1/8/2015 7:36 AM
billp3 $1,066 1/14/2015 2:28 PM
vaxis $1,066 1/14/2015 7:59 PM
suldan34 $1,066 1/14/2015 9:00 PM
dashu007 $1,066 1/15/2015 3:36 AM
inloco $1,066 1/15/2015 3:40 AM
reflect $1,066 1/15/2015 5:23 PM
brandprotection $1,066 1/15/2015 7:50 PM
ektr $1,066 1/15/2015 7:54 PM
domainer888 $1,066 1/15/2015 7:56 PM
JustSelfie.com now for sale – visit http://www.posterdomains.com & make offer?