(Some of) May’s top NameJet sales

Joseph Peterson takes a look back at the past month on NameJet.

Each month, NameJet disseminates its list of domain auctions that closed above $2,000, and various domain blogs publish that list basically as is. Personally, I’ve tried to dig a bit deeper, grouping sold domains by type and providing month-to-month statistics on overall market-place performance. Unfortunately, that approach is too time consuming; so I’m reverting to a simpler list format.

That said, I like to chew data before swallowing. And I can’t help noticing something the other bloggers apparently haven’t batted an eyelid at: NameJet’s list for May 2015 is suspiciously small. If NameJet really only finalized 41 transactions above $2,000, then May would be the platform’s worst month since it began reporting exactly 4 years ago in June 2011. Prior to this, the slowest 2 months on record had 49 and 58 sales above $2k respectively; and that was in 2011. Recently, we’ve witnessed NameJet’s strongest period – 5 consecutive months that handled between 94 and 148 sales above $2k.

So what can explain the sudden drop off from an average of 116.2 sales >$2k each month to just 41 – declining by a factor of 3? Human error. I know for a fact that NameJet’s list is missing domains because names I myself purchased during that period are absent. Also, my own records (which aren’t complete) show 75 auctions ending in May above $2k. A few of those would be expected to close in June, but some late April sales would have closed in May. During the last 10 days of April alone, there were 38 NameJet sales at or over $2k.

At any rate, we have half a list from NameJet. And it’s quite interesting. 3 of the top 4 sales are LLL.com domains, which will surprise nobody who has been watching the market of late. Yet these aren’t necessarily the LLL variety that most interests China. They’re vowel-laden, pronounceable, and meaningful in Western languages. EXX.com ($30k) strongly suggests the “ex” prefix found in such words as “exchange”. And VEO.com ($36.1k) is Spanish for “I see” – one of the best words for Spanish branding that I can think of.

Domain Name	End $	Domain Name	End $
VEO.com	36,100	EXX.com	30,000
DailyLottery.com	25,101	KEO.com	25,000
FiletMignon.com	19,000	1085.com	18,200
3960.com	10,600	3920.com	10,600
6674.com	10,200	TaxShelter.com	9566
4782.com	9500	1443.com	9377
1403.com	8850	BusinessRadio.com	8792
1435.com	8650	4061.com	7280
JZ.tv	6800	CouncilBluffs.com	5866
SafeBanking.com	5200	WLWL.com	5020
PZ.tv	5000	Utah.tv	4999
Ohio.tv	4800	9NN.com	4520
Illinois.tv	4450	BusinessWear.com	4102
GUSA.com	4100	OOOA.com	3055
MaoMa.com	2805	TOHE.com	2700
TEMY.com	2700	Kechi.com	2620
Laona.com	2521	01D.com	2510
TEJO.com	2500	TMCS.com	2377
EXIF.org	2222	Pilot.org	2190
CStar.com	2100	II4.com	2009
WagyuSteaks.com	2000

China is certainly to be found behind the 9 NNNN.com sales above. Our high of $18.2k is an outlier, since 8 of the 9 fall within the more circumspect range of $7.3k to $10.6k. Chinese bidders would be involved in the 7 LLLL.com sales as well, which ranged as high as $5k for the repeating pattern WLWL.com.

Yes, it’s also China buying CCC.com’s such as 9NN.com ($4.5k) and pinyin like MaoMa.com ($2.8k). What may surprise some readers, however, is the interest some Chinese buyers take in LL.tv domains. JZ.tv ($6.8k) and PZ.tv ($5k) eclipsed a trio of U.S. state TV domains – just barely, since the latter 3 fetched $4.8k to $5k apiece.

Within this partial NameJet list, China obviously predominates. If the company hasn’t yet hired a bevy of fluent Chinese speakers, perhaps it’s time they mirror that de facto customer base of theirs. Be that as it may, there are plenty of domains selling at NameJet that have nothing to do with China.

Money is the underlying theme of half the top half dozen English domains: DailyLottery.com ($25.1k), TaxShelter.com ($9.6k), and SafeBanking.com ($5.2k). We also see a pair of domains sharing the keyword “business” – once as a brandable in BusinessRadio.com ($8.8k) and once as a more descriptive category phrase in BusinessWear.com ($4.1k).

Apart from .TV, the only non-.COM extension to figure in this chart is .ORG, which placed EXIF.org and Pilot.org – both at $2.2k. It’s amazing how much market appetite there is for beef. Not only did FiletMignon.com elicit $19k; even WagyuSteaks.com was ordered up at $2k. Is it a coincidence that most auctions happen around lunch time when Americans are hungriest?