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?
Hi Joseph,
Thank you for the coverage and for noticing the absence of some of the domains from the $2,000+ list. You always do an excellent and thorough job with these articles. And as you mentioned, there were a number of domains that were not included in the list that should have been, so we will be sending along an update to everyone shortly.
Thanks again and keep up the great work. We also appreciate the purchases!
-Jonathan Tenenbaum
GM, NameJet
Below is a list of 56 domain sales that were missing from the table above. As I suspected, NameJet’s list for the month of May had a glitch; and it’s a revealing glitch. While I haven’t confirmed the nature of the glitch with NameJet, I’m sure I know what it is.
The 41 sales above were seller-run auctions, while the 56 domains we’re now adding seem to derive from the ordinary expired domain life cycle. So you can make a handy comparison here between the 2 domain auction populations.
For my weekly articles, I run an algorithm to filter out seller-run auctions. So this glitch gave me an opportunity to check the efficacy of that algorithm. Results are pretty good. None of the 41 domains within the body of this article appeared in my weekly pieces; they were all excluded, as intended. Meanwhile, 41 out of the 56 new domains below have already appeared in those weekly DNW articles. The 15 that didn’t were domain auctions I simply wasn’t paying attention to.
1280.com …………… $26,010
wangan.com …………… $13,920
mete.com …………… $12,320
floridian.com …………… $10,877
greeninvestments.com …………… $9100
vipjob.com …………… $7920
xianba.com …………… $7000
gadzooks.com …………… $6655
glucosemeters.com …………… $5601
biao.net …………… $5420
citywidehomeloans.com …………… $5300
medicalsoftware.com …………… $5300
yellowpages.net …………… $5210
ovoo.com …………… $5200
counterterrorism.com …………… $5099
kerri.com …………… $5099
moviez.com …………… $5000
mostaza.com …………… $4901
551188.com …………… $4800
slanted.com …………… $4766
costamaya.com …………… $4102
partyzone.com …………… $4100
collected.com …………… $3850
stockspot.com …………… $3811
loveday.com …………… $3601
trainingonline.com …………… $3557
lianchang.com …………… $3411
insulinpumps.com …………… $3411
development.org …………… $3405
golfsmart.com …………… $3356
hamish.com …………… $3300
chatly.com …………… $3175
warpath.com …………… $3055
jukai.com …………… $3000
oldtime.com …………… $2933
ccba.com …………… $2905
glucosemeter.com …………… $2855
3888888.com …………… $2620
biaoding.com …………… $2610
immix.com …………… $2600
roofcare.com …………… $2550
duvi.com …………… $2540
infinitymedia.com …………… $2525
haohao.net …………… $2509
superiorliving.com …………… $2468
cookoo.com …………… $2422
vantix.com …………… $2342
atvrentals.com …………… $2300
comz.com …………… $2300
markman.com …………… $2235
purpletree.com …………… $2205
primaryplus.com …………… $2100
siteplanner.com …………… $2100
santis.com …………… $2016
titanium.net …………… $2010
kangaroom.com …………… $2001
Joseph’s list seems to show a .tv comeback… 🙂