Three low-volume, high-price domain registries go on the auction block.
A partnership between Frank Schilling’s UNR and XYZ is auctioning off three domain name registries: .car, .cars and .auto. [Update 8/7/20: XYZ won the auction.]
The two companies partnered five years ago to bring the domain names to market. The three top level domains have generated combined revenues of more than $11 million so far and have a “predictable revenue stream of $1.7MM per year” with an average operating margin of 95%.
According to nTLD stats, all three registries combined have fewer than 1,000 registrations. But the partnership took a unique pricing approach to the registries. Retail prices for the domains are about $3,000 per year, significantly higher than most domains.
A new buyer could continue that strategy or choose a lower-price, higher-volume business model.
Frank Schilling told Domain Name Wire, “We both have made a lot of money from the strings and continue to, but we realize maybe the market wants it more than either of us. So this is a fair way to roll the investment.”
The auction will take place on July 13 and end the following day. Surprisingly, there will be no reserve. UNR or XYZ could technically bid in the auction under the same terms as other bidders.
Schilling noted that this is the first auction of new top level domain registries for which anyone can participate.
Innovative Auctions, which handled many of the private contention set auctions, is managing the auction.
” $1.7MM per year” with an average operating margin of 95%.”
Guess, It’s true what they say.. there is money in domains.
On the registry side… lol.
A domainer would have to sell 2 domains every day for $3,000 each to beat theses numbers.
Good luck for the auction.
If you can get the domains to sell, running a registry is money for old rope – its very low cost, high margin and scales really easily – but then that’s true for a lot of tech businesses
Read this you can see it in this link https://uniregistry.com/blog/post/to-price-or-not-price-your-domain-name
It started 2014 until June 27, 2019 of this post written by Jeffrey M. Gabriel 6 years passed every year 365 days = 2190 days if this divided to this amount $ 105,000,000 each day was $ 47945.21 is incredible truth.
Frank is one of if not the most successful domain investor of all time. I am not trying to get a promotion or a raise for writing this, it’s a fact. I guess that can be a discussion for another post. Since starting my time here we have sold over $ 105,000,000 worth of domains out of Frank’s portfolio alone. Let me tell you a little secret. 126,000 of his names have never received a single purchase inquiry. Not one. I will say it again. Not one.
I’ve always thought that those domains aren’t for domainers, they’re for end users. How many of those $3,000/year domains are developed?
Pretty nice margins!!!
I recall reading Uniregistry’s email announced general availability of .car/.cars/.auto in 2016. That message said: “There are no registry-reserved names and we have full availability of all single characters, almost all 2 and 3 characters, and all 1, 2, and 3 number domains.”
I started to check some names at that time and discovered that lot of best names were…registry reserved. They still are, check new.cars, for example.
Not good of Frank Schilling.
Sounds like a fire sale.
We say “Auto” too in French but the word “car” stands for “Bus”.
Any thoughts on the selling price ?
There was so much hype around this. Who bought it in the end?
It’s not yet clear who bought it. Should know soon.