Joseph Peterson reviews the past week in NameJet expired domain name sales.
5-digit numeric domains don’t typically sell for $9,120, but one expired NNNNN.com did just that at NameJet last week. 51513.com = 3 x 7 x 11 x 223, in case you care about prime factorization, which the odds are you don’t. Apart from Chinese cryptographers, neither does China, where numbers matter less than numeral strings. These Indo-Arabic numerals of ours belong equally as much to Chinese children, who can rattle them off at top speed and memorize them easily. Moreover, as many domain investors know by now, numerals can be used as an alternative script for writing homophonic words, since they sound similar. Whether I’m right or not, I’ve heard that 51 sounds like “I want” / “I will” (“wuyao”); and the numeral 3 is thought to be lucky. That’s undoubtedly why 513.com is a poker website. So maybe 51513.com = Frank Sinatra.
ZAXY.com fits domainers’ favorite CVCV pattern; and it sounds familiar, thanks to the form taken by adjectives such as “happy” and “lucky”. Rare as the letters “z” and “x” are in English, pronunciation makes them unambiguous in this case. Plus, they sound futuristic, alien, and edgy due to their rarity. This brand name is half “Sexy” and half “Zap!”; so it will appeal to a lot of English-tuned ears.
Made-up neologisms always have overtones of real language. In Volantis.com ($2.5k), many of you will subliminally hear the concepts of Exotic Mystery (“Atlantis”), Choice / Will Power (“voluntary” / “voglio”), and Aerial Flight (“volar”).
Domain Name | End $ | Domain Name | End $ |
---|---|---|---|
51513.com | 9120 | ZAXY.com | 3600 |
VirtualBackup.com | 2501 | Volantis.com | 2500 |
OneTrack.com | 2387 | RestaurantRow.com | 1807 |
CFCS.com | 1575 | Garbage.org | 1550 |
BeTheChange.com | 1505 | Kafes.com | 1500 |
Learn2.com | 1232 | AuctionExhange.com | 1202 |
WHBB.com | 1200 | CityTelecom.com | 1200 |
DrJoe.com | 1100 | MEV.org | 1020 |
OMAD.com | 1010 | BMEX.com | 930 |
GothPorn.com | 910 | See-EduCoop.net | 861 |
SBSOnline.org | 855 | StarterFund.com | 740 |
TheSheet.com | 730 | RSSM.com | 680 |
SuperHeavy.com | 680 | LoveClick.com | 660 |
ET4.com | 598 | SeeTheSights.com | 570 |
Motorcycler.com | 561 | GreatLimpopo Park.com |
560 |
BurrillAndCo.com | 538 | DMIN.com | 450 |
Child Photographer.com |
395 | FeedHere.com | 348 |
NPCD.com | 310 | EGST.com | 307 |
WSSK.com | 284 | Pointers.net | 250 |
BlueMountain Avionics.com |
210 | MyLocalNews.com | 195 |
WhoisExpired.com | 165 | FEK-Karate.com | 151 |
AUXS.com | 147 | WebsiteCentral.com | 99 |
ListDealers.com | 80 | LoanRefinance Calculator.com |
74 |
NativeStudies.org | 70 |
Who can you turn to when you need to Learn2.com ($1.2k) do something? It might be Pointers.net ($250); then again that site might simply sell dogs or laser pointers. A versatile word, that one! Some other undervalued domains (it seems to me) would include AUXS.com ($147) for “auxiliary services”, SeeTheSights.com ($570) for tourism, and especially NativeStudies.org ($70).
Motorcyler.com ($561) is a great brand name with obvious applications. Whether ChildPhotographer.com ($395) will mean adults snapping photos of kids or vice versa remains to be seen. Likewise, we don’t know yet which city’s “restaurant row” will be the RestaurantRow.com – New York, New Orleans, who knows? Other food-focused domains include Kafes.com ($1.5k) and – for those who need very simple instructions –FeedHere.com ($348).
Most of us have seen this venerable quote on T-shirts and bumper stickers:
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Ghandi, supposedly. Although he never uttered those words, the phrase BeTheChange.com ($1.5k) still resonates as a progressive call to social action. Environmentalism accounts for both domains above that one in the chart. Garbarge.org ($1.6k) would be recycling. Meanwhile, CFCs.com ($1.6k) can stand for chlorofluorocarbons, which are the culprits implicated in that infamous hole in the ozone layer. We also have an international wilderness preserve within Africa: GreatLimpopoPark.com ($560).
Writing these articles usually involves playing some game for meown private amusement. In this case, the task was to insert famous songs by 3 members of the Rat Pack. Job done.
KC says
51513.com.cn is parked and 51513.cn unresolved, so not sure how useful 51513.com is. “I Want I Want Birth” (I REALLY want a baby?)
Joseph Peterson says
It does come as a bit of a surprise.
Sale amounts come in 2 flavors:
(1) Private negotiations or But-It-Now situations where 1 eager buyer meets a firm number and decides to go ahead at the asking price.
(2) Auctions where no sale happens unless 2 eager buyers simultaneously want to pay the same price, if not more.
Unusual prices in #1 can be written off as whims of individual buyers. But unusual prices in #2 mean much more.
Most “flukes” or eye-popping prices arise from #1 sources – e.g. Sedo; high-end brokerage firms such as DomainHoldings; or resolute sellers like Michael Berkens, whose asking prices start high and stay high. In those scenarios, only 1 buyer is required to agree to an above-average price. (Note: “above average” doesn’t mean unfair.)
Unusual auction prices, on the other hand, deserve much closer scrutiny. Either market demand is higher than we realized for a particular topical niche or domain style … or else 1 bidder is a stooge or shill, working for the seller. (For examples of shilling, just look at Flippa.)
In the case of 51513.com, presumably not just 1 but 2 bidders wanted to pay over $9,000. Reviewing the bidding record, it might turn out that even more bidders participated up through the mid $x,xxx; or it might not.
In other words, that “I want” HAD to be doubled to get that price.
Joseph Peterson says
A nice flip for BeTheChange.com:
https://domainnamewire.com/2015/11/11/end-user-domain-names-sam/