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Decoding last month’s Web.com aftermarket sales

by — Domain Sales 10 Comments

Joseph Peterson shares what sold on NameJet and SnapNames last month, and what the domains could be used for.

Image that says Top Domain Sales with NameJet and SnapNames logos

 

“Oh but they’re weird and they’re wonderful” – these domain sales.  B-B-B-“Bennie and the Jets” by Elton John is how I first heard the word “mohair”.  Bennie (whoever she is) has “got electric boots, a mohair suit / You know I read it in a magazine.”  So the song goes.  Electric boots may be sci-fi, but mohair is as real as the Angora goat from which the wool of this luxury textile is shorn.  It’s used in carpets, coats, scarves, socks, and of course suits.  Since mohair is a relatively expensive commodity, we shouldn’t be surprised to see the sale of Mohair.com ($5.1k) among other auction results from NameJet and SnapNames during April.

But the biggest sale was Khols .com ($81.6k).  Déjà vu?  At first, I thought this must be a repeat auction because I covered the sale of a Kohl’s typo from January: Koles.com ($73.0k).  Someone is serious about buying typos of this department-store brand name.  Each of these was the top auction during the month in question.

999555.com ($44.0k) was the runner up.  I can’t say for certain why that 6-digit domain is worth 11 times as much as 747777.com ($4.1k), which also has a repeating pattern.  But it may have something to do with the numeral “4”, which is reputedly unlucky in China.  Another 6-digit domain with a repeating pattern sold just above the $2k reporting threshold: 902902.com ($2.1k).  Short numerical domains don’t need such repeating patterns to sell high, as the 3rd-highest sale shows: 1740.com ($20.5k).

Mould.com ($20.4k) was the 4th highest sale.  Here too, attentive readers should feel a twinge of déjà vu because DNW reported the sale of the plural, Moulds.com ($10.0k), back in December.  Notably, that was an end-user purchase via Sedo.  Did the same Chinese company pay twice as much for the singular?  This doesn’t strike me as a wholesale price, but sometimes ambitious domainers outbid end users in the heat of the moment.  Interestingly, the variant spelling was also sold as a .NET last month: MOLD.net ($2.2k).

While we’re on the subject of “Not-.COM” sales, let me point out that NameJet and SnapNames sold a total of 82 domains above the $2k threshold; and of these, 10 were not .COM – 6 .ORG, 3 .NET, and 1 .INFO.  My personal favorite was Activist.org ($2.6k).  As a rallying point, it’s ideal for branding; and the price strikes me as a bargain.  The highest sale was StatesAttorney.org ($10.0k), which is also political in nature.  Other interesting items include CreativeAging.org ($4.0k) and FuelCells.org ($3.3k).  If I mention HAARP.net ($2.3k), will a swarm of flying monkeys descend on this blog?  Conspiracy theories regarding the U.S. military installation, HAARP, are rampant.  Apparently it’s a plot to control the weather, a fiendish mind-control device, and the cause of an earthquake in Haiti.  Plausible.

When it comes to brand names, I’m not always 100% in favor of creative misspellings because they can cause ambiguity when the name is heard and not seen.  Domainers would call that the “radio test”.  And yet there are exceptions to every rule.  Fonic.com ($12.6k) is short and sweet, and it’s spelled phonetically – with “F” rather than the less common “PH”.  This can help with international branding, since many languages would use an “F” rather than “PH” for cognates.  For example, “telePHone” (English) is “teleFono” (Spanish).

There were a number of strong “brandable” domain sales: Nautico.com ($5.6k), Eventy.com ($3.6k), Digitary.com ($3.2k), Naturae.com ($2.5k), Breco.com ($2.2k), QCare.com ($2.2k), Celsus.com ($2k).  It’s tempting to think of such domains as a blank canvas, but often there will already be 1 or more brands using the name.  A good example of this is ProSim.com ($3.6k), which might be an upgrade for either ProSim-AR.com (aviation research) or ProSim.net (simulation software) or else be used for an unrelated startup.  MegaTel.com ($3.7k) seems to fit a New Zealand telecom and utilities company.

The foregoing list of “brandables” are neologisms that look and feel like a single word.  A different sort of “brandable” domain would consist of 2 dictionary words in combination.  Plenty of these sold as well: YourTown.com ($6.1k) and WeSearch.com ($5.5k); WeedTown.com ($2.2k) and CafeWorld.com ($4.7k); CareerNetwork.com ($3.2k) and CoolHomes.com ($3.2k).  The last pair hardly seem invented at all – more like an overheard phrase.

DIYWebsite.com ($2.5k) is a good name for a website builder or tutorial.  I assume the “U” in UGirls.com ($4.1k) stands for “university”, but conceivably it means “you”.  HellaWella.com ($7.3k) seems to match a health and wellness brand that was active on Twitter and Facebook as recently as 2016.  Maybe it’s being revived.  Maybe someone else just likes the name.  Or maybe there’s enough SEO value in the backlinks from an old website to justify that price tag.  It’s a good brand name, regardless.  For the benefit of non-American readers, “Hella” is a slang term common in parts of the USA.  It derives from “hell of a” – as in “That’s one hell of a car!”  And it means “very”.  For instance, “Hella good” = “Very good”.  Since “hella” sounds like “health”, transforming the phrase “health and wellness” until it becomes “hella wella” is pretty clever.  The name deserves to live on even if some prior project stalled.

IndiaTrade.com ($2.4k) has obvious uses in commerce.  AfricaTime.com ($3k) might promote tourism or be for a domestic audience.  Yakutsk.com ($2.1k) is a city in Russia.  HatYai.com ($3.4k) a city in Thailand.  Nothing against the 2nd coldest city in the world, but I’d prefer to visit the latter.  Speaking of cities, Pueblos.com ($2.5k) is Spanish for “towns” or “villages”.

Boeuf.com ($2.4k) is French for “beef”.  Obviously, that’s something most of us buy; so there must be some commercial value in a website about it, although most of us will never choose to visit a site about beef, let alone order a steak online.  In contrast, we might well visit ElectricBlankets.com ($3.5k) to order an electric blanket.  Or check LoanRate.com ($13.5k) to get a quote.  Or even visit FuneralPlans.com ($3.1k) in order to plan a funeral.

In the age of Google, would we need a directory of local carpet cleaners, a la CarpetCleaningService.com ($2.3k)?  Possibly not.  But the domain might be used by a single local business to attract clicks in search results or as a memorable address in print or radio advertising.  Certainly, it’s a bit long, and CarpetCleaning.com would be far better.  Nevertheless, the domain gets to the point.  Similarly, LightCompany.com ($3k) is a bit dull; but it’s generic enough that it might convey some authority or be used to brand a company in a straightforward, no-nonsense way.

Touche.com ($18.7k) is a French word that has been absorbed into English.  Originally it came from fencing.  When touched by the opponent’s sword, one would acknowledge the hit by saying “touché”.  It has come to mean something like “Well played!  You got me.”  There is no obvious application for this word other than fencing (or possibly debate).  But like so many single dictionary-word .COM domains, this one can function as something of a blank canvas.

4-letter .COM sales are a bit boring.  So let me just get those out of the way by listing them: IAAS.com ($11.4k), ISMY.com ($4.9k), GAFU.com ($3.7k), FAHI.com ($3k), SHID.com ($2.5k), MAIW.com ($2.5k), CSAI.com ($2.4k), TEMY.com ($2.3k).  On the whole, these are pronounceable and/or use common initial letters from English and other western languages.  In other words, they don’t resemble the vowel-less “CHIPs” that were all the rage during the Chinese surge a few years ago.

Even so, the Chinese domain market is very strong.  The #2, #3, and #4 sales in this article all have a China connection, as do others.  JunJun.com ($18.5k) may refer to an actress, a makeup artist with a sizeable Instagram following, or even simply be the Filipino version of “Junior”.  Given the price tag – it was the 6th highest sale – I assume it’s out of range for the Instagram influencer.  WangJiu.com ($4.1k) and ShangCe.com ($4k) are both personal names, but I didn’t see any bullseyes for a single most likely buyer.  Probably not the Shangce Gao who wrote a paper on a “meta-heuristic … gravitational search algorithm”, despite his being the top result in SERPs for “Shangce”.  Not the sort of person who wor

Gambling domains are seldom absent from these monthly sales lists, and April was no exception: SlotOnline .com ($3.2k) and RaceFan s.com ($2.1k).  But profit isn’t the only motive for buying a good domain.  Policing is a hotly debated topic in the USA, given perceived racial bias and use of excessive force.  Possibly Policing.com ($4.4k) will be used for activism in that arena.  Wawawa.com ($4.6k) might go to a bistro in Singapore.  GeoDome.com ($2.6k) undoubtedly refers to geodesic domes.

When I first saw truera.com ($2.7k) written in lower case – as domains all tend to be displayed online – I wasn’t sure whether to pronounce it as “Troo eh ra” or “True R.A.” or what.  Finally it dawned on me that it’s “Tru Era” without an “e”.  And that’s the name of an agency offering everything from DJs and dancers to videography and web design.

PhiloTV.com ($4.0k) seems clearly aimed at a company called Philo, which offers packages of TV channels in the USA.  They already operate Philo.com.  There was a second TV sale as well: SpaceTV.com ($4.7k).  And on the opposite end of the chronological spectrum falls EarlyCinema.com ($2.3k)

DeepRobotics.com ($2.3k) would be about deep learning and artificial intelligence.  I suppose that domain sale is 1 more step toward the inevitable Terminator scenario of robots enslaving humanity.  But for now, I’m still waiting for some electric boots.

Deep insight into recent aftermarket domain sales

by — Domain Sales 4 Comments

Joseph Peterson looks into what domains sold on Web.com’s aftermarket platforms in January, and why.

Image that says Top Domain Sales with NameJet and SnapNames logos

In January, 88 domains sold above $2000 apiece between the two auction platforms, NameJet and SnapNames.  75% of these occurred in a narrow lower range: $2k to $4.3k.  And only five domains surpassed $10k.

Far and away, the biggest sale was Koles.com ($73.0k).  In comparison, the runners up look more like stragglers: Xinda.com ($22.1k) and FIH.com ($20.4k), followed by BusinessCenter.com ($11.0k) and Though.com ($10.0k).

Whatever the intentions of bidders, the parking algorithm serving up pay-per-click ads at Koles.com certainly believes this domain refers to the sound-alike American department store, Kohl’s, to which 6 out of 8 ads explicitly refer.  (That’s true even from my vantage point, visiting the parked domain from a country where Kohl’s doesn’t exist – so prevalent is this association.)

“Koles” would be a common misspelling for English speakers accustomed to “poles” and “holes” and “moles” and not to the Polish surname of the man who first opened a Kohl’s store in Milwaukee, 1927, nearly a century ago.  By now, Kohl’s has more than 1000 stores, nearly 100,000 employees, and $20 billion in annual revenue.

With nearly all PPC ads orbiting a single well-known brand, one misspelling away from the domain itself, that brand owner might not seem overly paranoid if they felt themselves targeted. Justified or not, many UDRP disputes arise from just that feeling: When people encounter their own paid ads on a domain similar to their own brand name and for which they can envisage no other legitimate use, they believe themselves exploited.  Buying and parking such domains is not without its risks.  On the flip side, owning a brand name that fails the “radio test” and not protecting oneself with variant spellings is a costly domain strategy.

Xinda.com ($22.1k) also seems to match an established company, albeit less familiar outside a specialized audience of rock climbers: XindaOutdoor.com.  (It’s Chinese, in case you were wondering.)  Similarly, FIH.com ($20.4k) shares an acronym with the International Hockey Federation.  “But wait!” you say, “The letters are out of order.”  Indeed they are.  For la Fédération Internationale de Hockey (FIH) is international, after all – French, or rather, Swiss, which explains their .CH website.  Really for an organization that purports to be international, .CH doesn’t quite cut it.  .COM would.  Indeed, since they’re forwarding to FIHProLeague.com instead of using the shorter FIH.ch directly, it seems they’ve already come to that conclusion.  But, as a bit of trivia, they also run a website at FIH.live.  .COM is dominant, but it isn’t the only game in town.

Although the top 3 sales seem focused on established brands, the same cannot be said of the remaining pair of 5-figure auctions.  BusinessCenter.com ($11.0k) is utterly generic.  Office buildings and business districts in cities all around the world use this phrase.  Meanwhile, Though.com ($10.0k) is so generic that nobody could possibly claim sole rights to the word – though how someone could turn “Though” into a brand has me stumped.

Cornel.com ($3.2k) is 1 “L” away – and 1 lost UDRP away – from a famous university.  But not everything is cause for pessimism: Witness Grasshoper.com ($3.1k).  Bids were hopping – never mind the “P”s and “Q”s.

If your response to Nhathuoc.com ($3.0k) is “Gesundheit!”, well, you’re not far off.  Nhà thuốc is evidently Vietnamese for pharmacy or drugstore.  Various websites in this niche contain “nhathuoc” in their domain, and the term appears to be generic – not targeting a trademark.

Politics is in the air, as the USA gears up for the 2020 presidential election.  Unsurprisingly, the real world manifests itself in the domain market.  That’s obvious in GoVote.com ($8.0k), which might be put to use to drive (or misdirect) voting.  In NewAmericanCentury.org ($7.1k) there’s a back story – and, I daresay, plenty of backlinks.  This neocon think tank, which operated between 1997 and 2006,  included among its founders Bill Kristol (editor of the now-defunct Weekly Standard) and the cuddly Dick Cheney, before he became George Bush’s VP. As recently as 2019, the site was touting American “military strength” as a worldwide boon. But by 2020, it had clearly been captured by a new owner, who touted instead the “best steam mop for tile floors”, “best cordless stick vacuum”, etc.  Naturally he kept the think tank’s banner logo.

Notice the .ORG?  It wasn’t alone.  Out of 88 domains, 8 were “not .COMs”: 7 .ORG and 1 .NET.  Europe continues to demonstrate a higher tolerance for hyphens than the rest of the world: Tourisme-Midi-Pyrenees.com ($2.5k) is French and refers (no surprise) to the mountain range shared by France and Spain.  But there are exceptions to every rule: 2 other hyphenated domains sold in English: Career-Line.com ($2.5k) and Security-Assessment.com ($2.5k).

An excellent Spanish brand name, in my opinion, is MuyBien.com ($3.1k), which would translate literally as “very well” but which is used as a standalone expression much as English speakers would say “Great!” or “Alright” or “OK”.  Coste.com ($4.2k) would be “cost” in Spanish – but possibly only in Spain.  In Latin America, I’ve only come across “costo” with an “O”; and arguably the plural would make more sense as a cost comparison site.  Herstal.com ($3.9k) is a municipality of Belgium.

The French word “éternel” so resembles its English cousin “eternal” that it has been used as a brand name – no surprise – to market perfume. Yet I can find no record that Eternel.com ($3.7k) has ever been put to use.  About time!  AGift.com ($4.1k) is interesting because we don’t often see “a + noun” domains floating high up in the sales charts.  They’re uncommon as brands as well.  But succinct little specimen may prove an exception there too.

Miyoko.com ($2.1k) is a woman’s name.  According to Miyokos.com, “Chef Miyoko Schinner … invented the category of artisan vegan cheese.” That’s a big market, actually.  And since “[s]he’s now reinventing the entire dairy industry”, big aspirations might require the non-“S” version also.

EMC2.com ($3.4k) is as close as domain names can get to Einstein’s famous formula equating mass and energy, since not even IDNs can produce the “=” or “^” of E = mc^2.  A few years ago, vowel-less 4-letter .COMs featured regularly in these charts, even dominating them.  Now the 4-letter domains that rise above $2k are mostly pronounceable: CLAB.com ($8.1k), VALL.com ($7.3k), MEID.com ($4.0k), STMP.com ($3.8k), OSIA.com ($3.7k), and VORP.com ($3.0k).

Yet the pronunciation of CLAB.com is ambiguous.  Is it “C-Lab” or more like “clap”?  And who will ultimately own it? Candidate topics include everything from bank automation to nuclear waste: Comité Latinoamericano de Automatización Bancaria (Spanish) or Centralt mellanlager för använt kärnbränsle (Swedish).  MEID.com ($4.0k) would be pronounced as “Me + ID” if it refers to a mobile equipment identifier.  Your phone might have one.  As for STMP.com ($3.8k), although it looks like a permutation of the SMTP email protocol, it also matches the stock ticker for the company, Stamps.com, which is a clue for pronunciation.

It’s impossible to cover the full list of domains in detail.  Among the best – for reasons of investment value, aesthetics, and utility – are those I haven’t mentioned. Strong 2-word generics include ElectricAuto.com ($7.0k), PrivateBankers.com ($2.6k), and LowerCosts.com ($2.5k), ResearchPapers.com ($2.0k), and GroceryBags.com ($2.6k).  (The movement to prohibit or tax plastic grocery bags for the sake of the environment has led to real business opportunities for attractive reusable substitutes.)

Longer domains also did well: GlobalRealEstate.com ($8.1k), RealEstateSoftware.com ($4.1k), and BuildYourBusiness.com ($2.1k).  That said, “real estate” functions more like a single term than as two separable words.  English single-word domains were scarce, although Though.com ($10.0k) ranked 5th overall. Moulders.com ($2.5k) corresponds to one or more kinds of industrial machinery.  So that domain may be worth its weight in gold to a manufacturer or distributor.  (Don’t scrutinize that metaphor too closely.)  Technically, Apport.com ($2.9k) is an English word as well.  Ages ago, it meant “bearing”.  And it has a technical meaning involving – I kid you not – poltergeists.

Notable “brandables” include Metronet.com ($9.0k), Serval.com ($5.6k), BagTags.com ($5.4k), Chems.com ($5.3k), Akademi.com ($5.2k), Vertix.com ($3.8k), eReads.com ($2.5k), PetCafe.com ($2.4k), Ntegrity.com ($2.4k), and BrainWay.com ($2.2k).

Bitcoin enthusiasts with a ShortFuse.com ($3.4k) will be unhappy if I don’t mention the inversion CoinsBit.com ($4.6k). All the Alessandros in the audience will want to know about Alessandro.com ($7.2k).  And if there’s anything else you’d like to add, add it, and we’ll take it under Advisement.com ($2.0k).

An in-depth look at NameJet’s sales

by — Domain Sales 4 Comments

Joseph Peterson dives into last month’s sales on Web.com’s aftermarket platforms.

Image that says Top Domain Sales with NameJet and SnapNames logos

Yesterday, I published a quantitative comparison of NameJet sales in December 2019 compared to 2015.  Now let’s look at what sold last month, including both NameJet and SnapNames.

The top sale – WeedCenter.org ($23.1k) – is a bit surprising … and in more ways than one.  Of course, 2-word .ORG domains don’t usually rake in so much green.  Seldom do they top the sales charts.  But marijuana (a.k.a. “weed”) is both a cash crop and a burgeoning industry, now that legalization is so widespread.  Arguably .ORG has a certain cachet for a medical cannabis dispensary, due to its associations with non-profit projects.  Still, it’s a curious fact that the matching .COM sits parked, un-utilized.  Did the bidders try to buy it?  What would they have paid?  More?  Or does this aged .ORG have its own special benefits – back-links for SEO perhaps.  It has been a developed website since 2001.  But – surprise! – it began as CIPM, the Center for Invasive Plant Management – literal weeds, not weed at all. Click here to see the full analysis…

How NameJet has changed over the past four years

by — Domain Sales 6 Comments

Joseph Peterson returns to write about NameJet. The Chinese market implosion and new expired domain deals have changed the face of NameJet since he last wrote.

Yellow and blue graphic that states "Namejet four years later"

I stopped writing articles about domains at NameJet for DNW about 4 years ago.  “My how time flies!” would be one reaction.  But some things never change.  Or do they?  How has the domain market changed?

Rewind to January 2016, and we were looking at a record-breaking month for NameJet – technically a recap of December 2015.  Indeed, 2015 set and broke new records almost every month, as sale prices soared and transaction volume ballooned.  Chiefly this sudden growth occurred within a few categories of short domains prized by China, which were traded eagerly by speculators worldwide.  It was the year of the Chinese surge, as the graybeards will remember.  Prices were only going up, would always go up.  And if that market sector has deflated somewhat since, well, that may explain some of the gray beards.

Now we’re reviewing sales from December 2019.  What changes can we observe?  Let me reproduce this data from exactly 4 years ago: Click here to continue reading…

NameSummit 2017 Recap

by — Services 5 Comments

In case you missed it, the first NameSummit conference was held this week in New York City. Smack dab in the middle of Manhattan, actually, a few blocks from Central Park, Broadway, and across the street from the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). All sorts of local NYC professionals dropped by. And more than a few domain industry regulars flew in, myself included.

Unlike a typical domain conference, NameSummit wasn’t all about domains. Instead marketers, entrepreneurs, agencies, developers, investors, domain companies, and domainers mingled to share ideas about branding and digital marketing. Some topics were decidedly different from what you might be used to. Here’s a quick summary.

Day 1

Brett Napoli described an ongoing “land grab for attention” like the land grab for domains. Every company, he emphasized, is a media company. “Document don’t create” is a mantra online publishers know by heart, and he recommends this approach because it’s faster and often more genuine.

“If someone enters your store and shouts ‘Camera’, what do they mean? Buy one? Sell one? Blend one?” That’s how Mike Grehan (of SEMPO and Acronym.com) introduced the topic of search intent. He described a change in user behavior. When we don’t find something right away, we’re most likely to enter a new search query. Hence (another mantra): “The best place to hide a dead body is on the 2nd page of Google.” Because machine learning can predict intent based on query chains of consecutive searches, not only has search become better; ranking factors have changed. Whereas in the past keywords and links were the most important criteria, now it’s user interaction.

Click here to continue reading…



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