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A startup changed its domain from .com to .top

by — Domain Sales 16 Comments

Some companies trade in longer .coms for shorter second level domains in other extensions.

Yellow background with the words "Domain Name Change"

I love watching the Chinese domain market because it is full of surprises. Recently, I read a news story that a Chinese startup changed its domain from .com to .top. That challenges the conventional wisdom of .com being the ultimate upgrade.

Cryptocurrency exchange DCPPlus was founded in 2017 (apparently in Hong Kong) and it operated from the brand-matching domain DCPPlus.com. The exchange handles multiple digital currencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Recently, its name was shortened to simply DCP. To accompany the name change, the founders acquired DCP.top for reportedly 100,000 yuan (about $15,000) on December 6, 2019.

DCP.top has gone live and DCPPlus.com forwards visitors to the new site. Why not upgrade to DCP.com? Well, this is not possible because DCP.com is already being used by the American M&A firm District Capital Partners.

This reminds me of the company Supply whose founders pitched successfully in Shark Tank and received a $300,000 investment last year. The company then changed its domain from GetSupply.com to Supply.co. Why the change? Founder Patrick Coddou later tweeted “it will forever be worth it to not be called Get Supply anymore”. In other words, GetSupply.com misled consumers to believe the company’s name was actually “Get Supply”.

In these two cases, we can see that the founders consider the name part of a domain more important than its extension. In choosing a domain, its name is considered first, followed by its extension – and the name must match the brand.

Of course, the ultimate upgrade remains the exact match .com. Carrot founder Trevor Mauch told Domain Name Wire that people referred to his company as “On Carrot” when his company used the domain OnCarrot.com. He upgraded to Carrot.com.

How much are domain names selling for in China?

by — Domain Sales 6 Comments

Here’s a handy way to find out what domains are selling for in China.

Screenshot of eName's domain price search

From time to time, I get asked to look at a list of domains for advice on how much to sell them for in China. My reply is always the same: do your own research. One thing you can do is to look at similar domains being sold in China. So, today I’ll write about a website you can use to do your research.

eName is one of the Top 10 domain registrars in China and it also offers some content in English. Just visit eName.com and click the English button. From the Find Domains menu, select BIN. This gives you all domains listed with a price. From here, you can set up filters to find selling prices of specific types of domains you are interested in. Here are some examples of use.

Suppose you want to know the selling prices of 4 letter .com domains. Click the Category drop-down list and select “4-letter”, then click the Suffix drop-down list and select “.com”. Finally, click the Search button. When the search result appears, click the Cur Price heading to sort the prices from the lowest to the highest, and change “Each page shows” to 100 so that you can examine a significant size of the domains. If you want to know details of a domain, just click its name. Since some information is still available in Chinese, you can use Google Translate to get a rough idea of the content.

This is the result of the 4 letter  .com search that I see as of this writing: there are 41,714 domains listed with a price. The cheapest domain is UQTG.com at 550 yuan (about $80) and the cheapest 100 domains are priced at less than $150. Now you can compare your domain with the displayed domains and try to arrive at a price for your domain.

How about 7 number .com domains? From the Category list, select “Pure Number”, then enter 7 to 7 for the Length. The result shows that there are 6,574 domains listed with a price. The cheapest domain is 4177778.com at 75 yuan (about $11) and the cheapest 100 domains are priced at less than $45. Again, compare your domain with the displayed domains and try to arrive at a price for your domain.

You can look at many types of domains such as Pinyin, mixed characters, and Chinese IDN, as well as a variety of extensions such as .net, .org, and .club. So, be sure to spend some time and learn how to use the filters for your purpose.

What domains Wegmans and others bought last week

by — Domain Sales 1 Comment

A regional grocery chain, an apartment rental service and a men’s clothing brand bought domain names.

Picture of bundles of 500 euro notes with the words "End User Domain Sales" and the logo for Sedo

Wegmans grocery store chain led this week’s end user sales list at Sedo. The popular Northeastern U.S. grocer bought Meals2Go.com for its Meals 2GO app.

Here’s a look at some of the domains end users bought at Sedo this past week. See prior end user lists here.

Meals2Go.com $44,200 – The grocery chain Wegmans bought this catchy domain name. GrubHub owns MealsToGo.com.

Course.de €7,050 – Tutor Platform hosts online courses in a wide variety of subject matters such as languages, pre-med and more.

ASAPTravel.com $5,500 – Dyninno Group, an international development, lead generation and in-house IT company that focuses on travel, entertainment, and financial technology.

Coevo.com €4,000 – Forwards to Coevo.co.kr, the site for men’s clothing brand Coevo.

AST-International.com $3,895 – This company appears to have been formed last year, combining the assets of a couple of different companies. AST develops and manufactures sensors, switches and electronic assemblies for vehicle technology, white goods and industrial electronics.

Storyland.net €3,500 – Forwards to StorylandStudios.com, a master planning, design, and fabrication studio in California.

Cosana.com $3,000 – This domain was bought by Cosana Europe GmbH, a nutritional supplement company in Munich that also specializes in Manuka honey and related honey products.

Stayery.com $2,995 – Forwards to Stayery.de, an apartment rental reservation website for several locations in Germany including Berlin.

ScreenToMachine.com $2,888 – Planit Solutions, Inc., which provides software for woodworking machines. This might be a case of a company owning a domain, letting it expire, and then buying it back.

Mana.ch €2,200 – Website still in development for Swiss jewelry designers.

FamilyServ.org $2,149 – The YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago bought this domain, presumably for a campaign or special project within that community.

StickerWinkel.nl €2,000 – Forwards to StickerKoning.nl, a sticker manufacturer in the Netherlands.

Softice.com $2,000 – This domain was bought by Newtec Engineering, a manufacturer of weighing, packaging, and sorting machinery.

Western end users buy domains from China

by — Domain Sales 0 Comments

China sucked up a lot of domains, and now Western end users are bringing some of them back.

Yellow background with one arrow pointing to the left and one to the right

China is known for buying domains from the west. Examples such as 360.com, JD.com, and OFO.com are readily found. It’s a trend we all know. However, isn’t it reasonable to expect the opposite to also occur after so many good domains have gone to China? Two recent transactions remind me of such a possibility.

In September last year, Chinese domain company 62.com reported that it facilitated the sale of MPT.com. The buyer is the American public company Medical Property Trust. The exact price was not disclosed but reportedly more than 7-figure yuan (more than $150,000). Medical Property Trust’s corporate domain is Medicalpropertiestrust.com so MPT.com is the perfect upgrade. The company also owns MPT.net. Currently, MPT.com redirects to Medicalpropertiestrust.com.

In November last year, Chinese domain company West.cn announced the sale of Viafintech.com from its marketplace. The buyer is Barzahlen Cash Payment Solutions GmbH in Germany. The domain was sold for 46,980 yuan (about $7,000). The fintech startup owns the Viafintech and Viacash brands. It also owns Via-fintech.com, so Viafintech.com is a nice upgrade. Currently, Viafintech.com redirects to Viacash.com. The seller was Lu Chen, located in China, according to the Whois record.

These two sales may be a sign of what is to come. If it does become a trend and we see end users in the west buying domains from China, is there any implication for domain investors? That will mean you can find good domains in China for sale to end users in the west. This further means that you need to spend time watching the Chinese domain market. Reading my articles as well as my daily posts on LinkedIn may help.

PayStubs.net buys matching .com and other Uniregistry sales

by — Domain Sales 1 Comment

A payroll service company bought the .com to match its .net.

PayStubs.net screenshot

PayStubs.net bought PayStubs.com.

If I were to take my pick of PayStub.com or PayStubs.com as a domain investor, I’d definitely pick the former. It can be used for many personal finance purposes. But if my business was just about creating pay stubs, it would be a different matter. It’s an exact match, product-defining domain name.

That’s the case with the buyer of this week’s top domain at Uniregistry. Here’s a look at the other sales at Uniregistry, including notes when I could figure out who bought them.

Here are the Top 20 sales that can be reported.

1. paystubs.com $68,750 – As best I can tell, the business acquired PayStubs.net within the last two years. It was listed on various platforms for about $2,000-$3,000. The buyer set up the website and then acquired the matching .com, which now forwards to PayStubs.net

2. loopy.com $15,000 – Mobile phone case company Loopy Cases. It forwards the domain to LoopyCases.com.

3. rockspring.com $8,625 – Texas real estate investment company Rockspring Capital forwards this domain to RockSpringCap.com.

4. countryboots.com $8,000

5. creativebeauty.com $6,000

6. magicphoto.com $5,200 – Someone in New York

7. nprc.com $5,000 – Northern Pennsylvania Regional College

8. themortgagestore.com $5,000

9. ufff.com $5,000

10. billetera.com $5,000

11. ganjagrow.com $4,200

12. fastfiber.com $4,000

13. hellogenie.com $4,000

14. racestorun.com $4,000

16. partshare.com $3,500 – Automotive Distribution Network

17. smokingjackets.com $3,250

18. gemmology.com $3,000 – The domain now forwards to LustreGemmology.com.

19. puebloweb.com $3,000

20. brandbiz.com $3,000