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Virtual events company Hopin moves to .Com

by — Domain Sales 1 Comment

Events platform bought domain name from Greek tour company.

A screenshot of the Hopin virtual event platform

Hopin just changed its domain name to Hopin.com.

It’s been quite a year for virtual events company Hopin. The company’s platform was suddenly thrust into the spotlight when the pandemic hit and the events industry moved online. It rushed to open up its platform that was in a phased beta.

It also raised a $40 million Series A in June. In addition to spending money to hire employees, the company apparently used some of the cash to acquire the domain Hopin.com.

I discovered this today when I tried to log in to my account at Hopin.to. My password filler didn’t recognize the site I was on, and I discovered it was because Hopin.to now forwards to Hopin.com.

The company was using Hopin.to until a least two weeks ago when my wife held her latest event on the platform.

Hopin acquired Hopin.com from a Greek tour company called Hop in Sightseeing S.A. I believe the acquisition took place in June or later based on a review of historical Whois records at DomainTools.

The timing was probably good for both companies. Hopin has a lot of cash in the bank, and I imagine Covid-19 has decimated the tour company’s business.

I reached out to Hopin to see if it would comment and will update this story if it does.

Italian country code domain leads Sedo end user sales list at €62,000

by — Domain Sales 0 Comments

An Emmy-award winning actress, a company that sells elderberry extract, and an Italian phone answering service bought domain names.

picture of rolled currency with the words "end-user domain sales"

Sedo had some nice sales to end users this past week, led by an Italian country code domain name. The actress Anne Heche also bought a domain name.

Here’s a list of the most recent end user domain name sales at Sedo. You can view previous lists like this here.

Segretaria.it €62,000 – segretaria24 SRL, an answering service, bought this domain. It uses the domain Segretaria24.it. Segretaria is Italian for secretary.

MaleFertility .com $15,000 – Fertility Center of California, a sperm bank, bought this domain name.

SeekingArrangment .com $7,500 – Reflex Media, which operates the sugar daddy site SeekingArrangement .com, bought this typo.

AnneHeche.com $3,500- Anne Heche, an Emmy-award winning actress, bought her namesake domain. Heche has starred in Quantico, Donnie Brasco, and the remake of Psycho.

Arsal.com $3,500 – This domain was bought by Almajdouie Holding Group, which is a Saudi group of companies established by Shaikh Ali Ibrahim Almajdouie in 1965. It started as a land transport company but has since grown into a diversified business.

UpTina.com $2,875 – This site is still in development for a women’s sock brand.

SpruceGrove.com $2,600 – Sprucegrove Investment Management Ltd. bought this domain name. It provides investment management services.

BrainProTips .com $2,500 – The website claims that Brainprotips provides evidence-based modafinil research. Modafinil is a stimulant to treat narcolepsy, sleep apnea, and shift work sleep disorder.

Charanga.co.uk $2,500 – The domain forwards to Charanga.com, a business that sells education technology and digital music programs.

Nomaiq.com $2,500 – Canadian Tire Corporation Limited bought this domain. It’s a retail company operating in the automotive, hardware, sports, leisure and housewares sectors. Their brands include Canadian Tire, Mark’s, FGL Sports, PartSource, and the Canadian operations of Party City. It’s not clear what the domain is for.

Elderberry .org $2,500 – Pharmacare US, a wellness company in California, bought this domain. It offers several wellness products including an elderberry extract immune system supplement called Sambucol.

Accustem.co.uk £2,300 – Forward to Accustem.com, which has an announcement from Tiziana Life Sciences company regarding the demerger of StemPrintER™ from the company.

SkinYoga.com $2,000 – This is a retail site for Skin Yoga, an Ayurvedic skincare brand.

Escrow.com reports domain aftermarket rebound in Q3

by — Domain Sales 0 Comments

Domain sales rebound after sluggish Q2.

Chart showing domain name and website transactions at Escrow.com. Q3 sales totaled $77.5 million.

Sales at Escrow.com rebounded in Q3 2020.

The domain name aftermarket rebounded in the third quarter of 2020 after a dismal second quarter.

Escrow.com reports that it handled $77.5 million of domain name and website transactions in Q3 2020, compared to $55.2 million in Q2.

While many companies handle payments for aftermarket domain names, Escrow.com is seen as a bellwether for the market because it handles many private sales. It’s also the only large company that reports aggregate sales data each quarter.

Escrow.com blamed the Q2 drop on the pandemic and businesses holding off on closing deals.

Q3’s number is lower than Q1, but beat Q3 of 2019.

Transactions in the U.S. increased from $42.6 million in Q2 to $58.0 million in Q3.

The median price for domain name transactions in the quarter was $2,750, and the median for websites was $5,000.

Escrow.com’s full Q3 report is available here (pdf).

What Donuts’ data tell us about the new top level domain market

by — Domain Sales 8 Comments

A look at premium sales and which TLDs drive the most volume

Picture of four donuts with the words "Donuts domain trends"

Donuts, the largest top level domain operator in terms of number of strings, published a report about its sales in October. While the company doesn’t provide absolute numbers in its report, it does give us some insight into the new top level domain market.

Let’s start with premium domains. Donuts lists its top 20 premium domains registered in October, ranked by wholesale price. The top sale was prime.mortgage, followed by health.studio.

Running some checks at domain registrars, I believe the wholesale price for prime.mortgage is about $2,500 and health.studio is about $1,000. The 20th highest sale on the chart, millionaire.dating, is about $800 a year wholesale. So sales of $1k+/year premium domains are still meager, but there’s a lot of activity sub-$1,000. (Keep in mind that this list doesn’t include renewals of premium domains.)

The company also lists its top 10 top level domains in terms of registrations. The list is topped by .live again, but this doesn’t tell us too much about success. While .live is one of Donuts’ better domains, first-year registrations are only a few bucks, so price has a lot to do with the volume. It would be interesting to see this list ranked by total registration revenue.

As I pointed out last month, people tend to register second level domains in new TLDs that are similar to the terms they register in .com. Online and Life are the top two at Donuts.

You can view the full monthly report here.

Walmart sold Lingerie.com as part of divestiture

by — Domain Sales 1 Comment

Walmart divests great domains as it divests businesses.

Screenshot of Bare Necessities website when forwarded from Lingerie.com

Lingerie.com has a new corporate owner.

In August I wrote that Walmart sold Shoes.com. It turns out that the company also struck a deal in August that involved another great domain, Lingerie.com.

Walmart sold its Bare Necessities brand to Israeli company Delta Galil Industries, Ltd. The deal included the domain names Lingerie.com, Lingeris.com, Lingre.com, and Lingeray.com. (After all, lingerie can be difficult to spell.)

Delta Galil Industries’ other brands include 7 For All Mankind and Splendid. It also has licenses with Tommy Hilfiger, Ted Baker, Kenneth Cole, Converse and others.

Bare Necessities’ brands include the popular SPANX.

Lingerie.com forwards to a page on Bare Necessities website featuring lingerie.

Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!