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Dental brand Byte acquired Byte.com

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The company forwards Byte.com it to its website at ByteMe.com.

Screenshot of byteme.com showing a women putting in an invisible aligner

Byte has acquired Byte.com, which it forwards to its website at ByteMe.com.

A Californian dental brand made the monumental decision to acquire one of the most desirable domain names on the Internet, Byte.com.

Founded in 2017, Byte is one of many providers of invisible aligners, offering home kits to straighten smiles. The demand for clear dental aligners is increasing as people move away from traditional braces to something more subtle.

The market for clear aligners, estimated to be worth $2.41 billion in 2020, is expected to grow as more adults and teenagers are drawn to invisible corrective aligners. Company funding has reflected this expected growth.

SmileDirectClub and Candid, two American invisible aligner providers, have raised a combined $525 million in funding, while Byte itself was acquired for $1.04 billion in an all-cash deal by Dentsply Sirona, the world’s largest manufacturer of professional dental products.

A month before the acquisition announcement in January 2021, Byte.com transferred registrars and registrants. Previously owned by United Business Media LLC, the domain moved to GoDaddy, where it was registered to an unknown individual or company in Utah. Jamie Zoch first spotted the initial movement.

Byte.com remained dormant throughout 2021, displaying a basic custom landing page.

By September 2021, Byte.com had moved to the GoDaddy Corporate Domains account of Dentsply Sirona, indicating that the company had taken possession of the domain.

It’s unclear whether Byte bought Byte.com before the billion-dollar deal and didn’t utilize it or whether Dentsply Sirona purchased Byte.com in mid-2021.

Now, Byte.com redirects users to ByteMe.com, the current homepage for Byte.

With customers prompted to log in to their Byte accounts regularly to upload progress photos, Byte’s website takes on added importance as the source of continued customer interaction.

Investing in its brand-match domain name, Byte.com is a savvy move. While Byte.com may not pass the radio test in the context of dentistry, it at least transitions the brand away from the potentially confusing (and somewhat derogatory) ByteMe.com.

14 end user domain name sales up to €37,500

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A vacation rentals site, a game developer and an IP law firm bought domain names.

Graphic with purple background and a dollar sign with the words "end user domain sales"

Creating these end user lists is going to continue to get more challenging. First, there was GDPR, which eliminated public info in most Whois records. Now, GoDaddy is setting all of its registrations to private by default. Previously, GoDaddy still left the organization and state/country public on U.S. Whois records. I could work with that to figure out who bought a domain sometimes. Now, I’ll only be able to figure out who bought domains that are at GoDaddy if they resolve to active websites.

Take Sedo’s top public sale this week, Giveaways.com, for $78,000. It has Domains By Proxy in Whois. The buyer might have signed up for the paid privacy even if GoDaddy didn’t add it by default, but they might not have. It still points to Sedo parking, so it’s impossible to figure out who bought it.

I thought GDPR would kill these lists. It didn’t. Neither will GoDaddy’s change, but it will likely reduce this list by a couple of sales each week.

Here’s a list of end user domain name sales that just completed at Sedo. You can view previous lists like this here.

Microfaser.com €37,500 – This domain is German for microfiber. The domain forwards to polyclean24.de, which sells microfiber cloths.

BeatsRadio.com €12,000 – Beats Radio is a station in Germany. It forwards this domain to BeatsRadio.de.

CoffeeList.com $9,995 – The buyer is setting up a site about coffee.

KortingsCode.com $8,750 – Promocodex International S.R.L has a coupon site, and it appears kortingscode is related to coupon codes.

Ferienwohnungen-timmendorfer-strand.de EUR 6,500 – This long domain translates to “holiday apartments timmendorfer strand”. It resolves to a website for vacation rentals.

Kolster.co.uk £5,890 – Kolster is an IP law firm. It forwards this domain to kolster.fi.

Ksaar.com $5,000 – Ksaar is a no code software development platform. It forwards this domain to Ksaar.fr.

Indusgame.com $3,999 – Super Gaming is an Indian gaming company. It is working on a new game called Indus – Battle Royale.

PlaceCharts.com $3,655 – Meanwhile, Register.com and Network Solutions continue to publish complete Whois records. So we know the buyer here is the president of a community bank in Florida. It’s not clear if this domain is related to that bank or if he registered it for something else.

Fullsoft.com $3,500 – Fullsoft is a women’s leggings and pants brand.

LHSE.com €3,250 – LHS Electronics Enterprise in Singapore sells datacenter and networking products.

KNBL.com $2,600 – KNBL SA in Belgium bought this domain.

Endocrino.com €2,450 – This word translates to endocrine, relating to or denoting glands which secrete hormones or other products directly into the blood. A health clinic in Brazil bought the domain.

QFholdings.com $2,200 – QF Holdings LLC in Pennsylvania, a company formed last year, bought this domain.

Big list: 54 end user sales up to $350,000

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Here are 54 domains names that end users bought in recent weeks.

Graphic with purple background and a dollar sign with the words "end user domain sales"

Sedo dropped three weeks’ of domain name sales today, so that means we have a lot of end user domain sales to work through. Let’s get right to it. (You can view previous end user lists like this here.)

Pays.com $350,000 – The domain forwards to the website for Robomarkets, a stock trading platform.

Dildo .com $65,000 – Yep, it’s a porn site.

HardFork.co $50,000 – The site’s content doesn’t really say what it is but mentions gig workers vs. employment contracts. They’re developing a whitepaper, which, combined with the crypto term, suggests a blockchain-related play.

CleanPlanet.com $40,000 – Clean Planet Energy converts non-recyclable plastics into clean fuels. It forwards this domain to CleanPlanetEnergy.com.

u.fr – €39,990- This domain forwards to the website for UDrive, a delivery service.

Sweepz.com $25,000, iPrizes.com $12,999, and iLotteries.com $8,995 – Raffles .com.au bought more domains.

Scribos.com $17,000 – Kurz is a thin film technology company. It acquired a business called Scribos last year.

Dachfenster.at €15,000 – VELUX Schweiz AG is a skylight window company. This word is German for skylight.

Goodbill.com $15,000 – Goodbill identifies billing errors and inflated charges on medical bills.

Tokenfy.com $12,888 – Tokenfy helps people launch NFTs.

Paro.ai $10,000 – Business financing company Paro uses the domain Paro.io.

StudyinEgypt.com $10,000 – Oddly, the site currently promotes universities in Turkey

Mooning.com $8,000 – Mooning is a marketing firm that helps companies with NFTs and the metaverse.

6fb .com $7,488 – 6fb is a soccer betting site.

Abc.co.com $6,590 – This domain forwards to abc.co.at. .Co.com is a third-level TLD offering.

Weckman.com €6,500 – This domain forwards to weckmansteel.fi. Weckman is a roofing and wall company.

Leomil.com €6,500 – Leomil creates branded and licensed footwear products.

Amyloidose.com $5,500 – Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a pharmaceuticals company working on a treatment for AL amyloidosis.

HWI-Group.com $5,485 – HWI Pharma Services GmbH in Germany bought this domain.

HitRadio.com €5,100 – Southern Cross Austereo Pty Ltd is an Australian media company. One of its brands is Hit Network.

ICBB.com $5,000 – The Bankers’ Bank of Kentucky. I think this initialism is related to Independent Community Bankers of America.

Invest.co $5,000 – 2M Conseil is an insurance broker. This seems like a very low price for a great .co.

Ascena.net $5,000 – Hays Ascena is the former name of Hays Plc, a recruiting firm.

Scattershot.com $5,000 – Scattershot is a game development studio.

4screen.com $5,000 – This domain forwards to the website for 4 Screen GmbH, a company that creates connected car technology.

CoreFestival.com $4,960 – WeAreOne.World BV organizes music festivals, including Tomorrowland.

eFuel.de €4,500 – This domain forwards to efuels-forum.de, a site about carbon-neutral mobility.

Biodiversia.com $4,382 – Biodiversia tejadilla sl in Sweden bought this domain.

Grayscale.io $4,330 – Grayscale Technologies is a tech consulting and system design firm.

Piemonte.xyz $4,250 – Patrick Piemonte bought this domain as a personal site.

Decentraverse.com $4,000 – IBC Group FZCO is a cryptocurrency marketing firm.

Sighfi.com $3,995 – Cosmic Shovel is a dev shop that has acquired other domains from Sedo.

Cryptogic.com $3,995 – Cryptogic is a crypto investing news site.

GrantsDAO.com $3,500 – This domain forwards to Grants.xyz, a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).

MetaFood.com $3,499 – This site, still in development, will be for “food in the metaverse”.

Tatzelwurm.de €3,000 – The Tatzlwurm is a hotel in Bulgaria.

YeguadalaReserva.com $2,999 – Yeguada la Reserva appears to be a beauty store in Mexico.

Procasa.ch €2,990 – HGC sells floor coverings and exterior products.

Webtale.de €2,888 – Webtale is a digital advertising and software development company.

BeSocial.de €2,850 – Be Social provides sales staff and services. It forwards this domain to BeSocial24.de.

Rapid-Data.com $2,800 – Rapid Data AG Unternehmensberatung provides undertaker software for funeral homes. That’s not what I expected.

Liacon.de €2,700 – Liacon is an industrial battery manufacturer. It forwards this domain to the matching .com.

Auffrischungsimpfung.de €2,600 – This domain translates to booster vaccination in German. It forwards to a site powered by Roche for DoctorBox, offering Covid-19 tests.

Evy.eu €2,500 – Evy is an extended warranty business for e-commerce sites.

RecruitMe.de €2,500 – RecruitMe is a service for job recruiting.

LeapSocial.com $2,500 – Leap Social will be an AI-based matchmaker for young professionals.

FreshSolutions.eu €2,499 – This domain forwards to the website for Greenyard Fresh, a produce company in the Netherlands.

NVbetting .com $2,495 – Ribacka Media AB is a lead generation company for gambling businesses.

GeminiMotor.com $2,311 – Gemini is building an electric, fully autonomous class 8 truck.

Tugv.com $2,199 – Antsy Ant Web Design acquired this domain, presumably for a client.

UrbanWorldwide.com $2,110 – Urban Worldwide is an executive transportation company.

Coll.ag $2,000 – Collag is a platform to share shippable clothing collages.

Cal.com raises $7.4 million after rebrand

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Growth takes off after domain upgrade.

Image with green background that states "Domain Upgrades"

During a global pandemic that has seen travel restrictions and lockdowns affect vast swathes of the workforce, companies were forced to transition to online meetings. While spending most of the day in Zoom meetings is a common problem, scheduling them in the first place can take time, with a multi-email back and forth to work out a suitable meeting time.

Dedicated scheduling services such as Calendly have thrived from the desire to make arranging a meeting a much easier process. At the beginning of 2021, Calendly revealed a monthly active user count of 10 million and announced a $350 million funding round, valuing the company at $3 billion.

Competing with the powerhouse that is Calendly is an uphill battle. However, it’s a battle that one young company is waging. To stand out from the crowd, it has branded around the supreme domain, Cal.com.

Launched as Calendso in 2021, this San Francisco-based company describes itself as “the open-source Calendly alternative.” It gained early popularity, earning the title of “product of the month” for April 2021 at Product Hunt.

Just five months after its original product launch, Calendso rebranded to Cal.com, a highly sought-after domain name that the company didn’t think it would get. Notably, Cal.com is the company’s brand name and its domain name, fully leveraging the power of the domain.

At the time of Calendso’s rebrand to Cal.com, the company’s co-founder, Peer Richelsen, noted,

After several months of brand exercises, research and negotiations with domain owners, we were lucky to come to terms with the previous owners of Cal.com. […] It’s a blessing to be able to call this domain our new home on the web, even though the chances were slim.

While no information about the acquisition price of Cal.com has been shared, it’s safe to say that the rebrand has helped the company to grow quickly. Earlier this year, Andrew interviewed the founder of Calendar.com, who noted that the domain name has been critical to its success.

Since Cal.com is an open startup, meaning that it shares salaries and core metrics, we can see exactly what effect the rebrand had. According to its open startup page, Cal.com had 491 weekly users between September 13th and September 19th, 2021, the week that it announced the rebrand.

By the beginning of December 2021, Cal.com recorded 12,021 weekly active users. Its cumulative customer count has also just passed a significant milestone, breaking the 10,000 customer count at the end of 2021. In comparison, Cal.com had a customer count of just 221 before its rebrand in September 2021.

Building on this success, Cal.com announced that it raised $7.4 million in funding led by Joseph Jacks from OSS Capital. Rebranding to Cal.com has undoubtedly helped this company become a leading Calendly alternative.

My 2021 in domaining

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Here’s a look at my activity in 2021.

The word "Sold" in big letters in quote on red background

Domain investing is my third-most important business from a financial standpoint. I don’t do it for cash flow; I reinvest what I make selling into new domains. I thought it would be interesting to share some of my numbers for 2021.

Selling

I count 31 sales across Dan, Afternic, Squadhelp, Uniregistry, and DNWE. I think I’m missing a couple from private deals, but I’m looking at a roughly 1.7% sell-through rate. I think that’s not bad for selling most domains in the $1k-$5k sweet spot.

Here’s a breakdown across platforms:

Afternic – 18
Dan – 7
Squadhelp – 3
Uniregistry – 2
DNWE – 1

Afternic gets the most sales for two reasons: first, its purchase-path network with registrars; second, most of my domains point there. I’ve moved a lot to other platforms in the past year, and I’m not sure how many of my sales at Afternic are from landing pages vs. network. (Hint to GoDaddy: I’d list more if you shared this data.) But the number skews slightly higher because of where I’m pointing my names.

This year, I worked with an Afternic account manager to fix my names stuck in Afternic purgatory, price other names, and optimize which lander the names point to (buy now for less expensive, request price for more expensive). My sales volume is too small to show a significant uplift from this, but the end of the year was stronger than before I optimized.

At Dan, a couple of the sales were on payment plans. One of the buyers stopped paying, but I got some money out of it. I continue to be impressed with Dan’s platform: ease of use, fast payments…it just works. Its support got faster this year, too.

I closed three deals at Squadhelp. Two were standard listings and one was in the premium marketplace. They sold another domain for me, but I no longer owned it. Squadhelp continues to innovate, and I’m excited to see how their geo domain tools work this year. Oh, and Squadhelp support wins the award for the fastest response times of any marketplace.

Although I worked two transactions at Uni, the buyers ended up closing the deals elsewhere. One ended up buying a domain through the Afternic network at their registrar because it was more convenient, and one couldn’t get their card to work at Uni, so they bought it through Dan. I didn’t include these sales in the Afternic/Dan numbers above.

That DNWE sale was early in the year. I think DNWE came out of the gate with a lot of momentum, but it kind of fizzled from a new features standpoint as the owners turned more of their attention to NFTs. I don’t blame them.

Here’s a breakdown of sales by TLD:

.Com 23
.Org 2
.Gg 2
.VIP 2
.Co 1
.Capital 1

That .capital sale was a name I let expire but someone bought it through Afternic, so I re-registered it and sold it. I guess there’s an upside to Afternic having lousy domain management controls.

The .gg, .vip, .co and .capital domain sales were fairly small, with a few of them sub $1,000.

So far, buyers have put 8 of the 31 domains to use.

Buying

As I mentioned at the top, I usually reinvest 100% of my domain sales into building out my portfolio. I get my cash flow from Domain Name Wire ads and PodcastGuests.com.

I started the year strong with expired domains, took a breather in the middle, and then picked up a bit toward the end of the year.

My break in the middle of the year was for a couple of reasons. First, I was frustrated having to manage domains after I won them. Especially with SnapNames, which puts your domains in a bunch of different accounts. Second, I flirted with selling PodcastGuests.com, so I put a bit of time into that business to run the numbers and put together a pitch.

It sounds like financial buyers are willing to buy businesses like this right now for about 3.5-4x. That’s OK, but it’s a tough sell if your business continues to grow. Even at a steady state, it’s giving away a 25% a year return, and there aren’t many ways to make that kind of return. Yes, the sale is taxed at a lower rate and you don’t have to think about the business anymore. But it’s still tough to swallow for a business that doesn’t take me much time. I’m going to think about it again this year.

I bought most of my expired domains on GoDaddy, DropCatch and SnapNames. This year I think I’ll play around with Sav.com’s auctions a bit, especially for non-.coms. I also bought a couple of aftermarket domains at Sedo last year that I like, Melodrama.com and GamePiece.com.

Toward the end of the year, I acquired a few .xyz domains. I have a small .xyz portfolio and added valid.xyz, swat.xyz, and peanut.xyz, and a couple others. They’re still a gamble, but I think it’s a worthwhile gamble if you get the domains at reasonable prices.

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