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20 end user domain name sales up to $55,000

by — Domain Sales 2 Comments

A cryptocurrency exchange, clothing designer and customized apparel company bought domain names.

Blockchain and cryptocurrency companies continue to buy domain names, and this week’s chart-leader at Sedo was BTCExchange.com for $55,000.

This was one of 20 end user sales I uncovered by reviewing Sedo’s weekly list of sales over $2,000.

Also notable is that a .co.uk domain sold for £22,500–a high amount for a .co.uk–but the buyer isn’t known yet.

Here are the end user domain name sales I uncovered in Sedo’s list this week.

(You can view previous lists like this here.)

Click to continue reading…

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17 end user sales up to $130,000

by — Domain Sales 0 Comments

Some recognizable companies bought domain names at Sedo.

One of the enjoyable things about researching domain name sales is that I learn about interesting industries, foreign language terms, and fun entrepreneurial ventures. This week, for example, I learned that Sekt is the name for German sparkling wine.

Notable this week: Bosch bought a two-hyphen domain name for €12,500 as part of an eBike marketing campaign, a maker of fine quality jigsaw puzzles bought a .co.uk domain, and a special effects company bought a clever three word domain.

Here’s a list of some of the end user domain name sales that took place at Sedo over the past week.

NBX.com $130,000 – The buyer is unknown, but I’m going to assume it’s a crypto company.

Sekt.com €22,500 – Sekt is German sparking wine and the buyer, Henkell & Co. Sektkellerei KG, is a seller of sekt and other alcohol.

Feel-the-flow.de €12,500 – Bosch bought this domain, and it forwards to a page about its eBikes.

TWCapital.com $10,000 – TW Capital Co., Ltd. in Bangkok.

PhoneCovers.com $5,600 – Tech Master IT Services in the UK is a computer repair company.

Verified.io $5,000 – The eSignature company Verified which uses the domain name Verified.eu.

Lahcg.com $4,880 – LHC Group is a healthcare company based in Lafayette, Louisiana. Its current domain name is LHCGroup.com. Maybe the A stands for “and”?

Net4Energy.com $4,880 – The domain forwards to the website for Creos Deutschland Services GmbH, which offers energy-related services.

Totectors.com $3,500 – International Brands Group sells shoes under a number of different brands. I suspect this will be for a new brand or product feature name.

Cryptocraft.org $3,500 – Forex Factory in Florida.

ThinkFun.co.uk $3,000 – Ravensburger AG makes toys and games. It’s known for making high-quality jigsaw puzzles.

HarmonyFoundation.com $3,000 – Harmony Foundation is an alcohol and drug rehabilitation center. It uses the domain name HarmonyFoundationInc.com.

Bident.com $2,749 – Bident Services, LLC in California.

BloodAndThunder.com $2,500 – Legacy Effects is a Hollywood move effects and makeup company. I love the name for this. (Don’t visit the page yet. It goes to a scam zero click lander.

Osano.com $2,256 – Osano is a stealth-mode company in Austin that “builds products which are venture backable, scalable, and have a minimum potential of a $100M market cap.”

Matrix.info £2,000 – Matrix Financial Services in Hong Kong.

Visas.fr €2,000 – Visas is being developed as a tourism site.

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Competition in the domain industry

by — Uncategorized 12 Comments

Some parts of the domain name business lack competition.

Let’s talk about competition.

Competition and choice are good for consumers.

An example of a competitive market is that of domain name registration. There are hundreds of domain registrars competing for your business. That’s why domain registration prices remain fairly low, registrars create new products and services, and the cost of value-added services remain low (or even free).

A great example of a non-competitive market is for internet service. In the U.S., most people have a choice between just two wired broadband companies. It’s usually a cable company and a telco.

You don’t hear many people say they love their internet service provider. These companies have little incentive to compete on price and service since the alternative is just as bad.

We have some non-competitive markets in the domain name business, and we have seen the effects of this first hand.

There were a lot of reasons that revenue from domain parking plummeted. One of these is because there were really one two companies providing ads for parked pages.

Yes, there were lots of parking companies. They competed intensely for your business. But these were middlemen.

At the wholesale level, it was always just Yahoo! and Google. Much like internet providers, this duopoly was able to start turning the screws. Then, when Yahoo basically disappeared from the scene, Google was able to do whatever it wanted: change policies, reduce payouts…you name it.

While we have lots of competition with domain registrars, we are still quite limited when it comes to domain investor service providers. Thankfully, it’s not the internet provider situation in which they are taking full advantage of their situation. But it could become that way.

Earlier this week Payoneer announced it was leaving the escrow business. I doubt Payoneer ever ran huge volumes of domain escrow transactions, but it played a key role in keeping Escrow.com on its toes. Domain traders had a viable alternative for escrow with a big brand.

I don’t think Payoneer’s exit will have a huge impact on escrow. After all, Escrow.com has been doing whatever it can to try to win customers who had issues with its know-your-customer procedures. Even before Payoneer came on the scene, it kept prices in check. There are always alternatives like lawyers to handle escrow.

But look at some other types of services.

One that concerns me greatly is the domain aftermarket. There are basically two big marketplaces: Sedo and Afternic. Marketplaces are difficult to create, and it will be hard for anyone to challenge these companies.

Each of the companies has its own strengths and weaknesses. But it’s important that both remain strong. If one flounders, the other could easily raise its commissions. For that reason, I hope that registrars partner with both Sedo and Afternic, not just one of them.

Although they aren’t marketplaces, I’m also excited to see services like Efty and Uniregistry out there that can at least compete on generating leads from landing pages.

The expired domain market also concerns me. Generally speaking, there have always just been two players for the direct-transfer expiry market. Right now those two players are GoDaddy and NameJet.

GoDaddy has innovated a lot in this area. As a result, it has won over a lot of the business that used to go to NameJet. GoDaddy deserves to get this business based on its innovation. Let’s face it, NameJet hasn’t done much to invest in its platform and compete.

But if all registrars decide to send their expired inventory to GoDaddy, then NameJet will die and Godaddy will get to dictate the terms to play in the market. This includes the terms for domain registrar partners as well as bidders.

There are always winners and losers, and the best companies should win the business. As consumers, though, we need to encourage healthy competition.

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22 end user domain sales up to €75,000

by — Domain Sales 0 Comments

Maker of Jose Cuervo is among the end users that bought domain names at Sedo.

Sedo had a strong week for end user sales a couple of weeks ago, led by the €75,000 sale of a domain name to a company in Germany. Other notable buyers include the major of Jose Cuervo tequila, a company that is part-owned by Bosch, and a gaming company that bought Gamer.ai.

Let’s get to the list….

(You can view previous lists like this here.)

Koffer.com €75,000 – Tasko Products GmbH operates an online shop at Koffer-Arena.de.

Spying.com $25,000 – 70times1 Limited is a performance marketing company. The domain name does not yet resolve.

Alsid.com $13,500 – Alsid is a directory security company.

NetID.ch €10,000, Net-ID.ch €5,000 and NetID.at €8,000 – EnID European NetID Foundation.

Boxt.de $7,500 – Boxt connects consumers to heating system installers. Bosch is an investor.

Click here to continue reading…

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End user sales: Canadian companies spend $50k on .ca domain name

by — Domain Sales 0 Comments

Loyalty program partnership puts .Ca domain on top of the leaderboard.

Royal Bank of Canada and WestJet recently announced a new loyalty platform, and they paid dearly for the associated domain name: Ampli.ca for $50,000.

This was Sedo’s top reported sale for the past week. There are some notable sales that we don’t know the buyer for yet. Firehose.com sold for $35,000. This domain reminds me of Shane Cultra’s BlowTorch.com. It will make a great brand.

Also, SongExchange.com sold for $25,000.

Here are the domains I was able to determine sold to end users at Sedo during the past week:

(You can view previous lists like this here.)

Ampli.ca $50,000 – Royal Bank of Canada. This domain is for a new loyalty program between RBC and WestJet. Ampli.com is owned by a company that sells portable sound systems.

TheLocal.fi €19,000 – The Local is a website with news in Finland written in English.

Orchesto.com $5,500 – Technology company Zebware launched Orchesto, a multi-point object storage gateway compatible with Amazon S3 cloud storage, earlier this month.

Reason.co £4,000 – Reason calls itself a “digital product and service studio.”

Jam.net $3,990 – WildWorks is the gaming company behind Animal Jam.

Strenia.com $3,500 – Strenia Solutions is a tech company with offices in Australia, Germany and South Africa. It uses the domain name StreniaSolutions.com.au.

RealtorNow.com $2,950 – I hope the guy who bought this domain has rights to use the Realtor trademark.

Laramie1.com €2,900 – Laramie County School District No. 1 in Wyoming.

GotCramps.com $2,000 – Avadim Technologies is a life sciences company. One of its products, called Theraworx Relief, helps prevent foot and leg cramps.

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