Domain Sales

When some of my domain names are approved for Premium listing status at Atom.com, I’ve noticed the suggested prices don’t always seem to follow a clear rationale. In some cases, it looks like the suggested prices are influenced by the asking prices I have for the domain names at Afternic, but the exact numbers often feel somewhat arbitrary and contrary to what I’ve generally assumed.

In reviewing my last 13 approved Premium listings, 3 of them came in just above what I would have considered a natural pricing threshold. For example, one domain name was suggested to be priced at $3,099 instead of $2,999, which I would have expected. With a relatively small portfolio, I don’t have enough volume to test this in any meaningful way, but I’ve always assumed that “charm pricing,” prices just under round-number thresholds, was the smarter strategy for listing domain names. Some sellers even prefer -88 endings for their domain names.

I asked Atom CEO Darpan Munjal about the pricing, and he shared some insights about “precise” pricing rather than charm pricing:

San Francisco Business Times (behind a paywall) and TechCrunch wrote articles about Kyte shutting down. Kyte was a car rental service that operated on the brand matching Kyte.com domain name.

According to a Public Notice of Intellectual Property Sale listing on DailyDac.com, the company paid $550,000 to acquire the Kyte.com domain name in 2021. A total of 31 domain names are available as part of this listing.

Over the weekend, I received a $1,000 offer for a $1,997-priced domain name via Afternic. After a bit of negotiating, I agreed to sell the domain name for $1,500 on Sunday and the buyer agreed but has not yet paid. Yesterday afternoon, I agreed to sell a different domain name via Afternic for $2,500, and the buyer immediately paid and that deal is done and dusted.

I am curious to know how long other people tend to give buyers to pay for a domain name once a deal has been reached.

While looking through my DomainTools Whois alert emails (Name Server Monitor and Registrant Monitor) this morning, I noticed the Ton.com domain name appears to have changed hands.

Ton.com has long been owned by Digimedia and registered at Tucows. The domain name transferred to the Cloudflare domain registrar, with much of the Whois record redacted. One of the few things that isn’t redacted is the registrant location of Zug, Switzerland. The Name Servers also use Cloudflare nameservers.

I shared my observation on X:

I like how Atom.com has a feature that allows prospective buyers to track the price of a domain name listed for sale on the platform. If the price is decreased, the buyer is notified of the updated price via email. This means Atom has the buyer’s email address and the domain name that is of interest, which is a perfect combination for opening a conversation.

One bit of feedback I provided to Atom is that their brokerage team should be able to directly contact people tracking the prices of domain names to open a dialog. For instance, I have someone tracking the price of Navigator.ai, a domain name I have priced in the $200k range. It would be helpful for me to know if the buyer is interested in the $125k – $175k range or if the buyer has a completely different price expectation. This personalized engagement could help facilitate a deal.

I’ve been slowly adding domain names to Atom.com as they have gained traction. At the moment, my portfolio is the largest it has been on the platform with 235 premium listings. I also have 47 domain names pending review.

One of the differentiating factors of Atom is that they provide an approved list price. Depending on the seller’s status (Silver, Gold, or Platinum), they can raise or reduce the listing price by a certain amount. This can be helpful since it should offer an additional set of “eyes” on the asking price, and that should provide a bit of guidance on pricing for sellers.