The SERP.com domain name was acquired in July of this year for $210,000. This, according to the former owner of the domain name who is a longtime domain investor. SERP.com was sold via Afternic, according to an Afternic transaction activity screenshot I was sent.
Prior to the sale of SERP.com, the buyer had a price expectation of $500,000. After multiple rounds of negotiations, the buyer and seller agreed to a $210,000 sale price.
Anything.com is a legacy brand name in the domain name space. Anything.com has long owned a portfolio of exceptional domain names. Off the top of my head, I can think of Home.com, Marketing.com, Blade.com, Kitchen.com, and many other meaningful .com domain names the company has owned.
This afternoon, I saw a post on X from Alan Shiflett that highlighted a massive rebrand. A company called Anything, which has been using CreateAnything.com, acquired the Anything.com domain name. Anything is an AI-based, no-code software development company founded by Marcus Lowe. The company recently announced an $11 million round of funding. A press release was published this evening pegging the acquisition at $2 million.
Marcus shared the news about the new domain name this afternoon:
Andrew Allemann covered the Rams.com UDRP decision that went in favor of the domain registrant. The Los Angeles Rams NFL football team tried to get the domain name via UDRP, and they lost the decision. The domain name was successfully defended by attorney John Berryhill.
There was one aspect of the decision that caught my attention. The panel paid attention to the discussion about a $2 million offer that was reportedly made to buy the domain name. The panel did some background checking to confirm that the offer could be plausible, sharing that the prospective buyer apparently represents some companies with “Rams” in their brand names. Had the seller been untruthful about an offer, who knows how the panel may have ruled.
It is said that in Major League Baseball, a player can fail 70% of the time at the plate and still make the Hall of Fame. Someone with a long career whose batting average is .300 or better has a decent shot of being inducted in the baseball Hall of Fame while being known as a solid hitter.
Domain investing is similar in a sense, but the bar to be considered successful is even lower than a hitter in baseball. A decent domain portfolio may have a 2-3% sell through rate (STR). A strong domain investor portfolio optimized for sales might sell only 5% of the portfolio in a year. 95% of a domain name portfolio may sit unsold each year, and a large percentage of these domain names may not get an offer or inquiry during the course of a year.
When I was operating my directory websites, a business friend of mine gave me some good advice that applies directly to domain name sales. Enable immediate payment for domain names that buyers want to buy. Whether this is an Escrow.com payment link, a BIN link with Efty Pay, or a BIN landing page with GoDaddy, Atom.com, Spaceship, or other platform, the buyer should be able to pay immediately without jumping through hoops.
Atom.com recently announced “one of the biggest updates to search and discovery” on the platform. The platform is making its search results less literal and more intuitive. By way of example, if someone searches for the term “baby,” instead of being solely shown domain names with the baby keyword in them, the platform will show domain names that could make nice brand names for someone starting a baby-related business. The blog post has many more details about the change.
