Chad Folkening shared an excellent newsletter article from the Entrepreneurship Handbook that will be of interest to domain investors. Not only does Dave Schools share some good advice for buyers of valuable domain names, but he revealed a one word .com domain name that was acquired for $385,000.
Before sharing the domain name sale he revealed, I must say I agree with his thoughts about using .com domain names:
There are many times when the valuation of a domain name my company owns is far greater than what a prospective buyer thinks it is worth. Usually these people simply disappear when they realize the price is beyond what they are willing or able to spend. Sometimes, these people are persistent and won’t give up. These prospects may feel the need to argue with my valuation or try to convince me I am wrong.
When someone disagrees with the valuation of one of my higher value domain names, I will sometimes recommend that they connect with an unaffiliated domain broker to get some additional insight from someone who is unaffiliated with the domain name. A broker, working on commission, will let that person know their opinion on the valuation of the domain name and may even educate the buyer about why the domain name is valuable.
The Somewhere.com domain name has reportedly been acquired for $400,000 USD. The acquisition was announced on X this morning by Nick Huber:
Big news:
We spent $400,000 on a web domain.
Support Shepherd is now Somewhere.
Turns out nobody can remember Support Shepherd, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, and even really smart people spell it incorrectly over and over.
Hiring top 1% talent all over the world to save… pic.twitter.com/0b4GQtH9XU
— Nick Huber (@sweatystartup) May 15, 2024
I recently sold a domain name I owned for several years after an email discussion with the buyer. During our negotiation, at least three people from the buyer’s side were involved in the discussion. Once we agreed on a price, I wasn’t sure whose email address to use for the transaction and had a feeling it could be someone else entirely.
Because of the relatively low value of the deal (under $5k), I decided to use Dan.com for the transaction. In my experience, buyers have had few difficulties with payment, and Dan support works with the buyer to facilitate the domain transfer instead of having to do that myself. Despite a higher cost % vs. escrow, I have found there to be fewer speed bumps.
Because it was unclear who would be managing the transaction, I did not do the traditional lead import at Dan.com. Instead, I opted to get a checkout link via Afternic. Since Afternic and Dan both offer the same 5% transaction fee on imported leads, it was essentially the same cost and I figured I would see how the checkout link works.
Whois records show that Salesforce.com has acquired the 111.org domain name. The domain name recently transferred from GoDaddy to MarkMonitor. Using the DomainTools Whois History tool, I can see it had been registered for a short period to NameCorp, Alan Dunn’s domain brokerage. Prior to that, it was registered to a China-based domain registrant.
Salesforce is not yet using the domain name. My guess is Salesforce will use 111.org for its “Pledge 1% movement.” On its website, Salesforce describes this movement in terms of 1+1+1, so 111.org makes sense for this type of organization:
As you may have seen yesterday, George Kirikos published an article about the A-Mark Precious Metals, Inc. SEC filing that mentioned its acquisition of Gold.com. A few weeks ago, I learned the domain name had been acquired by JM Bullion, a company owned by A-Mark Precious Metals, in a deal brokered by Andrew Miller of Hilco Digital. At the time, the sale price was not shared.
As George noted, the SEC filing stated “In March 2024, JMB acquired $8.5 million of intangible assets that included Gold.com’s domain name.” Since the filing mentioned “assets,” indicating the potential for multiple acquisitions, I reached out to Andrew to ask him to confirm the sale price of Gold.com. Andrew was able to confirm the domain name sold for $8,515,000.
Commenting on the deal, Andrew shared the following with me:
