I’ve been asked to look at numerous domain name sales landing pages lately. I will generally be happy to take a look if I have the time, but I thought I would share what I think are the most important elements to a BIN landing page for domain name sales.
1) Domain name quality
2) BIN price
3) Ability to easily transact securely
and/or 4) Ability to contact seller
Tim Hargis alerted me about a recent corporate rebrand. A company called Stride Funding, which had previously been funded to the tune of $20 million, announced it was rebranding itself as Clasp. In addition, the company announced a $10 million oversubscribed venture funding round. Wisely, the company acquired the brand match Clasp.com domain name prior to the rebrand announcement.
Tess Michaels, Founder of Clasp, shared why the company rebranded in a post on LinkedIn. Tess also specifically mentioned the Clasp.com domain name, presumably because acquiring it is a signal of strength:
In June, with the help of DomainTools, I noticed that the Engine.com domain name was pending transfer and the nameservers had recently changed to Cloudflare. This valuable domain name transferred to Cloudflare, where it is currently registered under Whois privacy.
According to my @DomainTools Domain Monitor alert email, https://t.co/skWspkn2bF is pending transfer and the nameservers recently changed to Cloudflare (domain name doesn’t resolve yet).
It has been registered at GoDaddy under Whois privacy, and it had Afternic nameservers.
— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) June 17, 2024
We now know who acquired Engine.com.
The ASAP.com domain name was sold in a bankruptcy auction managed by Heritage Global Partners (HGP). The sale price was $340,000, plus an additional 19% buyer’s premium. The total paid for the domain name was $404,600.
David Barkoff, Senior Vice President at Heritage Global Partners, confirmed the sale has fully transacted. David also let me know that final sale price was solely for ASAP.com, and he shared the following comment about the recently concluded auction:
In what I believe could be one of the top domain name sales of all-time, Hilco Digital Assets brokered the sale of Rocket.com. The domain name is currently pending transfer away from Network Solutions, Whois records at DomainTools show.
This morning, I reached out to Andrew Miller, Managing Director of Hilco Digital Assets, who had previously mentioned the domain name. Andrew confirmed the domain name was sold but could not comment about the sale price. “We can confirm that we oversaw the sale and acquisition of the Rocket.com domain name, in a win-win for the buyer and seller,” he told me via email.
