IDNX: “Domain Prices Went Up by 8.5% in June and July”

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Apparently, there have not been “Summer doldrums” in the domain name aftermarket this year. According to the tweet above and illustrated on the IDNX website, “Domain prices went up by 8.5% in June and July.” I believe “domain prices” means the prices realized for domain sales that are tracked in the IDNX.

IDNX was created by Thies Lindenthal, a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, and its purpose is described as follows:

Your Domain Name Should Sell Itself

I am of the opinion that if you have to explain what your domain name means or why the domain name means something, you probably should not use outbound marketing to sell the domain name.

It seems like every day, I receive at least one email from someone trying to sell me their domain name(s). As a domain investor, I understand why these people are reaching out to me, but I feel badly when I receive a large list of domain names that make no sense to me and don’t really seem to be worth anything unless someone wants to use one as a brand.

Some people seem to believe that if they explain to me what their domain name means, I will be more apt to buy it. Unfortunately, the opposite is more likely to happen. If someone has to explain the meaning of a domain name to me, I will have less interest because I don’t really want to acquire a domain name that is inherently confusing.

There are plenty of brands that use

Google Changes As Does Your Leads

When I am looking to sell a domain name by doing end user outreach, I am very cautious with the way I conduct my business. I do my best to individually target leads by name, and I generally find most of my leads searching Google for companies in a specific business or for companies that offer a product or service. I almost always only contact the prospect once (ever) unless they express interest and I negotiate with them.

As a result of the way I do lead generation, I typically only use outbound methods once for a specific domain name. If the domain name is not sold after emailing the leads I find the first time, I usually let the domain name sit and field inbound inquiries. I tend to not try again because I hate receiving uninteresting emails from the same company more than once, and I don’t want to be an annoyance to someone else.

With the recent and ongoing Google changes, it may be worth

Domain Guardians Announces Sale of BTC.com for $1 Million

 

You can add another seven figure domain name sale to this year’s domain name sales chart. I just learned that Domain Guardians brokered the sale of the BTC.com domain name for $1 million USD. The buyer is reportedly a Bitcoin mining hardware company called GAWMiners. The domain name registration remains under privacy, and the landing page has not yet changed.

It was just over two months ago that I reported the private acquisition of BTC.com. I reached out to the seller of the domain name for a comment, but I believe the owner would prefer to remain private. Jen Sale, Co-Founder of Domain Guardians did comment on the sale of BTC.com.  “Your domain name is the foundation of your online brand,” said Sale. “Flagship domains like BTC.com solidify brands by empowering users to easily discover, remember, share and recognise your company online. The right domain name can take your brand to new levels.”

According to Domain Guardians, this is the largest

MutualFunds.com & MutualFund.com Acquired by Paul Rubillo

The MutualFunds.com domain name was the main attraction in the innagural Heritage Auctions (HA) domain auction held at the end of last year. Although MutualFunds.com was not sold during the live segment of the auction, HA’s Aron Meystedt announced that a deal had been reached after the close of the auction, and the domain name was sold in private for an undisclosed amount of money. MutualFunds.com had been owned by Internet entrepreneur Mark Ostrofsky, and it originally had a reserve price of $1 million.

I recently learned who the buyer of MutualFunds.com was, and I also learned the company acquired the singular MutualFund.com in a separate private transaction consummated around the same time. The acquirer is Paul Rubillo, founder of Dividend.com, and he teamed up with a company called Mitre Media on these two domain name acquisitions. According to Rubillo, the purchase prices are both private, but suffice to say the total spent was seven figures. He did tell me that MutualFunds.com was slightly more expensive than MutualFund.com though.

Here’s what Rubillo told me about these two acquisitions:

Mike Mann Sells MakeSomeNoise.com for $40k

 

Mike Mann just reported that his company sold the MakeSomeNoise.com domain name for $40,000. Although a $40k sale is not all that remarkable, the fact that he paid under $1,000 for this domain name less than two years ago makes it more notable. Namebio confirms that the acquisition price on July 29, 2012 was $844.

As of this afternoon, the domain name is still registered to Mann’s Domain Asset Holdings, LLC. Because the Whois registration information has not changed yet, it is unknown who bought MakeSomeNoise.com. All of the other major TLDs are registered, with