XL Airways was a low cost airline that declared bankruptcy and was set to have its assets liquidated. One of the assets the airline owned and used is the valuable two letter XL.com domain name. I recall hearing about the bankruptcy filing, but I did not pay close attention to it, nor did I follow along to see what would happen to the domain name. Apparently, the auction for XL.com was held earlier today in France.
DAN.com just announced an automated lease to own option that its domain name sellers may employ on their DAN.com marketplace listings. By enabling this option, sellers will allow buyers to lease their domain names for a set time period on the way to executing a sale at the buy it now price. This new domain financing option was announced this morning in a blog post shared by the company via Medium.
DAN.com has offered an installment plan where sellers could allow buyers to pay for a domain name in up to 12 installments. For instance, a $60,000 domain name can be acquired for $5,000/month for 12 months. With the new lease to own option, a buyer can stretch out the payment plan for up to 60 months. Sellers can choose how long they will allow a buyer to stretch out payments in their account settings. This option can be helpful to cash strapped businesses and startups that will use the domain name as a springboard to building their business and pay it off over time.
One major difference between the lease to own plan and the current installment plan is the escalating purchase price for longer payment periods (can also be looked at as an early payment incentive). The longer the payment term is extended, the more expensive the domain name is. Here’s how the markup works, according to the blog post:
Another large sale will be added to the 2019 domain name sales reports at DNJournal and NameBio. Results.com was sold for $264,000 in December of 2019. The domain name was brokered by Sedo Senior Broker Dave Evanson, and although Dave nor Sedo reported the sale publicly, Dave confirmed that he brokered the sale of the domain name. As you can see, a business has already been launched on the Results.com domain name.
As someone who manages a portfolio of my own domain names, the majority of which I consider to be inventory I would like to move for reasonable retail prices, I have an internal debate about showing buy it now prices vs. accepting offers to generate leads. I am not sure if there is a right way or a wrong way to do things, so I thought I would share the internal debate I have when considering these two popular landing page and platform options and get some perspective from others.
One thing that has changed for me during the past couple of years is that I have been negotiating on purchases and sales via text message much more than in prior years. I have closed a few deals on both sides via text message, and it seems to be more acceptable these days than in prior years.
On my Embrace.com price request inquiry form, I have an optional field for the prospect to leave a phone number. Typically, I will send a canned reply via email with the price of the domain name and a bit of a sales pitch. If the prospect left a contact phone number, I will usually send a text message to let them know their request was received and a reply was sent.
Yesterday morning, I published an article about the apparent sale of the Gold.com domain name. The domain name appears to have been sold by a subsidiary of a major jewelry retail chain for an undisclosed amount of money. In response to my tweet about that sale, Josh Schoen mentioned that the Ruby.com domain name had also been sold, and that appears to be the case.
Earlier this year, Ruby.com was registered to the same entity as Gold.com. The domain name was registered publicly at CSC, and Archive.org shows Ruby.com was also used as a forwarder to the Kay Jewelers website. According to current Whois records, Ruby.com is now registered to a company called Ruby Receptionists. Using the Whois History tool at DomainTools, it looks like the domain name changed hands in late September of 2019 for an undisclosed amount.
