Domain Sales

This morning in my Domain Monitor alert email from DomainTools, I noticed that AI.com had transferred from Uniregistry to Google (domain registrar). AI.com had been owned by Future Media Architects (FMA), and the domain name now has Whois privacy enabled, obscuring the registrant name from public view. Like all FMA domain names, AI.com had been listed for sale via Saw.com.

When I saw AI.com had transferred to a different domain registrar, I reached out to Saw.com’s Jeff Gabriel and Amanda Waltz to see if the domain name had sold.

The other day, I was negotiating the sale of a domain name with a prospective buyer. After sharing the price of the domain name with the buyer, I was sent what was considered to be a comparable domain name at a much lower price. In reality, the domain name that was sent and priced less was a non .com domain name that matched my .com domain name.

The prospect asked why my domain name was so much more expensive than the comparable non .com listed for sale on several marketplaces. Although I think it should be pretty obvious to most people why the .com domain name is worth many times more than the non .com domain names, I used a real estate analogy to keep things simple.

I’ve always been under the assumption that many prospective domain name buyers type the domain name into their browser to see what exists on the domain name. Having a “for sale” landing page or inquiry page can help facilitate a sale when a prospective buyer visits the domain name to see what exists on it. According to a Squadhelp, my assumption may not be the full picture.

Squadhelp CEO Darpan Munjal shared that a recent study from his company showed a prospective buyer is 4x as likely to search Google for a domain name than type it into their browser:

I just learned about the third largest publicly reported domain name sale of 2021. According to an email I received from BrandForce Co-Founder & Vice President Louis Pickthall, BrandForce sold the Floor.com domain name for $3,144,000. Louis and Senior Broker Stephen Byrne brokered this house-owned domain name, and the closed deal was transacted via Escrow.com. Once confirmed and charted by DNJournal, it will become the 11th seven figure (publicly reported) domain name sale of the year to date.

The buyer of Floor.com is not publicly known at this point. The domain name is registered under Whois privacy, and the buyer’s generic Shopify-powered website has been launched. This website does not give away any details about the buyer’s identity, but I will keep an eye out for any type of public launch announcement in the future.

Earlier this morning, James Booth announced that he sold BetU.com for $180,000. The domain name was sold via Squadhelp, a domain name sales platform that helps businesses select a brand name. The deal was announced on Twitter:

Just sold – https://t.co/KPTsbq48tA for $180,000 via @squadhelp

— James (@domain) September 21, 2021

I had a deal fall through on GoDaddy this week. To keep it short, a prospective buyer made an offer to buy a domain name via GoDaddy, and I accepted the offer. The domain name was listed for sale on Afternic, and the offer was above the minimum offer amount I set but below the BIN price. I told the broker I would accept the deal if the buyer paid “right away.”

Typically, I have found that buyers pay right away, particularly when they are dealing directly with a GoDaddy broker. For whatever reason, I haven’t had many defaults on GoDaddy domain name sales. I don’t have a significant enough volume of business to suggest this is the case across the board.

By the third day of seeing the domain name in an “on hold” status without the buyer paying, I reached out to GoDaddy to let them know I wanted to cancel the deal if the buyer had not yet paid. At the time I agreed to sell the domain name for the offer, I specifically told the broker that I would agree if the buyer paid “right away,” and three days later does not count as right away for me.