Domain Sales

While looking through my DomainTools Whois alert emails (Name Server Monitor and Registrant Monitor) this morning, I noticed the Ton.com domain name appears to have changed hands.

Ton.com has long been owned by Digimedia and registered at Tucows. The domain name transferred to the Cloudflare domain registrar, with much of the Whois record redacted. One of the few things that isn’t redacted is the registrant location of Zug, Switzerland. The Name Servers also use Cloudflare nameservers.

I shared my observation on X:

I like how Atom.com has a feature that allows prospective buyers to track the price of a domain name listed for sale on the platform. If the price is decreased, the buyer is notified of the updated price via email. This means Atom has the buyer’s email address and the domain name that is of interest, which is a perfect combination for opening a conversation.

One bit of feedback I provided to Atom is that their brokerage team should be able to directly contact people tracking the prices of domain names to open a dialog. For instance, I have someone tracking the price of Navigator.ai, a domain name I have priced in the $200k range. It would be helpful for me to know if the buyer is interested in the $125k – $175k range or if the buyer has a completely different price expectation. This personalized engagement could help facilitate a deal.

I’ve been slowly adding domain names to Atom.com as they have gained traction. At the moment, my portfolio is the largest it has been on the platform with 235 premium listings. I also have 47 domain names pending review.

One of the differentiating factors of Atom is that they provide an approved list price. Depending on the seller’s status (Silver, Gold, or Platinum), they can raise or reduce the listing price by a certain amount. This can be helpful since it should offer an additional set of “eyes” on the asking price, and that should provide a bit of guidance on pricing for sellers.

I pay pretty close attention to the domain name aftermarket. I read DNJournal’s weekly sales report, follow NameBio on X, and track many domain name sales and auctions on the major aftermarket platforms. There are many sales that I miss though.

That’s where NameBio weekly saved searches come into play. At the moment, I track every dictionary word .com domain name sale that is recorded by NameBio. This includes all of the large sales I likely noticed throughout the week, and it also includes some of the more obscure one word .com sales I would have missed. For instance, in yesterday’s report, I saw that Windjammers.com sold for $765 via GoDaddy.

Pricing domain names is challenging. The domain name market is dynamic. Domain name values can fluctuate based on many factors related to the domain name and the seller. If the price is too high, buyers may ignore the domain name. If it is too low, money can be left on the table.

One aspect of Atom.com that I find helpful is that it will help price domain names. Upon premium acceptance, Atom.com provides a suggested price with bracketed prices that are higher and lower by a percentage based on the membership tier of the seller.