Domain Sales

A startup called Aries introduced itself yesterday, and its brand matching Aries.com domain name is was what caught my attention:

Introducing https://t.co/g4JFITQbYE

The first ever open platform for traders, investors, and developers. pic.twitter.com/EBVJn2Ncnh

— Aries (@Aries) November 19, 2024

From what I can tell, it looks like Aries started out on the TradeAries.com domain name. The company appears to have raised more than $1 million in funding via StartEngine in a round that closed earlier this year.

Among other things, MarkMonitor is a corporate domain name brokerage. The company often represents and advises major corporations when they are in the market to acquire a specific domain name.

In addition to domain name acquisitions, MarkMonitor helps its clients sell valuable domain names that are no longer needed. MarkMonitor publishes a list of domain names it is currently brokering, and many of the domain names have buy it now prices listed. I am particularly fond of the one word .com domain names listed for sale. I check this list from time to time to see what domain names have come on the market and possibly identify domain names that were sold.

There are some exceptional domain names listed for sale via MarkMonitor. I think my favorites on the list are:

At our town’s annual meeting, there was a discussion about paving a secondary road. The non-critical infrastructure project was needed to be done at some point, but it had been put off for a few years. The town seemed pretty split on whether or not to spend the low millions on completing the project.

Towards the end of the public discussion, a gentleman stood up to comment and noted how the cost of the project more than doubled since it was first discussed. He also predicted the cost would continue to increase, and because it was a project that was going to need to be done at some point, the town might as well get it done at today’s cost.

The town voted in favor of completing the project, and the road was paved shortly thereafter.

A little over a week ago, I came across Diamond.com, and I noticed its coming soon page. When I scrolled down, I saw a message indicating that it was owned by a company that has been in the diamond industry for many years. The last time I heard about Diamond.com back in 2018, it had plans to become a cryptocurrency exchange.

A Whois search at DomainTools led me to a screenshot showing a Saw.com “for sale” landing page. I reached out to Saw.com CEO Jeff Gabriel to ask if the domain name was recently sold, and he confirmed the sale of Diamond.com was brokered by his company. He let me know the company planned to announce the sale publicly after the Dubai Domain Days conference.

That announcement came this morning on X:

NameBio does a very good job of tracking down and reporting domain name auction results. Domain investors aren’t the only people who use NameBio to find domain sales data. Domain brokers and domain name buyers use NameBio to get intelligence on domain names they want to buy.

Once a year in a domain name sale negotiation, a counterparty mentions the purchase price I paid to buy a domain name. I guess the prospect may think it’s a way to get a lower price and/or justify their low offer. This tactic works as well as someone mentioning that they’re a student looking to buy a domain name for a school project.

Domain investors have another option to transact domain name sales. Dynadot Founder and CEO Todd Han announced that Dynadot customers can now import their own leads onto its marketplace sales platform:

You can now bring your own lead at Dynadot. We handle payment and pushing the domain for you. The commission is just 5%.

This feature is still in soft launch, though I am sure the aftermarket team won't mind if I tell my select twitter friends😁 pic.twitter.com/BNuVcNKNFM

— Todd Han (@dynatodd) November 7, 2024