Right of the Dot Reports Sales of Kick.com and Cogent.com

Monte Cahn, CEO of Right of the Dot, sent me an email to let me know his firm has brokered two large domain name sales. Kick.com was sold for $276,077.45 and Cogent.com was sold for $60,029.60. I believe both of these domain names had been previously registered to New Ventures Services, Corp., which is a portfolio company associated with Web.com.

Believe.com Sold for $200,000 via Kate Buckley

Domain broker Kate Buckley announced that her company (Buckley Media) successfully brokered the sale of Believe.com for $200,000. Based on the current Whois records, it would appear that the deal has already transacted.

The sale was announced via Kate’s Twitter account earlier this morning:

This is the second six figure sale Kate brokered this month. Less than a week ago, Kate announced the $100,000 sale of GreenStreet.com. That sale is currently tied for the 17th largest publicly reported domain name sale of 2020, as reported by DNJournal. The $200,000 sale of Believe.com will rank as the sixth largest sale of the year (to date) tying the $200,000 sales of Profitable.com, Shop.app, and AOA.com. I also added the sale of Believe.com to the Embrace.com list of one word .com domain name sales.

Payment Plans: Cover Your Costs and Use an Escrow Service

I read AbdulBasit Makrani’s thoughts about payment plans on NamePros, as well as the commentary added by others. I thought I would share a couple of additional pieces of advice that I think could be helpful based on my own experiences.

I have done somewhere around 10+/- deals using payment plans. For all of them except for one, I used either Escrow.com, DAN.com, or John Berryhill for the escrow / holding service. There are other companies that offer payment plan deal facilitation, but I have not used any other services. Based on my experiences, there are two things I would suggest – use a third party provider to facilitate the deal and do your best to ensure all of the fees are covered with the first payment.

Payment plans can be beneficial for several reasons. The buyer will be able to purchase a domain name that might not be affordable without a payment plan, and if they buyer fails to make payment in full, the seller keeps the payments and gets the domain name back. Aside from not getting paid in full upfront, I don’t see many drawbacks that can’t be worked out in the payment plan agreement.

GreenStreet.com Sold for $100,000 via Kate Buckley

This afternoon, domain broker Kate Buckley of Buckley Media announced that she brokered the sale of the GreenStreet.com domain name for $100,000:

You Can’t Look at Sales in a Vacuum

Although I do not report my own sales, I appreciate when other investors and companies share their sales. Some of the benefits I get out of seeing other people’s sales include the following insight:

  • Types of domain names that are selling
  • Who is buying domain names
  • Where domain names are selling (venues/landers)
  • Pricing strategy
  • Keywords that are selling and the value of comparable domain names

Report: Meal.com Was Acquired for $1 Million

A reader sent me a link to an article from a Dutch entrepreneurial website, and the author reported that he spent $1 million to acquire the Meal.com domain name in 2019. On the about us page on Ondernemer.nl (dutch for Entrepreneur), the Publisher, Mitchel van Duuren, reported that he acquired Meal.com after founding MealPlanner.com and rebranded the business under the shorter domain name.

Here’s the excerpt from the page, with the English translation courtesy of Google Translate below the original excerpt:

“Ik kocht de domeinnaam mealplanner.com en huurde developers in om mijn visie tot leven te brengen. Deze visie bleek steeds groter te worden en dat zorgde ervoor dat ik in November 2019 de domeinnaam meal.com kocht voor het astronomische bedrag van 1 miljoen dollar voor wereldwijde expansie.”

“I bought the domain name mealplanner.com and hired developers to bring my vision to life. This vision was getting bigger and bigger, which meant that in November 2019 I bought the domain name meal.com for the astronomical amount of 1 million dollars for worldwide expansion.”

I reached out to Mitchel via the Meal.com contact page, and he confirmed that he acquired the domain name last year for $1 million. He also told me the domain name was purchased with a two year payment plan. I presume the deal has not yet been paid off.

Because the Whois information is “REDACTED FOR PRIVACY” at Enom due to GDPR, I am unable to see the current registrant of the domain name. I sent an email to the registrant via Enom’s website asking about the deal, but I did not hear back. The Whois record says, “Registrant State/Province: DC,” and the only domain escrow service in Washington DC I am aware of is facilitated by IP attorney Stevan Lieberman. I reached out to ask Stevan if he is handling escrow for this domain name, and he told me he could not confirm or deny.

Although this million dollar sale is self-reported and has not been verified by an outside source, it definitely seems well within the realm of possibility for Meal.com to be a million dollar domain name.

Assuming the domain name is paid off and also assuming Ron Jackson from DNJournal and/or Michael Sumner from NameBio are able to independently confirm the sale, it could become one of the top domain name sales of 2021. In the meantime, operating the business on Meal.com is a pretty nice upgrade for the company that was founded as MealPlanner.com.