Sedo’s Great Domains auction concluded a few moments ago, and Cooking.com was sold for $402,500. The auction was extended by over and hour and a half as the high bidder continued to slowly increase the high bid enough to hit the reserve price. In total, there were 39 bids placed in the auction.
Sedo recently entered the expired domain name auction business. I was just informed that the company made it easier for users to search for expiry inventory without having to sort through other types of inventory listed for sale on Sedo (BIN, make offer, private auction…etc.). The dedicated expiry auction page can be found here: https://expiringdomains.sedo.com.
The first Great Domains auction of 2019 concluded today on Sedo, and the results of the auction are listed below. In total, 35 domain names were sold in the auction. The total value of the sales a little more than $100,000 USD.
The largest sale of the auction was TBN.com, which sold for $29,888 USD. Following this sale was the sale of KAA.com for $19,999 USD. NIQ.com was the third largest sale of the auction, with a sale price of $19,000 USD. A .de domain name sold for 7500 EUR to round out the top four sales.
At the end of January, Sedo published a report that listed the top public domain name sales closed via its brokers and through its platform from 2018. Sedo also listed the top new gTLD domain name sales from the past year. In addition to the sales data, Sedo also shared some trend predictions for domain names in 2019.
Announcing our TOP 2018 publicly reported sales & market study: https://t.co/uUw3qNW1Tn. 🏆📈
Files(.)com ($750K) was Sedo’s highest priced domain sold, followed by Christian(.)com at $600K.
So proud of our high achieving year – that momentum will only continue! 💪💪 pic.twitter.com/OsKmLV1HOn
— Sedo (@Sedo) February 4, 2019
Over the years, I have received a number of emails about domain names that were (sometimes) allegedly stolen and re-sold on domain name marketplaces and platforms. I have also read forum and blog posts, as well as seen tweets and other complaints regarding the purchase of domain names that were previously stolen. Domain name theft is still a major issue that plagues the business of domain investing.
Yesterday morning, Sedo reported the $250,000 sale of Taxes.com. At the time I published an article about the sale, the domain name was registered in the name of Sedo’s escrow account. Since then, the domain name appears to have been transferred to the buyer, and the new registrant is Ryan, LLC. According to its website, Ryan “is a leading global tax services firm, providing a wide range of tax advisory and consulting services.”
Notably, in 2013, I questioned whether Ryan acquired Tax.com, in a deal brokered by Domain Holdings. Following the sale, there was a Ryan-branded landing page appearing on Tax.com. The Whois record for Tax.com is currently private and that domain name does not resolve for me. I am not sure if that is a temporary issue.
Taxes.com is not yet resolving to an operational website that I can see. Because Tax.com does not appear to be used either, I am unsure of Ryan’s game plan for either domain name. Whatever they have planned, it seems pretty smart to own both Tax.com and Taxes.com.
I reached out to Ryan’s CMO to see if he can comment about the acquisition of Taxes.com, and I will share an update if he offers any insight about the acquisition.
