Whenever I buy or renew a domain name at Uniregistry, I receive some Topcoin. I probably have a ton of Topcoins in my account, but I have never used any (nor do I know how or where to use them). Yesterday evening, I received an email from Topcoin with some news.
Here’s the email I received yesterday. I am not all that knowledgable about tokens and blockchain, so perhaps this news will be of greater interest to those who are active in that space.
One of the concerns I have heard people mention regarding Uniregistry is that the company could keep expiring domain names dropped by its customers. There are domain name registrars that either keep the higher value drops or did this in the past, and I have heard people express their concerns that it could happen at Uniregistry since the company is owned by one of the most successful domain investors, Frank Schilling.
Turns out, this does not appear to be the case (at least right now).
This morning while going through a list of pending delete domain names that are coming up for auction, I saw that TrafficAccident.com and TrafficAccidents.com were listed as pending delete. Estibot values these domain names at $15,000 and $13,000 respectively, and I think most people would agree these two domain names have value, especially to a law firm or auto body shop. When I looked at the Whois registration details to see
I am not a huge believer in domain name appraisals for a number of reasons. Not only is the domain name market dynamic, but every domain name is different and one small difference can make a domain name worth millions of dollars and another domain name worth significantly less (Sex.com vs. SXE.com for example). When people email me asking for a domain name appraisal referral, I typically tell them I don’t think appraisals are worth buying.
That being said, I occasionally reach out to business friends and colleagues to ask their opinion about a domain name I bought or about an offer I received on a domain name I own. Sometimes I want some reassurance from a third party or I want the opinion of someone I trust who doesn’t have a vested interest in the domain name. Like most people in the domain name space (I think), I have a tendency to “fall in love” with my own domain names, so getting a third party to share their insight can be helpful in setting my expectations.
I want to share an offer made by Uniregistry Market domain broker Darryl Lopes via Twitter yesterday evening:
Earlier this morning, I published a press release from Uniregistry with details about its year to date sales results. The company reported that it sold 3,617 domain names totaling more than $29,000,000. I asked Uniregistry VP of Sales Jeff Gabriel if he could share any more details about YTD sales at Uniregistry Market, and he sent me a list of over 2,700 sales worth more than $17.2 million. Jeff mentioned that many of the sales were removed, so the list I received is abridged.
Several of these sales were previously reported. For instance, I wrote about the the sales of Squeeze.com and Coya.com. I presume there are other domain name sales that have been written about by me or by others. I also presume this list of sales will be reported to DNJournal and NameBio for archiving. Once Ron Jackson has this data, there will be some major changes at the top of the DNJournal Year to Date sales report.
For the sake of convenience I am sharing all of the sales I received that are worth $20,000 or more. There are 156 domain name sales worth $20,000+, and the vast majority of those are .com sales. In this list of 156 sales, there are a handful of .net and .org sales, and there are some one-off sales in other extensions such as .ca, .link, .co.uk, .co, and others.
At a quick glance, there are some really, really solid sales here. If I owned some of these names, I almost certainly would have undersold them. There also seem to be a few solid deals for the buyer. Sometimes people are happy to move inventory and the buyer gets a good deal.
Have a look at the list and let me know your thoughts.
Earlier this morning, Uniregistry published a press release (published below) with its aftermarket domain name sales report from Uniregistry Market for the first 8 months of 2017. While the report doesn’t offer specific details about domain name sales, it offers a general overview of sales on its platform year to date. From what I understand, this aggregated sales data includes domain name sales from Frank Schilling’s Name Administration company as well as the third party sales of Uniregistry Market clients.
You should read the entire press release for more color commentary, but here are the most interesting data points the company shared:
It was a bit surprising to see that the average sale price on sold domain names declined for the first time since 2011. The average sale price seems to have dropped from $9,110 to $8,017. Despite this 12% shrinkage, I think the average sale price of $8,017 is still higher at Uniregistry Market than on other domain name sale platforms. This is likely attributed to the high quality of domain names listed for sale on Uniregistry Market. That said, there was still a drop in the average sale price, and here’s how the company explained that:
“Dollar volumes moderated during this period, due to continued expansion into exploratory, nontraditional markets such as Generic Top Level Domains (GTLDs) and Country Code Top Level Domain (CCTLD) sales.”
My interpretation of this is that the company sold more ccTLD and new gTLD domain names this year, and those domain names have lower sale prices. As a result, the higher volume of lower sale prices caused the average sale price to drop. In explaining this, it would have been helpful if Uniregistry shared the increased volume of ccTLD and new gTLD sales. For instance, if the volume of these sales increased by 50% over last year, the lower sale price would have been more obvious. If the sales volume increased marginally, the lower average sale price would be more concerning to me.
I am hopeful that the company will release additional data. I believe Uniregistry Market released more sales data to DNJournal last year, and I hope the company does the same thing this year.
Here’s the company’s press release, which offers more insight about its sales and gives a glimpse of its expectations for the future:
CrunchBase reported that an insurance startup called Coya received $10 million in seed funding at the end of August. A quick check showed that the company is operating its business on the Coya.com domain name, which had previously been owned by Frank Schilling’s Name Administration. Jamie Zoch reported the sale of Coya.com at the end of July, although the price was not published.
I reached out to one of the founders of Coya via email to ask what the company paid to buy the domain name and what url the company was using prior to the acquisition. Unfortunately, I did not hear back from him.
I also reached out to Jeff Gabriel, Vice President of Sales at Uniregistry. Jeff let me know that the domain name was brokered by Ryan May of Uniregistry, and the sale price for the Coya.com domain name was a very reasonable
