I’ve been trying to get a read on the recent performance of the domain name aftermarket. GoDaddy likely has the best view of the aftermarket, but the company does not share its sales data. Reviewing NameBio is helpful to get an idea of what domain names are selling and for how much, but many of the tracked sales are wholesale auctions, and that does not really provide a good look at the current state of the aftermarket.
To that end, I reached out to Reza Sardeha, founder and CEO of Dan.com, to see if he could share some insight about what his team has been seeing of late. Dan.com and most of the company’s employees are located in Europe, which is currently the hardest hit area of the coronavirus outbreak. Reza was kind enough to share some information about what Dan.com has been seeing and how the company has been operating:
“It’s strange times for us, we’re adding 2-3 team members every month and the past months due to the coronavirus we have to onboard and work people in
remotely which is not optimal. In the past week only we also observe that the # of transactions is going down (less cheap names sell) but the overal sales volume is unchanged. It seems we’ll process between 5% more in total sales volume compared to last month.Our main office is already closed for a week and the entire team is working from home. So far that’s going quite well. We do observe that some third parties that we’re dependant on are slower to work with.
Other than that, we’re still executing our long term roadmap and haven’t slowed down and are not impacted much luckily due to the coronavirus.
I think this pandemic won’t influence the domain industry negatively much, quite the opposite. The more individuals create their own work and future online, the more valuable the right digital assets will be as we already see the entire world interacting with one and other more online at the moment than offline.”
Dating back to December and January, I have approximately 150 domain names listed for sale on Dan.com with BIN prices. I have received offers on some of the domain names, but I have not yet closed a deal. I would welcome Dan.com, Afternic, and Sedo sellers to share what they have been seeing with their sales. It would also be interesting to note if payment plans have continued as scheduled or if there have been drop-offs there.
i think HugeDomains might have a decent view of the marketplace as well. i own over 200 domains. they own over 5 million. nobody tells me anything.
Thank you very much for the information. There is big hope that domain industry will not be affected much. God Willing.
KJ ..What if your god is not willing?Might be wise to prepair for a major disappointment .
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11)
I’ve had four Dan.com payment plans start since mid-February. One buyer made first payment and then cancelled the same week he started. The three other buyers have made first payments and I am waiting for time to pass to see if they make subsequent monthly payments. FYI – two of the domain names were .ai names, while the other two were .com names.
In parallel, I have sold two other .com domain names at BIN prices at Dan.com with no financing since mid-February.
It would be great if Reza could clarify what he means by “in the past week only we also observe that the # of transactions is going down, but the overal sales volume is unchanged”. I suspect they are seeing a significant drop in new sales over the last few weeks but since they process many instalments, their overal sales volume is still increasing.
This would be proof that their business model of instalments and leases has positioned them (and their sellers) very well for an economic downturn.
At Efty we do not have insights in transactions or volume as per our governance but I can share we’ve seen a 16% decrease in offers and inquiries (platform wide) in March compared to February. This is on ~300k domains that are using our nameservers, including some of the world’s best portfolios and ultra premium domains.
Keep in mind also that things didn’t start falling apart in a major way until the 9th March. That was first big stock market decline.