Earlier this morning, I shared a video of the DomainNames.com auction at NamesCon. The domain name sold for $370,000, and I believe Frank Schilling of Uniregistry was the winning bidder.
I thought I would ask readers their thoughts on the purchase via poll question below. “Good buy” doesn’t necessarily mean a good price to re-sell. I presume Frank / Uniregistry will be the end user, so even if you think the price was on the high side, it could still be considered a good buy. Feel free to share additional thoughts in the comment section after you vote if you would like:
Definitely a great buy, given the current market. Hopefully they’ll develop it and get the organic ranking, which will bring in a lot of good traffic. Especially at the current CPC prices for “domain names”.
Doesn’t look like there’s a lot of organic possibilities (maybe long tail) in that term. Andrew Alleman pointed out that it’s a total pay to play term on a recent post, so . . .
Elliot,
I would love to see similar poll for LEADS.com
I do not know who bought that name. I think Frank’s acquisition of DomainNames.com makes it a different question of value because we know who the buyer / end user is.
Hello. Do you think a poll asking what percentage of domains sold at Namescon bought by end users is a good fit
That would be very difficult to know. Some sales take a while to close and some will go under privacy protection. Sales to European buyers will likely be under privacy due to GDPR. I don’t think there’s going to be an accurate way to determine the percentage of domain names bought by end users.
I believe it is overpriced…
In my opinion it is not highly searched term to drive traffic and get revenue….it is not a daily used product for general people…
And people who wanted to buy a domain name….they usually go straight to established sites like GoDaddy…which spends lot on advertising…and biggest player in the field and widely recognised
If it is direct website or someone wanted to upgrade to this name then it can sense of acquiring same name as their brand name… I don’t think Uniregistry will change to Domain Names… I mean they just switched to Uni (by the way “Uni” is also an upgrade for Unilever group…dont know who owns short UNI)
These are just my opinions and I might be wrong also…
Thanks,
Ravi
Excellent buy, especially for a Domain Name Registrar / Registry.
Very surprised that Network Solutions let it go and that other Registrars / Registries did not buy it.
Congrats to Frank! Look forward to seeing how he uses it to Grow and Optimize his existing Domain Name platform.
If Frank succeeds to create a gateway to Uniregistry.com top ranked for “domain names” then it should be repaid quickly.
Now if the use is a new site, for example a marketplace, then Frank remember the shortener DONA.com is available for sale the day you’ll will feel DomainNames.com is too long 😉
If DomainNames.com was a good buy then Leads.com was a bargain. Much more profit in Leads and leaden than domains.
Agree. I think both name are reasonable prices. With Frank buying domainnames.com, he should be able to utilize it to bring out it’s value better than most. I think Leads.com is an incredible name with “leads” being a huge business online (and offline). I prefer leads.com for it’s potential between the two, but both are solid buys.
Absolutely a fantastic buy!
Developed into a user-friendly and informative domain name resource, this could be a very profitable business.
Good for Frank! A wise buy.
I wrote on another blog that I thought it was overpriced. It’s on the higher end of the end user price scale. Finding out that Frank S bought it, it makes sense. It would’ve been a terrible buy for an investor as you would be lucky to resell at break even. For an end user, it was full market value. Frank didn’t get a discount here. Hopefully, our DNS/IT parking income won’t be skimmed too much to make up for it.
Domain.com and DomainName.com would be a lot better but much more expensive.
Just a portal for their domain sales network, free leads, who cares, Frank can get it back in one high end sale. It is vanity, it is owning what you do, if anyone can spend it, I think he can. Now like he is buying a .mobi
Does Frank or Taryn ever lose an auction when he really wants a name? Rarely. Being that he was actually on the floor bidding on the name live made it really easy for those involved to easily pump the price. I think he bought it solely as a vanity purchase and I believe he overpaid because he can.
Just replacing sold inventory, keeping his brokers busy.
What about DomainNames.click.
I’d say yes, the names isn’t “in vogue” at the moment being an EMD and it won’t be easy to rank but it is a significant names with decent potential. Possibly the best buy of the auction.
The regular public knows of domain names as “domain names,” not as “domains.” That’s big.
It depends.
If he wants to resell it then he overpaid.
If he wants to redirect to Uniregistry he over paid.
If he wants to develop it for his 400k names then it makes sense to pay what he paid.
In either case the question is pointless, because Frank is an expert on Domain names and if he paid what he paid then rest ashore he DID NOT over pay.
Why does he need to develop it, he already runs Uniregistry, he owns one of the best portfolios, he employs like 30 brokers, he is the end user. All he has to do is forward it to his market, and sit on his hands, and it will make money for him. I double he is going to miss $370K, 1 less sports car for him.
bargain
He is going to flip it for double the price.
I think he bought it to brand and position his company for potential sale.
It’s a great buy because he is an end-user.
For Frank, it’s a good investment, and he’ll know how to profit, congratulations
Bears repeating, by the way: classic example of how longer is better and more valuable than shorter IN THE REAL WORLD. (See what I wrote above.) Pleasantly ironic that it’s the very name that defines our whole industry.
No it‘s not.
Only if by ”the real world“ you mean the porn industry. Longer is indeed better than short, I give you that.
No it’s not ironic? It seems you didn’t read what I wrote earlier. But for the sake of the greater good I’ll repeat it:
The “regular” or normal public has for all intents and purposes no idea what “domains” are. Yes, that means the general public and not the porn industry. But what they do know is what “domain names” are.
Domains.com > DomainNames.com
Bargain or not, the real news here is:
Frank is betting on .com!
He’s been buying them for years even though they are becoming like AM radio.
Great domain name and good price.
He traded one or two of his sales for the name…sweet.
I thought by now we would hear him speak about it….old times.
He’s bulking up the corp valuation for acquisition. Soon it’s all going to end up here: https://domains.google/? Why should they have to pay Frank for traffic when they can own it?