I have a “policy” of not sharing my sales for numerous reasons that I shared before. Others like sharing their sales for their own reasons. As an industry participant and publisher, I am always willing to highlight and/or report on a domain name sale I discovered or learned about.
Earlier this week, someone shared some details about a fantastic domain name sale that could have gone under the radar. According to the tweet below, ABiologics.com was sold via Squadhelp for $26,499. Impressively, this was reportedly a hand registered domain name as the seller needed to wait until the 60 day ICANN lock:
Hand reg, so waited a month to transfer this #domain.
Thank the buyer’s patience. pic.twitter.com/j61u43xBjs— Steley (@Steley) December 7, 2023
The seller could have kept this sale private and used this internal data to secure additional, similar domain names. If it were me, I would probably think that if ABiologics.com sold for more than $25k, perhaps other letter Biologics.com domain names could have substantial value to someone else. I would have gone through the alphabet and registered whatever was available and put those up on Squadhelp. That may have been a lightning bolt sale, but it would have been worth up to $250 to register other available domain names.
From the looks of it, someone else did that and registered a swath of similar domain names on December 8:
- BBiologics.com
- CBiologics.com
- DBiologics.com
- FBiologics.com
- HBiologics.com
- JBiologics.com
- KBiologics.com
- LBiologics.com
- MBiologics.com
- NBiologics.com
- OBiologics.com
- PBiologics.com
- TBiologics.com
- UBiologics.com
- VBiologics.com
- WBiologics.com
Could the seller have hand registered these domain names? Possibly, but I doubt it. ABiologics.com was registered at Dynadot and these are registered at HiChina. These appear to be listed on Dan rather than Squadhelp. In addition, if the seller was going to hand register the names, it would have been wise to register them when the name sold and not this week.
This shouldn’t be taken as a knock on the seller. Selling that name for $26k was great. People have their reasons for sharing their sales. Those reasons may have taken precedence over keeping the data private. Notably, the seller may have had insight into why ABiologics.com was valuable and other letter names don’t have value and were left unregistered. I obviously don’t know.
More than 10 years years ago, I publicly shared some under the radar private intel about a swath of sales I was making. Shortly thereafter, others used the info I shared to hand register and sell similar domain names. The well ran dry for me and the sales stopped. It was, of course, absolutely fair game for other investors since I openly shared what I was doing. That was a lesson I learned and have tried not to repeat.
I respect and enjoy discussions with fellow domain investors, but when it comes to my own sales data, I am greedy. I am always happy to share insight and offer advice when a friend/colleague asks, but I am not going to give others information that will make them money at the expense of my own business.
Transparency transparency transparency
If domains are like real estate and we all know the price history and even the previous owners so why not domains.
It will even raised the value of the domains if we knew the prices.
Likewise all companies should publish the salary of all their employees,to equal the playing field and fight against discrimination
No more Bullshitwebsites.com
Bottom line
Sharing Sales Can bring in more Opportunities
Transparency transparency transparency and no more BullshitWebsites.com
Money ,control ,power=corruption
That the big reason why the rich do not want transparency…the hunger for more power
Interesting; in this case I doubt that the party that register all of those copycat domain names got themselves many bargains, but the market will determine that.
Sharing sales definitely has an educational value in this industry, but as you say everyone’s reasons will vary for sharing – giving away private, repeatable business information seems foolhardy whatever the reason if you are playing this game with a professional investment mindset. Those that demand otherwise have a different mindset.
You are wrong the other day i got an offer on one word domain i own $100 it should been a six figere domain, make the story short the buyer did not know how much he should pay for the domain.
I believe that Domainnamejournal.com
Is one of the most valuabe web site Ron Jackson Editor & Publisher Was one of the reason many of us has made lot of money in this business.
I personally think it’s selfish not to share, especially given the industry is so small.
I do understand people have their personal reasons like privacy etc, becoming a target. God protects the good. Yes, bad things happen in this world. But there are stronger forces than people at work.
I know most of the big sales are annoyingly NDA blocked, but from now I am going to take on a Rick attitude and insist on no NDA. Buyer plays by my rules going forward.
Data points are critical (especially when a sale is vast) for the progress of this industry, IMO.
I don’t think there is any expectation of sharing private sales information.