The “unreported” domain name market dwarfs reported sales.
Each week Ron Jackson publishes the week’s highest reported domain name sales for the week at DNJournal.com. Jackson provides an invaluable service to the domain name community. But DNJournal’s reported sales are just the tip of the iceberg. Jackson is aware of a number of other domain sales but isn’t allowed to disclose them. Beyond even what he knows about, more domain sales occur that never get announced to the public. Many of these are purchased by large corporations or trade hands between people that would rather not announce it to the world.
I recently advised a good friend who was approached by a large company about her domain name. She registered the domain to use for her P.R. business about a year ago. This company wanted the domain, and she ultimately decided to sell it. Of course, selling the domain she used for her business involved some hassles, but she was able to settle on a nice 5-figure price. As a thank-you for my advice, she treated my wife and I to dinner at Jeffrey’s, an upscale Austin restaurant that George W. Bush frequented while he was governor. As we enjoyed our beef tenderloin and bottle of nice wine, I reflected on a couple things:
1. Many domains are selling each week that the general public doesn’t know about. In fact, I believe the number of unreported sales is greater than the reported sales.
2. My friend ‘accidentally’ stumbled upon a domain sale that’s bigger than many ‘full-time domainers’ have ever achieved.
Just a couple weeks ago I completed a five figure sale that no one will hear about. A few months ago another friend took me out for steak for helping him sell a domain for $6,000. Again, no one will ever read about that sale.
The message? The domain resale market is bigger than you think.
Basicity says
Andrew, it would be great if you could get your good friend to write a guest blog entry on Domain Name Wire about her experience selling her domain to this company that wanted her domain. I am interested in knowing who contacted who first, who blinked first and offered the initial price for the domain, what was the final sale price compared to the initial offer price (just ballpark numbers), the negotiation process, etc.
Robert Haastrup-Timmi says
Andrew, your articles are always inspiring to read. I suspect some of the large domain sale networks deliberately deflate appraisal values just to get a quick sale which is unfortunate really. As pointed out in your previous article, domains should not just be valued on ppc revenue alone or at all in my opinion. Afterall, if advertisers are shelling out $5 to $10 a click on a specific keyword or phrase, then a matching domain can be more realistically valued on the cost to the advertiser times a multiple of X number of years. I have noticed that most of the domains reported on DNjournal are still parked after the sale, this suggests that the buyers are domainers and not real businesses. If BuyDomains.com were to get there sales people on the phone targeting advertisers on google and yahoo, then we will see real price momentum. For now the market in general only favours domainers and I think that is very risky long term. Thanks for all your articles Andrew!
Don M says
Yes the market for unreported domain sales are very big. I had one myself in the six figure range 3 1/2 years ago in which I did not report. No where to report it at that time, it was in the cell phone area.
Ramiro says
I agree that many sales go unreported. After the legislative session, I’ll treat you to a cheeseburger at Nau’s Pharmacy. I hope all is well.