Tucows generates less revenue from its portfolio but sales of $2,000-$3,000 domains still strong.
Tucows reported earnings yesterday, which should give domainers some insight into how large domain portfolio holders are doing.
The headline number is that sales from Tucows’ domain portfolio in Q4 2012 were $300,000 less than the same quarter of 2011. But a lot of that has to do with the lumpiness of high dollar domain sales.
Here’s how Tucows CEO Elliot Noss explained it:
In Q4, we had fewer sales of domains over $50,000 than we’ve had in previous quarters. Yet, the total number of domains sold directly was up 83% year-over-year. Likewise, revenue from domains sold through network partners was up 17%, hitting at all time high of well over $400,000. Both also saw increases in average sales price. Thus, our strategy in 2012 of moving to higher price points as well as increase in the upper stores direct sales has paid off.
Finally, while sales of high price domains might delight or disappoint from one quarter to the next, our pipeline of domain sales in the $2,000 to $3,000 rate continues to show the sort of reliability and steady growth that we look for in all of our business units.
It will be interesting to compare Tucows’ aftermarket domain sales results compared to Marchex once the latter spins off its Archeo business.
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