Last year when DomainNameSales.com reported it’s Q2 domain names sales report to DnJournal.com, I did some digging on the buyers and did a two report series on the buyers. I thought the articles were awesome! These domain sales are different than many reported, because DNS always seems to maximize domain name sales and often the buyers can be large companies, funded start-ups and end users in general. These are the types of domain sales we all want to see! If you didn’t see the last two reports I did on these domains, you can see part 1 and part 2 by clicking those links.
In this new series, I will once again be using the DomainNameSales.com reported (that is very important as MANY sales go unreported) domain sales as reported by DnJournal.com published on 2/18/2015. A big thank you to DNS and DNJ for publishing these! So, no more waiting and here are my findings:
Quick facts
- I researched 360 domains reported by DNS to DNJ
- Prices were $10K and higher ($375K for Rangers.com was the highest price paid)
- Of the 360 domains, 8.8 characters was the average length of the domain.
- The average creation date was 2002
- 5 of the domain names were registered in 2014
- The oldest domain was registered 7/22/1994 and was CPG.com
Interesting: TrashCompactors.com expired already (2/13/2015). The domain was sold for $15K. Not only did TrashCompactors.com expire after being purchased for $15K by an unknown buyer, the domain expired in 2014 and was purchased in an expired domain auction on GoDaddy Auctions for $3,161. That sale was reported on DnJournal as you can see here in April 2014. The $3,161 buyer appears to be the seller at $15K, so a very nice ROI and may have a chance to do it again!!
Buyers (in no specific order)
- Domain Purchased: CPG.com
- Purchase Price: $30,000
CRL IP Holdings Pty Ltd is a privately held company in Australia and was founded in 2011. It appears that they are connected to Federation Centres which is shopping centers.
- Domain Purchased: AorticStenosis.com
- Purchase Price: $19,000
Edwards Lifesciences, LLC A Global Leader in the Science of Heart Valves and Hemodynamic Monitoring and uses the domain name Edwards.com for its main website. Aortic Stenosis is heart valve disease.
- Domain Purchased: SHLX.com
- Purchase Price: $22,000
Shell International Petroleum Company Ltd which really doesn’t need any explaining as a company but it’s interesting that the domain purchased matches the stock symbol of a shell company. I noticed this sale last year when I reported it July 15, 2014.
- Domain Purchased: MetropolitanHome.com
- Purchase Price: $12,000
Hearst Communications, Inc. The Hearst Corporation is an American multinational mass media group based in the Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. METROPOLITAN HOME is the premier brand of modern design accentuating timeless elegance,
enduring furnishings and relevant style for over 30 years. The domain currently redirects to MetropolitanHomeCollections.com
- Domain Purchased: TeamTarget.com
- Purchase Price: $12,500
Target Brands Inc. Target Corporations is the second largest discount retailer in the United States only behind Walmart. #TeamTarget is a hashtag used by the brand and its extensive advertising in motorsports. The domain name redirect to a sub-domain teamtarget.target.com and features young racing standout Kyle Larson and Scott Dixon.
- Domain Purchased: Suivante.com (French To English translation = Next)
- Purchase Price: $15,000
Next PLC is a British multinational clothing, footwear and home products retailer headquartered in Enderby, Leicestershire.
- Domain Purchased: ELNK.com
- Purchase Price: $12,000
Earthlink Inc. is an IT services, network and communications provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, US. The company serves more than 150,000 businesses and 1 million U.S. consumers.
- Domain Purchased: YogaSport.com
- Purchase Price: $15,000
Deckers Outdoor Corporation is a footwear designer and distributor based in Goleta, California, United States, founded in 1973 by University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Doug Otto and Karl F. Lopker.
- Domain Purchased: ClearCare.com
- Purchase Price: $140,000
Novartis AG is a Swiss multinational pharmaceutical company based in Basel, Switzerland, ranking number one in sales among the world-wide industry in 2013. The domain currently redirects to ClearCareSolution.com which is a contact solution with the brand name CLEAR CARE.
- Domain Purchased: DriverHelp.com
- Purchase Price: $10,000
Mindspark Interactive Network, Inc. is an operating business unit of IAC/InterActiveCorp division of Time Warner focusing on interactive products and web portals. Mindspark’s home office is based in Yonkers, NY.
- Domain Purchased: HindiWeb.com
- Purchase Price: $35,000
Google Inc. was the buyer of HindiWeb.com which I was a bit surprised by because I didn’t think the domain was all that great. Google is known for buying outstanding domain names and I wouldn’t consider this one of them by just looking at it. They have a website up on it already and it’s Hindi related and is “All Hindi Articles In One Place” based on the translation on the site.
- Domain Purchased: iThinking.com
- Purchase Price: $12,500
BlackRock Financial Management Inc. is a global investment management company that provides guidance to individuals, institutions and financial professionals. Blackrock owns over 1,200 domain names and this isn’t the first “i” related domain I have seen them purchase lately!
Wrap-Up
A lot of time goes into digging the information for these articles, so this is part 1 of a 2 part series of this article. (part 2) This gives me a little break from digging and also allows you to absorb the data without getting overloaded. This list I focused in general, larger companies and some of the domains they purchased. I will have to do some deeper digging on many more of the domains in the list. Sadly, a lot of domains that I dug into already are still not showing who the real buyers are yet and just generic whois data.
Great job!
What were the 5 domains registered in 2014?
@Khan,
Mobikon.com ~ $10K
QuantBox.com ~ $15K
LoveHub.com ~ $14,985
Lojistics.com ~$13K
Atomik.com ~$15K
All of the above have a creation date of 2014. I didn’t look into the specific domains to see if they were “hand registered” or they dropped from the registry and grabbed on the drop or not via a backorder service.
Excellent report Jamie! Looking forward to your next effort.
Most of these reports are pointless without knowing the seller
@Schwartz’s Anus,
I wasn’t going to approve your comment because it doesn’t really add any value but I also do not like blocking comments. Anyway, these are far from “useless” without who the seller was. Alot of the domains were owned by Frank Schilling’s Name Admin Inc. and many are hard to tell who really owned them. ClearCare.com for an example is displayed in whois as “Printcarts” prior to changing ownership to Novartis…. but the domain was owned by Frank in 2013/2014 until 12/29/2014 when Printcarts shows up. Novartis AG shows up 1/11/2015 in whois. So should I say Frank sold it or Printcarts? A lot of domains have a “blip change” prior to going to the end user and this is often because a buyer broker was involved or is a secret buyer for a company. Again, I don’t see why the seller would really make a difference. Sometimes Big Company A sells to Big Company B and it makes the story a bit more interesting but other than that… what makes the difference if Frank or “printcarts” sold ClearCare.com? I don’t think it matters really.