Domaining Manual

A statistical look at a slice of the domain name market.

Most people agree that the investor aftermarket for domain names isn’t as lofty as it was a couple years ago. Just look at the mood and total sales at live domain auctions for proof. But gathering data to prove this is difficult.

Richard Wixom of DNSalePrice recently took at stab at it, but with a different conclusion: the domain aftermarket is doing just fine, thank you. The drop in domain prices over the past year or two is small compared to the drop in the stock market. At least for three character domains.

Wixom took a narrow band of domain sales that he believes creates a good proxy for the investor market overall: three character domain sales under $30,000. He charted sales from January 2005 to May 2009, stripped out domains with q, x, y, or z, IDNs, and three letter domains that are words. Wixom then plotted these sales on a graph, added a polynomial trend line, and overlayed the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The picture tells the story:

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Article says domain name auction yesterday would have been “one of the first”.

A planned real estate domain name auction yesterday in San Francisco fizzled as no one placed bids. But an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the auction will give you a chuckle. It suggests that this would have been “one of the first” live domain auctions:

The few who showed up felt more comfortable negotiating in private – removing the sale from public view and scuttling what would have been one of the first – and probably classiest – live auctions of domain names in the history of the Internet.

Classiest, perhaps. But one of the first? The author needs to do a little fact checking.

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Data from an advertising campaign shows that parked domains can convert better than search ads.

It’s been about 9 months since I last wrote about how I was getting better conversions from parked domain ads than Google search. Now that I have a lot more data, it’s time to update the stats.

As background, I own a college funds site that offers a free report about mistakes to avoid when setting up a 529 plan. I purchase ads on Google Adwords that direct users to a landing page specifically about the report, and track conversions on the back end.

So far the campaign has served over 4 million impressions and delivered over 30,000 clicks across Google search, the content network, error pages, and parked pages. The most cost effective channel: parked domains.

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Auction includes 71 domains priced from $0 to $300,000.

Aftermarket.com has released its auction list for next Tuesday’s auction during the Domain Roundtable conference in Washington, D.C. Based on the number of very attractively priced domains in the auction, I think there will be some great momentum and excitement. Sure, there are a few domains as always that seem like long shots, but most look well priced.

This list is subject to change.

3gphone.com $3,500
Adjusted.com $1,500
Atty.co.uk $3,000
AudioEditing.com $0
Autotuners.com $500
BabySwing.com $2,500
BaseballJerseys.net $500
Bicentennial.com $3,000
Bullfighter.com $5,500
Burbank.net $12,500
Carburetors.com $30,000
CharmBracelet.com $12,500
CheapHybrid.com $0
ChildBed.com $850
Chum.com $30,000
Clears.com $1,500
Coffeehouses.com $17,500
CommunityCollege.info $0
Covenants.com $3,300
Cower.com $500.00
Crumpets.com $5,000
CustomBoots.com $0
DivorceDocuments.com $0
eNew.com $0
Eras.com $9,995
Exhaustion.com $4,500
EyePencil.com $0
FederalProjects.com $0
FluSeason.org $500
Gettingby.com $0
Goliath.com $17,500
Guarantor.com $2,500
Handicapped.net $4,588
Heartbreaking.com $4,000
Heated.com $5,500
Hexes.com $5,500
HighDefinition.com $100,000
HomePrices.com $300,000
IncomeTaxLoan.com $2,200
LED.org $8,000
LoanPayments.com $2,000
Magicspell.com $10,000
Marcia.com $25,000
Monetize.org $0.00
MonthlyPlanner.com $750
Multivitamins.com $60,000
NewRochelle.com $32,500
Nosejobs.com $65,000
OutdoorSurvival.com $0
Pitches.com $4,900
Pommade.com $0
Possibly.com $3,500
PowderPuff.com $4,500
RealEstateLawyers.co.uk $2,500
Relaxation.net $3,500
Schizophrenic.com $5,000
Screamers.com $4,500
SmoothLegs.com $5,000
Spincycling.com $1,000
SportsTherapist.com $2,400
TaxBlog.com $7,700
TechTip.com $1,850
TeenPhones.com $0
TheSportsbook.com $7,500
UniversalPolicy.com $0
University.net $100,000
WeddingTuxedo.com $1,100
WeightLossCalculator.com $1,000
WeightTraining.com $11,500
Wordlists.com $0.00
Workshirts.com $17,500

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