Sales from NameJet last month — 10 notable
Joseph Peterson analyzes ten notable sales that took place at NameJet last month.
What sells and for how much may be objective fact, but that won’t stop us domain investors from voicing our own subjective opinions regarding quality, strategy, and value. Let’s see what we’ve got …
NameJet noted 82 domain sales that closed at or above $2,000 during the month of July. As with June, I’ve chosen 10 of those domains to look at here; and what better place to start than with the biggest of those big deals, BigDeals.com?
BigDeals.com $36,100 – Obviously, a good name. But was it a good deal? I tend to think that $36k is more or less the maximum retail number for this domain. So hopefully the buyer has the right project ready to launch. If the goal is resale, then the buyer could have done much better elsewhere. My concern isn’t just the interchangeability of positive adjectives (BigDeals, GoodDeals, BestDeals, GreatDeals, TopDeals, RealDeals, WowDeals, AmazingDeals, etc.). There’s also the familiar problem of a singular / plural split. With BigDeal.com parked at GoDaddy, this brand name could turn into an investment of $72k or more — potentially much more. “Deals” are what people are looking for. True. But phrases like “no big deal” or “what’s the big deal?” are material for TV and radio ads, and they add color to BigDeal.com. BigDeals.com may offer big savings. But the singular is a big deal.
PNN.com $23,200 – This … is PNN. Where is Darth Vader when you need him? Truthfully, though, I’m only mentioning this 3-letter .COM sale since it would be weird to skip over 9 LLL.com sales at NameJet between $7.5k and $23.2k. Having tipped my hat to them, I can now confess that I find LLLs to be boring. Even the newest domainer knows their wholesale price range and liquidity. Indeed, they’re liquid since they’re boring. Acronyms are easier to compare than descriptive or brandable domains, which tend to be subtle and unique. So LLLs are traded actively by anyone with money who can count to 3. They can be good investments. Just boring.
K56.com $3,000 – In contrast, this CCC.com is worth discussing since $3k sales for domains of this type are unusual. At first I thought I saw a connection to Oxycodone, which is a commonly abused painkiller. But with a Chinese owner, that’s unlikely. In this case, I confess ignorance. “56” may have some meaning in China, but for me China remains opaque.
YelllowPages.com $2,322 – Here’s another boring sale. Just an extra “L” right smack dab in the middle of a familiar, high-traffic brand. UDRPs can be abused by reverse domain hijackers, but this looks like it might have been an appropriate case. Firms ought to not have to pay $2k apiece for dozens of typos. Typically, they pay with cease and desist letters, not cash.
PartyIdeas.com $20,100 – This price looks ten times too high. Is it? People spend money on parties, sizable or modest. Think weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, bachelor parties, corporate events, reunions, quinceañeras, etc. Plus, there are 27,100 exact searches for [party ideas] in Google each month. That’s nothing to sniff at! Party planners and caterers can charge quite a bit, even if they are normally locally constrained and unable to take advantage of 99% of those search results. We’ll see what develops. Regardless, it’s pretty clear that NameJet sales like this one frequently reflect retail valuations rather than the wholesale domainer market.
CustomPens.com $10,109 – When I first commented on CustomPens.com, I called the purchase “money well spent”; and I still think so. Over the years, I’ve seen expensive engraved pens awarded at symbolic events. And we’re all familiar with less expensive pens being given out for promotional purposes in bulk. Since pens ship easily, they’re perfect for e-commerce. CustomPens.com is descriptive, definitive, and reads like a branded identity.
ChimneySweep.com $14,544 – This price is somewhat higher than I’d have predicted, but it’s the domain itself that intrigues me. I find myself debating with myself. Does this name give a brand wings? Or cement shoes? Chimney sweeps as a cultural concept have undergone a series of weird transformations. Originally a dirty but mundane profession, William Blake converted it into a symbol of lost innocence. Basically, children were purchased from their parents as apprentices and made to climb inside chimneys to scrub away ash and soot. Charles Dickens arranged for his child hero, Oliver Twist, to narrowly escape such a fate: “Mr Gamfield did happen to labour under the slight imputation of having bruised three or four boys to death by now.” And by the time of Mary Poppins, the historical child chimney sweeps became a dancing prancing Dick Van Dyke. So what do you do with a brand like that? Its associations may prove as bad as good, and they are so specific as to be fairly limiting. Then again, anywhere chimneys are in use, they need cleaning. Professional organizations like CSIA.org oversee such things; so ChimneySweep.com may find itself being used not symbolically but literally.
FL.org $14,667 – We’re not looking at just any 2-letter .ORG here. Among other things, it’s the official abbreviation for the state of Florida, which is the 4th largest U.S. state by gross domestic product (GDP). Based on that, the price seems straightforward. Even so, the sale is a notable one.
Ammo.org $2,600 – This domain will make a superb name, and it was bought at a fair price. Forget bullets and shotgun shells, which are better sold through a .COM or a .NET. We’re looking at “ammo” in its metaphorical sense — preparation, evidence, leverage, fire power. Ammo.org is also a viable acronym for multi-word names beginning with “association”, “american”, “automotive” or containing the state of Missouri (“MO”).
ElHeraldo.com $7,553 – I’ve by now written regarding this ubiquitous Spanish newspaper name (“The Herald”). Nevertheless, as someone who views Spanish domains as being an attractive but undervalued investment opportunity, I want to underline the fact that these dominios are selling by telling the public twice. In fact, NameJet also sold Valores.com ($5,202) last month, which I discussed here. For my money, anyone looking for big deals, would have done better with 7 domains equal in value to Valores.com than with BigDeals.com.
Opinions?
