Expired Domain Name Sales Review
Joseph Peterson reviews the past week of expired domain name sales.
A French fur trader freezing his fingers to collect beaver pelts up in 19th-century Canada and I might see eye to eye. His days are spent in isolation touring rivers and ponds, recovering his catch, and re-setting the traps. Mine are spent staring into a frigid screen, recovering auction results, and re-setting backorders for next week’s data. Sometimes the traps misfire, as they did this stretch, and my beaver haul is half as big as the week ahead of. Sacrebleu!
Fortunately it’s the smaller beavers that swim away. The biggest expired domain auction that I saw the prior week at NameJet was SeeU.com ($7.2k). That LLLL contains multiple meaningful elements, allowing it to be interpreted in various ways: “See” for vision, “U” as in “you”, “U” as in “university”, and even “EU” for Europe. During the previous week, many of the most significant LLLL.com sales had an English tilt. That trend proceeds apace with SeeU.com and OneV.com ($1.1k). Yet despite containing “V” (which China reputedly dislikes) and an English keyword, that last domain had a Chinese buyer.
JiangJie.com($3.5k) is a personal name. One Jiang Jie is an impressive sculptor and installation artist; she lives, works, and teaches in Beijing. DroneNetwork.com ($1.9k) is interesting partly since of its resemblance to the domainer-owned Drone.Network. And although 2 boxing domains sold for $1.7k and $2.6k within 1 day of one another, they share neither buyer nor former owner.
| Domain Name | End $ | Domain Name | End $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| SeeU.com | 7200 | Slava.com | 6036 |
| JiangJie.com | 3500 | Stellen.com | 2837 |
| BoxingGyms.com | 2555 | YN5.com | 2520 |
| DroneNetwork.com | 1900 | ShadowBoxing.com | 1700 |
| Baico.com | 1511 | WesternPower.com | 1377 |
| NHK.net | 1311 | EdenGroup.com | 1142 |
| OneV.com | 1101 | WPEC.com | 960 |
| WebSoup.com | 620 | SiteFuel.com | 609 |
| WritingGrants.com | 599 | MinJuegos.com | 565 |
| WQZJ.com | 540 | MusicPortal.com | 530 |
| FreeTrialSoft.com | 530 | RKPC.com | 444 |
Slava.com ($6.0k) was NameJet’s #2 expired domain auction. At this point, whois doesn’t show the buyer’s identity. But ultimately I’m guessing it will be Slava.co.uk, an advertising agency that boasts Google among its clients. Still, their ownership of the domain is by no means assured. This most slavic of words is also a Romanian river, a woman’s name, a Russian watch manufacturer, and a “Serbian Orthodox Christian tradition [involving] the ritual glorification of one’s family’s patron saint”. You can also hear the chorus shouting “Slav!” at the high notes of Borodin’s “Polovtsian Dances” (3:40):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVURal-QYsA
WritingGrants.com was undervalued at $599. It can be interpreted either as “grants for writers” or as “writing grant applications”. The theater activist I met last Friday for dinner is getting far more than $599 in benefits out of her book-writing stint in Santa Fe. Meanwhile, nonprofit organizations agonize over writing their grant applications, since (apart from donations) grants comprise the majority of their funding.
Baico.com ($1.5k) corresponds to a book publisher (Baico.ca), the British American Insurance Firm (Baico-Intl.com), a pump distributor (BaicoPumps.com), a property management firm (BaicoPM.com), and a Viennese dried fruit merchant (Baico.eu). In contrast, MinJuegos.com ($565) would seem to have only 1 application – as typo for a Spanish mini-game site.
Stellen.com ($2.8k) is German for post, position, and most importantly job. As a verb meaning “to put”, it’s used in such disparate phrases as “we’re hiring” (“wir stellen ein”) and “who we are” (“wir stellen uns vor”). The latter often shows up on the “regarding” pages of websites. If I’m wrong regarding this, someone who speaks German is welcome to correct me.
| Domain Name | End $ | Domain Name | End $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| QHFQ.com | 391 | DiveKnife.com | 357 |
| SexPotions.com | 333 | Unscientific.com | 322 |
| UIRT.com | 321 | 1800Vacations.com | 320 |
| GuideZilla.com | 311 | 652666.com | 310 |
| Python10.org | 290 | 48803.com | 270 |
| TheBlueMonk.com | 266 | WhatGifs.com | 261 |
| ChiangMai Orchid.com |
260 | GoDict.com | 245 |
| SEGF.com | 240 | 58434.com | 210 |
| FLFV.com | 180 | Sosaz.com | 165 |
| SIDSMA.org | 146 | WYQA.com | 140 |
| TKFI.com | 130 | FinoPallet.com | 119 |
| Rezillos.com | 100 | WorldMotor Racing.com |
99 |
| GDVH.com | 97 | PoliticalWar.com | 90 |
| TIZQ.com | 89 | InterFluxUSA.com | 81 |
| WUOJ.com | 79 | Yunga.org | 69 |
TheBlueMonk.com ($266) ought to replace the domain right now used by the Blue Monk gastropub in Buffalo, NY: BMBFLO.com bites. If they don’t bite, perhaps a blues and jazz bar in Portland of the same name will. If you’re wondering why bars and jazz clubs are named following a celibate religious order, then allow me the pleasure of introducing you to Mr. Thelonious Sphere Monk:
It was a great week for puns: GuideZilla.com ($311) won’t destroy Tokyo; but WhatGifs.com ($261) will probably feature GIF clips that leave you scratching your head and asking, “What gives?” While I’m on a music kick, I could use SexPotions.com ($333) as a springboard for “Love Potion #9”. But you’ve heard that song, whereas you probably haven’t heard of the Scottish punk band, the Rezillos.com ($100):
As you might suppose, ChiangMaiOrchid.com is a flower; but it’s also a hotel in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Scuba divers will appreciate DiveKnife.com ($357). You’ll need one if you get tangled up in a kelp forest. But my fellow fur trappers may find themselves stuck in a very different way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITLXo19248g
There now. If I were you, I’d skip the domains, skip the article, and stick with the videos!
