Some people are successfully flipping fresh TLD registrations
Here are some cases where fresh TLD registrants flipped fresh domains for a nice return.
It’s easy to come out and say fresh TLDs are a waste of time for domain name investors and that you won’t make any money with them. You can point to high initial prices and registry premiums to suggest that domainers are being cut out of the action.
The reality is that some people are making good money flipping fresh TLDs.
I want to be careful to not suggest that flipping fresh TLDs is easy money. Following all, anyone can easily cherry pick sales from weekly notes or DNJournal to show that some people are cashing in on any type of domain name.
That stated, I think it’s worth bringing some of these domain resales to attention to show that there are opportunities.
I’ve reviewed a number of fresh TLD sales from Sedo and DNJournal and verified they were indeed resales (not registrar auctions or direct registry sales) using historical whois records.
One big winner is Valery Otto in Monaco. As stated by historical whois records, this person was the seller buyer of two .estate domain names: Luxury.estate for $50,000 and NewYork.estate for $9,000. Both of these domain names were registered during the last phases of the Early Access Program. I asked Donuts what these domains probably were registered for, and the firm stated its estimated retail cost of each of the domains is under $200. [Update: Valery Otto was actually the buyer of the domain names, not the seller.]
These two sales are outliers in terms of public fresh TLD sales; the majority of aftermarket sales are in the three or low four figure range. But even lower prices represent healthy returns for assets held less than a year.
Below is a chart of more fresh TLD resales. I’m not sure how much the original registrants paid for the domains, but I inquired with Donuts and they believe the retail price of all of these was under $200 each, whether they were EAP, premium or regular price.
Again, the original buyers of these domains paid less than $200, meaning the profit (less broker fees) is close to the full sale price.
The HoldTime column represents the approximate number of months the original registrant held the domain name ahead of selling it.
These are pretty good flips.
