100+ expired domain name auctions — Results from
Joseph Peterson reviews the past week in expired domain name sales.
Dilíu is Romanian for “madman”, which is what you’d have to be to believe DiLiu.com sold for $4.9k for any reason other than China. In Chinese, dì liù means “sixth”; dī liú is a “trickle”; and dī liū would be to “carry”. While the domain remains under whois privacy, we can only be 99.9% sure of this rationale; but China is never absent from these charts, and expired Pinyin domains have recently sold as high as $62k.
Pruning.com ($4.4k) was a close second among NameJet’s expired inventory the prior week. No joke, that auction closed while I was out with the GF buying a weed wacker! Life imitates domaining in uncanny ways. From 2004 to 2013, Blogsome.com ($3.6k) was “a free web hosting site for blogs“. Now defunct.
| Domain Name | End $ | Domain Name | End $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| DiLiu.com | 4900 | Pruning.com | 4357 |
| BlogSome.com | 3600 | VirtualCapital.com | 2401 |
| Hemeng.com | 2400 | Tacoma.org | 2156 |
| CarTransporter.com | 2100 | SuperSunday.com | 2000 |
| Kooler.com | 2000 | OPEA.com | 1755 |
| eBusinessGroup.com | 1755 | H4H.com | 1500 |
| BELV.com | 1410 | 66BOBO.com | 1399 |
| AstraGroup.com | 1276 | LaPadania.com | 1030 |
| FirstSouthern Bank.com |
1013 | 97BOBO.com | 1009 |
| EBIM.com | 1009 | X02.com | 1005 |
| LWE.net | 1000 | YXWZ.com | 898 |
| LemaiHui.com | 895 | HNGAWJ.net | 810 |
| SJRF.com | 810 | UNAPL.org | 790 |
LaPadania.com ($1.0k) is an Italian newspaper – in fact, “the official organ of the right-wing party Lega Nord”. Hemeng.com ($2.4k) appears to be a personal name in both China and Ghana. Tacoma.org ($2.2k) is a sizable city near Seattle. Another fact not so obvious to non-American readers would be the meaning of SuperSunday.com ($2k), which is the day of the Super Bowl – the culminating game for American football. The phrase has a wholly different meaning in Fresh Orleans.
GlobeTrot.com ($669) is slang for world travel, and by now it’s also associated with the Harlem Globetrotters. Zitan.net ($560) is a prized Chinese hardwood, while Malinche.net may refer to La Malinche, a native woman crucial to the Spaniards’ conquest of the Aztecs and potently symbolic within modern-day Mexico.
Wholesale .NET prices are up again following the prior week’s brief doldrums. Apart from the pair just mentioned, LWE.net fetched $1k; and a 6-letter acronym, HNGAWJ.net, did nearly as well at $810. Why? Since it had been a Chinese IT website since 2002.
By far the most interesting case to me, though, as someone who studies domain market valuations, must be Transcription.net ($711), which sold alongside Transcripts.net ($110) and Transcriptions.net ($79). Rarely do we see 3 words so similar to one another sell simultaneously at the same venue. It’s as close as we come to a controlled laboratory experiment.
| Domain Name | End $ | Domain Name | End $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transcription.net | 711 | MYUH.com | 709 |
| 78110.com | 705 | 60807.com | 676 |
| GlobeTrot.com | 669 | DogPeople.com | 633 |
| TTXGP.com | 620 | 53877.com | 610 |
| 1VL.com | 605 | 57880.com | 600 |
| UOFIAssembly Hall.com |
594 | Zitan.net | 560 |
| Malinche.net | 560 | GamingVegas.com | 553 |
| OSLU.com | 510 | EDCR.com | 501 |
| PlanetMichael.com | 500 | MVIGroup.com | 450 |
| TJSX.com | 450 | TJRG.com | 429 |
EEDigest.com ($301) would probably be a magazine for electrical engineering. EurNex.net ($378) is an excruciating pun. Yes, when a name bugs me I do TalkSmack.com ($377). Registries.org ($312), on the other hand, I quite like. If nTLD registries were to converge on a single website, then it would be tricky for them to decide which TLD to employ. Selecting any of their own extensions would favor one firm above another, while rallying around .COM would assuredly undercut their sales pitch. .ORG seems neutral enough to accommodate them all. Following all, it is the TLD employed by ICANN itself.
| Domain Name | End $ | Domain Name | End $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| THWK.com | 425 | TROA.org | 425 |
| SBClaw.com | 422 | ReachWord.com | 420 |
| KYNW.com | 419 | XDYQ.com | 410 |
| MasterWave.com | 407 | KKMedia.com | 395 |
| CreditReporter.com | 385 | EurNex.net | 378 |
| TalkSmack.com | 377 | QXBF.com | 375 |
| CashForBitcoin.com | 366 | BHLB.com | 365 |
| GHRD.com | 360 | MJGE.com | 359 |
| 95BOBO.com | 351 | 64828.com | 350 |
| Registries.org | 312 | EEDigest.com | 301 |
| 651000.com | 300 | Mega Warehouse.com |
292 |
I was surprised to see Invalids.com go unchallenged for a mere $201. The word is relatively common, and familiar English words tend to do well by dint of their being in widespread use. Perhaps the note of pessimism in the term was a turnoff for buyers, but I would have expected a higher price even so. And yet EvenLess.com ($161) went for even less.
Splendicity.com ($260) is fun to say. For that matter, so is YKTA.com, which I wouldn’t be surprised to find as an acronym for a youth group or kindergarten teachers’ association. Shepherds.net ($260) probably corresponds to many existing brand names with longer domains. And speaking of length, it’s interesting to see the prices paid for the 4-word .NET ($211) and .ORG ($171) below.
| Domain Name | End $ | Domain Name | End $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| 602555.com | 285 | BitsOnline.net | 285 |
| Comics2Film.com | 270 | AuctionDealers.com | 266 |
| Splendicity.com | 260 | Shepherds.net | 260 |
| Splandoo.com | 230 | 01380.com | 226 |
| IUPAB2014.org | 220 | Xinyusi.com | 219 |
| FortLauderdale RealEstate.net |
211 | YKTA.com | 210 |
| 49205.com | 201 | Invalids.com | 201 |
| CXMO.com | 199 | UGNO.com | 190 |
| AgisMap.com | 180 | SBNFA.org | 171 |
| AmericanInstitute ForHistory.org |
171 | Asiva.com | 169 |
| FENews.com | 166 | EvenLess.com | 161 |
| ZRET.com | 160 | AKF.com | 159 |
| UZIZ.com | 155 | MusicaBona.com | 154 |
As an avid collector, I always hate to see music shops go under. MusicaBona.com was a classical music store centered in Prague with a site that ran for 15 years. OverseasLiving.com ($133) will make a good name for an expat info site. I’d declare DigitalBinoculars.com ($129) the best buy in this stretch’s list. Here we have an exact-match domain for an e-commerce product that retails at $1.6k or more. Permission to kick yourself granted.
| Domain Name | End $ | Domain Name | End $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| 98BOBO.com | 151 | 58447.com | 139 |
| OverseasLiving.com | 133 | Digital Binoculars.com |
129 |
| OTXO.com | 122 | Abbys-Good- Stuff.com |
120 |
| ChoiceMag.org | 113 | Transcripts.net | 110 |
| ShagMail.com | 109 | EffectiveWeb.com | 109 |
| THWO.com | 109 | TrafficTime.com | 109 |
| SurrealismNow.com | 108 | BluesAnd HeritageFest.com |
106 |
| ISSA-INTL.org | 100 | RSWU.com | 99 |
| TSWU.com | 99 | MaxFilms.com | 99 |
| WebHost Directory.com |
94 | NUYG.com | 93 |
| OneDinner.com | 90 | IPTI-Malaria.org | 90 |
The BarrieSpeedway.com ($71) in Ontario, Canada, recently shut down following 45 years. Even though the internet is full of content writers for hire, most of them have no experience entertaining kids. So KidMagWriters.com ($80) is actually an notable commercial niche; and this domain, long though it seems, is actually a very short rendition of “writers for kid magazines”. KidWriters.com, although better, would be ambiguous – writers for children or writers who are children?
| Domain Name | End $ | Domain Name | End $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| MuchJoy.com | 89 | OnlineTeacher Certification.com |
85 |
| GetACall.com | 80 | KidMagWriters.com | 80 |
| Alaska ProChoice.org |
80 | BGWEA.org | 80 |
| H2PInc.com | 80 | Tratado.com | 79 |
| Transcriptions.net | 79 | CepaGallery.com | 79 |
| iTribe.net | 79 | BeautyCulture.com | 79 |
| RDelSol.com | 79 | TheFinanceClub OfBrussels.org |
73 |
| Barrie Speedway.com |
71 | SponsorWorld.com | 69 |
| IXMA.org | 69 | Gosaic.com | 69 |
| WebInsurance.net | 69 | LawServices.org | 69 |
But the real question this stretch undoubtedly must be this: How many Bobos do we need? 66BOBO.com ($1.4k) … 97BOBO.com ($1.0k) … 95BOBO.com ($351) … 98BOBO.com ($151). Will Bobo domains be the next hot niche for China?
