Stephane Van Gelder - Domain market

Domain names help Verisign beat analyst forecasts

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 19:30:03 +0200

COM and NET registry Verisign has just reported its results for the second quarter of the year. Analyst expectations were for revenue figures somewhere around $166.5 million. Helped by its naming operations, Verisign beat those forecasts at $168.7 million.

The company ended its second quarter (from April to June 30th) with a profit of $35.2 million, up from $34.9 million for the same quarter a year ago.

The bulk of Verisign's business is now centered around domain names, in particular its management of the COM and NET namespaces. The company claims 101.5 million active domain names in those two suffixes at the end of Q2, a 9% increase year-over-year.

In May, Verisign inked a deal with Symantec to sell its authentication business for about $1.28 billion in cash. A purchase which should complete 3 months after the sale date of May 19.

Sex.com for sale (yet again)

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:01:18 +0200

So sex.com is once again making headlines. Sedo has just announced that it has been retained by Escom LLC, the owner of the domain, to handle its sale through its second-hand domain sales platform.

The name will be sold along with two related trademark registrations, making this a pretty complete package for any interest buyer.

There's little doubt the name will sell, but at what price? Just how valuable is it on today's Internet? Enough to see Escom cover some (if not all) of the $14 million loan it took out to buy the domain in 2006 and has since been unable to repay?

Sex.com auction… yup, that's not gonna happen!

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:31:48 +0100

Sex.com was due to be auctioned yesterday, but the proceedings were cancelled. Creditors of the domain's current owner Escom filed for the firm to be declared bankrupt, thereby blocking any sale of Escom assets.

The creditors are thought to have considered that sex.com would not have been sold for a high enough amount at auction. It is now unclear what the next episode in this saga will be.

Auction.com sells for $1.7 million

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:09:59 +0100

Real Estate auction specialist REDC has made domain name headlines by shelling out $1.7 million for the domain Auction.com.

"I've wanted this domain for years," REDC Chairman Robert Friedman was quoted as saying in a press release. "REDC is without question the number one real estate auctioneer in America and quite likely the world. This is a domain we should have had from the beginning and I'm thrilled we are finally Auction.com."

Up until now, REDC used the domain USHomeAuction.com, which now points to Auction.com directly.

By showing that descriptive domain names still have high intrinsic value for ambitious businesses, this sale is a clear indication that downturns are also great buying opportunities for those who are either savvy, or rich enough, to make them.

Crisis or no crisis for domain names?

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:31:22 +0100

There's no real suspense here: yes domain names are also being hit by the current economic downturn. Aftermarket domain sale volumes may not be falling too much, but transaction values are certainly down as sellers adapt to the end of the "anything sells (even a dud domain)" era by dropping their prices.

Another sign of a cooling off in the second hand domain market: NameMedia has shelved plans for a $172 million IPO which the professional domain seller had filed back in November. Current market conditions have been named as the main reason for not going ahead with the stock market listing.

Yet it's far from being all doom and gloom for the industry. Record sales are still happening. Take AT&T's purchase of YP.com for a mouth-watering $3.85 million cash payment in November. The American telecom giant is the operator for the US Yellow Pages, so the two-letter domain is an obvious bonus for the company's telephone directory service.

The sale shows that good names will continue to hold their value during the current downturn, just like top real-estate tends to fare much better than the rest of the property market in such times. Think top-flight New York apartments and you'll get the idea. Just like that kind of real-world property gemstone, a two-letter .COM domain has undeniable intrinsic value.

So as usual, the crisis is really a way to bring back a level of sanity to some over-inflated values. It's also an opportunity for savvy investors to fill their shopping basket with great deals. In a few years' time, they'll be the ones behind the headline-grabbing sales you'll be reading about on this blog…

Pre-crisis numbers show continued domain name growth

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:51:42 +0100

But for how long? That's the question some people will no doubt ask themselves while reading Verisign's latest domain stats. The .COM registry's numbers cover Q3 2008, so miss out on the full impact of the credit crunch. They show no real signs of slowing domain growth.

Even though there was a small decline in the rate of overall domain registration growth, this is easily explained by the historical trend for a weaker third quarter when compared to registration volumes for the first half of any given year.

Overall, across all TLDs, there were 174 million registered domains at the end of September 2008. That's a 19% increase year over year. The world's TLDs added a total of 11.5 million names in Q3 2008, a decline of 2% in growth rate from Q2 2008 and also 2% less than the Q3 2007 growth rate.

There were 68.9 million names registered across the ccTLDs at the end of Q3 2008 (89.4 million for .COM and .NET combined). That's 5% growth over Q2 2008 and 26% over Q3 2007. China's .CN stole a march on all other ccTLDs by moving into top spot ahead of Germany's .DE. The next three are .UK, .NL and .EU, but the top three ccTLDs all experienced flat growth rates in Q3 2008.

Check out www.Domaines.Info's stats for comprehensive registration numbers including overall top ten, gTLD top five, ccTLD top five, regional top fives (Europe, Asia, America and a top three for Oceania) and an overall top 40. Each chart shows current month registration numbers and compares them with the previous quarter's registration numbers. Growth rates are given and where possible, local market penetration is shown as a "number of domains per 100 people".

Time to sell your domains?

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:39:03 +0200

With the current financial crisis, the question a lot of domain investors are asking themselves is: "should I sell?".

It's easy to understand people getting jittery, but there really are no reasons so far to suspect that domain values will crash. Sure any meltdown of the magnitude that we're seeing right now in the banking industry is bound to have repercussions in all markets and sectors. But domain fundamentals shouldn't be affected that much.

Pay-per-click revenue could suffer to some extent, as all types of advertising take a hit, but it will remain one of the cheapest and most precise ways to reach your intended customer base. I worry a lot more for TV advertising execs than I do for domainers right now.

As ever in times like these, those who can stay calm and collected today will probably be the ones making obscene amounts of money tomorrow. I think DNW has a very good point saying that when the DotCOM bubble burst at the turn of the century, those rare (and brave) investors that bought all the good .COM names are the ones that have since become domain millionaires.

So is it time to sell your domains? I'd actually be tempted to say yes! Sell them to me at a much reduced price… and let me sell them back to you for a huge profit in a few years' time.

Pound sign = mucho dollares?

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:57:54 +0200

This is shaping up to be a great rags to riches story. Published today in DomainesInfo.fr is a piece on the upcoming auction of £.com, one of a rare breed of single character .COM domains that were registered years ago.

Richard Haigh, the domain's lucky owner, claims to have registered it 9 years ago for the equivalent of 25 euros. And the asking price for the upcoming auction on the name is? A cool million, pounds that is (close to 2 million US dollars).

£.com is actually an IDN, that is a domain name using non-ascii characters. As such, it can only be accessed through latest generation, post 2006, browsers. It seems there's also a €.com domain, which is currently unused. The £.com auction may give its owner a few ideas though…

Israel.com NOT sold for over 5 million!

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:39:18 +0200

Haaretz.com's reports of the sale of israel.com for a whopping $5.88 million, was apparently erroneous. When I reported on this, I argued that the sale was evidence of the continued health of the secondary market. Especially in the light of the failed sale of america.com, which received a highest bid of $1.7 million. As good as that number was, it was still below the domain's reserve price.

The israel.com debacle, with a message being posted below Haaretz.com's report as a comment, supposedly from the VP of EURO RSCG (but is there any way to verify that), saying the domain is in fact still for sale, also shows how hard it is to really know how much domains are sold for.

There's clearly a great deal of interest around "country" domains at the moment. No doubt we'll be hearing about israel.com and america.com again soon.

Jobs.ca, Canada's record sale

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:08:21 +0200

Confirming the current trend for bigger and bigger sales of ccTLD domains, Internet real-estate developer Ogopogo Media has confirmed its 600,000 USD purchase of jobs.ca.

The name will become the core "of a planned job network, which will include JobSearch.ca and Resumes.ca that will cover all the needs of both job seekers and employers," claims the buyer.

This sale sets a new record for Canada's extension. It also provides clear confirmation (if any was needed) of the growing interest in ccTLDs. Investors are flocking to country codes for obvious reasons. The suffixes are less crowded that generics like .COM, giving them better chances of finding names that are still available. Furthermore, those names that are already taken tend to be cheaper to buy.

At INDOM, we're getting more and more volume buyers coming to us for ccTLDs. Their logic is sound. 600,000 might sound like a lot, but when you compare the sale price of .CA's most expensive domain ever to that of the record-setting .COM domains, there's obviously still a lot of potential left in going national rather than international for your choice of suffixes.

Selling bond!

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:23:42 +0200

Times are hard for Her Majesty's favourite spy. Not only has his Aston Martin just been crashed, but now his name is for sale on the Internet!

This week's high profile domain name auction (seems like there's one every single week at the moment) is bond.com. The name has 2 days left to run on its auction and currently stands at 70,000 USD. The name's current owner obviously thinks it's worth a lot more, as there's talk of a reserve set at 1 million USD for this sale!

Poor Bond. Not only has an Aston Martin engineer just wrecked his almost unique (the car maker has prepped 5 ultra special cars for the new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace) car by plunging it into an Italian lake but now his name is up for sale. Of course, the domain bond.com could just as well refer to the famous London street or to the ties that two people might share. And it remains to be seen if domain investors will consider it as valuable as recent heavy hitters like pizza.com or vodka.com…

Dollars.com set to make lots of euros

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:42:51 +0200

Auction watching is getting to be a great sport these days. After the fun I had tracking pizza.com as it scaled to ever increasing heights before finally making its previous owner's fortune, I've now got a new hot sale in my sights. Dollars.com is currently being auctioned and I guess it must be a sign of the times that the auction is being handled in euros . So far, the name already stands at a quarter of a million euros. No doubt it will go higher before the auction ends on April 18th…

That's quite a slice!

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:31:25 +0200

Everybody's been following the pizza.com auction these past few days, as the bids piled up and the price rose above the 2 million USD mark.

Well, the auction ended last night (French time) and the previous owner has got to be ecstatic with the final price: 2.6 million!

The domain's first owner is a one Christopher Clark who lives in Maryland and was tracked down by the Baltimore Sun newspaper. Clarck explained that he'd bought the name in 1994 (on July 17th according to the name's WHOIS) in a bid to get some consultancy work for his company from a local pizza firm. Clark sold his company in 2000 but kept the name.

There's a decision he probably doesn't regret today…

New record sale : casino.de

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:57:42 +0100

Danish company Balslev Media ApS has paid 400,000 euros (close to US $600,000) for the domain casino.de.

This is probably the second highest sale of a ccTLD domain after poker.de was sold for close to 700,000 euros last year.

Seeing .DE generic names reach such high numbers isn't really surprising. With a total of 12 million registered domains, .DE is the world's second largest extension and Germany is an Internet powerhouse. Other country code domains are also starting to command high prices as buyers recognize the value of these names, just like Balslev Media ApS did.

"It’s the perfect brand name - it’s short and it describes exactly what we do," explains Balslev Media chief Jan Balslev. "Many people will find our website even if they don’t know anything about us through direct traffic, which is acquired when people type in a keyword domain name in their browser and find a service provider without searching for it first. The high price (paid for the domain) also indicates the popularity of online casino and poker gambling on the Web."

Balslev Media ApS will turn casino.de into an online gambling portal "offering independent and thoroughly researched information about gambling on the Internet."

They will undoubtedly also turn it into a great source of online advertising income, through pay-per-click and affiliation partnerships with online gambling website operators keen to feature on such an instantly obvious domain name.

10 million for fund.com!

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 11:41:47 +0100

I've recently discussed the sale of datarecovery.com for $1.7 million and the fact that recent domain auctions have netted record proceeds. It looks like I'm going to have to start a regular series on how domain names are the best investment around these days .

I know what: to make it easier for your people reading this to identify this type of "domain names bull market" post, I'll carry on using the same "Nasdaq and graph" photo whenever I talk about this…

On to the sale. The sale of fund.com has been announced for US$9,999,950 (c'mon guys, couldn't you have stumped up an extra 50 bucks just to make it a nice round number?). The buyer, very appropriately, is a company called Fund.com which is quoted on the OTCBB (Over The Counter Bulletin Board), a quotation system used to list what are generally microcap companies too small to be traded on a normal stock exchange and therefore traded directly (over the counter). Look up FNDM for fund.com here.

Talking Guinness book of records, this would apparently be the highest recorded domain sale after business.com's 1999 US$7.5 million sale. There does seem to have been a couple of higher sales since business.com, like sex.com (said to have gone for 12 million US) or porn.com (9.5 million US), but these have not been recognised by Guinness.