Are new TLDs changing the way you approach domain investing?

Tucows filed its 10-Q yesterday. In the report, Tucows suggested that domain name investors may be proceeding cautiously with aftermarket domain purchases this year as they wait for new top level domain names:

We have two primary buyers for our domain names – domain investors and businesses. While businesses domain sales continue to grow, we have begun to see evidence of domain investors interest slowing as they attempt to assess the impact the introduction of new gTLD’s may have on their businesses. Accordingly, until the impact of new gTLD’s can be appropriately assessed, we will be shifting our efforts towards appealing more to businesses while continuing to work with domain investors.

There are many reasons domain investors may proceed cautiously this year with the knowledge that new TLDs are coming soon.

Many domain investors are applying for new TLDs themselves, and may be reserving cash to support those ventures. Others may be putting cash on the sideline to register new TLDs when they come out. Some may be worried about what effect new TLDs will have on their existing portfolio, and are therefore treading carefully.

On the other hand, I know some investors who are spending more this year than usual as they try to buy the .com equivalent of strings that will be released as top level domains.

What about you? Is the imminent release of new TLDs changing how you approach your domain business right now?

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We’ll find out in an auction that ends today.

.Cm, the country code for Cameroon, has been on an interesting ride.

It previously struck a deal with Kevin Ham to wildcard the DNS and monetize the traffic. Then it sold .cm domains to all comers, brazenly marketing the domain as a typo of .com.

That “relaunch”, if you will, was an unmitigated disaster. Bidders on domains that appeared to sell for a lot backed out, and the registry lost a bunch of billing files.

I was a bit confused why Ham didn’t participate in the relaunch auctions, but perhaps it was because he had all the data.

Fast forward to 2013, and Sedo is holding an auction for .cm domain names with good keywords such as toys.cm, songs.cm, and phones.cm.

How much are these domains worth? We’re about to find out, as the auction ends in a couple hours. (The auction pages say the auction ends in 2 hours, but also says 11 EDT. As I write this 2 hours would be 12 EDT, so just check in on the site to make sure you can bid before the actual closing. I suspect closing times didn’t adjust to daylight savings time.)

As of right now 10 of the 265 domains have $99 bids. If you have good data around how much traffic these domains get, it might be worth getting in on the action. $99 isn’t much of a risk.

Update: these domains sold. All were $99 except Phones.cm, which was $150:

soccer.cm
fit.cm
patent.cm
band.cm
audio.cm
vet.cm
songs.cm
toy.cm
phones.cm
test.cm
nutrition.cm

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NameMedia refreshes end user sales web site.

BuyDomains, the end user domain name sales site owned by NameMedia, relaunched with a completely new look and feel today.

The site places a greater focus than the previous one on explaining why a business should spend money on a domain name. It also emphasizes the ease and safety of buying a domain through BuyDomains and includes a number of testimonials.

Domain searching and filtering has also been improved. You may recall that the old site required you to select multiple filters and then add them to a filter list. The refreshed site has simple dropdown boxes to filter by price, exclude hyphens, and select categories.

Domain name owners can list their domains on BuyDomains by adding them to their Afternic account

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P&G in France, Univision, and a Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliate among big name buyers at Afternic last week.

Afternic sold just over $1 million in domains last week. The highest sale was FreeBackup.com, which was purchased by a direct response company.

Direct response company Fiorentino Media bought FreeBackup.com for $45,000.

California grocery store Los Olivos Grocery bought LosOlivosGrocery.com for $1,477.

Bio Herbal Tech, seller of pills that it says help you lose weight, bought SkinnyHabits.com for $1,000.

New Jersey company Healthcare Referral Networks bought PracticeAcquisition.com for $1,888.

DMR Partners, which stands for Digital Media Roundtable Partners, bought DigitalMediaReview.com for $1,195.

Animal Imaging Partners in Wexford, Pennsylvania paid $2,000 for VeterinaryMRI.com.

Financial company Market Shield Capital bought HomeEquityExchange.com for $3,788.

Breitling Energy bought EnergyProperty.com for $1,036.

ErgoSeat, a Swedish company that designs seats for buses, trucks, etc., bought ErgoSeat.com for $4,188 to go along with its Ergoseat.se domain.

This is interesting: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota bought JustSkipIt.com for $2,488.

Lab equipment company Nova-Tech International, Inc. bought NTIUSA.com for $5,088.

Irish company Paramount Packaging Ltd paid $1,200 for ParamountPackaging.com.

Celebrate Your Faith, seller of religious products, bought CircleofFaith.com for $1,388.

Safety Canada Limited bought SafetyCanada.com for $1,495.

Knoxville, Tennessee dentist Stephen Malone paid $1,900 for KnoxvilleDentist.com. Seems like a good deal.

Univision bought EuphoriaMusic.com for $2,996.

Patent law firm Da Vinci Partners in Switzerland bought Patent24.com for $2,500.

Berry Fresh Produce LLC in Long Beach picked up BerryFresh.net for $2,000. It already owns the .com.

Thrifty Nickel Ads, LLC recently bought AmericanClassifieds.net for $1,846. Last week it bought ThriftyNickel.org for $1,750.

Talk about a necessary domain upgrade: Face the Future, a group dedicated forest projects to combat climate change, upgraded from Face-TheFuture.com to FaceTheFuture.com for $1,725.

There’s an industry group for everything. The Society for Protective Coatings bought Coatings.org for $16,000.

IT company Network Guidance 2.0 bought NG2.com for $2,000. Nice buy.

A Coldwell Banker real estate agent bought LakeTahoeReal-Estate.com for $1,700. Wow.

I like this one. Radisson Hacienda Cancun bought MargaritasCancun.com for $1,477.

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iPark.com leads list of Sedo’s end user domain name sales last week.

Sedo sold $1.15 million worth of domain names last week, including some good end user sales.

There’s a lot of money in NYC parking. Imperial Parking Systems, which bills itself as one of New York City’s largest and oldest parking garage operators, bought iPark.com for $23,000. Perhaps it has something to do with this?

PCloud LTD in Bulgaria paid 12,000 EUR for pcloud.com.

Norway company Advantec bought AdvantecGroup.com for $11,500.

A UK company called Assura Management Services bought Assura.co.uk for 895 GBP.

Thomson Reuters paid 810 EUR for the German ccTLD ThomsonReuters.de.

Procter & Gamble bought lecoindesfilles.fr for 1,000 EUR. I can’t quite figure this one out, other than that it seems to translate to “Girl Corner”. I’ll let one of my French readers help out here.

A CSC client bought PurpleClover.com for $8,000.

Wine Racks America bought WineCellars.co for $3,299.

Technology company Admira, which uses Admira.co, bought Admira.com for $7,200.

Insurance leads seller The Lead Company, Inc. bought InsureIt.org for $850.

Mindjuice, which owns the Denmark ccTLD Mindjuice.dk, paid $5,100 for Mindjuice.com.

Video game site network Curse.com bought MadPro.com for $1,000.

Clothing company Next Plc bought NextDirect.co.in for $1,500. It’s shoring up its domain strategy and recently bought Next-uk.com for $1,599.

Penn Hotels, which owns hotels in the British Virgin Islands including one called Hodges Creek Hotel & Marina, bought HodgesCreek.com for $1,277.

TRADERS media GmbH, publisher of financial magazine TRADERs, bought Trader.info for 3,400 EUR.

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Company buys 2Smiles.com domain, but leaves some other obvious ones unregistered.

Earlier this month HP launched Two Smiles, a service that combines custom greeting cards with gift cards.

In advance of the launch HP bought two key domain names for the venture: TwoSmiles.com, the actual web address for the service, and 2Smiles.com, a domain that likely receives visits from visitors who remember the site name as the digit 2 instead of ‘two’ written out.

Based on historical whois records, it appears HP bought TwoSmiles.com from HugeDomains.com. I’m not sure how it tracked down the owner of 2smiles.com because the whois record for that domain had bogus information.

OK, pretty smart to buy 2smiles.com, right?

Yes. Except that 2smiles.com isn’t even set up to forward to TwoSmiles.com.

Also worrisome is that HP didn’t register two other domains that are freely available and could cause confusion. First is TooSmiles.com. I bet some confused visitors show up to this alternative domain. Second is the common www typo, wwwTwoSmiles.com.

Since HP was proactive enough to buy 2Smiles.com, you’d think it would have spent $20 to practice an ounce of prevention with these other domains.

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A pharmacy chain, cybersecurity company, and a baseball glove company made domain purchases last week.

Afternic sold just over $1 million worth of domains last week. Here are 22 of the purchases that were clearly to end users.

Glimmerglass, which offers big data product Cybersweep to extract actionable information for cybercrime, bought CyberSweep.com for $19,000.

Examp prep and tutoring company Huntington bought iPrep.com for $7,995.

Amplify, a News Corp company, bought Amplify.net for $10,000.

The owner of SwissMassage.ch bought SwissMassage.com for $1,200.

Dance group travel company Dance Around the World bought DanceAroundTheWorld.com for $4,000. It currently uses the .com.au version of this domain.

LiveCareer LTD, an online resume builder, bought Jobtap.com for $1,700.

Costa Rica IT company Gridshield, part of Nomadic solutions SA, bought Gridshield.com for $1,095. It has been using Gridshield.net.

Concord Health, which sells “medicinal mushroom” products, bought ConcordHealth.com for $2,700. It already owns the .net and .com.au versions of this domain.

Office machines company DocuCopy, Inc. bought OfficePrinter.com for $1,944.

Gulf Business Machines in Dubai bought G-B-M.com for $1,288.

Memorial Hospital in Towanda, Pennsylvania bought eMemorial.org for $1,088.

German company TriSytle Mode GmbH shortened its domain from TristyleGroup.com to Tristyle.com for $3,708.

Commercial real estate company NAI Houston bought ProposalNet.com for $1,200.

Real estate company Steiner + Associates paid $1,488 for LibertyCenter.org for a project it is currently developing.

Canadian drug store Value Drug Mart bought ValueValet.com for $1,588.

Forceout, maker of a spiffy baseball glove, bought Forceout.com for $2,462. It now forwards its old domain, ForceoutGlove.com, to the new one.

Couchsurfing, a company that helps you find a host to stay with when you travel, bought SofaSurfing.com for $3,000.

A London company called Holistic Group bought HolisticGroup.com for $2,000.

Technology company NetworkingLinks upgraded from .net to .com by paying $1,288 for NetworkingLinks.com.

Pacific West Communications, Inc. made a big upgrade with PWCinc.com for $2,000. It has been using PWCinc.ws.

The Risk Management Association bought RMAU.com for $4,288. I assume the first two letters stand for “risk management”.

Medical market research company Ricca Group bought MedScoop.com for $3,000.

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Domain name auction that ends tomorrow has lots of activity.

The Moniker Spring Auction on SnapNames doesn’t end until tomorrow, but bidding is already very active.

The auction features 199 domain names and 33 of them already have bids. 22 have met their reserve price.

The leader so far is StumpRemoval.com, which has an $11,770 bid and has met its reserve. I’ve paid for tree stump removal so I know it’s not a cheap service. That said, an individual tree company is unlikely to pay this much for the domain – it will likely be used for a lead generation service.

YogaClasses.com has a $10,250 bid but has not hit its reserve, which is under $25,000.

Many of the domains that have met their reserves are three letter .net domains, including xre.net, jnu.net, and jxb.net.

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Electronic Arts among the big name buyers at Sedo last week.

Sedo had some big sales last week, including Moms.com for $252,000. The whois record for Moms.com still shows Sedo, so we don’t yet know how bought the domain. Here are some of Sedo’s other end user sales last week.

Electronic Arts bought BF4.com for $9,000, which is short for its Battlefield 4 game.

Australian wedding site EasyWeddings.com.au bought EasyWeddings.co.uk for $1,250.

Spy equipment site Spy.bg bought Spy.eu for 1,500 GBP.

Local World Limited, publisher of the Nottingham Post, bought NottinghamPost.com for 850 GBP.

Ticket To Heaven A/S, which runs clothing site Ticket Outdoor, bought t2h.com for $4,001.

Australian company Global Pumps bought GlobalPumps.com for $1,999. It uses the .com.au version of this.

Red Ventures bought another domain – FloridaHomeSecurity.com – for $899.

Consulting firm Olive Grove Consulting bought TheOliveGrove.com for $1,000.

Brazilian fabrics and packaging company Évora, which recently changed its name from Petropar, bought Evora.com for $94,000.

ChatThreads, which measures how brand interactions lead to purchases, bought Purchased.com for $X.

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I sold my first domain through DNS. What have your experiences been?

Last week I completed my first domain sale using the Internet Traffic/DomainNameSales.com platform.

One thing that is a bit confusing at first is how the communications work inside the DomainNameSales.com platform. The platform is “open”, meaning you can handle domain inquiries yourself or use a number of third party brokers (including DNS itself, like what I chose). By using an outside broker or DNS, some of the communication tabs are bypassed since someone else is handling it for you.

Once you understand that, it’s fairly straight forward.

I set up my account to let the DomainNameSales.com brokerage team handle all incoming domain inquiries. They charge a 10% commission.

I like having a third party manage negotiations even though I have to pay 10% for many reasons.

1. I find that it takes some of the emotion out of negotiations.

2. A broker can play the good cop in negotiations with the other party.

3. In the case of DNS, they offer a phone number for interested parties to call, which can improve conversions and leads.

4. Brokers see a lot more activity than I do as an individual. The broker on my transaction suggested that I raise my counter-offer. She was right; the buyer paid the full amount of my counter-offer.

DNS uses Escrow.com’s broker tool to handle transactions. With the broker service, the buyer pays the total due and then Escrow sends two payments: one to the seller and one to the broker.

At first I was a bit confused by the Escrow.com transaction since the onscreen transaction information didn’t break the price down by sales price and net proceeds after commission. The Escrow.com transaction showed just the proceeds after commission with no indication that the commission had been deducted. It was pretty easy to figure out that it was the amount after commission, but I was concerned that perhaps the amount had been entered incorrectly. The closing statement email does show the full amount plus the amount after commission, but I think it would be helpful if Escrow.com showed a breakdown online when you accept the transaction.

Overall it was a good transaction. Have others had success with DNS? Did you handle the negotiations yourself or use a third party broker?

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