Listed below are updates to the top ten domain sales from a year ago this week, as ranked by DN Journal.
1. ICN.com for $60,000
- “ICN.com is a leading gateway dedicated to covering all aspects for traders in the Foreign Exchange Market (FOREX) and the developments across the global economy and major corporations.” Ownership under privacy protection. The site previously resided on the seemingly unrelated ecPulse.com. Decent traffic (Alexa just under 50,000) for a site which targets high paying keywords — FOREX has a CPC in the $10 range.
- The domain is listed for sale at Buy Domains, with a price of $70,000.
2. Local360.com for $51,000
- Acquired by “360 Local LLC”. Just a placeholder is live, with a tagline “Full Circle Local Search Marketing”. Sadly, they own the related 360Local.com, and it goes to a GoDaddy parked page.
3. NewYorkApartmentsForSale.com for $42,000
- I’ve blurted out a loud “WTF!” twice for this domain. First, when I was taken aback by the sales price that seller Mike Berkens was able to negotiate. Second, when I checked the status of the site this week……they paid $42k and it’s still a parked page with a link to Mike’s Most Wanted Domains site.
- When I first looked at the Whois earlier this week, it was still listed as “Sedo Escrow”. Both Mike and Sedo broker Dave Evanson were kind enough to confirm that the sale did in fact occur, but the buyer simply hadn’t updated the contact details. That has since changed….it’s now under privacy protection. Baby steps, baby steps………
4. Ma.de for $25,000
- A hack: “ma.de is a self service website that allows you to create apps for mobile devices in minutes. ma.de helps creators monetize their content on mobile devices. Start selling your content in the App Store and generating income today!“
- Made.com is developed….they make high end designer furniture.
- Ma.com is the home of Morris Adjmi Architects.
5. Gold.biz for $20,640
- Parked, owned by an individual in Belgium, and available for sale for the bargain basement price of 300,000 Euros (roughly $400k USD). The owner seems to like his gold….per SpyOnWeb, the same Adsense account is used on names such 4gold.com, 8gold.com, goldbids.com, goldimport.com, chinesegold.com, and more.
- Gold.com is a minisite, and appears to be owned by Sterling Jewelers, who also owns Jewels.com (but it doesn’t resolve).
6. HYJ.com for $20,000
- HYJ.com is the home of a Chinese men’s clothier. Another example of truncation (Owen’s fancy word): they previously resided on haiyijia.com, which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue in English or Chinese (I assume).
7. Kritiken.de for $19,350
- “Kritiken” translates into English as “criticism”, and the thrilling one page site tells you what criticism means.
- BuyDomains has the .com for sale for the charm price of $11,888.
8. Mortgage-Calculator.co.uk for $19,250
- The domain tells you what you’ll find at the site. Owned by “Mortgages Made Easy Ltd” of the UK. Alexa rank near 12 million.
- The hypenated .com is also developed and has a slightly better Alexa rank. The non-hyphenated MortgageCalculator.com is also developed, with an Alexa rank near 1.5 million.
9. Astora.com for $16,000
- Acquired by Fortune 100 BASF, Astora.com is an upgrade from Astora.de. “As one of Europe’s largest gas storage operators we focus on a secure supply of natural gas for our customers.”
10. Dotank.com for $14,835
- No site resolves, owned by an individual in New York.
“Truncation” is not a fancy term I invented it’s a best-practice of the branding industry. If you want to sell end-users you need to speak their language which is not LLL.com or 7 characters but…..
like 4 wheeler or sedan- it’s a truncated trademark in “trade lingo” example:
Posted in Branding, Counterfeits, Famous Marks, Truncation
–Susan Perera, Attorney
Over a year ago, Steve and I authored a piece in the Minnesota Business Journal discussing two-faced brands, these are brands that use both a formal trademark and a less formal, often truncated, trademark.
Since then we have seen many brands move away from their historical trademark uses towards shorter truncated trademarks (just see the “Truncation” section of the blog in the topics bar to the left).”
A lot of info in this bog which includes special needs for Chinese Luxury Products Market right in line with what you pointed out above
http://www.duetsblog.com/truncation/
Owen,
Thanks for your comment.
I like the word! Nothing negative was intended by my “fancy word” comment.
Heck, I was making fun of my limited vocabulary…..I have no problem admitting I had to look up the word when I first saw you use it.
Aaron