Eight domain names that sold to end users last week.
Here are eight end user domain name purchases completed over the past week. All sales were at Afternic except for GameTraining.com, which sold at Sedo.
Anytime Fitness president David Mortensen.com now owns DavidMortensen.com after dropping $1,788.
Internet marketing firm Adventure Marketing upgraded its URL from AdventureMarketingLLC.com to AdventureMarketing.com for $1,000.
Telecom networking company Dynamic Network Advisors bought CloudAdvisers.com for $1,100. CloudAdvisOrs.com (with an ‘o’) is owned by someone else.
Oil & gas product supplier ScanTech, which uses the domain name scan-tech.no, solidified its online presence with Scan-tech.com for $1,000.
Family Marketing, Inc., which provides cost-per-action lead generation targeting new families, bought EverydayFamily.com for $3,188.
Coffee company Allegro Coffee bought the great “statement domain” EnjoyCoffee.com for $3,488.
GameTraining.net, which trains people to develop video games, upgraded to .com for $2,250 at Sedo.
Enterprise software support company Rimini Street, Inc. bought SupportSAP.com for $3,491.40. Yes, it provides SAP support. But I don’t know how SAP will feel about this.
Lots of progress, but still an issue of orphaned domain name listings on marketplaces.
If you’ve been buying domains on major domain name marketplaces for any number of years you’ve certainly come across a domain listed for sale that isn’t actually for sale.
I still remember “buying” SugarCookies.com for something like $2500 many years ago only to find out the person who had listed it had sold it already.
Afternic and Sedo have taken steps over the years to resolve this problem. After a site started listing domains listed on Sedo that were freely available for registration, Sedo started implementing a number of systems to weed out old listings.
The problem is also creeping up on GoDaddy. It creates a particularly interesting situation on GoDaddy since the site started syndicating its auction listings to its registration path.
One Domain Name Wire reader has experienced this twice. A domain expired and was fully deleted, so he went to GoDaddy to register it. But the system wouldn’t let him register it, instead saying the domain name was available in auction:
The reader had to go to a competing domain registrar in order to register the domain name.
What happened here is that the previous owner had listed the domain on Go Daddy auctions. When the domain expired the auction listing wasn’t removed.
Marketplaces have worked to clean up such listings as they move to more fixed price, instant transfer listings. Most instant transfer systems constantly monitor whois records for changes and remove domains from the marketplace immediately if there’s an ownership change.
I’ve noticed Afternic go a step further recently. Afternic will completely remove your listing if you don’t respond to several notices of a price request for a domain name.
Company removes listings from Sedo but it may be only temporary.
Notice anything missing from Sedo lately?
NameMedia, which operates BuyDomains and Afternic, has yanked all of its domains from Sedo. The company previously listed its owned and operated domain names on Sedo’s marketplace.
Sedo changed its commission rate and terms and conditions a few months ago, although Sedo says this wasn’t the reason for the removal.
Sedo Marketing Team Manager Heather DelCarpini informs me:
“While NameMedia did temporarily remove their names from our marketplace, this had nothing to do with the change to our terms and conditions. Their contract with us expired, and at that time the names were removed.”
Carus Corporation, which claims to be the world’s largest manufacturer of potassium permanganate, bought Carus.net for $2,388. Its main web site is CarusCorporation.com. Frank Schilling owns Carus.com.
Fort Wayne, Indiana pharmacy Community Care Pharmacy, which used the ill-advised communitycarepharmacy.PRO domain name, upgraded to CommunityCarePharmacy.com for $1,500.
The World Bank is one of the most notable groups to buy domain names on the aftermarket this week.
The group bought two domain names through Afternic: GlobalPartnership.com for $4,588 and EducationPartners.org for $1,088. It already owns GlobalPartnership.org but hasn’t developed it yet. It doesn’t own EducationPartners.com.
Television network Telemundo bought yPunto.com for $2,510.
Another notable buyer is FriendFinder Networks, which bought DMEC.com for $6,471. I can’t figure out what they plan to do with the domain.
Here are some other “end user” domain purchases this week:
Location app SpotOn (getspoton.com) bought Fondu.com for $5,000. Note that’s not Fondue.com. A name change in the works?
The owner of travel site Alaska.org bought AlaskaApp.com for $4,000.
MetroGistics, LLC bought MetroLogistics.com for $2,600.
Bookseller Thomas Nelson bought WhereintheBible.com for $1,895, probably for a book name.
Mobile Annex, which had been using MobileAnx.com, bought MobileAnnex.com for $1,788. A smart and affordable domain upgrade.
Scrap processing company Cohen Brothers Inc. upgraded from CohenBrothersInc.com to CohenUSA.com for $1,600.
Outsourced affiliate program management company AffiliateManager.com bought AffiliateRecruitment.com for $1,500.
Trade Street Capital bought Trade-Street.com for $1,088.
US Foodservice, which bought USKitchens.com for $2,300 last week, picked up USFoods.net for $5,200.
Simple and effective integration of domains for sale.
A lot of large domain name registrars offer Afternic‘s “Premium” inventory to customers. Each registrar integrates it differently and some do it better than others.
I just checked out Hover.com’s integration and I really like it. Hover is owned by Tucows, which is Afternic’s latest top 10 domain registrar partner.
Hover is known for its simplicity and this carries through to premium domains. It manages to integrate premium domains with simplicity but also make them standout.
As you can see, premium domains are denoted with a star. If you mouseover the star there’s a brief description and a link to a detailed description. The detailed description even includes a video explanation.
The video explains that domain pricing reverts to regular pricing for subsequent years. Hover’s shopping cart also handles multi-year registrations of premium domains.
This is one of the better implementations I’ve seen and should be a model for other domain name registrars.
End users line up to find the perfect domain name.
There were a lot of great end user domain purchases at Afternic this week. Here’s a look at some of the ones that caught my eye.
Franklin Debt Relief, LLC of Chicago picked up Chapter7Bankruptcy.com for $18,000 and Chapter13Bankruptcy.com for $13,000. Smart move.
Las Vegas based iPrepaid, which had been using the domain name iPrepaids.com, bought iPrepaid.com for $8,000.
Cooper Safety Ltd, maker of Cooper Fire Systems, bought FireCurtain.com for $5,000.
LaGrange College bought MusicMajor.com for $4,800 — a fantastic purchase.
Key Publishing, which bills itself as “Europes leading aviation publisher”, bought AirportsInternational.com for $3,645.
Healthcare company The Schumacher Group bought PatientSolutions.com for $3,400.
Fog Creek Software paid $3,188 for Trello.com. I can’t find any product named Trello on its web site, but maybe its forthcoming.
Marriage site The Knot Inc. bought ItIsSafe.com for $2,988.
Baby Introductions Brand Inc. paid $2,750 for BibInc.com, its company initials.
RNJobs.com bought JobsInNursing.com for $2,600.
A company using brand protection company MarkMonitor bought IBDOnline.com for $2,500. Perhaps Investors’ Business Daily?
Playback Media, maker of the of the Playback Drive for churches, bought PlaybackMedia.com for $2,500. It previously used PlaybackDrive.com as its web site.
Private-equity owned food giant US Foodservice bought USKitchens.com for $2,300.
SocialGift, a site that lets friends chip in for a big gift, bought SocialRegistry.com for $2,088.
Ask.com, aka Ask Jeeves, bought PageSets.com for $1,700. A new search product?
Dr. Menks Mobile Vet Care LLC bought an ideal domain name, MobileVeterinarian.com, for $1,488.
Hotel chain among end user domain name buyers this week.
As I do every week, here’s a look at end user domain purchases from Afternic for the past week.
First let’s start with the big name: Starwood Hotels and Resorts. The company paid $1,188 for OnlyInHawaii.com. Specifically, it looks like the buyer was the Sheraton Waikiki.
Electronic Cigarettes, Inc. bought eLiquids.com for $2,588. Electronic cigarettes are filled with liquid nicotine.
The rest of the purchases are upgrades where a company drops a superfluous word or upgrades its TLD.
Cincinatti-based The Urology Group, which owns TheUrologyGroup.net and .cc, upgraded to UrologyGroup.com for $4,000.
Some guy named David Sims upgraded from David-Sims.co.uk to DavidSims.com for $3,588.
Human Resources company The Centennial Group spent $3,500 to move from GoCentennial.com to TheCentennial.com.
Marketing and interactive agency Rocket Red improved its domain from GoRocketRed.com to RocketRed.com for $1,500.
Here are some other notable domain sales at Afternic this week:
I didn’t find a lot of interesting end user domain purchases through Afternic this week. The amount of disclosed sales was lower than usual thanks to the holiday weekend and a number of domains are still pending transfer. But here’s a look at some of the more interesting sales:
Austrialia’s Government Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency spent $3,588 on CleanEnergyFuture.com.
Medical company YGM Group, LLC upgraded its domain name from TheYGMGroup.com to just YGMgroup.com for $2,000.
London & Partners, which bills itself “The Official Promotional Agency for London”, may be getting ready to cheat on London. It paid $1,200 for LondonandParis.com.
Kent Metals, which owns WeBuyAnyMetal.com, wants to get metal out of cable with its purchase of CableRecycling.com for $1,000.
