As an end-user, how much would you expect to pay for a premium one-word .COM domain name? In Enemy’s case, it took just $43,000 to acquire Enemy.com.
The price of this name was disclosed by Aaron Marino, the founder of the Enemy sunglasses who may be familiar to some readers as YouTube personality Alpha M. Alpha M has amassed over six million subscribers for his channel which is mainly focused on men’s fashion, health, and lifestyle.
The details of the domain acquisition were given to the Mixergy Startup Stories podcast, where Aaron revealed that he had a $100,000 budget for the acquisition of Enemy.com. The revelation happens around 1 hour into the podcast.
However, when he got in contact with the owner, they wanted just $43,000. Typically, one-word .COM domains have a higher retail price than this, with many investors paying this or more for one-word .COM’s.
According to Marino, “I found out the domain was for sale, and I said ‘let me just ask him how much’, and so … I think he wanted 50 (thousand) and we negotiated back and forth.” The host seemed to agree with my sentiments that $43,000 for Enemy.com is a great price for an end-user to pay.
In fact, Aaron revealed that he’s had multiple offers on the domain since then.
Domains such as Enemy.com can have negative connotations, but they can make excellent brand names. For example, Chaos.com sold for $350,000 to the Chaos Group in February 2019. I’d consider Chaos to be a name with negative connotations, too.
Similarly, the domain Toxic.com sold at NameJet, a domain investor-centric platform, in 2009 for $55,655. That name isn’t being used, but would likely command a six-figure price tag.
Ultimately, this was a big upgrade for Enemy, which started life on EnemyEyewear.com before upgrading to Enemy.com in early 2019. For years before this, the domain hosted a game repository.
A big thanks to Michael Cyger for sending the details of this.
Do you think this was a steal for the buyer?
Updated June 14th 2020.
Yes, Enemy.com would been a decent sale at $150,000. One-word generic names will always have direct navigation. Anything that releases you from the bonds of search engines like Google, will only pay for themselves and rise of value in the future.
Agreed!
The negative element removes a lot of value, would say 70-80%, I wouldn’t have said the price is low.
It is only a limited subset of co’s that could use this, notably fashion, games where a negative term may not be offputting to customers.
A bargain for the buyer. Wonder why the seller wanted only 43K and the buyer just grabbed for that price.
They’ve probably owned it for 20 years and never had a better offer.
That shouldn’t matter if it was owned by a genuine domain investor.
Very negative word. I am not sure if a sunglass company can prosperously use it as a corporate domain. I would say its a fair sale.
Enemy may be negative in connotation.
But keep in mind that it is a very Powerful word too and that is very important.