In my Sales Roundup this week, I’m exploring the stories behind five domain sales listed in DNJournal’s sales chart from March 4th, 2020, finding out why domains such as Palace.com, BettingTips.com, Gravity.net, RealCraft.com, and Modena.com sold for the prices they did.
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Palace.com – $306,000
Topping the chart this week is the sale of Palace.com for $306,000, which was sold in a joint effort by DomainBooth and DomainBoutique, two brokerage companies. DomainBooth has featured on my series before for the sale of Free.co.uk.
According to Archive.org, this domain has been up for sale before, with Igloo offering the name for sale at a price of $500,000 in 2017. It’s unclear whether the domain sold at that time, as it remained under GoDaddy’s privacy protection.
When the name ultimately sold for $306,000, it was to an end-user. Although Palace.com currently displays a GoDaddy default page, James Booth of DomainBooth did confirm at the time the sale was announced that the domain was acquired by a casino.
There are very few clues to suggest which casino purchased the name. Could it be the world-famous Cesars Palace in Las Vegas?
BettingTips.com – $150,000
Second, on my list, this week is BettingTips.com at $150,000. Betting domains have been a niche that I’ve explored in the past, as I think that with the introduction of legal sports betting to many states in the USA, betting domains could be big business (that’s not investment advice. Do your own research).
Before BettingTips.com, we saw BettingOdds.com sell in 2019 for $487,687, and there seem to have been many betting domains sold at GoDaddy auctions for three-figures this year as investors acquire “betting” keyword names.
As for BettingTips.com, this wasn’t an investor purchase. The domain was acquired by Ribacka Group, a company that generates revenue through affiliate marketing with a strong focus on iGaming lead generation.
Ribacka Group owns a small portfolio of betting-related domain names, but nothing else of the caliber of BettingTips.com. As of writing, the company hasn’t developed BettingTips.com, but it’s likely that given Ribacka’s history, they will turn the domain into a lead generation or affiliate machine.
Gravity.net – $38,500
At third on my list, this week is a .NET name sold by Braden Pollock. Braden is a prolific domain investor who does tend to reject offers until they meet his own valuation of the domain in question. It looks like the buyer of Gravity.net met Braden’s valuation, as the name sold for $38,500.
As of writing, this is the fourth-largest .NET sale of 2020, trailing behind the likes of Memories.net at $41,000. The .NET extension certainly isn’t as desirable as it once was, with many companies opting to go for .CO or .IO if the .COM is unavailable or too expensive, but it does have it uses.
Gravity.net was an end-user purchase, acquired by a company that offers cybersecurity and social media consulting. Gravity.com is owned by Oath, the company that operates Yahoo! and AOL.
RealCraft.com – $38,000
RealCraft.com was sold by Mike Mann’s DomainMarket for $38,000. According to data from Mike, he acquired the domain in 2010 for $50. This may seem like an impressive return on investment on the surface, but Mike needs to attain these numbers as he owns around 300,000 domain names with an annual renewal bill that will run into the millions.
Regardless, this $38,000 domain was acquired by a company called Real Craft after a rebrand from Real Carriage Doors. Immediately after the rebrand, RealCraft.com carried a logo notifying customers of its change of name. RealCraft.com is home to a company offering doors and other woodwork.
The company filed for a trademark for the name RealCraft in January 2020, a couple of months before acquiring the RealCraft.com domain name.
Modena.com – $37,060
The final name on my list is Modena.com. Modena is a city in Italy that’s popular amongst car fans in particular as it’s the home of factories for car manufacturers such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Maserati. However, Modena.com didn’t sell for this price because of its Italian heritage.
The domain was acquired by a consumer electronics company from Jakarta, Indonesia, called Modena. This is by no means a new company, as they were founded in 1981. Why did the company wait so long to acquire this name?
The Modena.com domain has, for several years, held a “for sale” notice. In 2015, the asking price was €50,000. Before that, Modena.com held information about the city of Modena, so there was very little chance of the company Modena acquiring the domain without paying a substantial fee, which they obviously didn’t do until 2020.
The timing of the acquisition is strange since the name has been on the market for so long, but it does at least give Modena the opportunity to operate its global website on the exact-match .COM.
Good research and thanks for sharing!