The Sales Roundup: Why Bullish.com Sold for $900,000, and More…

In this week’s Sales Roundup, I’m looking at several sales listed on the current DNJournal sales report, covering a period from October 26th – November 8th, 2020. With this being a current sales chart, there’s a disclaimer that we may not be able to glean as much information as looking back at historical sales.

For those perhaps reading for the first time, the Sales Roundup is a regular feature that looks behind domain sales numbers to see why certain domain names sold for the prices they did.

 

Bullish.com – $900,000 $1,080,000

Bullish.com tops DNJournal’s chart this week and now holds the record as the largest sale of 2020, beating NAS.com ($720,000).

BestWeb.com’s Murat Yikilmaz sold Bullish.com. BestWeb.com holds a portfolio of some of the finest names around, including Best.com, CE.com, and Lab.com. Murat doesn’t sell cheaply, either. Previous sales include Innovation.com for $550,000 and Sportsmans.com for $235,000.

“Bullish” is a popular term for the market sentiment that can be applied to the stock market, cryptocurrency, or even the domain market. Being bullish describes hope and confidence.

To get a $900,000 $1,080,000 price tag, Murat needed a buyer to meet his high expectations. He certainly got that. As of writing, the buyer’s identity isn’t known. However, we do know that the domain moved to registrar MarkMonitor, a domain management firm that works with the majority of Fortune 500 companies.

I’ve had a look at other domains related to Bullish.com (such as Bullish.co, Bullish.net, and Bullish.io), and there don’t seem to be any clues there. I’ve also had a look at trademarks, and again – there’s not much we can glean from that search.

The buyer could be a bank such as JP Morgan, an investment media setup such as Forbes, or even a cryptocurrency company such as Binance. All three of these companies have their domains managed by MarkMonitor.

The trifecta of an owner with high expectations, combined with one of the best financial terms and a motivated buyer, ends with a $900,000 $1,080,000 price tag.

Update: Ron Jackson of DNJournal updated the price from $900,000 to $1,080,000 after this article was released. The new figure of $1,080,000 includes the brokerage fee paid by the buyer.

 

Picture.com – $225,000

This sale was announced by James Booth last Saturday. James owned Picture.com with his brother Andy. The pair acquired the name for $110,000 last October, so it’s taken around a year to get a $105,000 return on investment.

During that time, they had to defend Picture.com in a UDRP, which they ultimately won just before selling the name. Picture.com was acquired by Brent Oxley, the founder of Hostgator, who has amassed a domain portfolio of envy at Oxley.com.

Picture.com for $225,000 is more than most investors would pay for the name, but Brent has a history of paying over the odds for the best domains. It’s a long-term strategy that works for him. Expect Picture.com to be resold in the future for a large figure.

 

Bath.com – $195,000

Another name acquired by Brent Oxley. Listed as being brokered by CanvasMedia, Bath.com finds a new home alongside Picture.com et al. at Oxley.com. In February 2019, the domain was listed in the QEIP domain newsletter for an asking price of $425,000.

Acquired for less than half of this figure, Bath.com now holds a minimum offer value of $500,000 at Oxley.com, so expect this name to be resold at some point.

 

ForeverYoung.com – $150,000

ForeverYoung.com – a two-word .COM, sold for $150,000. On the face of it, $150,000 seems like a great price for the name.

The name was listed as being sold by DomainSource. According to WHOIS history, DomainSource has owned ForeverYoung.com since at least 2003, meaning that it has taken at least 17 years for DomainSource to achieve the price they wanted. That’s an important factor in achieving this price — the fact that the owner likely had to decline several five-figure offers within the last 17 years to get his price.

GoDaddy lists the new owner as residing in Limassol, Cyprus. Unfortunately, thanks to WHOIS restrictions, there are no other details available. I’ve had an unsuccessful time digging for information on this name, too. There are plenty of potential buyers out there based on domain registration and trademark data, but none that I can pinpoint to Limassol, Cyprus.

 

HomeFinance.com – $100,890

Brokered by Kate Buckley of Buckley Media, HomeFinance.com sold for $100,890. Kate brokered the name on behalf of Bruce Breger, an investor who acquired the name in the NamesCon 2017 auction for $5,500.

HomeFinance.com was acquired by Prospect Financial Group of San Diego, California, and currently redirects to ProspectHomeFinance.com. Eventually, the group may upgrade from ProspectHomeFinance.com to simply HomeFinance.com.

According to DotDB, there are 945 domains registered containing “Home Finance,” but nothing tops HomeFinance.com. Although Google only records 3,600 US searches for the term “home finance” at a cost per click of $5.84, finance domains can always be lucrative.

When Prospect Financial Group got the chance to own the “Home Finance” keyphrase online by owning HomeFinance.com, they were willing to pay $100,890 not to let the opportunity pass.

 

ListeningRoom.com – $75,000

ListeningRoom.com was sold for $75,000 by DomainMarket.com, the marketplace for Mike Mann’s domain names. With a couple of hundred thousand domains under ownership, Mike Mann consistently achieves five-figure sales. If you have 250,000 annual domain renewals to pay for, you need some sizable sales.

The name was acquired by a client of SafeNames Ltd. Like MarkMonitor, SafeNames is a corporate domain management company.

A listening room could be a room specially designed for optimum audio listening or a therapeutic venture. The buyer is unknown.

 

Segretaria.it – $73,160

Segretaria is Italian for “secretary.” Combined with the Italian .IT extension, the name makes perfect sense, but why did it sell for the equivalent of $73,160? After all, NameBio lists this as the third-largest, publicly disclosed .IT sale of all time.

According to WHOIS history, the domain was sold by Nojob S.R.L. Not much is known about this company, aside from operating the clothing brand Vaffanculo.com. Those who speak Italian will know what this means..!

Based on WHOIS, the new owner is Segretaria24 S.R.L. of Milan, Italy. Segretaria24 operates on Segretaria24.it and seems to be a pretty successful company. They have likely invested in Segretaria.it as an upgrade from Segretaria24.it.

 

Uncle.com – $66,002

There have been plenty of articles written in the domain industry about Uncle.com since it sold for $66,002. The domain sold at auction at Sedo, and it soon transpired that the name was acquired by a domain name investor — although their identity is unknown.

Did the investor overpay for Uncle.com? It’s a common, familial one-word .COM that you might expect to sell for a higher price one day to a motivated buyer. However, before this sale, the same Canadian IT expert owned the name since 1994 without selling – indicating that this could be the highest offer they ever received.

Nonetheless, the new owner, an investor, is aiming high. The domain now has a $1,235,000 “buy now” price at Sedo. I’d be surprised if it achieved a seven-figure sales price, but expect it to sell for a higher figure than $66,002 in the future.

 

Contactless.com – $64,998

In a global pandemic, you could say that “contactless” has become the preference. Contactless delivery is something that immediately comes to mind. Beyond that, contactless charging and contactless payments have been in the public consciousness for some time.

Grit Brokerage brokered the name on behalf of someone who also owned domains such as Contactless.org, iContactless.com, and eContactless.com.

According to a DomainSherpa show featuring Brian Harbin of Grit Brokerage, the name sold to a company in the contactless payment industry, although thanks to GoDaddy’s limited WHOIS information disclosure, I can’t say exactly which company bought it.

Although Contactless.com may be a mediocre brand name, it is the exact-match domain for an entire industry that includes major players such as Visa and MasterCard. Contactless payments are a growing phenomenon, too. In the UK, statistics suggest that contactless payments accounted for 39 percent of all credit card and 58 percent of all debit card transactions in July 2020. $64,998 for a company to own the exact-match domain for this industry isn’t unreasonable.