In this edition of The Sales Roundup, I look behind the numbers to see why domain names such as FaceYoga.com, Dabble.com.au, and Speechify.com sold for the prices that they did. As usual, I’m using DNJournal’s sales chart as the source for the sales data used within this article.
FaceYoga.com – $75,350
Did you know that face yoga is a thing? According to Google Trends, this practice has been relatively popular for the past decade and has had peaks of popularity. It can also seemingly be a profitable venture for facial fitness teachers, with GoodHousekeeping.com revealing that one instructor charges $200 for a fifty-minute class.
There are already online courses and YouTube channels dedicated to face yoga, with FaceYogaMethod.com perhaps the largest, with a 500,000-strong army of YouTube followers. Koko Hayashi is another YouTuber making a healthy living from face yoga, with a Shark Tank appearance and somewhat of an endorsement from Kim Kardashian under her belt.
The popularity and the lucrativeness of face yoga may help to explain why FaceYoga.com achieved a $75,350 sales price at Sedo recently.
Thanks to WHOIS privacy protection, the identity of FaceYoga.com’s buyer isn’t immediately known, but by looking at the footer on FaceYoga.com, we can see that the name is being developed by Wire Salad, an Estonian app developer that is using the domain to promote its new custom facial exercise program.
With the practice known as face yoga, and with the term widely used and searched for, acquiring the exact-match FaceYoga.com domain for its app is a sound investment that could allow the company to dominate the face yoga industry.
Dabble.com.au – $75,000
The sale of Dabble.com.au for $75,000 is the ninth-largest .COM.AU domain sale of all time, according to publicly-disclosed data available at NameBio. While the other top .COM.AU sales include desirable keywords such as “money,” “pay,” or “broker,” this sale is slightly more perplexing – why would someone pay $75,000 for Dabble.com.au?
This, unsurprisingly, was acquired by an end-user. Dabble Sports Pty Ltd, to be precise. Dabble is building an app and platform to allow sports fans to interact, engage, and share social sport experiences, according to the company’s website.
Acquiring Dabble.com.au for $75,000 is a significant move for a company formed just a few months ago. However, it looks as though Dabble’s plan is very much centered around its app and digital platform, meaning that the right domain name is vital from the outset.
Speechify.com – $75,000
Another domain that sold for $75,000 was Speechify.com. The sale took place at Uniregistry, a venue that has traditionally achieved higher value sales based on NameBio data for Uniregistry.
Speechify.com was sold by an investor that has a portfolio of several thousand domain names, according to DomainIQ.
With a larger portfolio comes larger renewal costs, which is an influencing factor in the asking prices of the domains owned by these large portfolio owners.
Mike Mann is a prime example of someone who places high valuations on his names, due in part to the annual renewal bill.
Fortunately for the seller, a motivated buyer came along that was willing to pay $75,000 for Speechify.com.
That seller, unsurprisingly, was a company called Speechify. Speechify turns text into audio thanks to some nifty AI. According to the company’s website, over three million people use Speechify.
The Speechify.com acquisition is an upgrade for the company, from GetSpeechify.com.
Usually, an acquisition like this usually occurs around the time of a Series A funding round or a similar influx of cash. I can’t find any evidence to suggest that happened this time.
HolyGround.com – $60,000
Holy ground predominantly means an area of ground that is sacred or holy. It’s also the title of a Taylor Swift song, according to Wikipedia. According to DomainIQ, this name may have been sold at Sedo on behalf of Merlix LLC, a North Carolina software and Internet company that has additional offices in Europe.
The buyer was HolyGround, a company helping churches with live streaming, social media, website design, WiFi, networking, and other IT issues during COVID-19. The domain is currently being used in conjunction with the company’s upcoming HolyGround conference.
For promoting a conference alone, $60,000 seems like a lot of money to invest in a domain name. It’s money that could have been invested elsewhere to create higher ticket sales, for example. Is there a plan for the domain aside from conference promotion? I hope so.
Flow.me – $58,080
At $58,080, the sale of Flow.me represents the fifth-largest .ME sale of all time, according to NameBio. Sold at Sedo, Flow.me was sold on behalf of Mark Langeneck, a consultant and executive in Europe.
The buyer was The DTX Company, a New York-based company founded by the former CEO of AOL, Tim Armstrong. DTX has created a service called Flowcode, an alternative to social media reference landing page service Linktree.
Currently, Flowcode uses the domain Flow.page to allow users to create custom landing pages and links. Perhaps the company will introduce Flow.me alongside Flow.page, or as a direct replacement for Flow.me.