In the July edition of the Sedo sales roundup, I’m looking at five domain sales that closed at Sedo in the past month. We’ll be trying to look behind the sales figures to see why these domains achieved the prices that they did.
Table of Contents
CarteCadeau.fr – €49,000
First up is a two-word, French domain. NameBio suggests that at €49,000 ($57,682), this is the ninth-largest .fr domain sale of all time. The sales database also suggests that this is the largest two-word .fr sale of all time.
Carte cadeau translates as “gift card.” According to estimates, “carte cadeau” is searched for 33,000 per month in France via Google. It seems like there are also several popular sites using “carte cadeau” either in the domain name or business name. A fairly popular term, then.
The buyer of CarteCadeau.fr was a Dutch company called GiftCards.nl. The company has acquired a number of other gift card domain names including: GiftCards.co.uk, GiftCard.co.uk, GiftCard.de, GiftCards.be, GiftCards.dk, and more.
These, along with CarteCadeau.fr, all redirect to GiftCards.nl. With all of these domain names, it seems logical that GiftCards.nl will expand into the rest of Europe at some point, using ccTLDs to establish a local presence in each country.
OneGoal.com – $34,995
This domain was acquired through Sedo’s MLS network, which works with global partners to promote domains across different platforms. OneGoal.com was acquired by OneGoal, a college access organization that runs a very worthy cause. Essentially, OneGoal wants to level out the playing field, allowing all students to earn a college degree.
One Goal has raised $4.5 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and also relies on donations for funding.
OneGoal likely acquired OneGoal.com as an upgrade from its existing domain, OneGoalFoundation.org. The company may also have acquired OneGoal.org, too.
Naturel.com – $28,970
Another French domain name sold by Sedo. This time, the French word is paired with the .com extension. Naturel.com, French for “Natural,” was acquired by Infodustrie, a French publishing company that owns and operates a number of French websites hosted on premium French names such as Bateaux.com (Boats), Peche.com (Fishing), and Assistante.com (Assistant).
I’m not sure how Naturel.com fits into Infodustrie’s current set of websites and publications.
iSwap.com – $25,000
This domain was acquired by Huobi, a Chinese cryptocurrency behemoth. Founded in China, Huobi is now a publicly listed company in Hong Kong, with offices in several countries. Huobi.com estimates that it trades around $28 million in cryptocurrency every day. It could be described as China’s Coinbase.
Huobi paid $25,000 for iSwap.com, a domain name that is going to be the base for a new venture from the company. In comparison, iBox.com reportedly traded recently for around $1.56 million. That name was acquired by a Huobi-funded NFT company, named iBox.
Piedmont.com – $20,000
The majority of the sales I feature on the Sedo roundup every month are end-user purchases. However, this one is a little different. The domain name was acquired by an investor that maintains a portfolio of highly valuable names. Currently using an Efty landing page, Piedmont.com holds value thanks to the region of Piedmont in northern Italy, which is home to cities such as Turin.
Piedmont also means “a gentle slope leading from the foot of mountains to a region of flat land,” so it could have value as a single-word .com, too.
Prior to this investor purchase, Piedmont.com was owned by the city of Piedmont’s fire department, according to WHOIS. This is a case of a domain moving from an end-user hands to investor hands, somewhat bucking the trend of this Sedo sales roundup!