SX.com closed today on NameJet at $555,050, the winning bidder First outdueled Boothcom to win the auction. There were 11 bidders who each bid $500,000 or more for the domain.
There has been some action lately in the LL.com world, We.com sold on Sedo as reported by Jamie Zoch. There was no price mentioned on We.com, but some research done by James Iles on Namepros put the name at $8 – $10 million based on the commission paid.
The sales price of We.com has never been publicly revealed, but the seller of We.com has stated that the brokerage fee was “around $1m”, which would bring the sales price of We.com to anywhere between $8m and $10m – meaning it would be one of the biggest domain sales ever.
FB.com which Facebook acquired for a reported $8.5 million. IG.com sold for $4.7 Million in 2013. YP.com for $3.85 Million in November 2008, MI.com for $3.6 Million in April 2014 and MM.com selling in July 2014 for $1.2 Million (which seems to be a pretty good deal for a repeating 2 letter .com IMO)
It also appears that SA.com has been in escrow since December of 2014, this was brought up by a commenter, Peter T. The post was actually about whether or not CentralNic sold GB.com.
Mike wrote about JD.com possibly selling for $5million back in 2014, this was based off of research uncovered by George Kirikos.
SX.com was purchased by domainer, so the price goes to wholesale category. Since the auction has closed when it was about 4 o’clock morning in China, it is very likely that many Chinese domainers were not involved in the bidding. Generally speaking, price is aprox. $300k below the average of 2014 LL.com reported sales. Yes, it sold cheap. Very cheap. But since it is now in hands of an extremely rich domainer, it’s unlikely it will sell cheap next time.
1 event. But it’s open to 2 interpretations – either as a retail purchase or a wholesale purchase.
In a retail scenario, the domain has reached a viable end user; and end users don’t necessarily care whether the resale value of their asset is above or below what they paid. Evaluated as a retail transaction, this price might appear low to some people.
In a wholesale scenario, the buyer hasn’t purchased the domain so much as the right to resell it. That’s pure speculation; so it’s important for wholesale buyers to maintain a healthy distance from the expected retail range – distance that can act as a cushion against risk and cost.
Consistently high as LL.com sale prices may be, and secure as the upward trajectory of that asset class’s value seems to be, there are risks and costs that repel wholesale buyers from paying too near 100% retail. For one thing, it can take a decade to find the ideal end-user buyer or for an asset to appreciate enough for the owner to wish to sell to another wholesaler. There would be a long-term opportunity cost in plunking down $555k on SX.com, since that money will be unavailable henceforward for other investments. And there is always some risk of depreciation. That doesn’t necessarily mean the retail value of SX.com will dip as low as the $555k price paid today; but even if it dips to some higher number, perhaps that’s low enough to make the cost of paying $555k and waiting for a diminished ROI unattractive. All this must be factored into the decision.
In the absence of any ready retail buyer, the auction simply becomes a contest between domain resellers – each of whom wants to beat out the competition while staying as far away from the retail range as possible and leaving themselves as big a budget for other investment opportunities and expenses as possible.
Interpreted as a wholesale purchase, $555k might be sensible. I won’t comment on that. The point is that measuring a wholesale purchase against retail sales figures can be tricky. It says as much about the risk tolerances and budgets of the buyers and the other opportunities out there in today’s wholesale market than it does about the retail value of the domain itself.
I think in general, in my Domain Movers series alone I have wrote about at least 10+ LL .com’s that have changed ownership fairly recently.
Was NameJet.com the “best place” to sell/auction the domain name is the real question? Why not put it on 4.cn? Why list it for $4,995,000 on Afternic with a BIN and the same price as minimum offer?
According to Afternic, the “seller” of SX.com is listed as DNMAGroup and has 160,408 listings currently. Interesting enough, I did a “tracing tracks” type article where I walked through some research and it just so happens to have been on the seller: http://dotweekly.com/tracing-domain-tracks/
In the end, DNMAGroup is connected to LeaseDomains.com aka Anthos Chrysanthou who owned SX.com and also owns WV.com etc.
I’m sure sx.com also gets traffic as a typo for sex.com.
Who is bidder First? I thought that person was tied to 4.cn?
He is very active on name jet buys every numeric in sight.
If developed it will also bring traffic to sex.com. Don’t you think? Sort of inverted type.
At some point fiverr bought fiver.com as well. Still using the former and the latter even does not have a proper ssl certificate.
Not bad for a wholesale price.
He is going to resell it for over a million dollars within a week.
I think First got the domain at a very nice price but selling for millions in weeks is easier said. Only end user can afford to pay that and it will definitely take time to find one.
MM.com sold for $1.2M to domainer, so even wholesale prices can go over a million.
And who bought WE.com, an end-user or a domainer? If end-user, why he is hiding behind a whois privacy?
Market is changing every day. In this particular category (LL.com) it goes just up, up, up. Both, retail and wholesale. Some short-term minor corrections are sure possible, but that’s obviously normal.
first is one of the 5 main proxy services in China to bid on domains (expiring, deleted or for auction in the drop houses). Basically, it is a user that bids in the name of chinese clients that probably don’t know english. that is way “the guy” gets so many domains.
actually china is responsible for the 2,5 times increase in prices over the last two years for the short domain segment.
Jose is right about the proxy services. “Navy” is another one.
Curious to watch the follow up. Have two baskets of pop-corn: sweet and salty. Anyone willing to join the show in the theatre?
Recall a long story of md.org [ http://www.thedomains.com/?s=md.org ] which was not paid first, and then appeared as cancelled on the NameJet…
Still thinking about the best way to report the sales and to verify them.
According to a recent post at domain.cn ( http://club.domain.cn/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2561496&extra=page%3D2 )this name was bought by juming.com for their clients and in the meantime, it has been auctioned at US$1.13M to the highest bidder .
Are you saying someone just flipped it within 24 hours for 100% (over half million dollars) profit?
No way…
This is the actual auction page: http://www.juming.com/p/cj/?/91059/
So the final price is not disclosed.
You have to sign-in to see full details of the auction you have participated in.
What if you did not participate in the auction?
Any screenshot or insights are very welcome.
Well, it’s clear the big boys like FS, MHB, etc think it’s overvalued at this price. They said so with their pocketbooks.
So any domain Berkens and Schilling don’t buy must be overvalued simply because they didn’t buy it or bid it up to its final price?
In that case, 99.99% of domains that sell at auction are overvalued.
It’s overpriced for them, not overpriced period…
Reading comprehension.
Ah, I see. For how many billions of additional people was the domain overpriced?
To cant say it was overpriced for them, with their portfolios why would they drop half a million. Name any purchase of Frank or Mike where they paid half a mil for anything.
If the buyer is a reseller, he should be able to resell the domain for nothing less than $5 million in order to make a great ROI considering other factors or else it would be a bad purchase.