Domains, Domain Names For Sale & Domain Name Registration

Top 10 domain names sales WE 1st March 2009

Over the last week I have been having a think about where I want to take my weekly top 10 domain name sales post. I started off just wanting to show people which domains were the top ten sales from a monetary point of view, but then I thought to myself, is the actual sale price of a domain the be all and end all? Can the top 10 domain name sales incorporate not just high value sales but commercially significant sales, quirky sales and also other sales of particular interest such as a seasonal domain for example? So here we go, my new improved top 10 domain names sales, from me Gary Taylor.

Starting off at number one it has to be the purchase of Toys.com for a cool $5.1m by toy giant Toys’R'Us a few days ago. Significant not just in the price that was paid but also, by  acquiring Toys.com, they have negated the opportunity for a competitor to develop the domain and the potential for a significant k share of the online toy industry to be exploited. Whether Toys’R'Us will go on to develop the domain fully or just use it as a redirect to take advantage of toys.com direct type-in traffic who knows, all we can do is watch this space. Believe you me though, what ever their plans may be you can count on it that they were firmly in place  before they considered parting hands with the five big ones they just paid for it.

In at number two has to be the second largest and only other seven figure sale of this year so far which was the $1,760,000 paid for fly.com brokered by leading domain name auction site Sedo.com. The proud new owners Travel Zoo host a travel information portal with over 14m users and this little beauty of a purchase will add some serious muscle to their online marketing campaigns, I’m sure that they will have no problems monetising it over the next few years, easily recouping the cost of the acquisition.

In response to my last weekly top 10 domain name sales not much has really changed. This is why I want to start commenting on other types of domain names sales that could be considered “top” or be worthy of note in general, and make this weekly report become more personised from my point of view rather than a boring list of actually sales.

Let us proceed with the other seven of the top 10 which I believe are more significant:

At number three the sale of RSS.MOBI which went for just £3,250 is an absolute steal as far as I’m concerned. Regardless of many domainers feelings of the dot mobi extension, the mobile industry is becoming  a power-house for advertising spend and contrary to popular belief mobile advertising is converting more traffic than online. Fact*. According to Emarketer it is estimated that the worldwide mobile marketing and advertising will reach $19bn by 2012.

*Reported in Bango’s white paper “Mobile Advertising for Newbies”

For places four to ten I am leaving the same as last week for now, as I need to crack on with actually doing some work that relates to domain development…otherwise you guys will have nothing to follow in “my projects.” And that would just be criminal…thats the whole reason I set this blog up!

Until next week, cheerio!

Gary

Tags: 3AC, Domain Names, gary taylor, top 10 domain name sales