In March of last year, Mike Berkens reported on the sale of Ice.com, although he did not mention the sale price. According to an article in TechCrunch about the new company operating on Ice.com, the domain name was sold for $3 million.
Here’s the relevant excerpt from the TechCrunch article about the price of the domain name:
During the last couple of weeks, there have been news reported about several exact match .com domain names and the companies that operate them. While news about these individual companies might not directly produce residual value for our domain names, I think reports about these businesses with exact match .com domain names is good for the domain name resale market.
Here are four news stories from the last couple of weeks I have been tracking pertaining to exact match .com domain names. Keep in mind that some of these news reports are related to the companies who use EMDs and is not simply “domain name news.” You should also keep in mind that I am biased because my portfolio is almost exclusively made up of EMDs, and my developed brands are built on EMDs.
I am sure I missed additional articles, and if so, I invite you to share them with all of us.
According to a SEC filing shared with me and highlighted by George Kirikos, the JD.com domain name may have been acquired for around $5 million US Dollars in 2012. JD.com is one of the largest Chinese online retailers, and the company is in the midst of prepping for a very large initial public offering.
George Kirikos shared the following information about why he believes the JD.com domain name may have been acquired by the company, which is also known as Jingdong Mall but is now JD.com, Inc.
According to Kirikos:
“I was browsing through EDGAR,
Sold in 2010 for $13 million, what URL is considered by the Domain Name Journal to be the most expensive domain name of all time?
I bet you can answer this question that appeared this afternoon on the television gameshow, Who Wants Be a Millionaire? Of course the correct answer is Sex.com (after a very long saga), and the contestent answered the question correctly.
It’s neat to see domain names get attention like this in the mainstream, and it’s even better to see Ron Jackson’s DN Journal get credit for providing the information.
Thanks to John Ferber, founder of Domain Holdings, for the tip and screengrab. The real question is what is John doing watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire in the middle of the day in the middle of the week? 🙂
In my opinion, domain sales is the lifeblood of the domain industry. Not only do large sales bring attention to domain names, but they also provide liquidity to companies operating in the space. My business is mostly reliant on the sale of domain names, most of which are acquired and re-sold in a short period of time.
I think it would be very interesting to know the approximate aftermarket sales volume for the domain industry, and I would guess this number would be in the $250-500 million range annually. Determining the total value of domain sales for the entire industry would be impossible due to the number of private sales and sales that are subject to NDA. Personally, I don’t report sales prices, so I can’t criticize others for wanting to keep their sales private.
I would be very curious to know an approximate number for the public annual domain sales at the major aftermarket companies, large portfolio owners (like Buy Domains, Name Administration, Domain Market, Reinvent, Marchex…etc.), and domain auction houses. These figures
Ron Jackson, whose DNJournal is one of the best sources of information about the domain industry and issues impacting the industry, was honored at the Domaining Europe conference this past week. I want to share this video of assorted domain industry professionals who couldn’t attend the conference giving Ron well deserved platitudes for his work.
Feel free to leave your own good wishes to Ron.
Ron Video 04192012 from Kent Bryan Blanche on Vimeo.
