Not Easy to Get Top Dollar for One Worders

Someone mentioned my name in a NamePros thread the other day discussing one word .com domain names. The comment was “Single word domains don’t sell quickly. Just ask Elliot Silver…he has had words on the market for a while.” I tend to agree with the comment to a point.

In my opinion, meaningful one word .com domain names are highly liquid. They sell regularly, and there are at least 20  people that I know personally who actively pursue these domain names and will spend four, five, and six figures for the right .com domain names. I am always on the hunt for great one word .com domain names and it seems like I am competing with friends and colleagues to get these great dictionary .com names at fair prices. Without a doubt, meaningful one word .com domain names are among the most valuable types of domain names.

On the other hand, it can take quite a bit of time to sell great one word .com domain names for top dollar (aka retail pricing). I get offers all the time for some of my one word .com domain names, but most of the offers are terrible. When I want to move older inventory or build my cash reserves, I know I can sell them to colleagues or put them up for auction for reasonable prices, but it can take quite a bit of time to get retail prices for them. The “trouble” with these names is that they are difficult to find for sale, they are almost always very expensive to buy, and the hold time can be quite long.

Meaningful one word .com domain names are trophy assets for a domain portfolio. When I describe what I do to people, I don’t mind sharing some of the good one word .com domain names my company owns. The downside to them is that they can lock up quite a bit of funds and it can take time to sell them for top dollar.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

11 COMMENTS

  1. From my experience selling major 6 & 7 figure one worders you should anticipate about 3 to 5 years to find a buyer if you’ve set your price objective at the top top dollar point and aren’t willing to negotiate and accept even a penny less.

    Most owners of these crown jewel domains are already very wealthy and don’t mind waiting as long as it takes to achieve their price.

  2. Most people are not very imaginative. So when you explain what a good 1-word dictionary term or category killer domain would do for a business, they typically shrug. Most people don’t care and will never understand. They would rather have something catchy, descriptive, memorable. Brandables.

    Not saying the domains you own Elliot are not memorable. Just like that commenter stated you need to wait for top dollar from the right end-user.

    Looking at your list of domains I can think of many companies that should own those. Just cause they should doesn’t mean they will ever make an offer or be interested.

    Our company has moved to building sites on highly desriptive domains. WebHostingJobs.com is a good example, it is clear what you will get when you land on the website. Is anyone going to be confused? 🙂

    • Would be great to know what kind of offers that name has received. One issue is that the headset brand is so well known, it would be tough for another company to build a brand called Beats. I could be wrong of course 🙂

  3. It’s nice to read domain posts that add value and help teach. Thank you.

    I registered my first domains in Feb ’99. Some good some not. I tried to concentrate on a few different industries because it just seemed like too big of a crap shoot to randomly buy domains in hopes of finding a buyer.

    Different sectors within the industry have all had their ups and downs. From reading your posts over the years it appears you wisely stayed away from the fad domains.

    One word .coms are tough for me because seems like a lot of their value is based upon collectibility, unless they are an exact match product or service. Which makes them a 7 figure domain.

    I understand they also have value as “shorteners” or for startups but don’t think that happens very often in 6 figure range. Probably less now than previous years.

    Two word .coms with commercial meaning have a lot more value than many one word .coms with no commercial identity/value imo.

    Ultimately a domain has to provide the owner real value or its value is similar to a baseball card. Sure some old ones have value but 99.9% are worthless pieces of cardboard.

  4. The problem is that people are being told by certain veteran “domainers”, that a one-word new gTLD (nTLD) domain name, is just as good or better than, a one-word .Com, which is not true.

    So end-users or new domainers, buy a one-word nTLD name based on a seasoned domainers recommendation instead of a .Com, then end up buying a .Com name eventually, because they realize a .Com name is better than a nTLD name.

    These nTLD domainers made their money on selling .Com domain names in the past and still do today, not nTLD’s.

  5. I’m under the impression Stallion.com should bring in 7 figures just from reaching out to the right entities in the horse racing and breeding industry, let alone the remarkable “non-horse” branding possibilities.

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