Below is another look at a few recent domain flips and flops, with data courtesy of NameBio.
Flips
KUL.com sold for 43,143 USD on 2018-03-09 at Sedo, vs 22,000 USD on 2017-02-05 at BQDN. The LLL.com market in general hasn’t doubled over the past year, so this is an outlier. The current owner is under privacy protection, but it forwards to Nhainvn.com, which I’ve seen on a few recent domain acquisitions, such as DTP.com.
BTSE.com sold for 4,990 USD on 2018-03-08 at Sedo, vs 144 USD on 2010-05-11 at SnapNames. A nice 35x return before commissions. It’s end user pricing, but the owner is under privacy and the domain doesn’t resolve yet.
Cupboard.io sold for 2,500 USD on 2018-03-08 at Sedo, vs 104 USD on 2016-08-23 at Park.io. The first of two non .com domains that were very profitable flips with less than a two year hold.
Good.ai sold for 10,000 USD on 2018-03-01 at Sedo, vs 3,800 USD on 2017-02-07 at Sedo. Nothing resolves yet, but the buyer appears to be Blippar.com, which “specialise in Augmented Reality (AR) and Computer Vision, the field within AI that understands sight.”
Dragonglass.com sold for 4,999 USD on 2018-02-11 at GenericDomainMarket, vs 320 USD on 2015-11-22 at NameJet. A nice 15x return. The buyer describes their site as “the world’s first gamified cryptomining experience. Play mobile game, mine real cryptocurrency, earn up to 10x coins.”
Flops
ML.net sold for 24,500 USD on 2018-03-11 at NameJet, 48,533 USD on 2015-12-02 at NameJet. A painful loss of over 50%, with their purchase during the heady days of the Chinese bull market.
Baseball.net sold for 15,100 USD on 2018-02-14 at Flippa, 52,500 USD on 2008-04-02 at T.R.A.F.F.I.C.. This is closer to a 70% loss between the sales, although it appears the domain has traded a few times. The poor name has been pimped through domain newsletters and auction houses for many years, with asking prices as high as $95k.
Punches.com sold for 1,900 USD on 2018-03-09 at NameJet, vs 2,800 USD on 2015-03-24 at NameJet. The first of two one-word .com domains with losses. One-word .com domains are hot, but you can’t simply put your blinders on, pay a high price, and expect values to skyrocket….especially with awkward endings like “ed” or “ing”, or the plural when the singular would be better.
Raking.com sold for 800 USD on 2018-03-02 at GoDaddy, vs 2,019 USD on 2012-03-01 at GoDaddy.
POLP.com sold for 918 USD on 2018-03-12 at NameJet, vs 1,500 USD on 2017-07-20 at NameJet. Similar to the comment above, pronounceable LLLL.com are hot, but you still need to buy at the right price if you’re looking for a quick flip. This is a loss near 50% after commissions, in less than a year.
Note: I didn’t do an exhaustive search of the ownership history of each domain. There are likely cases where there were multiple owners between the sales prices I list.
You can find past Flips and Flops posts here.
Thanks for the post Aaron. Good for learning for newbie like me. Hope to see more of these 🙂