I’m a big fan of DomainShane’s series of posts on recent domain sales that have been developed. What started as curiously glimpsing over 1 or 2 posts turned into a big obsession and studying the whole series of 75+ articles. 🙂

You may ask: Why? As domainers, I think we ought to spend more time studying our buyers, who are ultimately the people who will develop the domain into a workable website. Sure, there will be a bunch of sales we’ll make to other domainers who will re-sell them at a higher price. But the ultimate buyer is the end user, and knowing about the motivations of what caused them to buy our domain is crucial, in my opinion.

I’ve analyzed 75+ posts, each of which contained at least 5 sites listed. That makes it at least 375 sites, thus the title of this article. Almost all of the purchases were .com domains, and sometimes I omit the .com from the domain name in the examples below. Let’s begin.

1. Foreign Companies Buying the .com Version

This is one of the most common patterns I’ve seen. For example, MyTicket.de buying My-Ticket.com.

The most common buyers were companies from Western/North Europe, countries like Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Canada/Australia companies were common too. Basically, countries where companies have enough money to afford the .com.

2. Companies Whose Names are 2+ Nouns Buying a Single Noun .com

For example, Corpointegra Reformador bought Reformador.com. Companies with long names want their website to fit on a print card, and for their website to be remembered overall. This is a good business decision. So they might get 1-word .com or an acronym, leading me to my next example…

3. Companies Buying Acronyms of Their Names

Some sites I’ve seen doing this are: Real Estate Optimized Inc = reop.com SiliconValleyLawOffices = SVLO, QuadKnopf = QKInc. Pangaea.nl bought PNG.com, Success-Group.com bought SHGR.com. This was a very common pattern I’ve seen. 3 or 4L domain name owners might want to check which companies could use their name as an acronym and sell to that company for good money.

4. Websites Buying the Full Version of Their 2+ Words Name

Qbrushes bought QualityBrushes. Lrnkit bought LearnKit. MediMeals bought MedicalMeals. There are thousands of domain registrations daily where the owner couldn’t get the name with all keywords, so they abbreviate or shorten one of the words. When the company grows enough, they eventually buy their full name, as the examples below demonstrate.

5. Websites with New TLDs Buying Name+NewTLD.com

Example: Bi.tt bought Bitt.com. Seems the primary reason people buy these new TLDs is because the .coms are not available. As the site grows, it eventually acquires the name+the TLD.com.

6. Companies owning the .com buying Company.name (new TLDs)

Example: Joyclub.de bought joy.club to supplement their domain. If you plan to invest in the new TLDs, one idea would be to analyze the names of the popular sites and see if you could get a name like with joy.club. Make sure you don’t break any trademarks!

7. Companies with Ugly Names Getting a Better Sounding Version

I’ve seen so many examples of these. Warm9 = CloudCommerce, GPUdb = kinetica CordiaGrad = purefy, MilkMen = AdMen. The last example is not an ugly name, but rather, a more relevant name (if you’re an ad agency, having ‘milk’ in your name might not be a good idea).

 

8. Websites Removing Unnecessary Words from Their Names

CigarOfTheMonthClub bought CigarMonthClub.com. There are sites with words like “of”, “the” etc. unnecessarily add to the length of the domain name, so they eventually purchase a shorter version without these words, which makes their domain easier to remember.

9.A Website Containing Generic Keywords Re-Branding to a Cute-Sounding Name

Examples I’ve seen were DamagedCars = Carbrain  MetalDeckSupply = RoofDecki. If you have a fitness studio, people won’t remember you if your name is “Heath and Fitness”. Thus the motivation for getting a name which will be associated with you, and only you.

10. Websites Buying Better Synonyms Of One Of Their Words

For example, CEOConsultant bought CEOAdvisor. Companies want their names to sound good, and if you can give them a better version of their name without losing the meaning, you might get a deal.

11. Remove “inc”, “gmbh”, “corp” and other suffixes from domain names

I’ve seen plenty of example where a company owned “companyinc.com”, bought “company.com”. In German, the equivalent would be “gmbh”.

The suffix can be domain-specific as well, for example AfterMastersHD bought AfterMasters.

Also, companies removing a location-specific suffix. I’ve seen 2 examples of these: FootSurgeryCenterNYC.com bought the .com without the ‘nyc’ suffix.  OnTimeAirAZ.com bought OnTimeAir.com. I suppose the reason for this is because these companies grew big enough and they didn’t want to associate their name with a particular local area.

Here are the most common suffixes I’ve seen removed from domain names: online, ltd, group, inc, gmbh, app, tv, hd, labs, network, corp, corporation, concept, technologies, technology, software, digital, capital, tech, soft, limited, llc, communications, media, solution, solutions, global.

12. Remove “get”, “buy”, “download” etc. as a prefix

This is extremely common in startups, with companies like GetDropbox.com buying Dropbox.com,

Here are the most common prefixes I’ve seen removed from domain names: my, the, your, shop, get, go, visit, buy.

So these are the patterns I’ve found. Which of them can you use to sell your premium domain names to end users?