New gTLD Namebio Reported Sales Last Month

About every month or so, I plan to have a look at what sales have been publicly reported in the database for 'new' global domain name extensions (ngTLDs).  The term new is perhaps unfortunate, as many of them have been around since 2014.
Namebio

There were 31 recorded ngTLD domain name sales in this period (Feb 23 - Mar 22, 2018), with a median sales price of $1210 and mean sales price of $4089. A total of 18 of the sales were for $1000 or more.  The highest value sale was blockchain.ventures for $42,000, with Berlin.club taking second place with a $11,700 sale.

The 8 global TLD sales were from the dot.global registry, while the others were all non-registry sales. By far the most popular marketplace for these sales was Sedo, with 14 of the sales, including the largest one.

Here is the breakdown by number of domain sales reported in each extension.

• cab 1
• club 3
• digital 1
• global 8
• group 2
• guru 1
• market 1
• mba  1
• media 1
• news 1
• one 1
• online 2
• ooo 1
• plus 1
• top 1
• ventures 1
• vin  1
• watch 1
• xyz 2

There were sales in 19 different extensions, ranging from the most widely held of the ngTLDs to some with only modest registration numbers.  

So far in 2018 in total there have been 139 Namebio reported ngTLD sales with a median price of $2324 and a mean price of $9238.  The latter was highly influenced by two January sales: home.loans for $500,000 and The.club for $300,000. Blockchain.ventures is the fourth highest ngTLD of the year.

The Namebio database does not include sales with value less than $100, nor sales from a number of venues, so it is difficult to estimate how complete a record this is of all  #ngTLD domain name sales. 

Why Would Anyone Want a New Extension Domain Name?

Background

A NamePros user asked this question:

"Why (would) an end-user would want to invest in a ngTLD versus a .com domain name? What are some use cases and/or selling points for a ngTLD? Aside from them being very unique and one-of-a- kind, how would you respond to a .com holder who asks this question? Thanks in advance for any insights or success stories regarding this!

A whole book could be written in response, but here are 12 reasons why sometimes new domain extensions make sense for both end users and domain name investors.

Why Use a New Domain Extension?

1. You want a powerful, single word domain name, but that name is simply not available at any price to you in .com or .net. This is probably the driving reason behind the domain name sale of blockchain(.)ventures for $42,000, for example.
2. You believe that a domain name doesn't need to have a .com tacked on, and it is more aesthetic and elegant to simply have a domain name that describes your enterprise precisely. If you listen to the interview at Domain Name Wire with Blake Janover who paid $500,000 earlier this year for home.loans that is essentially his reasoning (and he had earlier business success with a similar other name). Or about a year ago casino(.)online sold for $201,000. 
3. You can express the exact name of your company through a ngTLD, e.g. look at DXC.Technology. Their name is their website. Nothing added. Elegance defined. 
4. You do use a .com or cc for your main site, but you also want a descriptive domain name for a subset of your activity. Design is central to a business like Kohler. Surely it made sense for them to use Kohler.design, and they do! 
5. What you do can be described perfectly and concisely using a ngTLD. That is probably why earlier this year Talk(.)show sold for $50,000, and maps(.)Amsterdam sold for about $8500. Also in 2018, tax(.)help sold for $6000. In these, and many similar cases, you see the domain name and you know instantly what the site is about. With extensions ranging from loan to review, club to trade, blog to store, and over one thousand more, it is hard to think of an operation that would not fit with one of the ngTLDs. 
6. You want to use domain name phrases in a marketing campaign. Most of the legacy gTLDs and cc TLDs are difficult to make into domain name phrases. But this can express endless ideas when creatively using ngTLDs (see the recent examples over at the thread where people listed their 5 best ngTLD domain names for loads of great examples). I set up a few examples from my portfolio so you can see how they work. For example, if you enter all.curlers.win or help.diversify.science it could redirect anywhere on the web (try them out). Phrases like this are easy for people to remember and can be entered into social media as clickable phrases. The good folks over at Names.of.London (yup just click the phrase) have great possibilities available at reasonable rates. You will be amazed at the great expressions still available. 
7. You are a small (perhaps single person) business, and you can combine your name with an extension to express exactly what you do. For example if my name was Jane Doe and I was an accountant, the domain name JaneDoe.accountant would perfectly describe my business. This works particularly well for sole proprietorships where you must use your exact name. I describe this on a blog post here. 
8. You want good value in your domain purchase price. There are countless small sales of ngTLDs, many below the $100 Namebio limit so don't show up in the publicly released database (a more extensive one for small sales is DNPric.es, but it too is far from complete).. In a bit of self promotion, might we be out of step to point out the great deals in some of the new extensions that we have over at NamesThat.win? You run a roofing business, wouldn't it be cool to have the domain name roofer? Or your company produces sensors for the Internet of Things, why not the domain name sensor? Into robotics? Shouldn't your domain name be simply robotics? All of these are available right now in the gdn (global domain name) extension at great prices. You can get a memorable, descriptive name for great value in new domain extensions. 
9. You feel that the dot com bubble burst in 2000 except for the domain name business. You find this is the era to have something new, something like The.club, and are willing to pay $300,000 for that as was done in January of this year. But the really great thing is you don't need to pay funds like that to get a still pretty great name. Why not check out what we have available currently? 
10. You can purchase single letter domain names in some of the ngTLDs. For example A(.)top sold for just over $96,000. Sometimes you don't even have to pay that much for a single letter ngTLD. In 2017 V(.)photo sold for $15,000 and G(.)rich for $13,750, but in what seems to me like a huge steal of a price a(.)watch went for just $110 and u(.)holiday for $136 in late 2016. 
11. You can use a ngTLD as part of a call to action. With a two word phrase like Act(.)today (that sold for $20,000 in 2017), Our(.)place (sold for $10,000 in 2017) or Learn(.)wine ($10,000 sale from 2017) you can simply and directly urge the reader to take some action. 
12. You want to shake up things a little and stress your forward looking attitude. The parent body of company Alphabet don't have a lot of content at abc.xyz, but who can argue that it isn't a cool and appropriate domain name? Speaking of cool, isn't 2(.)cool a rather unique domain name? It sold in the Namescon auction this year for $2900.

What Else?

Please feel free to suggest your own ideas that I have left out! And of course if a reader is looking for more big ticket sales scan through lists such as this one over at DNJournal, or use the Namebio database and search on one or more of the new extensions.  Thanks to all the insightful people who keep NamePros the vibrant online domain community, as their experiences and ideas have inspired my interest in domain names.

So while most sales in the daily domain report at NameBio are certainly .com, there are good reasons for both end users and some domain name investors to consider investing in the "new" extensions.  I also did a post more from the domain investing perspective related to this topic here. The domain investing community should be large enough for those who prefer legacy domain extensions, country code domains, and the new extensions. Nothing in this post means that .com (or .org or .net) is not the best choice for certain applications, such as the main website for a business. I simply wanted to point out that there are other cases where quality new extension domain mains make a lot of sense!

Original post March 15, 2018
Minor editing July 27, 2018 and August 10, 2018

Photocredit: The image at the top of this posting is by Pixabay user qimono.  

Note: While an effort was made to make sure that this post was current and correct at time of writing, if any details are important to the reader it is their responsibility to independently establish that information. This posting is for informational purposes, and is not to be construed as individual advice for any domain investing decision.