Domainer Shout Out May 2019

With this post I am starting a new monthly feature of shout-outs recognizing those who have done interesting things or provided exemplary service to the domain community or beyond.  Over the months I hope to highlight businesses, organizations, writers, and domainers. I particularly want to recognize those who went out of their way to help others, who have produced tools that are valuable to domain analysis, have done important research, have done outstanding communication, or who simply are trying something new or innovative. I don’t plan to make this a place to mention high value sales, as those are already recognized within our industry at places like DNJournal. While this is a personal selection, I always am open to suggestions.

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NamePros

I think a lot of us take NamePros for granted. We shouldn’t! What a vibrant, helpful, knowledgeable community it is! Shout out to the staff and moderators who help keep NamePros the place that it is. If you have any interest in domain names you should be a member. I doubt that my interest in domains would have persisted without NamePros.

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Dofo

Dofo is relatively new but has quickly become a key resource for me. In one place you can do sophisticated searches around domains for sale across multiple marketplaces. Key people in Dofo are active on NamePros and I am regularly finding new things it can do from their posts. If you are not already using it, do check it out!

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NameBio

You can tell from my writing that I am a big fan of NameBio. A freely available database with more than 1.5 million domain name sales (about 1.7 billion dollars) all available with a fantastically powerful and intuitive user interface. If you are new here is an introduction to getting started with NameBio. Hats off to Michael and others who keep NameBio the amazing resource that it is.

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NPs Members BrandCougar and Want2Learn

The past three months have seen amazing .com hand registration contests at NamePros. The idea was started by NP member Want2Learn and then the last two months the contest was directed by NPs member BrandCougar. While many great things happen at NamePros I don’t think I have witnessed anything handled better than the contests. BrandCougar put so much effort into maintaining enthusiasm for the contests, and attention to detail to make it run well. He is absorbed with other things so won’t be running the next contest, but I wanted to recognize the incredible work that he put into this. Here is the link to the April contest.

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TLD-List

I love to save dollars, and one place that it is important to do that is with the cost of registrations and renewals and transfers. My go to tool for this is TLD-list. I particularly like that it shows me historical rates to help me evaluate how good current specials are. Dom-Comp is a similar site that is also very good.

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NPs Members Maxtra and MapleDots and GoDaddy’s Joe Styler

A long term NPs member (Dustie) found one night that her name that was also her domain name sold via quick transfer at a price she did not intend. It still is not entirely clear how this happened, but to lose a name she held for 21 years was traumatic. She could easily have lost the name forever. However as it turns out the buyer was NP member Maxtra. Within a few hours of this coming to the attention of the community another NPs member, MapleDots made a $5000 offer to buy the domain from Maxtra and hold it until the situation was sorted out, and to return it free to Dustie if an investigation showed it had been transferred wrongly. He did this without knowing the people, just to make sure the domain did not sell to someone and Dustie could never get it back. In the end Maxtra sold it back to Dustie at exactly the price of the unintended transaction and MapleDots was not out money. However, his gesture touched many at NPs, including me, as did Maxtra being willing to give up a valuable domain name that he had proerly purchased for much less than it was worth. Also GoDaddy’s Joe Styler is a hero here, both for immediately getting involved in doing a high level investigation, and in facilitating the transfer back, GoDaddy absorbed the commission fees, and compensated Maxtra and recognized MapleDots as well. You can read the details in this long thread. All around this was a feel good story of people doing generous things.

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David at WebTrading

It can be a solitary business being a domainer, so each month’s shout out I wanted to mention at least one domainer and give a bit of attention to their portfolio. David (NameMarket NPs username) is a long term member of our community (he joined NPs back in 2003) with a proven record of success (he is a TOP member of NPs). While he has mainly dealt in legacy extensions, and done a variety of other financial and web development things, of late he has, in addition, accumulated a very nice .best TLD portfolio. You can view his entire .best portfolio at this site. He has many great words and phrases from AutoLoan.best to Campgrounds.best, and Cloud.best to MedicalSchools.best. I got to know David through NPs, although we have never met in person. I like the way that a long term legacy investor decided to diversify and try a new type of domain name. We all know this comes with risk, particularly so in an extension like this with a very thin trading record. I was impressed with his open attitude and the portfolio he acquired.

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I plan to feature some new people and organizations every month or so here. There were so many I could have included, as this industry is full of good people doing innovative, interesting and generous things.  If you want to contact me, you can see the ways here. 

Note that a similar version of this post is also available on my website here.
Note that mention here does not imply endorsement or association by them of this site. Nor did I seek or obtain their permissions to be listed (if any object just let me know, please, and I will take mention out).

Are Average Domain Prices Decreasing?

Recently I looked at what years the top 100 all time domain sales took place.  The data shows some correlation to the strength of the stock markets, with a slight lag. Other than  that, there is not clear statistical evidence for a net increase or decrease over the two decades studied.  A more important question, though, is what has been  happening to the average  domain sale price. I look at that in this issue.

The Data

Let's start by taking a  look at a NameBio generated graph of the average weekly price over the past decade (click on the image to see a higher resolution view). It is clear that there was more variability in the early years. There is also an indication that the average weekly sales price has been decreasing.  Many weeks this year that average has been $900 and less, whereas in the early parts of the period covered in the graph the average is normally in the $2000 to $3500 range. The plot is for all domain extensions, with the weekly average used.

While the graph suggests that the average price has been decreasing, it is difficult to discern precise data from the NameBio generated plot.  I therefore looked at the average sales price in different intervals, with that data given in the table shown on the right. I looked at data for both all extensions and for .com only,  although the data is only slightly different since .com is dominates the market.

Discussion

Certainly the data seems to suggest that prices are going down for domain names. For example if we look at .com domains only the average over all time represented by the NameBio database (about 20 years) is $2714.  If we look at only the last five years it is $1731 and has dropped to $1258 this year.

One explanation is that more low quality domains are now selling.  There is some evidence in the data for that hypothesis. For example 2016 had 67,600 sales of .com domains while 2017 saw 66,400 sales, but the average number over the last five years is lower, 58,500.

It would be interesting  to know if the median price was going down as well, but this can not readily be calculated for large datasets with the NameBio public interface.

It is relevant to look at resale of the same domain name to see if that was going up or down.  This is more challenging to do, but for a small dataset (I studied 13, 165 domain name sales over  a  61 day period) indeed prices seem to go down more often than  they go up. I found 288 domain sales with a previous sales history, 104 showed an increase and 184 a decrease in price. As I explain, however,  the apparent conclusion may not be valid, and in any case the statistical sample is small.

Over the years there have been some changes in which venues report to NameBio, and it is possible that there are systematic biases introduced by this. 

If it is true that domain prices are indeed falling that has serious implications for the viability of domain name investing.  If we view domains as a commodity it would mean that simply holding a portfolio of names will, on average, be a losing proposition. I will develop this hypothesis in a future blog post, although the apparent downward trend should be of concern to domain name investors.

Original post Oct 5, 2018.

Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you. You also accept full responsibility for any domain investing decisions you may make. I have no association with the folks who maintain NameBio. I acknowledge the makers of these for the valuable products that they make freely available to the domain name community. 

I try to be fair, balanced and objective in my analysis.  If you feel this post does not meet that standard, please express your concerns to me.  I never accept compensation to provide favourable review of any particular service or product.

The text of this posting is ©R Hawkes, all rights reserved. However, you may, without permission, use reasonable length portions of the post as long as a link to this post is also provided. If you wish to use the complete contents of a post, please request permission. I am normally open to reprinting, but will consider each request individually. 

The Big Jump

One of the many nice features at NamePros is that members can post domain names in an appraisal section and other members offer insights on what pricing should be on that domain name.  Domain valuation is of course not an exact science by any means, and frequently different estimates vary significantly. When providing an estimate for new global top level domains (ngTLD), often if there is not a record of significant prior sales in the extension members will express the opinion that the name is essentially worthless ('reg fee' is the term domainers like to use for this). I think this view is perhaps too simplistic, which is the topic of this post.

A Sale Today

While the idea for this post has been in my head for some months, it was one of the sales on today's NameBio daily report that pushed me to finally write it.  The domain name smile.direct sold for $7018 on Sedo.  Let me admit something - even as someone who knows ngTLDs pretty well, I had not really ever noticed that there was a .direct extension before.  After seeing this major sale, it took third place overall on a strong day of NameBio listed sales, I decided to look into the history of .direct extension sales on NameBio. Here is the complete list, it's not very long, just 5 sales including this one.  The last sale before this one was almost two years ago, and it was for just $111. Today's sale of smile.direct has a value above the combined sales values of all previous sales in the extension. The highest previous sales were tackle.direct and 1.direct, each of which sold for $2500 a few years ago.  I am sure that ngTLD sceptics will say that this is simply an outlier in which the purchaser paid far too much.  While accepting that is possible, I think the case can be made that this name was worth the purchase price, based on a multi-faceted approach.  I deal with that question in the next section.

A Multi-Faceted Approach to Valuation

I think that it is important not to take any single measure of the worth of a domain name.

• One component, but only one, is to look at previous sales in the extension, as presented above.  
• A second question is to look at previous sales in the term.  If we use NameBio to look at sales of the exact term smile, we find 8 sales (including this one) with an average sales price $3342 and a  standard deviation of about $2000.  This suggests that this sale is on the high end (the highest sale on list) but within bound of expectations.  The term has never sold in .com, .net or .org, so the average price is reflective of sales in other extensions only.  Probably the best comparator in the list is the sale of smile.club which sold early in 2016 for $5017 (it also sold in .me for a similar amount).
• A third aspect to evaluate is how popular the term is in searches and for advertisers.  For me today when I search on smile there are 4.4 billion search results.  Yes, no misprint, billion - I check this for thousands of names, and I am not sure I recall such a large number.  The term is clearly broadly important on the internet. Now that is overall results, so important to look at monetized searches.  You can get detailed information from Estibot for a domain name, but once there is a sale NameBio provide some basics.  In this case the exact word 'smile' (i.e. just those searching 'smile', not searching for 'better smile') has about 2 million exact searches per month with an advertiser cost per click (CPC) of $0.36 for the exact searches according to NameBio summary.  The more detailed report from Estibot suggests about 550,000 monthly exact searches and a CPC of $2.20 (these values change with time, probably accounting for the difference).  Those are certainly decent numbers, if you are considering the domain name for a monetized reference site.
• Possibly the most important thing to evaluate is how many potential users are there for the domain name.  In this case the most obvious use is in dental applications (dentists, toothpaste, denture providers, whitening products, etc.). This is big business and smile is generic enough that the number of potential users is huge.  But this is by no means the only possible use of the domain.  It also would work perfectly for mental health, positive psychology, and early childhood education, among many other areas (e.g. Amazon and other companies have used a smile in branding).  I have no idea who the actual purchaser is in this domain name.
• An additional aspect that needs to enter into the valuation is the inherent quality in the domain name.  This is a matter of the intersection of aesthetics and marketing, and cannot be evaluated in an exact way.  However, a name should be memorable - if someone hears it will they remember it.  It should, in general, also engender positive emotional feelings to work best in marketing.  There is no doubt that smile is very strong in both aspects. 
• For ngTLDs, a key consideration is how well the term and extension match.  In this case smile is consistent with direct, although it does restrict some of the possible applications mentioned earlier.  A dental company that provided products or services directly to end users would be an excellent fit. 
• How much competition is there for among similar domain names?  If we look at the big three legacy extensions (com/net/org) for the domain name, the .com and the .org go to parking pages but without explicit statements about possible sale of the domain, while the .net goes to a forbidden page. When I check for extensions that it is available in at standard registrations, there are only a handful, mainly specialized (one of the better ones is smile.golf, in case a reader wants to register it). 
• While it should be well down your priority list, I do believe that it is always worthwhile to look at the automated estimates of domain worth. In this case GoValue indicates an estimated worth of $2456, a pretty good estimate in my opinion.  Through GoValue I also find some additional comparator sales of the exact word that were not in NameBio, including a $2225 sale in the .pro extension, a very nice domain name in my opinion that could well have gone for even more. When I used Estibot it suggested a worth of $7200, also a solid estimate of worth. Estibot also gives a wealth of information on advertiser CPC history and monetized search data.
• Does it have special value to certain potential end users?  When evaluating a ngTLD domain I usually try a Google search (using the + before each term) restricted to only sites that include both the terms, in this case, smile and direct.  The results here are dominated by a company called Smile Direct Club.  I have no idea whether they are the purchaser, but clearly the domain name would work excellently for them, either as a rebranding or more likely for redirection purposes. 

It's Not Just Smile

If this was the only case, or one of just a few, where the first recent sale in an extension is much higher than previous sales, then maybe we could chalk it up to either a chance occurrence or perhaps a buyer paying too much. But a much higher sales price is fairly routine in the ngTLD world.  Let me list a few.

• When home.loans sold for $500,000, the previously highest sale in loans was just $7500 and there were only 4 previous NameBio listed sales at any value in the extension.
• When autism.rocks sold for $100,000 on Sedo in 2015 there had not been a sale at all previously in the extension. 
• Vacation.rentals sold in late 2017 for $500,300.  The previous highest sale in that extension was just over $1500, and even today there are only 5 other sales in the extension listed on NameBio.  
• The .online extension has sold many times, but when casino.online sold for $201,500 in March 2017 the previous highest sale in the extension was just over $16,000 (there have been some higher sales in the extension since them, but not nearly at the casino level). 
• The great domain name video.games sold for $183,000 in 2017.  The next highest sale in the extension is only $1101. 

While the above are the most dramatic cases, there are many domain names where the first sale in an extension is at a major amount. And it's not just in new extensions.  For example, I pointed out on Twitter that when Buckley Media Group sold sleeping.com summer 2018 for $502,225 that price exceeded the combined sales of all 251 previous NameBio listed sales that include the term 'sleep' anywhere (the next highest sale price was $14,888).

Discussion

What are the lessons to be learned from examples such as these?

1. While prior sales in an extension should be taken into account in an evaluation, that should never be your only consideration in estimating the worth of a domain name.
2. It is important  to take a multi-faceted approach to any domain name valuation, looking at the strength of the term, previous sales in the term, previous sales in the extension, search and advertiser statistics, the aesthetics of the name,  competition with similar names, and the pool of potential end users, among other factors.
3. For new extensions, the critical question is often whether the term matches effectively with the extension for for real world applications.
4. Prior sales do not set a limit on the possible selling price of a domain name. There are many cases of sales much higher than previous sales, or even the very first sale in an extension being a large one.
5. A domain name will have value if an end-user sees a good use for it.  It will have a lot of a value if there is a strong desire for the domain name by at least one potential purchaser.
6. Domain name valuation is not an exact science. We should not pretend that it is. 

Now let me stress that this post does not mean that any domain name might sell for a large amount.  The key issue is always the quality of the domain name.  Let's not over-simplify the complex task of evaluating the worth of a domain name by saying that just because there is not a history of large value sales in an extension so none are possible.

Links:

• NameBio Daily Report Sept 17, 2018
• Smile.direct NameBio listing
• NameBio list of all .direct extension sales
• NameBio database
• GoValue
• Estibot
• NamePros
• Our site NamesThat.win - thanks for visiting
• Permanent link to this blog post

Original post Sept 18, 2018.

Disclosure:  I currently hold a number of  ngTLD domain names, but none mentioned directly in this report. I am  not associated with NameBio, but would like to acknowledge their incredible database and their generosity to make it available to the domain community. I have no association with GoDaddy or the GoValue automated estimate of worth tool or Estibot, except as a user of these automated worth tools.

Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you. You also accept full responsibility for any domain investing decisions you may make.

I try to be fair, balanced and objective in my analysis.  If you feel this post does not meet that standard, please express your concerns to me. 

In a very few cases there may be affiliate links on this blog. This means I receive a small amount if users visit or make purchases via the link. You do not pay any additional charge due to using an affiliate link, and in some cases your cost will be below the normal price. I receive no identifying information about who clicks, or does not click, any link. I never accept compensation to provide favourable review of any particular service or product.

The text of this posting is ©R Hawkes, all rights reserved. However, you may, without permission, use reasonable length portions of the post as long as a link to this post is also provided. If you wish to use the complete contents of a post, please request permission. I am normally open to reprinting, but will consider each request individually. 

The images used are either those associated with a product or service, my own images, or Pixabay images believed to be available for use without attribution. If you see any image that you believe is problematic, please let us know and we will immediately correct the situation.

Hopeful Week for New Extensions

Proponents of new domain extensions have waited a long time for much good news.  Yes, occasionally there were big sales announcements such as The.club and Home.loans sales, and some of the registries have reported a string of good value premium sales. However, the domain after market in new extensions has been slow throughout and almost non-existent for some extensions. While one should never place too much emphasis on any single day or even one week or month, I wonder if August  2018 might be viewed as when things changed for the new extensions.

The August 21 Daily Report

The August 21 NameBio daily report includes 16 new extension domain sales, with sales in 12 different extensions.  There were two sales in each of the .bid, .club, .date and .space extensions, and a single sale each in 8 other extensions.  I can't remember a day during the past year when so many different new extensions sold in a single day. To put it in perspective, on this day there were more new extension sales than .net, .info, .co and .io combined! Yes, critics will point out that most of these sales were at modest prices (average price was $254) and that it is just one day. For me, however, the more significant point is that this does not seem to be one isolated day, but rather an upturn in new extension sales during the past few weeks as I explain below.

The Last Week

NameBio allows you to easily search for data from a certain time period and extension class, so I searched for sales in new domain extensions (ngTLDs) for the past week (ending Aug 21, 2018).  It shows  that there were 44 sales in 23 different extensions, with an average price of $1809.  That is more different new extensions than sell in most months.

Here is the breakdown by extension for the week long period ending Aug 21, 2018.

• app 1
• bid 2
• club 3
• cricket 1
• date 2
• fun 2
• life 1
• loan 1
• men 2
• online 3
• party 1
• place 2
• review 2
• science 2
• space 3
• stream 1
• top 8
• trade 2
• webcam 1
• win 1
• world 1
• xyz 2

While some of these, such as .club, .online and .xyz have sales regularly, for a number of the extensions the sales reported this week are among the first.  For example, these are the first two .fun sales ever (at least in the NameBio database), while for .space these 3 sales represent almost 40% of all sales in the database (there are of course many others not in that database, either because of venue or dollar value). The only two NameBio recorded sales ever of .webcam have been in August, and this is the first recorded .stream sale in the database. This week saw the second and third highest  sales of all time in the .place extension. The sales in .review, .trade, .loan and .men, while not the first in those extensions, are among only a handful of prior sales.

It would appear that the new managers of the former Famous Four extensions are already having a positive impact on acceptance of the extensions. Many of their extensions, including .bid, .date, .loan, .men, .party, .review, .science, .stream, trade and .win, saw sales in this week. Spamhaus measured abuse is already way down in some (not all, for example .men and .date still have high levels of abuse) of the former Famous Four extensions - e.g. .science went from being among the worst just over a year ago to being broadly comparable in abuse to major extensions now (its score of 1.45 is a bit worse than .net and .com but much better than .us and .biz, for example).

It is important to realize that the average price was influenced by some high end registry .top sales, and any week, no matter how encouraging, could just be a statistical outlier. Nevertheless the news is encouraging (see also the section Other Promising Signs below).

Why Does The Value End Of Market Matter?

While high end sales (along with actual use) play a significant role in giving respect to new domain name extensions,  I think healthy new extensions also depend on a substantial number of aftermarket sales at the value end (which I interpret in the low to mid hundreds of dollars per sale).  Even in legacy extensions, many of the sales are at modest amounts, typical median prices of a few hundred dollars. Critics argue that end user sales are typically higher than this, claiming that NameBio data is biased by sales between domainers at venues such as GoDaddy Auctions. They argue that end user sales at venues not reporting to NameBio, or private sales, are usually at higher prices. I see logic in this argument, although without evidence it is difficult to be sure. No matter whether biased with respect to average price data, NameBio data clearly indicates that many sales do take place in the few hundred dollar range.

I don't think that it is healthy to have the only sales in an extension at the high premium end. The sales noted here, of many different extensions, sales that are for the most part not registry premium names, and across multiple venues, gives hope that the sputtering new extension aftermarket may finally be finding traction. The natural pattern is that if extensions become accepted through a multitude of sales in the $100 to $400 range that later values will go up for the better names.

A big part of the potential domain market is currently not purchasing, in any extensions, domain names.  If new extensions play an important role in serving these end users it would be positive for the entire domain market.  I am encouraged that there are other recent promising signs for the new extensions as outlined below.

Other Promising Signs

There were other recent promising signals for new extension proponents. I list a few below.

1. There has been at least one ngTLD sale each day for the last 30 days (starting July 24), with an average of 4.1 NameBio reported new extension sales per day.
2. The .club extension reported generally promising financial numbers.  This interview with  Colin Campbell of CLUB and DomainNameWire has insights on the overall picture as well as insights on the strength of premium domain sales in the Asian market and the success of selling premium domains with extended payment plans on Namecheap in particular.
3. A major investor and personality in the domain name field announced a major sale of a new extension when Andrew Rosener announced on Twitter the $15,000 sale of token.xyz on Sedo.  Andrew is a well known and  highly respected individual who usually deals  in legacy extensions, so I think this sale will influence others.
4. The .fun extension announced strength in real world use, which coupled with the first after market sales seen here is encouraging news of the health of the extension which recently reached 100,000 registrations as well.
5. The .app extension seems off to a reasonable start in terms of aftermarket sales. with 6 sales in the first few months since general availability and an average sales price of $4426.
6. With 24 major sales of new extensions (on NameBio) of $25,000 or more so far in 2018, the high end seems very strong currently.
7. Both the introductions of .app and .icu seem to have been successful when compared with previous new extension introductions.
8. As I pointed out, while the new extensions still represent a tiny amount  of major website use, they are growing in use faster than legacy extensions. 
9. While the difference will not be large, 2018 seems on track to have the highest total dollar value in new extension sales ever. 

Conclusions

I realize that this  could be a statistical blip, and we may return next month to a small number of new extension sales per week dominated by a few extensions. I am hopeful, however,  that this is an early sign of a brighter future.  I see inherent worth in the new domain extensions when a high value word is combined with an extension that meaningfully matches that word.  Some of the extensions that saw movement this week have good potential in my opinion. For example, .fun and .win are both ideal keywords to use as part of a domain name phrase. Extensions like .club, .online, .space and .xyz have already achieved reasonable actual use, and it is good to see them also being traded in the after market. App has a clearly defined role, emphasizes the importance of a secure environment, and will no doubt continue to grow in sales. Most of the new extensions are intended not as broad extensions, but for uses in specific niches.  As such it is important that we see sales at a range of prices in a variety of different extensions.  How bright is the future for new domain extensions? Only time will tell, but this has indeed been a good week!

Links:

• NameBio Daily Report Aug 21, 2018.
• NameBio database
• Previous monthly ngTLD sales report (July 2018)
• New management at former Famous Four extensions (Domain Incite)
• Colin Campbell of CLUB (Domain Name Wire)
• My look at the global domain market and needs
• DNJournal look at the Radix .fun extension
• Spamhaus TLD scores
• Website use and trends for different extensions
• Domain name phrases
• Our site NamesThat.win - thanks for visiting
• Permanent link to this blog post

Original post Aug 22, 2018.

Disclosure:  I am  not associated with NameBio, but would like to acknowledge their incredible database and their generosity to make it available to the domain community. My portfolio of domain names is mainly ngTLDs, as well as a number of .co, .com and .ca (and a few other country codes).

Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you. You also accept full responsibility for any domain investing decisions you may make that use data from this post.

I try to be fair, balanced and objective in my analysis.  If you feel this post does not meet that standard, please express your concerns to me.  

In a very few cases there may be affiliate links on this blog. This means I receive a small amount if users visit or make purchases via the link. You do not pay any additional charge due to using an affiliate link, and in some cases your cost will be below the normal price. I receive no identifying information about who clicks, or does not click, any link. I never accept compensation to provide favourable review of any particular service or product.

The text of this posting is ©R Hawkes, all rights reserved. However, you may, without permission, use reasonable length portions of the post as long as a link to this post is also provided. If you wish to use the complete contents of a post, please request permission. I am normally open to reprinting, but will consider each request individually. 

The images used are either those associated with a product or service, my own images, or Pixabay images believed to be available for use without attribution. If you see any image that you believe is problematic, please let us know and we will immediately correct the situation.

Are You Missing The TOP?

Every morning at 9 AM in the Eastern time zone Michael Sumner at NameBio releases the daily domain name sales report.  I, and probably most serious domain name investors and analysts, eagerly check the report each morning.  I find that Micheal puts just the right amount of detail into the report, making it an informative but quick read.  The purpose of this thread is to warn you to not base your perceptions of what is selling only on the daily report.  Let me explain.

The NameBio Daily Report

The structure of each daily report is the same.  It starts with a title giving the total sales volume for the day along with the name and price of the top domain name sale.  After that there is a brief summary that repeats that information and  also gives the number of sales, and the comparison of number and total dollar amount with the previous days. A bit later will be a summary of  those  domain names  that had sold perviously, giving  the year and amount of the previous sale for each, and the percentage increase or decrease.  Then the complete sales list, typically about 220 sales, is given in order of decreasing sales price. For each the domain name, price and sales venue are given.

The monetization of the NameBio daily report depends on promotion of some auctions and sales, so that information is usually embedded somewhere in the daily reports. That information can also be valuable for those expanding their domain portfolio with new acquisitions.  I also like that Michael provides archived reports in an easy to access fashion.  For example I recently used the last 100 daily reports in an  analysis looking at which domain extensions were in first place most often.

Where Are The .TOP Sales?

When I did a search using the NameBio database the other day, I was surprised that the database showed 17 sales of .TOP extension domain names during the previous week (Aug 5-12, 2018), even though I believe only one of them had been on any of the preceding seven NameBio daily domain sales reports. These sales were significant, ranging in price per domain from $638 to $51,187, with an  average sales price of $4549.  In total they accounted for over $77,000 sales in .TOP in just that week. The sales venues were predominantly Jiangsu Bangning, the .TOP registry, but also included sales during this one week period at Alibaba Cloud and NameSilo.

So why were the .TOP domain sales missing from the daily report? I believe the answer is that naturally each daily report can only include sales reports received by the time the report is assembled, so venues that report sporadically or from other time zones are often excluded. Although this bias is of course not deliberate, if you base your impressions only on the NameBio daily report they will be skewed. In particular there is bias against trades in the Asian domain markets, and extensions like TOP.  Of course everyone realizes there are other biases related to which venues report to NameBio, and the fact that domain name sales under $100 are not publicly reported.

So What Did I Miss?

I present the TOP sales in the NameBio database for the week of Aug 5–12 in the table on the right (click on the table if you need a higher resolution view).  Not only are the total number and value significant, but there are some noteworthy individual sales.

The two letter domain name bg sold for more than $51,000, and several 3 letter domain names sold as well. I was interested in the sales of a number of animal names: koala, frog, dolphin and zebra, which each sold for more than $1000.

Conclusions

While I urge you to read the NameBio daily report each morning, make sure you remember that sometimes sales do not make it into the NameBio database in time to make the daily report. This is particularly true for venues that only report sporadically to NameBio and those from venues located in the far east time zones.

Some may say 'I don't really care if I miss the odd ngTLD sale'.  This perception bias if you look only at the daily report can be very significant.  For example, in the period considered here the missing .TOP sales equalled the combined  number of sales in that period for .CO, .DE and .INFO (16 in total), almost equal to .IO sales in that period (19), and represented about 50% the number of .NET sales (32) during the period. 

I am not sure how much effort this would  entail, but one way around the issue is to include at the bottom of a daily report recent database additions that were not shown  in a previous daily report.  But all each user needs to do is to periodically do a NameBio search to make sure that they are not missing sales of interest to them.  The time frame setting for previous week and month make this easy to do.

This is a good time to acknowledge the amazing service offered to the domain name community by Michael and NameBio.  Their database currently has more than 614,000 sales representing over $1.6 billion.  The oldest sale recorded in the database is from 1997 (for you trivia fans, it is business.com which sold for $150,000 in a 1997 private sale.)

Any sort of significant domain name analysis would be impossible without NameBio.  That Michael makes it freely available to us all, in such a powerful and user friendly format, is indeed wonderful.  Thank you! A day without NameBio is a day without domain name sales data!

Links:

• NameBio Daily Reports
• NameBio database
• Our site NamesThat.win - thanks for visiting
• Permanent link to this blog post

Original post Aug 16, 2018.

Disclosure:  I am  not associated with NameBio, but would like to acknowledge their incredible database and their generosity to make it available to the domain community. My portfolio of domain names is mainly ngTLDs, as well as a number of .co, .com and .ca (and a few other country codes). I do invest in the .top domain extension, along with many others.

Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you. You also accept full responsibility for any domain investing decisions you may make that use data from this post.

I try to be fair, balanced and objective in my analysis.  If you feel this post does not meet that standard, please express your concerns to me.  

In a very few cases there may be affiliate links on this blog. This means I receive a small amount if users visit or make purchases via the link. You do not pay any additional charge due to using an affiliate link, and in some cases your cost will be below the normal price. I receive no identifying information about who clicks, or does not click, any link. I never accept compensation to provide favourable review of any particular service or product.

The text of this posting is ©R Hawkes, all rights reserved. However, you may, without permission, use reasonable length portions of the post as long as a link to this post is also provided. If you wish to use the complete contents of a post, please request permission. I am normally open to reprinting, but will consider each request individually. 

The images used are either those associated with a product or service, my own images, or Pixabay images believed to be available for use without attribution. If you see any image that you believe is problematic, please let us know and we will immediately correct the situation.

NNNNN Domain Names

While it is challenging  to estimate the worth of many domain name types, short numbered domains are somewhat easier to predict.  In the NameBio report for August 11, 2018 there were 30 sales of NNNNN (five number) domain names.  With a common day and sales venue (NameJet), this offered an opportunity to study a homogeneous dataset.  In this report I look at the sales prices, and place them within a historical context. I also see how effective  GoDaddy GoValue is in predicting sales prices for NNNNN.com domain names.

Recent Sales

With so many NNNNN sales in a single NameBio daily report, I decided to take a closer look at the prices paid.  There were 30 sales of NNNNN domain names in this daily report, ranging in price from $490 to $1500, with an average price of $654.  The majority of sales were at $500, and that was also the median price. You can see just the list of just the  5 number  domain names from that day at this link.

Several numbered domains did go for prices significantly higher than the average on this day.  The two that went for the highest price ($1500), both contain the sequence 23 and also the number 7.  Many people and cultural traditions find the number 7 to be magical or lucky, although in Chinese culture it is also treated with suspicion.  It is easy to see why the lowest priced domain went for a bit less - it starts with a 0 which is generally less desired both aesthetically and because of possible confusion with letter O.

I do not have the expertise to comment in detail on coded messages in certain numbers.  This fascinating article on Chinese messages in numbered domains will help you understand that phenomena.

Historical Valuations

We thought it would be interesting to take a  brief look at how prices for these recent sales of five number domain names compare to prices for similar digital assets in the past.  The average prices paid for NNNNN.com domain names is given below.  The information has been obtained from the NameBio database.

• 2018 YTD  $952 (range  $151 to $22,383, with 2232 sales)
• 2017 $959 (range $134 to $25,500, with 2454 sales)
• 2016 $1098 (range $100 to $34,501, with 2460 sales)
• last 5 years $1056 (range $100 to $245,000, with average 2274 sales per year)
• all time $1051 (9343 sales)

The clear picture is that several thousand NNNNN domain names sell each year (at least as listed on NameBio, there are undoubtedly many more that sell on Chinese venues not reported to NameBio) with the average price in the range from  $900 to $1100.  Within this context the recent  sales are on the low side, but the average prices in the historical data are heavily influenced by sales of highly desired sequences. There is some suggestion in the historical data that the average price of NNNNN domain  names is decreasing slightly, probably a reflection from the general  cooling in the Chinese domain name market.

All Time Top NNNNN Sales

Let's take a  look at the highest sales of all time for NameBio recorded NNNNN.com domain names.  You can find the full  list at this link. 

1. 88888  sold at Uniregistry for $245,000 in Dec 2013
2. 17176 sold at Uniregistry for $55,000 in Feb 2015
3. 10023 sold privately for $50,000 in Feb 2015
4. 83333 sold at Uniregistry for $43,000 in Aug 2015
5. 70777 sold at NameJet for $34,501 in Jan 2016
6. 88808 sold  at Uniregistry for $30,000 in Aug 2015
7. 77787 sold at SnapNames for $26,055 in Oct 2015
8. 79000 sold at GoDaddy for $25,500 in May 2017
9. 55588 sold at DropCatch for $25,050 in Mar 2016
10. 97088 sold  at NameJet for $22,500 in Feb  2016

While the largest sale was in 2013, the peak in numbers of high value NNNNN sales was in 2015. While 4 of the high sales include at least 88 (a lucky number in China), and the highest sale all 8's, various other combinations occur in the leading sales.  A number of  different venues have accounted for the sales, with Uniregistry leading, particularly in the early years.

GoValue Estimates of Worth

Since these are liquid assets, frequently traded, and  somewhat homogeneous (although with preferences for certain numbers and sequences), they should be easier to predict prices for than say multiple word (or even single word) domain names.  I had a look at GoDaddy GoValue estimates of worth for each of the domain names sold yesterday (with older sales it i difficult to be sure that the sale value did not alter the estimated worth).

What I found is in the table on the right (click on the table for a higher resolution view).  For each domain name sold (all on same day and venue) I give the name, the GoDaddy GoValue estimate of worth, and the sales price recorded.  I also compute for each the ratio of the two values – e.g. if a domain name sold  for $1400 and GoValue estimated its worth at $700 the ratio would be 2.

If you go to the bottom of the table, I compute the average and standard deviation for each column.  You can see that there is no evidence of bias, with the average prices in the GoValue estimates of worth and the sales values almost identical at $648 and $654.  This implies that the domain names recently sold did in fact trade at about the correct value.

If we look at individual values, most are at ratios of 0.50 to 1.50 indicating to me that the worths of NNNNN can  be estimated moderately precisely by automated means (although see next paragraph).  Many sales were within 20% of  their estimates of worth.  However, there are exceptions. For example GoValue predicted that 47601 was only worth $167 (it sold at the median price of $500), and the name 23757 that tied for the highest price ($1500) was only projected to have a worth of $700 by GoValue.

If I plot these data,  I obtain the result shown at the top of this blog post. There is only a weak correlation between the GoValue estimate of worth and the actual sales price.  As background an R2 value of 1.00 means perfectly correlated data, while 0.00 would mean no correlation.  This dataset with R2=0.11 is pretty weakly correlated. I actually tried a few different types of fits to the data (linear, polynomial, logarithmic, exponential) and while a couple were marginally better than the linear fit shown, not by enough that made them worth the complexity in my opinion.

For the mathematically inclined, I show at the top of the graph the equation for the best linear fit to the data, and it is repeated in words below.

Sales Price (US$) = $430 + 0.34 x GoValue Estimate

For example, if GoValue tells you that a certain NNNNN.com domain name is worth $900 the best fit regression suggests that your sales value would be about $740.  Note that at best results are only meaningful to two significant digits, so I have rounded both the parameters in the equation and the final result to this precision.  Let me stress that this is only moderately more significant than simply using the average value.  Also, this equation is derived only for NNNNN.com domain names and is not directly applicable for any other types of domain names. 

Conclusions

Christopher Beam has written a really informative article at The New Republic on why, particularly in China, numbered sequences are so popular and effective as domain names. I strongly encourage you, particularly if you invest in numeric domain names, to read the entire article which is full of  insights.

One thing  I noticed while using GoValue was that there were numerous comparator sales that came up that had not been in the NameBio database, and generally these were towards the lower end of sales prices.  This suggests that some of the venues not reporting to NameBio may well have lower prices, and that possibly the price range for the recent sales is indeed in keeping with the overall record. NameBio no longer  calculate the median, but almost certainly it is in the same range  as these sales. NamePros experienced  users have pointed out that sales to end users frequently have higher prices than  sales on venues such as GoDaddy Auctions and some of the registrar marketplaces that are dominated by sales from one domain investor to another.

Overall GoValue does a good job of estimating the value of these assets, with almost no difference between the average value predicted by GoValue for the dataset and the average sales price.  It seems only moderately effective in recognizing higher quality names however, so you should never depend exclusively on any automated estimate of domain worth.

As with conventional  real estate, prices go up and down over time.  I sense a very slight downward trend, but NNNNN domain names remain good value assets. Relatively short numbered domain names are among the most liquid part of a domain name portfolio, and therefore deserve to be part of your diversified portfolio, provided that you can acquire them at reasonable cost.

Links:

• NameBio Daily Report for August 11
• Just the NNNNN sales from Aug 11, 2018 report
• All Time NNNNN.com sales
• The Secret Messages Inside Chinese URLs 
• Chinese Numerology
• NameBio Daily Reports
• NameBio database
• GoValue
• Our site NamesThat.win - thanks for visiting
• Permanent link to this blog post

Original post Aug 12, 2018.

Disclosure:  I do not currently hold any NNNNN domain names, so have no conflicts of interest with respect to them.  I do try to use a fair and balanced approach in all of my analyses however.  I am  not associated with NameBio, but would like to acknowledge their incredible database and their generosity to make it available to the domain community. 

Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you. You also accept full responsibility for any domain investing decisions you may make that use data from this post.

I try to be fair, balanced and objective in my analysis.  If you feel this post does not meet that standard, please express your concerns to me.  

In a very few cases there may be affiliate links on this blog. This means I receive a small amount if users visit or make purchases via the link. You do not pay any additional charge due to using an affiliate link, and in some cases your cost will be below the normal price. I receive no identifying information about who clicks, or does not click, any link. I never accept compensation to provide favourable review of any particular service or product.

The text of this posting is ©R Hawkes, all rights reserved. However, you may, without permission, use reasonable length portions of the post as long as a link to this post is also provided. If you wish to use the complete contents of a post, please request permission. I am normally open to reprinting, but will consider each request individually. 

The images used are either those associated with a product or service, my own images, or Pixabay images believed to be available for use without attribution. If you see any image that you believe is problematic, please let us know and we will immediately correct the situation.

Who Is First?

This week's Domain Name Journal sales report by Ron Jackson with only 9 of the spots in the top 20 going to .com extension domain names has got a lot of discussion at NamePros. Proponents of the new global top level domains (ngTLDs) have pointed out that 5 of the top spots went to new extensions.  However, critics have justifiably pointed out that it was a single week, and that the Radix release of multiple month of sales had a big impact, and in any case the big sales were by registries not independent domain name investors.

The Study

I decided to look back at the last 100 NameBio daily sales reports on its archive in order to get a broader picture of how often different extensions lead with the highest domain name sale.  For each day I simply noted the extension of the domain name that was in first place.  Here is what I found.

• com 75
• all other cc not listed below 7 (2 in de, 1 each in co.uk, al, fi, us and ch)
• ngTLD 4
• net 4
• io 3
• co 2
• org 2
• legacy gTLD (asia) 1

I did these by hand ticks, and may well have missed one or two (in fact I think I did, as the ticks add to 98 and should 100 for the 10 pages of archives), but this presents a substantially correct picture that com lead about 75% of time. This is of course not surprising.

Discussion

Probably both sceptics and proponents of ngTLDs will find something positive in this analysis. The ngTLD sceptics will  point out that .com lead all ngTLDs combined by a factor of more than 15. Proponents of ngTLDs will counter that some large new extension sales are happening, enough to lead the daily market report, and that the rate at which ngTLDs appear on the market report is higher than it was two years ago (I have not been able  to  quantitatively  check this, but I believe it is true).

While the .com extension dominates the raw numbers, if you scale these results according to registration numbers (since at least approximately the number of domains for sale in each extension probably scales that way), the situation becomes somewhat more equal across extensions, although .com still leads.

To look into this I present below the number of times an extension appears at the top of the NameBio daily report per total registrations in that extension. I used data that about 133.9 million .com are registered, 14.4 million .com, 146.3 million country code extensions in total, and 20.2 million ngTLDs.

• So 1 ngTLD leads the NameBio daily report (during this 100 day period) for approximately every 5 million registrations.
• By comparison 1 .com leads the same NameBio daily report period for about every 1.8 million registrations.
• For .net, the numbers would be 1 per 3.6 million registrations.
• For country code extensions taken in total, about 1 per 11.3 million registrations

These are small number statistics and not all that significant. Within country code, clearly some extensions do much better than the average, while the majority will never lead the NameBio daily report.  It would be interesting to look into similar data for a longer period, and I may do that in the future.

We should not read too much significance into how often domain names appear at the top of the NameBio daily report, or for that matter the top of the Domain Name Journal weekly reports.  Yes, it is interesting to see which domain names are the high price sellers, but more significant indicators of health of extensions are use in actual websites, total sales volume, average sales price, and especially the trends in those numbers. I looked at the website use statistics and trends in this post, and will be looking at the others in future posts.

Links:

• Domain Name Journal weekly report mentioned in this post
• NamePros discussion on the report
• Radix premium sales report first 6 months 2018
• NameBio Daily Reports
• Verisign statistics on domain registrations in different extensions
• Website use and trends of different extensions
• Our site NamesThat.win - thanks for visiting
• Permanent link to this blog post

Original post Aug 10, 2018.

Disclosure:  I hold mainly ngTLD domain names (you can see my complete portfolio here) and  that may be considered a bias.  I do try to use a fair and balanced approach in all of my analyses however.  I am  not associated with NameBio, but would like to acknowledge their incredible database and their generosity to make it available to the domain community. 

Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you.

I try to be fair, balanced and objective in my analysis.  If you feel this post does not meet that standard, please express your concerns to me.  As disclosure, I do have a domain portfolio that is predominantly ngTLD domain names, although I do also own a number of .com, .ca, .co and a few other country code extension domains..

In a few cases there may be affiliate links will on this blog. This means I receive a small amount if users visit or make purchases via the link. You do not pay any additional charge due to using an affiliate link, and in some cases below the normal price. I receive no identifying information about who clicks, or does not click, any link. I never accept compensation to provide favourable review of any particular service or product.

The text of this posting is ©R.L. Hawkes, all rights reserved. However, you may, without permission, use reasonable length portions of the post as long as a link to this post is also provided. If you wish to use the complete contents of a post, please request permission. I am normally open to reprinting, but will consider each request individually. 

The images used are either those associated with a product or service, my own images, or Pixabay images believed to be available for use without attribution. If you see any image that you believe is problematic, please let us know and we will immediately correct the situation.

Prices for .News Domain Package Names Uncovered

History

Donuts announced a  "six figure" price for the sale of a group of platinum .news domain names.  The package contained the domain names cancer.news, climate.news, food.news, health.news, medicine.news, pollution.news and science.news. While originally a false name was used in the announcement of the sale, after research by DomainIncite, it was subsequently disclosed by Donuts that the purchaser was in fact WebSeed, a company founded by Mike Adams. Mike Adams is known as Health Ranger for his previous content at Natural News.

As has been pointed out by others, the actual content on the sites is at best highly questionable. There is certainly not balanced coverage of scientific content on the sites in my opinion.  For example, my examination of the sites reveals frequent anti-vaccine content that has been well debunked by medical and scientific experts, as well as extensive climate change criticism that is contrary to the evidence amassed by respected scientists over decades. The writing on the sites is frequently alarmist and sensationalistic, with strong political undertones.

While the sites may appeal to alternate truth advocates of various conspiracy theories, they certainly do not, in my opinion, provide a scientific view. The Genetic Literacy project looked at the types of information spread by Mike Adams through the complex wet of Natural News sites prior to his move into these domain names.  Fortunately, I think the bias on these sites is so obvious that most will not consider them authoritative information sources.

I have been  able to uncover the prices paid for 5 of the 6 domain names in the package.  I share that information in the next section, along with a look at some comparator sales for reference.

Prices Uncovered

By accident I stumbled across the exact price for one of the domains during a GoValue search looking at a similar name when one of the six names in the package came up as a comparator.  For prices up to $25,000 GoDaddy GoValue show the exact price, while above that they only show >$25,000.  A bit of searching in GoValue quickly revealed the purchase prices for all but one of the domain names (for some reason no price appears for the medicine.news name).  I give that information below.

• cancer.news $19,167
• climate.news $19,166
• food.news $19,166
• health.news $19,167
• pollution.news $19,167
• science.news $19,167

If the medicine.news domain name sold  for $19,166 as well (but see update below), that brings the total price of the six domain package to $115,001, confirming the six figure package price reported in the press release.  As of today, none of the domain names show up on the NameBio sales database. You can see the prices for yourself by going to GoValue and entering one of the names in the search.

UPDATE: I have now done a little more research on the domain name medicine.news trying to figure out why it does not have a price given like the others.  While contact details are hidden under privacy, the ICANN Whois shows that the domain name was first registered on July 10, 2015. It was most recently renewed in July of 2018. I then used the Wayback Machine to confirm that the website has indeed been active since mid 2015, for example this is how it looked in 2016.  While  no contact information or ownership was provided, one of two ads on each page seems to be for a Ranger related item, and the content seems so similar to the sites operating today in tone and coverage, it seems almost certain that Mike Adams has long owned and operated medicine.news.

Now if the domain name medicine.news was not really part of the sales package, despite its inclusion in the press release, then the combined sales price of the other 5 domain names is just $95,835 and the press release description of a package of 6 domain names selling for six figures is inaccurate.  In the first DomainIncite post it was stated "It appears that the same buyer has acquired several other presumably non-platinum .news domains, including vaccines.news, nutrients.news, menshealth.news and emergencymedicine.news."  While these names have been registered, I could not obtain any price information via NameBio or GoValue. The name EmergencyMedicine.news, does resolve to an operating website that is clearly part of the same group as other six sites, full of articles against the scientific and medical 'establishment' and favouring various alternative treatments. My first thought was that this had been purchased as part of the package, and its price pushed the total over the $100,000 mark.  However, an ICANN Whois indicates that name was first registered on July 15, 2015, so it seems that it can't have been part of the package either. Another of the names, vaccines.news, also is operational at a site clearly linked to the others, but again the registry data on ICANN seems to preclude it being part of the current package.  We therefore are left unclear on the total price of the 2017 package deal between Donuts and WebSeed, and indeed how many domain names are in the package. 

Comparator Prices

I think that a premium was paid for these domain names when one compares to previous sales that have been recorded at NameBio.  There have been, not counting these six, 12 sales of .news extension domain names on NameBio with an average price of just over $3700.  Only one of the sales was for more than the prices above, the single letter name i.news sold for $35,000 at Rightside in June of 2016.  All of the other sales are for about 1/10 (or less) of the prices paid for each of the .news names in the package. You can browse the full NameBio comparator list at this link.

GoValue automated estimates of worth for each domain name are a few thousand dollars for each name in the sale.  The highest when I checked was food.news valued at $4100.  It is true that the word food sold in the .club new domain extension for $9000.  I would say that while the prices are on the high side for the six domain names in the package, they are not completely unreasonable.  Clearly names like science.news and health.news are premium domain names and are worth a lot.

If these prices were to be placed on the NameBio sales database they would be placed in 25th place in the highest new domain extension sales so far in 2018.  You can browse the list at this link.

Closing Notes

In researching this article I also had a look at ICANN Whois data, most of which is didacted under privacy.   However, it is interesting to note that the domain names have different registration and  expiry dates, and several are earlier than is implied in some of the press information on the sale.  For example the domain name food.news was registered on Oct. 24, 2017.  I also found it somewhat surprising that multiple years were not registered, as is frequently done for premium digital assets.  The current registrations in fall  of 2018.

The press release discloses that the sales occurred late in 2017, but the announcement was delayed until the sites are fully operational. The six sites are linked, with navigation at the top of each quickly taking you to one of the others.  Some content is also shared across the sites.  The prices paid for the domain names are somewhat high even for these premium names, and it seems that what WebSeed was purchasing, in addition to the memorable domain names, was an attempt to get respect and authority. The press release for the sale says in describing the content at the sites "quality and authenticity are top priorities" but in my humble opinion that is not supported by an objective evaluation of the sites.

At least on the day that I looked on the sites, they contained only a small amount of niche advertising. While the press release says that there will be minimal advertising, an  alternative explanation suggests that the sites are off to a rocky start in terms off broad acceptance. I also evaluated each site using the VisitRank site that gives the popularity of a site depending on web traffic. The sites generally ranked  somewhere in the 3 million to 10 million range. While this is not insignificant, the sites are not yet on the Alexa 1M.  Science news was the most popular of the new sites, at just over 3 million.  When I did a Google search on the words 'science news' (without quotes), at least  here in Canada, the WebSeed site is on page four. By comparison the real science news site, ScienceNews.org, a highly respected nonprofit that has been operating for decades offering high quality information, places about 7000 on VisitRank and on the top of the first page of Google.  I am surprised that the real Science News site does not issue a UDRP challenge for science.news, as it seems clear to me that it results in dilution of the long established name Science News.

While the initial announcement seemed to give momentum to Donuts and the .news extension in particular, the association with websites promoting alternative 'truth' and conspiracy theories (admittedly mixed with occasional snippets of authentic content) will hurt the adoption of the .news extension by many. As was said by DomainIncite "I can’t help but feel that .news has the potential to take a big credibility hit due to the content of these sites." Nevertheless, the registries cannot, and should not, police what content is placed on domain names they sell. From the number and  content of advertisements on the sites when I recently checked, it would appear to me that most understand  the true nature of the sites.

To my knowledge the price information revealed here has not previously been reported.  If in fact it was reported elsewhere, I am happy to give credit to those sites, so please do let me know.

Original post Aug 7, 2018

Update Aug 8, 2018 with additional research on medicine.news added, along with associated uncertainty on what names were  really in the package.  The title was changed slightly to reflect this uncertainty of package price. 

Links:

• Donuts Press Release re sale (updated version)
• Domain Incite first post re the sale
• DomainIncite second post, confirming that was the purchaser
• Genetic Literacy article on Natural News
• NameBio .news sales comparator list
• GoDaddy GoValue
• VisitRank
• NameBio
• Our site NamesThat.win - thanks for visiting
• Permanent link to this blog post

Original post Aug 7, 2018.


Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you.

I try to be fair, balanced and objective in my analysis.  If you feel this post does not meet that standard, please express your concerns to me.  As disclosure, I do have a domain portfolio that is predominantly ngTLD domain names, although I do also own a number of .com, .ca, .co and a few other country code extension domains..

In a few cases there may be affiliate links will on this blog. This means I receive a small amount if users visit or make purchases via the link. You do not pay any additional charge due to using an affiliate link, and in some cases below the normal price. I receive no identifying information about who clicks, or does not click, any link. I never accept compensation to provide favourable review of any particular service or product.

The text of this posting is ©R.L. Hawkes, all rights reserved. However, you may, without permission, use reasonable length portions of the post as long as a link to this post is also provided. If you wish to use the complete contents of a post, please request permission. I am normally open to reprinting, but will consider each request individually. 

The images used are either those associated with a product or service, or Pixabay images believed to be available for use without attribution. If you see any image that you believe is problematic, please let us know and we will immediately correct the situation.