Domain Magnate

Up until today I never heard of any .co.za domain sales. Dnjournal had 3 high value sales for the South African tld in the recent report:

Property.co.za     $56,000     Pvt Sale
AutoInsurance.co.za     $36,500     Pvt Sale
Life.co.za     $14,536     Pvt Sale

These are private sales most likely to end users, so they (like most high value domain sales on dnjournal)  shouldn’t reflect the market value of these domains, however surprisingly these aren’t even the highest value .co.za sales, here is how a list of all reported top .co.za sales would look like (excluding some older and lower value sales to have only data for the last 12 months):

Domain    Sold Date    Price    Source
Fly.co.za    2/10/2010    65,000    Latonas.com
Property.co.za    9/9/2010    56,000    Private
Porn.co.za    11/17/2009    45,000    RickLatona.com
AutoInsurance.co.za    9/8/2010    36,500    Private
Furniture.co.za    3/3/2010    33,000    Sedo
Toys.co.za    1/21/2010    20,000    Sedo
Domains.co.za    4/20/2010    15,000    Sedo
Life.co.za    9/8/2010    14,536    Private
Slots.co.za    5/13/2010    10,000    Private
S.co.za    6/2/2010    8,500    Sedo
Shirts.co.za    3/9/2010    8,000    Sedo
bet.co.za    8/12/2010    5,480    Sedo
domainnames.co.za    8/25/2010    5,169    Sedo
fly.co.za    11/17/2009    5,000    Sedo
Mortgage.co.za    5/25/2010    4,920    RickLatona.com
super.co.za    12/25/2009    3,500    Sedo
indemnity.co.za    12/1/2009    2,505    Sedo
mattresses.co.za    2/18/2010    2,301    Sedo
studies.co.za    8/19/2010    2,200    Sedo
institute.co.za    8/19/2010    2,000    Sedo
bikini.co.za    1/20/2010    2,000    Sedo
bed.co.za    2/11/2010    1,900    Sedo
decorating.co.za    3/9/2010    1,800    Sedo
airconditioners.co.za    6/28/2010    1,250    Sedo
okb.co.za    5/25/2010    1,100    Sedo
ouch.co.za    6/2/2010    1,050    Sedo
diplomas.co.za    8/17/2010    1,000    Sedo
financecareers.co.za    6/16/2010    1,000    Sedo
tnt.co.za    4/20/2010    1,000    Sedo
pensions.co.za    10/20/2009    1,000    Sedo
chiropractors.co.za    8/17/2010    933    Sedo
iha.co.za    8/15/2010    892    Sedo
skouspel.co.za    12/24/2009    425    Sedo
bbw.co.za    1/20/2010    400    Sedo

First thing that comes to mind: Nice Flip on Fly.co.za – $5k -> $65k in 3 months, well done Rick!

There are no restrictions on .co.za domains and everyone can register them at different registrars. Prices can vary, for example at EuroDNS the price is 18 euro, while at Godaddy it’s $59.49.

While writing this post I researched some of the .co.za domains available for sale and there are very few. There could be bargains out there, but it’s hard to estimate the actual market value to know what a bargain is in this group.  At first I wanted to check the opportunity of purchasing some nice .za generics to build a site, rank it and monetize with affiliate offers, however the only decent affiliate program I could find in .za are for loan leads. According to Google the local traffic is pretty low for most of these terms so it’s probably not even worth the effort. But I think a premium .za generic can present a nice long term investment to diversify any domainer’s portfolio  and the South African namespace matures these names should gain more value and the end user interest will rise.

Top sale in dnjournal’s report today:

$260,000 for TripleCreditReport.com

Looks quite overprices and suspicious indeed, and btw QuadrupleCreditReport.com is still available, should be worth at least 25% more

There are a few threads over at dnforum discussing this here and here

Some have suggested that similar sales might be fake. There can be many reasons to do this: someone trying to get attention to his domain and sell it for a good amount later, or for tax purposes, to get funding etc. There are many ways to fake a sale like that, so this is quite possible. read more »

JobsOnline.info recently sold for $12k on sedo.

I could see the .com going for that amount, but .info?!

Congrats to the seller!

Other tops sales were OD.com for $220,000, Luxury.net $38,750

Dnjournal has an interesting story today about the recent GeoDomain conference.

Highly recommended to all geo domain owners. Among the contest nomination for top developed city domains were such gems as:

Vegas.com
Richmond.com
Hawaii.com
Branson.com read more »

Few interesting numeric sales recently, from dnjornal

93.com $75,000 Pvt Sale
249.com $92,000 Sevent.com
848.com $24,000 RickLatona.com
085.com $10,503 Sedo
452.net $1,500 AfternicDLS
431.net $1,120 AfternicDLS

Here is a little glimpse of domaining history with help of dnjournal.com: 2004 top sales

It’s always interesting to see the old sales to find what was a good buy and what wasn’t and try to predict the future prices by that:

CreditCards.com $2,750,000 Pvt Sale
Mercury.com $700,000 Pvt Sale
ME.com $460,000 Moniker / Domain Systems
Rugby.com $350,000 Pvt Sale
Smoking.com $325,000 GreatDomains
Viajes.com $300,000 Sedo
Arab.com $225,000 Pvt Sale
TourismAustralia.com $201,000 Pvt Sale
VisitFlorida.com $186,000 Pvt Sale
Commerce.com $180,000 Sedo
Beef.com $150,000 GreatDomains
Animation.com $150,000 Pvt Sale read more »

New, great story by Ron of dnjournal read more »

A new interesting cover story on dnjournal

There are certain names that everyone in this industry knows, names that newcomers normally encounter within hours of entering the domain business. Names like Rick Schwartz, Kevin Ham, Frank Schilling, the Castello Brothers and others from a small band of pioneers who have reached the top of a mountain that thousands of others continue to climb. Most in that group became wealthy because they were visionaries who foresaw how valuable domain names would become long before they appeared on anyone else’s radar. read more »

New DnJournal Report is Up:

Moniker.com closed the $850,000 sale of SkiResorts.com this week, a deal that ranks as the fourth highest sale reported so far in 2008. Moniker handled the sale for Rick Latona who sold two other domains that landed on our Top 20 chart through his own site, RickLatona.com. One of those, StCatharines.com, completed the top ten after going for $19,000. Sedo.com had a big week sweeping 11 of the 20 chart entries. Their roster was led by #2 Madrid.net at €28,000 ($43,920) while #4 Celibataire.com (“single” in French) and #5 Hoteles.info (“hotels” in Spanish) gave them three of the top five spots. Madrid.net banked €28,000 ($43,920) while Hoteles.info booked €19,500 ($30,607). Pool.com rounded out the first five with #3 Banks.ca (Canadian country code) depositing $41,000 in the year’s 8th biggest ccTLD sale.

By Ron Jackson

The AfternicDLS also had a solid outing with four names on the elite list including #6 ContemporaryRugs.com ($30,000) and #9 HowToInvest.com ($23,000). This was a strong week for non .com domains as they took nine places on the Big Board. Three of those were .orgs, two were .nets, two were .infos and two were ccTLDS. That trio of .orgs was led by #7 Compraventa.org (“purchase” in Spanish), sold at Sedo for €18,000 ($28,253)

Another great story by Ron from dnjournal:

Born to Run: How Oversee.net Co-Founder and CEO Lawrence Ng Built a $200 Million Company Before His 30th Birthday

The wave of consolidation that has swept through the domain industry over the past couple of years has left a handful of giants at the head of the pack. Oversee.net is certainly one of those, having assembled some of the best-known brands in this space, including DomainSponsor.com, SnapNames.com and Moniker.com. read more »