OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
The domain name Travel.Agency was sold for $9,999 in an auction at Flippa. There were 91 bids in the auction.
Unlike some other auctions, in this one the seller clearly stated the premium renewal price of the domain name:
Premium nGTLD Renewal $499/year
The seller renewed the domain for an extra 2 years so that is a $1,000 added value.
With a little research the buyer will find a better renewal price than $499 per year. ($460 per year or even lower than that)
The sale also includes a custom professional logo and some social media handles.
According to Sold.Domains this is the highest price paid for a .agency domain name. Music.agency was sold for $6,000 in October.
I think this sale is a real let down and reality check for all the new gTLD’s.
This much touted PREMIUM name sale was primed and promoted to sell and it only attracted $9,999.
Ali could not have done any more to promote and sell this name that what he did. He did a great job of getting the name out there and in front of Domainers who know this space.
After all his efforts this PREMIUM name gets only $9,999. If fellow domainers only think its worth this amount, that does no bode well for end user sale price expectations or other flips between domainers for gTLD’s
This sale would send a shiver down the spines of all the other EAP PREMIUM name buyers.
Ali clearly wanted and expected much more than the price he got. I will take a stab at it and say I think we expected $50,000 – $75,000 for it. I feel for him. He probably made a small profit. Some will say he did well.
I don’t think he or others would honestly believe it was a good result.
Good luck to all those holding crappy left and right of the dot combo’s.
$50,000 – $75,000? That is a high end user price.
This was a domainer auction at Flippa.
This was a good price.
It was registered well after eap pricing had ended : http://www.gtld.com/product-sheet/agency http://who.is/whois/travel.agency
So a 450 investment sells for 10k less than a year later … On a domainer to domainer platform … On a nr auction . It was a great sale ! Great news for the new g’s . I’m sure most wish they had 100 names they could freshly reg for 450 and sell for 10k in a year. You surely won’t find many .coms where you can fresh reg a name and sell it for 10k in a year .
And with all the respect in the world meant to Ali this name certainly is not the best of the best in terms of the new g’s .. It looks nice and he marketed it very well. But a name like web.hosting is a better indicator of what the best of the best will sell for domainer to domainer. Congrats to him on a great sale and great flip!
Don’t listen to Phil Harris, he is heavily biased, and if you want to know which ill witted party buys all those $250-$500 premium
Domains here you go.
.agency went into
day 1 EAP on June 17, 2015 for reserved domain release. It was not available in 2014 with the general
Release.
So the cost is in the thousands, not the $500 reg fee renewal the domain comes with.
My guess Ali paid $0 listing fees for premium, who knows if he pays an exchange commission, the domain was hyped as the editors pick whatever that is, along with being a 30 day auction.
The term is bland, and not important, everyone is branded.
Looks like the seller was close to $5K invested with marketing costs.
.Agency was originally launched in 2014.
.Agency went into day 1 EAP on June 17, 2015 for the collision names only. Travel.agency was a collision name.
So the domain costed about $4,000 to register (including the $500 registration cost) on EAP day 2 June 17, 2015. Plus 2 years of renewal that is $1,000.
So the total must be over $5,000 including the marketing cost (domaining.com ads etc.).
But sorry to say but this was not an EAP day 2 domain name. Probably and EAP day 3 ($1,200) or 4 ($600) domain.
Travel agencies have a very low profit margin. There are much better domains out there so I still think this was a good price.
He made almost 10x on his investment in a reseller environment, which is pretty good ROI imo, I agree with Konstantinos on this.
What this foretells for the ntlds is another story altogether, goes to show the value of combinations which don’t come close to the real world usage of ‘travel agency’.
But it’s not all bad news, if you can get the right combinations, you can make a decent roi, which is what any of us is really concerned about.
10X his investment?
Let’s see
$9,999 sale price and deduct
$4,000 EAP cost
$1000 in renewals
$100 in marketing costs
$1000 in exchange commisions
Escrow fee?
______
You do the math? 10X I think not
Sadly not.. rather depressing auction result to anyone who is higly invested in the new gTlds..
still i will give the benefit of doubt to it due to the uniqueness of the travel market and the need for strong branding instead of anything exact matching..
Check weekly stats at sedo GTLDs were performing better in the aftermarket in 2014,2015.
2016 is not looking to good right now. I blame the registries for high pricing, and inconsistent data to pricing of renewals.
In 2016 not something you want to build a brand on.
Sedo has sold 36 New gTLDs this year until the 27th of March.
At the same period last year it had sold 42 domains.
The beginning of the year is always a bit slow.
Total Sedo sales:
2014: 119
2015: 243
2016: 36
It’s not a fancy name anyway. I wouldn’t even pay 4 figure money for it.
Sedo should sell more in 2016 given more listed inventory available after collision release which was not active in 2015, so there has been a slow down.
It can be contributed to a lack of communication, and marketing, along with a non active release schedule of extensions being released unlike 2014,2015.
The market is down, the guys holding premium renewals are hurting, and are selling off names to cover renewals.
My facts align with your facts, nothing to hide, or knock, just general observations.
Market demand is what it is.
It doesn’t always align with supply.
You are 100% correct. A contributing factor could be people just as yourself who do not sell cheap, and even if you paid $150 for a name, wouldn’t sell it with a $1,000 offer, whereas many would jump. Much like .com when they fall into safe hands, like 3L.com and Nat Cohen, you are not going to get them cheap from him.
The issue is renewal pricing. Nobody can say where Travel.Agency or other premium and non premium domains will be priced in the future. There is no limit and we have seen proof of ridiculously high priced domains. It is the most uncertain part of the New Gtld’s and this uncertainty is hurting the prices on the aftermarket. This issue of renewal pricing has been brought up in many threads on NamePros and the deep questions have NEVER been answered. Mostly the answers end up sounding like a seasoned politician where much is said, but the questions remain and the answers are evaded….There is no limits to renewal pricing.. NONE….This is not good for a domainer and thus not good for an end user….
https://www.namepros.com/threads/domain-name-news-that-will-spook-you.931948/
This seems like a conversation the underlying registries who release such domains are not willing to have.
Ryan – Agreed…On the NamePros thread I mentioned above we are awaiting an answer from the VP of GoDaddy. Things are about to get very interesting.