OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
A .media domain name was sold for $20,500 by a domain investor in a private transaction.
The domain was registered on April 1st, 2016 but this is no April fools’ day joke.
Seller of the domain name op.media is Phil Harris of gtld.link. The buyer is OP Osuuskunta that is one of the largest financial companies in Finland (op.fi).
The domain sold before its first year anniversary and has a renewal rate of about $80 per year. The domain name is now registered with CSC Corporate Domains, Inc., a brand protection agency/registrar, and does not currently resolve.
This is how the seller described the sale:
“Offer came in for 1k to my email from who.is I passed politely with a little commentary about LL names two days later offer raised to 5k I passed with a little more info but made them a one time offer of 20,500 they accepted.. Probably left money on the table but I have another 429 LL.media names .”
The 430 names, that Phil Harris bought, renew at about $80 to $100 per year.
The sale of op.media is the 2nd highest New gTLD sale in 2017 according to Sold.Domains, it is the 6th .media sale ever reported and the highest of the 6. Second highest .media sale is mixed.media that sold for $7,500 in 2015. The extension .media is operated by Donuts.
The company does not own the domain name OPMEDIA.COM that has been registered since 2000.
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Yeah, don’t believe this sale.
@THCNames
What’s not credible about this story? While no one should believe all the sales we see on the weekly Sedo listing (because some of them make no sense whatsoever), here you have an end-user/buyer who’s corporate name matches the domain name…and the sale isn’t purported to be $1mm
Why?
” Probably left money on the table but I have another 429 LL.media names .”
A typical greedy idi..
He has to make 2 sales like this to break even every year so not so greedy.
To get one sale like this a year is a gift, $40K in renewal a year, this portfolio is already under water since inception.
As the better stuff sells, costs more to carry lower quality inventory, the only winner is the registry.
These are all 2-letter domains so one could say (without knowing all domains) that as domains are sold the quality stays the same.
Too funny, another jealous poster who did not make the sale so the label the seller as greedy.
Go live in a communist country if you don’t like capitalism.
The sale is solid and .media is one of the top gTLDs choices that make sense among companies with media presence: Marketing agencies, creative, branding etc.
That being said, stocking up on inventory that carries a substantial renewal cost will eventually break down the business. I hope he gets many more sales soon.
Thanks for posting this.
This story reinforces two well-known themes: (i) all domain names are unique assets, and if someone sees value in them – just like artwork – they’ll pay, and (ii) end-users certainly have a preference for dot-COM, but don’t seem to have a bias against gTLDS.
There are about 17xx combinations of LL, in terms of GTLDs this is a great sale, this is a Finnish company that owns OP.fi, they had the money for this sale to really be insignificant to their overall operations.
It comes down to luck, I mean this portfolio has about $80k invests into it, another $40k due this year, we all know $20k gtld sales are rare, LL . Media, is thinking outside the box, but if you are going to go this far right, you can use other options for much less, even premium reg fee.
So let’s say in 5 years $200K will have to be paid, if $100K in sales are not done by then, I would consider it drowning.
There are only 676 LL.media names if you google search almost any combo of LL and media there are 3-20 companies using some sort of combo for these type names.
I have 7 LL .media and I have sold 2 “keyword” .media domains.
Wonder how much the LL.media domains sold for us front (I’d assume more than the renewal pricing). $200, $500, $1,000 a domain? He’s probably underwater big on them.
Donuts sells all domains at the renewal price.
As far as being true , I sent the escrow details to ron at Dnjournal to validate. As far as being greedy? Im confused I just felt i could of done a better job selling to a billion dollar company. I have received and passed on many 3-5k offers . Im in this for the long run If we only average 5k per name after 10 years our spend would be 350k and return would be 2,150,000. At this point we are not willing to sell for 5k. Some of the 430 renewals are 69 some are 100
Phil, your problem is you have to many big renewal domains. Sure you are in for the long run, right now portfolios are churning 1-1.5%, I see your portfolio is littered with many $250-$500 renewals, your business model can’t carry all these big renewals, and be profitable.
Let’s take the 429 ll.media * $80 per year = $34K per year in renewals, $3-5K deals will not get you whole on this portfolio, even if you sell a $5K LL.media every other month, you are still underwater at year end.
Ask to much $$$, and the buyers jump to .online .solutions .whatever, others can weigh in, but I see a bumpy road ahead.
K you never mentioned what you sold 2 of your LL.media for?
I sold 2 keyword.media. Not LL.media.
trent , i could sell 3 a month easily at 3k but i would never sell them so short.. i feel a 10k -20k average over the next 10 years will be on the low side.
.Media is one of the best IMO. Nice to see someone gets the long game.
Don’t worry about the 1 “short” sale. Just know you have many more “long” sales to come !
Thanks for sharing
Cheers
Congrats on the sale Phil, I have always liked LLmedia.com, and I like .media, Phil registered all the LL.media right before I went to register one, I was interested in up.media. I have sold a few LLmedia.com for a solid roi. I recently picked up FS.media from the expiring list on Name.com.
I did not know you had 7 of them Konstantinos, best of luck.
Phil understands in order to sell at a premium price you need to grab the premium new g’s and not leftovers.
I’m sure a big majority of us feel we could have sold higher after the sale but that’s just a normal feeling and not greed.
Hopefully we will see more .media sales moving forward, as someone pointed out above large companies are not afraid of new gTLDs, that’s apparent with these type sales.
It has been about 12 months, and you can see the return. $20,500 revenue, $36,000 in expenses. In a months time the expenses column will increase to $72,000 with another round of renewals.
You can see how these premium renewal names are highly unlikely to ever work for domainers. The big winner is Donuts who actually get nearly twice as much revenue from domainersn ($36,000) versus what they could get if they waited for endusers ($20,500). This is why the “.tv model” is so great for registries and why for domainers it is so important to have normal $9 renewals not $30, $100, $500 renewals.
Phil, Chad,Gong(one Character) and Mike B. are early adapters and visionaries of Premium GTLDS. They will absolutely be proven right, going forward in time. They already have enough capital to support their investment strategies. No one have to feel sad for their renewals. If you are not ready to accept the change, be ready to keep crying like this many more times down the road…….
They are gamblers, that is all it is today, they may have a slight edge over the house if they have a low renewal, but it is essentially gambling in hopes of outselling your renewals.
Frank S will tell you himself the premium renewal model does not work on a mass scale.
Congrats @Phil, another nice deal. Being gTLD domainer , I could see and forecast nice growth to newer domaining industry as such reporting sales quite predictable towards positive side of gTLD industry.
Congratulation. Now this would be an even GREATER ROI sale if he had only registered only a handful. Still great sale. It’s in a way like a lottery the more tickets you hold the better chance for you to win something.
I chatted with Phil about this sale and the only issue is he let a golden goose get away.
This could have been the one to sell for enough to cover all his annual renewals maybe more
As we all note not all domains or buyers are created equal, this was a huge fish a company with over 12,000 employees.
Of course not all 400+ 2 letter .media domains have a buyer of this size; most do not. Better to sell to the small mom and pop guys for $5K and keep the big fish for the big catch.
Congrats on the sale but, as I told Phil over the phone he let Moby Dick get away.
I see everyone mention LL.media, I recently purchased that…any idea what it could be worth?
Nice one. How much did you pay for it?
Reg fee, got that as well as pp.media and ww.media about a month ago.
Nearly didn’t bother because of the price…