Sedo rang up the year’s 6th reported 7-figure domain sale this past week, banking $1,100,000 for Call.com. Sedo sold the name for Live Current Media who has been selling off their best domains to raise capital. Call.com helped Sedo sweep the first five spots on our weekly Top 20 Sales Chart. They also notched a big six-figure sale with #2 Editor.com at $225,000. Sedo went on to pile up 12 of the 20 chart entries, including 8 of the first 10.
Last week we noted that we were still sifting through information to determine whether the $1.5 million sale of DropShippers.com that we reported in our Lowdown section a couple of weeks ago should be listed on our charts which are limited to cash sales of domain names only. In addition to being a strong domain name, DropShippers.com has featured a slick ecommerce platform for the past several years. With developed sites it is impossible to determine what portion of a sale price can be attributed to the name only and what portion stems from the site development and the revenue stream it produces. As a result they are not eligible for our charts.
If a buyer junks whatever was previously on a site that makes it obvious they were buying the domain name only. In the case of DropShippers.com, this “added value” issue required some additional thought when both the buyer, Tom Hashem Jr., and the seller, Richard Gabriel (who had a huge sale earlier this year when he sent Auction.com to REDC for $1.7 million) said the existing platform was a free throw-in.
Gabriel described it as an automated system that didn’t require him to run it as a business and said that he added it to the deal at no charge since he would have no use for it after signing an agreement not to compete in the drop shipping business with the buyer. Hashem said he eventually plans to “develop the site with website hosting features for people who need an ecommerce business and supply products to Ebay power sellers.” However, in the meantime, DropShippers.com continues to run the ecommerce platform that has been on it for years and that has to be of some value. Also, Gabriel is still listed as the Admin contact on the WhoIs because the platform runs on his servers.
In addition, the $1.5 million sale price includes a $500,000 promissory note to be paid off at 5.95% over 10 years. Hashem paid the other $1 million upfront, but the domain, as collateral for the loan, was transferred to the LLC that financed the balance, Gabby Investments, which according to a post on Gabriel’s 50.com website, is solely owned by his daughter Ashley.
Until the Gabriels receive the balance of the payments due (which could take a decade) we can’t chart the domain as a completed $1.5 million sale, even though the contract is valued at that amount. In a similar situation several years ago, we reported the news when Rick Schwartz struck a deal to sell Men.com for $1.3 million, but we didn’t add the sale to our charts until six months later after the buyer made the last of the six monthly payments that their contract called for (the domain was also transferred to the buyer at that time).
None of this takes anything away from another major sale for Gabriel. It is just a matter of trying to make sure we compare apples to apples on our sales charts (completed all cash sales of domain names only). Having carefully considered the information I have on this transaction I don’t feel that it currently meets that criteria.
Now back to this week’s action. .Com dominated the competition with 15 chart entries. The remaining five spots went to two ccTLDs, two .orgs and a .net. One of those county codes crashed the top five. Games.eu generated a €67,500 ($95,850) payday at Sedo. The top non .com gTLD was #11 Aileron.org, which went for $21,000, also at Sedo.
The week’s return on investment winner was #6 Releases.com, a name that changed hands for $47,500 through John Daly’s NameConnect.com. It had been purchased less than a year ago (n October 2008) for just $8,600 through Moniker.