For more than two years, I have done a daily Tweet summarizing and highlighting some of the domain name sales of the day as reported by NameBio.
I thought it was about time to explain the format, and answer a few questions that have come up.
The Format
I keep each day to the confines of a single Tweet, and they look as shown.
Here are the required elements.
- Number of sales, counting all sales of $100 and more.
- The average price of those sales.
- The median price.
- The number of sales at $1000 and above.
- The total sales dollar volume for the day, counting only $100+ sales.
After that summary, I list a number of the names that I consider interesting or noteworthy.
I always list the highest value name first followed by the trophy symbol. Even if I don’t regard it as the best name for the day, I still list the highest-value sale first and always include it.
To make the most of the space, I list all names that are in the same extension together, with a semicolon separating the next extension. For example on the day shown the top-value sale was mural.xyz, so the other .xyz sales of the day are listed right after ending at BlockchainLabs.
The names from cylinders to TravelBrew are all .com names in the example shown.
NameBio report if a name has prior recorded sales. If this sale is at a higher price I include an up arrow symbol, and if lower a down arrow. This information may not be as significant as first seems, as it may be that one sale was wholesale and one retail.
What Names Do I Choose?
While I make exceptions, normally I make selections from names that have sold for $1000 and more.
I favour retail sales over wholesale. Keep in mind that the majority of sales on NameBio are wholesale acquisitions by domain investors.
I try to include sales that are indicative of many others, but I also select a few simply because they seem outliers.
Trending terms are more likely to be selected.
I try not to include names that seem likely trademark issues, and seldom include names that sold for high price mainly because of prior website strength.
Why Do I Wait A Few Days?
I always post a few days late. I do that for at least two reasons. One, sometimes sales get reported late, so the list is a little more complete. Secondly, NameBio do their own daily Tweet, they are archived in their Daily Market Report, and since I am using their data I thought as a courtesy I should not compete with their own daily Tweet.
What Have I Learned Over Two Plus Years?
I have made going through each NameBio daily list part of my day. I think it has helped me to see what is selling, at least as reported on NameBio.
What has sold has changed significantly over the several years I have been doing this. One sees more new extension sales, as well as more sales of generic country extensions such as .io.
There have been subtle changes in terms of what two-word combinations are selling.
Lately terms like meta, NFT, ETH have sold for eye-popping prices at times.
A few times this list has spawned an acquisition of a name inspired by one I see on the sold list.
Will I Keep Doing This?
At first I planned to do this for one year. Then a second year. Now I am working on a third year. At some point I plan to stop. When I started it was partly for my own learning and partly a service to the domain community. I now have other platforms and ways to contribute to the community.
I think there is great value to systematically doing some sort of study or analysis daily to further your domain expertise.
A Better Daily Report
Recently Leanne McMahon has started a great daily domain sales series. Check it out at her Crunch.id site. She provides a wealth of detail. I find the information on how many sold domain names are very new and well-aged particularly interesting.
I interviewed Leanne at NamePros Blog last fall.
How Do I Get The Daily Tweet?
In case you have stumbled on this NameTalent post but don’t know what it is all about, follow me on Twitter at AGreatDomain and you will get the daily domain tweet.
