Domain Names for Sale – What might you pay?

Domain Names for Sale – What might you pay?

Domain Names for Sale – You can now buy two character .ie domain names.  Fairly cool for a brand like Brian O’Driscoll, 13.ie, perhaps.  Unfortunately, an advertising agency got that domain before Brian, maybe he wasn’t even interested as Brian is an International Brand, a .com encompassing his name and brand is the right strategy, brianodriscoll.com – a strong corporate image.  Fair enough, solid decision.

But first, if you are interested in our services at Digital Sales, check out this quick video:

Domain Names for Sale – Two Character Domains .ie

When the IEDR decided to release two-character domain names for the .ie market, a bidding process was initiated (they did, back in the day make exceptions for already established brands such as 02 for example, but very rare).  The price paid for IT.ie was almost 11K euro.  Good publicity for 11 Grand I suppose and probably a load of decent PageRank backlinks, in fact 162 according to Semrush.  And we all know about backlinks, PageRank and SEO

Domain Names for Sale – Apart from two character .ie domains, what should or what are people paying for .ie domain names?

Well, it’s hard to get a handle of what people historically paid for .ie domain names in the past as this was forbidden by the IEDR.  You couldn’t sell a .ie unless it was part of the company assets that you were buying.  Technically!  I myself bought a .ie with a ‘s’ at the end of a two-word string for €1100, just to protect my primary brand and set it to redirect.  However, you can now buy and sell .ie domain names without selling a company.  So, how much?

Domain Names for Sale – what are you willing to pay…

So, what are .ie’s going for?  I recall hearing a story Denis O’Brien paid 1M for jobs.ie back in the boom days (2005), any truth in it?  I don’t know.  But there was a active live website with advertisers, so not just a domain name but an online recruitment business.  This is what jobs.ie looked like in 2007 (awful really!):

Domain Names for Sale

Domain Names for Sale – www.Jobs.ie – 2007

Paddy Cosgrave claims he paid 10K for WebSummit.com from an asking price of 100K, a claim which is very very hard to believe (show me the proof please?), especially when you consider Teamwork.com was sold for €500K to Teamwork, another Irish company.  Two companies who built a brand and forgot about international expansion, where was the scenario planning!?!?!  They lost an awful lot of negotiation ‘position’ once the brand was created.

Now that you can buy and sell .ie domains, let’s take a look at www.sedo.com and see what .ie’s are actually going for?  Domains with an asking price attached (May 2018)…

Therapy.ie                          35K                                                     Beijing.ie                            40K

Insider.ie                            13K                                                     Internet.ie                          50K

Christ.ie                              35K                                                     Creation.ie                         50K

Webcam.ie                        25K                                                     Linger.ie                             50K

Download.ie                      30K                                                     Jewellery.ie                        30K

Edify.ie                                38K                                                     Amsterdam.ie                    20K

BailBonds.ie                       40K                                                     Rome.ie                              50K

Cool.ie                                25K                                                     Drink.ie                               20K

Baby.ie                                50K                                                     Billionaire.ie                      50K

SL.ie                                     50K                                                     HomeHelp.ie                     40K

SunHotels.ie                      50K                                                     WhitePages.ie                   50K

SelfDriving.ie                     50K                                                     SelfDrivingCars.ie             50K

Winter.ie                            13K                                                     Gender.ie                           1.5K

Swimsuit.ie                        2K                                                        Herbal.ie                             1K

Sting.ie                                12K                                                     Slack.ie                               11K

Cuba.ie                               14K                                                     Nerd.ie                                4K

Rave.ie                                7K                                                        Celebration.ie                   2K

21.ie                                    2K                                                        Al.ie                                     30K

Oi.ie                                     7K                                                        Netserve.ie                        10K

Kyl.ie                                   20K                                                     PokerPlayer.ie                   10K

AllAboutBaby.ie                10K

I did get a great laugh when I found out that ScumBag.ie was going for 2K!!!  It’s a funny world!  So, would you spend 50K on Internet.ie?  Well, if it was Internet.com – maybe, .ie with a population of 5 million, I don’t see it.  WebSummit.com for 10K, a ‘steal’ if its true, which I doubt very much.

Really the investment depends on a number of factors:

Your Product & Service Market – if its got international potential, don’t bother with a .ie – however, if your initial market is Ireland only, then absolutely.  See this blog post regarding International SEO.

What are the search volumes of that domain name?  The keyword, is it significant?  Maybe it isn’t at all.  And is it a new trend, study the search volumes over the past number of years, are they upwards?

Are there possible alternative domain names?

Domain Names for Sale – Brand versus a search query as a domain name?

If you decide to go with a search query as domain name, then make sure that string encompasses the generic sector you are in.  And, can that string be developed into a brand?  Otherwise go with a brand.

Are you looking to sell your domain name?

You can sell your domain name through loads of providers like, sedo, GoDaddy, etc.  but they will take a cut or you can sell direct, you can do the negotiating and you can keep the full sale value.

At Digital Sales we can help in two ways.  We will host your domain name and we will upload ‘for sales’ contact details information on the homepage.  So, if anybody types your domain name into the address bar, they will see your contact details and are aware that your site is ‘for sale’.  Perfect!

Here is a perfect example: www.b2bsales.co.uk

At an extra cost we can upload Google Analytics code, if requested.  See our contact details above and below, if you would like a price.  The price will depend on the number of domain you are looking to sell and thus host on the Digital Sales servers.

Some Inbound Queries we get to sell Domains – Example

‘Hi , I am interested in selling bigsale.ie

Do you think it is of any value  ??

Thank you

Kind regards

FOB’

And this was my response, which you may find informative:

Hi FOB,

Ye, it’s quite a good domain name and I’m sure it could be worth a few quid if you found an Irish company who was interested or they found you!

Many decision makers will check a domain name by going to their browser address bar and tying it in.  If the page loads and a message appears that the domain is for sale, they may contact you.

And a user may go to a domain registrar like: www.register365.com and check if the domain is available – unfortunately this user process will bypass you, but the user may also check if it’s for sale.

For example, Digital Sales recently purchased, www.DigitalSales.io – if wasn’t listed on the registrar, we went to the domain, saw it was for sale and make an enquiry, negotiated a price and made the payment using Dan.com

I can envisage the .ie domain market will go up in price due to supply – so yes your domain name has worth.

As I wrote in my blog post – https://www.digitalsales.ie/digital-blog/domain-names-for-sale/ – we can upload a landing page if you wish and get your domain on a server, just like: www.b2bsales.ie or www.b2bsales.co.uk

If you were really clever, you could buy www.bigsale.com, this would add extra value.  In fact you could buy strategic domain names, bigsales. extensions and this would really increase the value of your group of same name domain extensions.

If you would like Digital Sales to host your website and upload for sale instructions, let me know and I will provide a quotation, otherwise you can contact Dan.com, just like: http://www.bigsales.com/ and they will host selling instructions.

You can reach me direct on 0863113443.

Regards,

Diarmuid.’

***TIP****

Another point, if you have a particular domain name and you want to sell it.  Say you have a .ie or a .io – contact the owners of the .com and .co.uk directly and see if they might be interested in protecting their brand or using your domain to expand into that particular domain extension jurisdiction.

Need Help generating a digital strategy, do you need advice?…Contact Digital Sales

If you are a company that wants to build a world class website or needs help with your organic search position, Digital Strategy or generating online sales……do the necessary!!!…contact the Digital Sales team direct send us a mail at: info@digitalsales.ie, see our contact us page for our office locations.

Diarmuid Haughian – Business Development Director – Digital Sales

Post Grad Dip. User Experience (UX), Dip. International Selling, Cert. Digital Marketing, MSc. BITS

Diarmuid Haughian - Digital Signature

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