Three non .COM sales that caught my eye this month

I always enjoy looking at sales data and trying to understand how the dynamics of the domain name world are changing over time. It wasn’t that long ago that if the .COM was taken, you’d have .NET or .ORG – today there are so many more options it’s really hard to know which is the best for your company and what budget makes sense, especially if you’re leaving the .COM space.

There are .COM purists out there who say that you absolutely have to be on a .COM, but at the end of the day there are tons of examples of companies that have done a-okay building high-growth, super successful companies on non .COMs.

Let’s be honest, most people come up with a name, look to find the .COM taken, and then after finding out it’s way out of their budget, start to look into other TLDs. This month it’s been interesting to see TLDs like .LOANS, .KITCHEN, and .EXCHANGE in the mix with three pretty decent sales IMO:

InvestmentProperty.loans – $7,500 (sold on 11/16/2017)

Snap.kitchen – $5,895 (sold on 11/15/2017)

BTC.exchange – $12,500 (sold on 11/12/2017)

(Source – NameBio)

The first name in this list was actually a shocker for me. Very long two-word .loans domain selling for $7,500, have consumers built trust in .LOANS yet? If not would this impact a business that brands on it, like an additional hurdle to get over?

Then BTC.exchange for five-figures. I’m not sure how many stellar names .exchange has in whole but coin.exchange and coins.exchange sold for $5k each (at different times this year) so it’s clear there are going to be some cryptocurrency exchanges using this for their new home.

Here’s the question – assuming these are end-user buyers, are they making a huge mistake putting down a decent chunk of change on a brand new gTLD or are these early pioneers securing valuable real estate and brand space online at a fraction of the price?

What do you think – comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton