70% of the top 10 sales this year are .COM, the rest are new gTLDs, what happened to ccTLDs?

I was just having a conversation with a friend who was saying that with so many new domain options, startups aren’t as focused on .COM. To which I told him, eh – you’re wrong, .COM is still most people’s first choice, but new gTLDs are starting to see some meaningful sales. Below is DNJournal’s top ten reported sales of 2018:

top-domain-sales-2018

(Source – DNJournal)

The three new gTLDs to make the top ten list are: .CLUB, .LOANS and .RENTALS. It is also very important to point out that many .COM domain names have sold in this price range over the last 20+ years, these new gTLD sales at this price range represent some of (if not the) highest priced sales of all time.

My point is…please don’t read this and then go out and start buying a ton of .CLUB, .LOANS or .RENTALS domains. By no means should you look at this list and think, “well I guess one word .LOANS domains should sell for six figures. Instead, the reality is one did, and one may happen again soon, or never again. There just isn’t enough data about new gTLD sales prices, the only domain extension that has enough data to show it is truly investment grade is .COM.

As you can see from the sales data above the most valuable .COM domains are one-word .COMs, but they don’t have to be words, EEN.com sold for $300k and DAX.com sold for $500,000 so it’s safe to say that short .COMs command six-figure price tags, or higher, and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.

I am surprised to see that not a single ccTLD made the top ten, in fact we don’t see a ccTLD until the 26th highest reported sales this year – music.ai at $101,500. After that you don’t see a ccTLD until #74, eSports.io at $40,000. What happened to ccTLDs?

I personally don’t own any .LOANS or .RENTALS domains but I do have maybe two or three .CLUB domains. Like I said above though…data like this just makes me want to double-down on .COM, not buy new gTLDs. Still, these are the early days, and if in some cases one or two of these new gTLDs keeps seeing sales in the six-figure range, it’s going to be hard to stay away. For now though, I’m happy to just wait and see…

What do you think? Are new gTLDs heating up or are these sales just outliers? What happened to ccTLDs? I want to hear from you, comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton