Did you know that domain names sell for six-figures every day?

First things first – it’s important to note that my blog is read by two different groups of people:

  1. startup founders who know about running businesses and building brands
  2. domain name professionals who know about buying and selling domain names

If you’re one of my readers in the domain name world, what I’m writing about here isn’t news to you, so this post will probably be pretty boring and you can skip it. Of course, keep reading if you want, but this won’t be groundbreaking news for you.

Hello fellow founder 👋  Read on!

So last week I was talking to a friend who runs a startup here in SF, they just raised an eight-figure round and decided it was time to upgrade their domain. All the names they ran by me sounded great but I wanted to make sure they knew what kind of price tag to expect.

“Those are all great names, just know that you’re going to be paying six-figures for domains like that,”

They didn’t believe me. I think the exact response was:

“What are you talking about? I don’t think domains sell for six-figures very often.”

The reality is, very few people know the sheer volume of six and seven figure domain sales that happen. While seven figure sales don’t happen daily, they do happen more than once a month but often go unreported, the same is true for six-figure sales except more of these get reported.

Recently Go Daddy released their sales data and I think this provides a valuable look at the true volume of domains that are changing hands for six-figures every week. Here’s a quick look at domains that sold over the past week compliments of DNJournal:

Six Figure Domain Sales
(Source – DNJournal Weekly Sales)

What you’ll probably notice here is that there were actually nine six-figure sales reported and they aren’t even all one-word .COMS – FiveNines.com just made the cut at $100,000 as did VanInsurance.com, and surprisingly, the same name in .CO.UK sold for $6k more.

Now here’s where things get interesting.

These are only the reported sales. I can’t say that me, or anyone else really has the data on how many sales go unreported but most people believe it’s more than 50% of sales in the six and seven figure range.

Of course you might look at a domain like FiveNines.com and think – what?!? I wouldn’t pay $10,000 for that domain, and I believe you. That’s the magic of domains, certain names are incredibly valuable to certain companies, and since there’s only one of each domain name out there, they are each truly unique assets.

So if you just raised a round and are looking at getting a new domain, let me be the first to say – do it 🚀  Your domain name has a major impact on your business, and just like you’d pay top dollar for an office on 5th Ave in NYC (okay maybe pre-pandemic), you can expect to pay top dollar for the same location online.

Just know, if you spend six-figures on a domain, you’re not alone, you’re just one of many buying domains in this price range that week, or even that day.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton