Gay.uk just sold for $25,000 making it the highest reported .UK domain sale to-date

by Morgan on July 12, 2019

Now I didn’t intend to do two days with back-to-back blog posts about .UK, especially since I intend on buying zero .UK domains…but here we are, and it’s happening.

Today Jag Singh posted the following on Twitter:

Converting that to USD the final sale price comes out to $25,466. The domain sold through DomainLore.uk a marketplace focused on .UK domains that I honestly hadn’t heard of until today.

Looking at the site it seems that they have a lot of bidding activity on a whole range of .UK domains with names like Insure.uk already exceeding $5,000 USD.

One of my readers Snoopy, shared some interesting insights on .UK domains in the comment section yesterday:

The last sentence stuck with me. It’s not like .UK is new, it’s been out for five years and still .CO.UK seems to be the overwhelmingly popular choice. So why now would .UK become so valuable?

Looking on NameBio, the highest recorded .CO.UK domain is Cruises.co.uk which went for $1.09M, followed by Furniture.co.uk for $650,000. For .UK on the other hand, the highest recorded sale is Campings.uk $12,675. Why anyone would pay so much for the key word “campings” is actually baffling to me but the point is, today’s sale of Gay.uk was 2x the highest reported .UK sale.

My initial thought is that there’s too much hype about .UK and it’s causing people to do foolish things, i.e. overpay for domains that they’re never going to be able to sell for a profit.

That being said, as these sales continue it’s going to create a whole new set of comps, the question is – does that make a difference? I’m still staying away from .UK domains myself, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on the sales data because this is officially getting interesting.

{ 7 comments… add one }

Tex July 12, 2019, 3:15 pm

.co.uk sales have been diminished in recent years because .uk was on the horizon, with the extension threatening to rival or overtake .co.uk in the long-run. Conversely, .uk sales have been low because it was not widely used yet and was adopted by .co.uk owners, so not much aftermarket activity since 2014. The full rollout just took place and now it’s new ballgame. Right now, not much going on, just speculation. But five, ten years down the road, that’s a different story. .uk is very well-positioned to grow in market share, mind share, and usage. Accordingly, values will be higher.

You make calculated risks based on the set of facts before you. Nothing is guaranteed. But if it makes sense, go for it. And some people are going for it.

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Doron Vermaat July 12, 2019, 3:17 pm

A ton of premium keywords in .UK went to auction last week at SnapNames, GoDaddy and a few other auction houses / dropcathers.

Most of these went for a LOT but aren’t reported. I was in the auction for Pink.uk and it went to $8,000+

That’s just an example. I can imagine sun.uk, job.uk, webhosting.uk, wedding.uk etc went for much more than that.

Personally I think they went for way too much considering the complete lack of sales in the extension so far and investors overpaid.

Personally I ended up winning auctions for Jobsearch.uk and fem.uk but ended up paying much more than intended. Time will tell if I overpaid for them.

Here in Hong Kong the .hk extension has increased in popularity over the years and is now actually the preferred choice over the longer .com.hk extension.

Shorter is better imo but it might take many years, or not at all before the extension gains popularity and recognition in the UK.

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Mark Thorpe July 12, 2019, 3:18 pm

Gay.app sold (supposedly) quick as well.
Gay is in, straight is out. Welcome to the Millennium.

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Tex July 12, 2019, 3:30 pm

Even if the extension is not widely used, premium dot UK domains could still have value as digital assets.

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Anonymous July 12, 2019, 5:17 pm

Something seems queer about this sale.

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John July 13, 2019, 1:20 am

One thing I determined when I was regging some during the release was this:

This domain is really for end users now, not domainers. I was actually not happy when I saw some I was not able to get show up being listed for sale right away. Thought that was a horrible thing and they were ones I wanted to put to immediate use.

I thought I only had around 10 to 15, but I’ve just tallied up and have over 20. Every single one I bought for end use, not for “domaining” or selling. I got into an interesting 3 way auction for one of them and fortunately won. Every single one I put into immediate use, have not listed for sale, and have no plans to ever do that. But never say never as they say. I don’t really put any effort into selling domains beyond maintaining a small fraction of my portfolio passively listed in mostly one place, with a tiny number in one or two other places.

As far as “insight” goes, I found this comment by the user “platey” very interesting at NamePros:

“OK here goes lol

I am from the uk etc

To understand the

.uk

Market

You have to forget domain names

And go way back in the uk to about 40 years ago to the era of the yuppie in the 80’s awash with dough Eg money buying porsche etc in the uk you done OK if you bought a porsche or rolls Royce etc but in the uk back then there was a little white booklet that used to list personalised number plates by a company called

Elite registrations where a person could buy a personalised licence plate or as we say in the uk number plates etc so that people who had a few quid could pose and buy a number plate with their initials on it and a couple of numbers on it etc but a person even if they had quite a few quid could only buy a personalised number plate for their car within a certain format which had to consist of numbers and letters and they would pay a pretty penny for these personalised number plates etc but then a company called

registration transfers

Entered the personalised number plate market and the prices of these personalised number plates started to soar in value

Check out

Elite registrations

And

Reg transfers. Co.uk

And you’ll see the prices these personalised number plates sell to the wealthy in the uk etc

Bear with me lol

Before the Internet people used to have to speed scan pages and pages of these personalised number plates trying to make words from letters and numbers using zeros for the letter o etc and 1’s as the letter I etc etc

Which I thoroughly enjoyed finding these very desirable personalised number plates etc

But there was a problem lop

I could save money for toffee and couldn’t afford to buy these personalised number plates in order to be able to profit from them etc and still can’t today lol

But but one of these personalised number plate companies has also gone in to the domain name market

Eg

Elite registrations

The number plate company

Owns?

Intervention. Co.uk

A domain name reseller / registrar

But it appears to only sell

.Co.uk

And

.uk

Website addresses

But it’s main number plate business has over 40 years of premium top dollar end users as does

reg transfers who also have some of the best potential buyers for. Uk website addresses

Isn’t that right wizard lol

Wizard knows most of them and understands the market too

But when reg transfers eventually enter the domain name market

The prices of. Uk Website addresses will soar in value like the uk has never seen and achieve millions for some. Uk Website addresses purely down to the fact that these two companies have significant amount of wealthy end users as customers who trust these two companies and they have the dough to buy pretty much anything suggested to them. By these two companies

And when you understand both these markets and the potential uk end users for the. Uk Website address extension you’ll understand just how important buying the most premium Website addresses in the. Uk Website address extension could prove very lucrative

And when the prices of very good
.uk Website addresses start to soar in value it will attract the big. Com dough investors from the states

It’s just that the uk market currently is still digitally asleep but only until

Reg transfers

Enters the domain name market as a reseller and or registrar

But although I never made money on number plates in the uk

I learned my domain name skills from the big. Com investors in the states but have a very good understanding of the uk domain name market and have managed to build up a little portfolio of domain names for reg fee using 40 years database experience scamming pages of number plates manually extremely quickly and now the Internet is hee my experience at playing the fruit machines back in the day lol works well with domain names etc lol

But suffice to say

The domain name market in the uk is still digitally snoring at the moment but this week investors in the states are buying up the uk domain names because domain name investing in the states is understood but these. Uk domain names became available whilst the uk domain name market was still asleep but it won’t be for long and when the uk domain name market wakes up and realises that the domain names they need are already bought the wealthy end users will start paying proper dollars for these premium. Uk domain names

But the best domain name auction for
.uk

And. Co.uk

Domain names

Is

Currently

Domainlore. Uk”

It is found here: https://www.namepros.com/posts/7302027/

Morgan, you apparently also missed another ~$1,000,000-plus .co.uk sale:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/gold-domain-sells-600k-record

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John July 13, 2019, 10:19 am

Nice, wish I had thought of this one: http://www.uk

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