Carousel.nyc sells for $7,000
I originally posted back in July about my 4 year .nyc domain investing experience and recently followed up that article with news of 4 more .nyc domain sales that took me over the $20,000 sales mark.
There was one sale however, that pushed me over the break even line and that was carousel.nyc which completed just a few weeks ago for $7,000.
Up until recently my biggest .nyc domain sales were $3,000 (x 2 sales) and $3,090 so it was nice to exceed those with this sale. Maybe there’s time for one more big sale before the year’s up!
I received an email about this domain about a month ago from a gmail account with no history and so I was intrigued about who it may be interested. After a couple of emails they said that they had decided to go in a different direction – so we both moved on.
Fast forward a few weeks later and I received an email from Afternic congratulating me on the sale of carousel.nyc. I was excited but also nervous because of only one other domain sale through Afternic coming after a pricing mishap – I’d listed a domain there for $360 and netted $288 after that sale.
I anxiously logged in to Afternic and noticed that I had listed carousel.nyc for $7,000 and netted $5,700 after their commission (20% on the first $5,000 and 15% on amounts above this).
This sale gives me extra confidence that the .NYC domainspace is thriving. Businesses are valuing these domains well and aftermarket sales are happening – mostly quietly as other people in this arena prefer not to promote their sales.
Afternic’s $1,300 commission on a $7,000 domain sale (or even their $72 commission on my only other sale with them of $360) did hurt a little, but they facilitated the sale. Listing your domain names with Afternic.com get more eyes on your domains especially through their partnership with GoDaddy to get premium domains owned by investors to the top of GoDaddy’s search page. Take a look at the screenshot below which shows my domain rink.nyc which is listed at Afternic and how it looks when someone searches for this domain at GoDaddy.
I expect that whoever purchased carousel.nyc did so after a search at GoDaddy. They then completed the sale by clicking through.
Buy now prices sometimes are not favored by domain sellers because of the thought of leaving money on the table, after I’ve made a few sales like this (with a buy now on an Efty or Undeveloped page) I think they may improve overall sales success.
Could I have negotiated this domain beyond $7,000? I’m not sure. Would I have frustrated the buyer if I tried? Maybe.
Thinking more broadly about the implications of this sale
$7,000 for a generic one word .nyc domain is not only another positive signal of .nyc domain strength 4 years after the TLD launched, but it’s further evidence that solid one word .nyc domains hold value.
The strength of “carousel” could be debated, I really like it, but have others I prefer and there are many others out there waiting to be registered.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this domain sale and the NYC domainspace. Please leave your comments below.
That’s amazing how you sold it on afernic! May I ask Matt, how long did you have it listed before it sold? I’m thinking of using afernic also to list domains. Thanks for sharing your success!
I think I bought it 3 years ago and try to have all my names listed on Afternic, Sedo, Uniregistry’s marketplace. I may have listed all my domains to afternic about 18 months ago – this name probably was added then.
About once a year I change the DNS between Efty / undevelped.com to test different splash pages/inquiry forms (this also changes the commissions).
I’ve only ever sold the two domains with Afternic and I think both should be considered GoDaddy sales as I believe the buyer first searched at GD then saw the premium listing and completed the purchase there.
I’m not completely sure of the buyer experience but Afternic and GD have tight integration that may make the buyer unaware of Afternic and make them think the transaction is fully with GD – this can really help buyer confidence which is important with a 7k deal (or even at any price).
More eyeballs on domains is the benefit of listing them everywhere especially with Afternic which can push good names to the top of a GD search as shown in the screenshot above in the article.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Great sale Matt! Afternic is a must, as well as Sedo. You can list at both, and both distribute your listings to a large channel of registrars. Afternic distributes your names on GoDaddy, but I believe Sedo’s MLS network will also distribute your names on places like name.com, Dynadot.com, Porkbun.com and many more. They all do a domain availability check before selling so it’s OK to list on both platforms. Yes, the commission hurts, but the reach they bring definitely puts the odds in your favor of finding the perfect end user!
Thanks for the comment Kathy. I have to look back into how Sedo verify domain ownership – I think that was my hurdle when I last tried. I have so many domains, at so many registrars and I think that they were needing a cname update or screenshots of my registrar account…
One option was to point the DNS at Sedo but I’m running Efty pages on my domains and that has also been quite successful.
I had always assumed that GoDaddy premium listing in their search was the only one to really care about because of customer base and number of searches but maybe I’m missing out more than I think with MLS. Will look into it – thx.