Several notable .BIZ domain sales were picked up the other day by Domain Name Wire. Casinos.biz was purchased through Sedo’s online brokerage for $19,000 as verified through their RSS feed of recent sales. And All.biz was sold for a very substantial $61,750. Neither site is developed yet although both domains lend themselves to good branding possibilities for the buyer(s).

PremiumDomains.biz recently sold InjuryAttorney.biz and PersonalInjuryAttorney.biz in private deals, as well as MedicalMalpracticeLawyer.info through an online brokerage.

On a different note, www.Methadone.US which was developed in the first quarter of 2011, has experienced consistent week after week growth since going live January 23rd. The site has a wealth of original content, a U.S. city clinic directory, online assessment, and several other tools & resources.

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A quick post to mention several notable industry happenings. Photo.com was purchased via Moniker for $1.25 million. The buyer remains private at this point as their public whois information is currently shielded at Network Solutions. This is a common practice as many big ticket buyers are still acquiring premium domain names and wish to remain anonymous.

Sadly, Bido.com closed its doors effective today. Bido was an online domain name auction platform whose owners focused on a “social auction” model that allowed site users and bidders to vote for domains. The owners did an excellent job of designing a rather sophisticated interface with many features. One of Bido’s strengths and weaknesses was both its site’s diversity and complexity. Bido struggled somewhat in defining its market niche. Its demise seems at least in part a result of trying to sell lower quality domain name inventory on volume. This, in my opinion, moved the company in the wrong direction. 

However, Bido’s owners are very creative, entrepreneurial types who constantly look for new opportunities and who can take a mere idea to final form through discipline and hard work. I have no doubt we’ll hear of other new ventures coming from Sahar Sarid, Jarred Cohen, and Jeff Bhavnanie.

Lastly, SanDiego.com (the complete business, not just the domain name) will be auctioned off on Friday, May 7. SanDiego.com was reported to be generating about $700,000 per year in revenue … which most estimators conclude is a significant underutilization of the site. Geo domains, and most any elite domain name, must be properly optimized. San Diego is a very large, popular American city with enormous potential. SanDiego.com will likely be acquired, and hopefully relaunched, by a media savvy organization. For more on this story, please visit Ron Jackson’s DNJournal.

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Domain name sales have always driven widespread interest in the domain name industry. No one knows when the first domain sale occurred, but it foreshadowed a vibrant market that was to emerge in the years ahead.

Novices should be informed that there is not one, singular market that represents all domain transactions. Most people are aware of Sedo and Afternic sales as well as those documented in Ron Jackson’s DNJournal. However, many sales are undisclosed and never become publicly known due to privacy & non disclosure agreements.

There are reasons why domain sales privacy is fundamental to good business. A buyer does not want others in the marketplace to know what he has paid, or can pay, for future acquisitions. And a seller does not want others to know the level of proceeds received from a sale because that seller often reinvests those proceeds into more purchases.

Publicly disclosed sales information can weaken future negotiations for both buyers and sellers. So “smart money” typically operate outside the public’s radar and prefer to keep quiet their most strategic moves and acquisitions.

This phenomenon greatly impacts public perception of domain sales and creates the somewhat false impression that all aftermarket sales are known. They are not.

Many people try to extrapolate domain trends from known sales data, but they are always operating somewhat in the dark since so many total domain name sales are never made public.

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Facts.info is currently available to the highest bidder in an ongoing Sedo auction. The current bid is $3000 EUR which is $3956 U.S. dollars, and the reserve has been met. I was the original registrant of Facts.info in 2002 and had previously sold this domain at auction in April 2007 for $2550.

It is an excellent fit for the .info (information) domain extension since facts & information are at the very core of what makes the internet so powerful. Mr. Harald Ebert of Barcelona, Spain is the present owner and looks to make a nice return on his investment.

Facts.info would make a logical brand & online identity for a wikipedia type website, online encyclopedia, news aggregator, or research center for a major university. Online education and degrees are big business being so well suited to live streaming over the internet. I’ll be interested to see if this nice name is possibly acquired by a known educational institution, or is purchased by a domain name investor.

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It’s not hard to understand this strategic acquisition which occurred near the end of 2008. AT&T (American Telegraph & Telephone Co.) have been around for a long time, and are a true American icon and brand. But they are an older company determined to reinvent themselves and stay relevant in this rapidly changing world.

AT&T operate YellowPages.com which was reported to have been acquired for around $100 million some years ago. YP.com was purchased for $3,850,000, from LiveDeal, who had been providing the expected online yellow pages format that most people are familiar with. Acquiring YP.com will only strengthen AT&T’s online yellow pages dominance.

In this hyper-competitive global economy, grabbing market share requires planful decision-making, good timing and a constant vigilance for accretive opportunities. AT&T score high marks with this one.  

An investment-oriented, forward thinking approach would suggest that buying a premium domain name now … is preferable to purchasing it for multiples later on. Two letter domain names certainly qualify as exquisite properties.

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