Domain Names for Sale – You can now buy two character .ie domain names. Fairly cool for a brand like Brian O’Driscoll, 13.ie, perhaps. Unfortunately, an advertising agency got that domain before Brian, maybe he wasn’t even interested as Brian is an International Brand, a .com encompassing his name and brand is the right strategy, brianodriscoll.com – a strong corporate image. Fair enough, solid decision.
But first, if you are interested in our services at Digital Sales, check out this quick video:
When the IEDR decided to release two-character domain names for the .ie market, a bidding process was initiated (they did, back in the day make exceptions for already established brands such as 02 for example, but very rare). The price paid for IT.ie was almost 11K euro. Good publicity for 11 Grand I suppose and probably a load of decent PageRank backlinks, in fact 162 according to Semrush. And we all know about backlinks, PageRank and SEO…
Well, it’s hard to get a handle of what people historically paid for .ie domain names in the past as this was forbidden by the IEDR. You couldn’t sell a .ie unless it was part of the company assets that you were buying. Technically! I myself bought a .ie with a ‘s’ at the end of a two-word string for €1100, just to protect my primary brand and set it to redirect. However, you can now buy and sell .ie domain names without selling a company. So, how much?
So, what are .ie’s going for? I recall hearing a story Denis O’Brien paid 1M for jobs.ie back in the boom days (2005), any truth in it? I don’t know. But there was a active live website with advertisers, so not just a domain name but an online recruitment business. This is what jobs.ie looked like in 2007 (awful really!):
Paddy Cosgrave claims he paid 10K for WebSummit.com from an asking price of 100K, a claim which is very very hard to believe (show me the proof please?), especially when you consider Teamwork.com was sold for €500K to Teamwork, another Irish company. Two companies who built a brand and forgot about international expansion, where was the scenario planning!?!?! They lost an awful lot of negotiation ‘position’ once the brand was created.
Now that you can buy and sell .ie domains, let’s take a look at www.sedo.com and see what .ie’s are actually going for? Domains with an asking price attached (May 2018)…
Therapy.ie 35K Beijing.ie 40K
Insider.ie 13K Internet.ie 50K
Christ.ie 35K Creation.ie 50K
Webcam.ie 25K Linger.ie 50K
Download.ie 30K Jewellery.ie 30K
Edify.ie 38K Amsterdam.ie 20K
BailBonds.ie 40K Rome.ie 50K
Cool.ie 25K Drink.ie 20K
Baby.ie 50K Billionaire.ie 50K
SL.ie 50K HomeHelp.ie 40K
SunHotels.ie 50K WhitePages.ie 50K
SelfDriving.ie 50K SelfDrivingCars.ie 50K
Winter.ie 13K Gender.ie 1.5K
Swimsuit.ie 2K Herbal.ie 1K
Sting.ie 12K Slack.ie 11K
Cuba.ie 14K Nerd.ie 4K
Rave.ie 7K Celebration.ie 2K
21.ie 2K Al.ie 30K
Oi.ie 7K Netserve.ie 10K
Kyl.ie 20K PokerPlayer.ie 10K
AllAboutBaby.ie 10K
I did get a great laugh when I found out that ScumBag.ie was going for 2K!!! It’s a funny world! So, would you spend 50K on Internet.ie? Well, if it was Internet.com – maybe, .ie with a population of 5 million, I don’t see it. WebSummit.com for 10K, a ‘steal’ if its true, which I doubt very much.
Your Product & Service Market – if its got international potential, don’t bother with a .ie – however, if your initial market is Ireland only, then absolutely. See this blog post regarding International SEO.
What are the search volumes of that domain name? The keyword, is it significant? Maybe it isn’t at all. And is it a new trend, study the search volumes over the past number of years, are they upwards?
Are there possible alternative domain names?
If you decide to go with a search query as domain name, then make sure that string encompasses the generic sector you are in. And, can that string be developed into a brand? Otherwise go with a brand.
You can sell your domain name through loads of providers like, sedo, GoDaddy, etc. but they will take a cut or you can sell direct, you can do the negotiating and you can keep the full sale value.
At Digital Sales we can help in two ways. We will host your domain name and we will upload ‘for sales’ contact details information on the homepage. So, if anybody types your domain name into the address bar, they will see your contact details and are aware that your site is ‘for sale’. Perfect!
Here is a perfect example: www.b2bsales.co.uk
At an extra cost we can upload Google Analytics code, if requested. See our contact details above and below, if you would like a price. The price will depend on the number of domain you are looking to sell and thus host on the Digital Sales servers.
‘Hi , I am interested in selling bigsale.ie
Do you think it is of any value ??
Thank you
Kind regards
FOB’
And this was my response, which you may find informative:
Hi FOB,
Ye, it’s quite a good domain name and I’m sure it could be worth a few quid if you found an Irish company who was interested or they found you!
Many decision makers will check a domain name by going to their browser address bar and tying it in. If the page loads and a message appears that the domain is for sale, they may contact you.
And a user may go to a domain registrar like: www.register365.com and check if the domain is available – unfortunately this user process will bypass you, but the user may also check if it’s for sale.
For example, Digital Sales recently purchased, www.DigitalSales.io – if wasn’t listed on the registrar, we went to the domain, saw it was for sale and make an enquiry, negotiated a price and made the payment using Dan.com
I can envisage the .ie domain market will go up in price due to supply – so yes your domain name has worth.
As I wrote in my blog post – https://www.digitalsales.ie/digital-blog/domain-names-for-sale/ – we can upload a landing page if you wish and get your domain on a server, just like: www.b2bsales.ie or www.b2bsales.co.uk
If you were really clever, you could buy www.bigsale.com, this would add extra value. In fact you could buy strategic domain names, bigsales. extensions and this would really increase the value of your group of same name domain extensions.
If you would like Digital Sales to host your website and upload for sale instructions, let me know and I will provide a quotation, otherwise you can contact Dan.com, just like: http://www.bigsales.com/ and they will host selling instructions.
You can reach me direct on 0863113443.
Regards,
Diarmuid.’
***TIP****
Another point, if you have a particular domain name and you want to sell it. Say you have a .ie or a .io – contact the owners of the .com and .co.uk directly and see if they might be interested in protecting their brand or using your domain to expand into that particular domain extension jurisdiction.
If you are a company that wants to build a world class website or needs help with your organic search position, Digital Strategy or generating online sales……do the necessary!!!…contact the Digital Sales team direct send us a mail at: info@digitalsales.ie, see our contact us page for our office locations.
Diarmuid Haughian – Business Development Director – Digital Sales
Post Grad Dip. User Experience (UX), Dip. International Selling, Cert. Digital Marketing, MSc. BITS
