NEW YORK – With another ‘out of the ordinary’ new Generic Domain Name sale publicly announced by Donuts Inc. for Vacation.Rentals (reportedly acquired for $500,300.00 in an all-cash deal) this becomes their second earth-shattering alternative-dot transaction in the last twelve months of which many will agree, appears to be sent straight from the heavens above. In fact, all of their employees should vacate the Kirkland, Washington premises immediately and purchase lottery tickets; luck and good fortune is abound.
Vacation.Rentals now becomes the second earth-shattering alternative-gtld transaction by Donuts Inc., in the last twelve months, which many will agree appears to be sent straight from the heavens above.
The first colossal sale which rattled the domain industry hit the wire back in January when new gTLD domain name Home.Loans was reportedly purchased for $500,000.00, in yet another all-cash deal. You may remember that I highlighted that transaction in ‘sheer disbelief’, which opinion was greeted with a small flurry of comments that also questioned the legitimacy of the sale.
One industry veteran commented that in his opinion questions are indeed proper in such scenarios:
This is exactly the reason I posted the story of my Whisky.com sale on dnjournal back in 2014. I put the Escrow document in the article showing the names and email addresses of those involved. Transparency is key. People are investing their hard earned money and need to know the truth in order to make sound business decisions. Be careful of manipulators”, said Michael Castello, owner/CEO of CCIN.com
One industry veteran commented on StrategicRevenue.com, article “Does the Domain Industry Suffer From Own Versions of Trumpted Fake News Stories?” that in his opinion questions are indeed proper in such scenarios.
In my first observation and I reiterate to you today, we must keep in mind – and hold the industry accountable as there is and continues to be the potential that many deals will be based on these sorts of – most often – unverifiable reports.
Let’s make ’em verifiable, or at least a small select portion of them, as many bets will be made and lost, and we are in a time of great-many questions, especially when it comes to new GTLDs.
Which is why, today, I am making a public call and request for Donuts Inc., to release variable financial transaction data, for the general good and transparency of the industry, from ITS SALE IN 2017, OF HOME.LOANS, AN ALL-CASH DEAL, which buyer and seller were equally delighted to light-up-the-industry with just prior to the live NamesCon auction; dynamite timing I might add.
- Did that original transaction of Home.Loans in any way influence or lead to the price and/or value determination of this new second record breaking transaction?
- Have new gTLD domain prices, or any domain prices for that matter, changed, either positively or negatively, from that initial report, or will they in the future, with this new one?
- Does the domain industry suffer from its own version of “Fake News” stories?
These are all very fair questions and if you think I am alone in this assessment or my objectivity, you are sadly, sadly mistaken.
I will not mention names specifically, but I am pleased to be able to enlighten you that many-a-domainer (industry veterans), quietly whispered words of encouragement and approval at NamesCon for having raised these very important questions – which is why I invite you and anyone with an opinion to agree or disagree publicly in the comments below, as we wait to see if Donuts Inc. will step-up-to-the-plate and release verifiable proof of its original transaction of Home.Loans announced earlier this year – yet closed in 2017; a new gTLD transaction now off its books, and made public and disclosed by both buyer and seller prior to any significant questioning being risen.
A screenshot of my very initial comments and questions on DomainNameWire.com when news of the Home.Loans sale first broke in January of 2018, days before the 2018 NamesCon event and live auction. Nothing verifiable has come about.
I bet not one reporter ever saw any actual proof, yet these transactions are reported as gospel; what say you?
Related: Does the Domain Industry Suffer From Own Versions of Trumpted “Fake News” Stories?
About The Author: John Colascione is Chief Executive Officer of Searchen Networks Inc. and Internet Advertising Inc. He specializes in Website Monetization, authored a ‘how to’ book called ‘‘Mastering Your Website’, and is a key player in several Internet related businesses through his search engine strategy company Searchen Networks®
Let’s see the signed contract of sale. I have big doubts. The second sale seems like “marketing” with the price slightly higher than the first.
The $300 increment is so blatantly ridiculous…. We must all ask ourselves what type of industry does not question or police report after report of half-million dollar cash transactions which effect future market prices and sales of other industry participates.
Several months ago I had an inbound offer from an end user for a two-word ten-character aged.travel-related COM domain for high $XXX. I was looking for low $XXXX. They would not move up to what I believe was a very reasonable asking price. No deal was made.
Yes I am skeptical of five and six-figure reported sales by new TLD registrars. Publicly-traded companies have to go through annual audits and quite often the auditors will spend time on-site even looking at quarterly results. Yet the domain industry blindly accepts registrar-reported sales even when they seem illogical – with no supporting corroboration that they are legit third-party transactions. Yet domain investors ultimately make investment and pricing decisions based on reported domain sales. What are the penalties for fraudulent financial reporting? What are the penalties for reported domain sales which never really occurred?
Unsure I believe either sale so yeah, proof would be good.
And I am not interested in seeing proof of this one. I want proof from the first one Home.Loans which buyer has now already confirmed that the $300 increment was specific to beating out the first record sale. Unfortunately for him, a couple more zeros were likely added.
Articles like this are good for contrarians. If we contrarians are right, it keeps the herd out of our space and if we are wrong, keeps our losses lower.
Thanks!
I call BS! No way a gtld sold for more than the reg fee. Practically no one wants them and they invite confusion on a massive scale. Can you say .mobi? Show us the contract!
I believe some yield great sales prices, no doubt, but let’s be realistic here….. The clock is ticking, and the longer they wait, the more foolish it all looks. Yes, all parties are indeed reading every word of this.
Interesting…. DN journal requires written documentation on all published transactions. There is a realistic possibility this might be all “smoke and mirrors” similar to the jet.com transaction.
A bogus press release would cause hype in the alt suffix market. Similar to when prez trump tweets and stocks fall immediately creating a market for puts.
All I can say is that I talk with a lot of people’s and I have a very good feeling that nothing you would have expected to have happened as far as verification of funds actually transferring, ever happened related to the home.loans sale. Tick-tock… Tick-tock…
There is no way dnjournal would require documentation on all sales. They’d be going on word a lot.
I have submitted a few sales reports and most of the better reporting places require proof but quite honestly what is sent is a screenshot of some type. If one wanted to get creative a screenshot is easily forged.
To report a sale over 100k there needs to be some concrete proof of money actually changed hands.
People make bad investments all the time, True or Not this is a bad investment and everyone unbiased knows this. If it were true that a company was going to risk half a million dollars the seller would not have rocked the boat by asking him to pay an extra $300 so it could be reported as the highest new gtld sale to date. The buyer has nothing to gain by this and risking such an amount he probably would have gotten nervous to have his domain name a part of something shady risking his investment.
Only Noobs will fall for it and think new g’s will offer them a chance at a big payday.
Look at .xyz now, people cant even sell their one word .xyz names for more than a few dollars if even that. Time is the best teacher and those of us around from the beginning know better.
p.s. homes.loans has a website but for someone that spent half a million for it im sure would have done some marketing, Right? That said a youtube video commercial on their home page has ONLY 57 VIEWS.
P.S 2 New gtlds proponents were envious of the .com holders and tried to take away from the people because they think they are more deserving/Entitled. Lying comes second nature to them especially in business.
In the stock market brokers push worthless investments to their clients often for their own benefit, and clients fall for it all the time.
Sooner rather than later new g proponents will have to accept the fact that and give up, take a loss, and resort to dealing with .com owners….and they know owners of premium domain names don’t sell cheap anymore.
They cut off their nose to spite their face.
I was going to say something else but i forgot:)
A lot of these companies have an interesting relationship with the truth and/or proof. These folks have been BS’ing us for many years for their own self absorbed financial interests at the expense of GULLIBLE domainers! Believe NOTHING!
Notice that very few domainers have ANY GTLD sales after how many years and 30 million registrations? Almost every sale is either a direct registry sale or a registry ordered auction. Some with questionable results.
They all wanted the same result as .com but these companies clawed back every possibly value combination they could think of. MANY after a DOMAINER actually registered the domain and the registry decided it was too valuable and clawed it back after the fact. After it was bought and paid for. DISGUSTING PRACTICE! These companies have no honor. If they make a mistake, YOU, the domainer are always the ones getting screwed. And even so, when combined they still sell very few!
They all want to be .com and not ONE has copied the .com playbook. Good luck with that. The only ones they are fooling are domainer wannabees and fools.
In time, these worthless gtld domains will just be redirected to a REAL .COM domain name! Just look at the history! They FAIL each and every time! GTLD’s should come with a warning label! Caution, you might lose MOST of your traffic to the .com counterpart. You may be building someone else’s business instead of your own!
Meanwhile what percentage of these reported sales are truly genuine? And genuine means, $$$ changed hands and if there were any other perks, ad dollars or ANY OTHER consideration, rebate, refund etc included in the deal that was not reported.
GTLD’s are an unwanted, unneeded product with virtually no market other than foolish domainers looking for the second coming and going broke! SAD!
And yet another thing, people buying new extensions don’t think that they might wake up one happy morning to discover that the renewal price for the domain that their money site dwells, is now few hundreds, if not thousands bucks. Why not? Because they can.
Rick, You said – “GTLD’s are an unwanted, unneeded product with virtually no market other than foolish domainers looking for the second coming and going broke! SAD!”.
Your statement suggests that ICANN has done a mistake, DotBrand owners have done a mistake, worlds leading domain registries are doing a mistake by promoting new gTLD to the world, and all the new gTLD domainers are making a bad investment. This is unfortunate that such statement comes from the one who led the way in the early days of days of .com even when people considered .com investment to be a mistake.
Sadly, you call thousands of new gTLD domainers foolish. Dear Rick, many domainers including me consider you as a great example of success. Please do not let us down.
PS: Their site is a total joke.
I went to their site, I did several searches and they ALL came back “No results found”. Who would EVER go back? I don’t care if the site is finished or not, you offer a service with no service or content. Fake site! Waste of time. It’s just another “Shell of a site”. Millions of these type “Mini sites” WITH the content that nobody will ever use. Why would I TRUST a No.Name brand vs actual brands that are reliable, have guarantees and millions of users that praise their service? No.Reason.
I have to agree there, I checked out the site and it kept my attention for about 20 seconds before I left. I just thought it was not finished.